Slate wiped early. Riot Platforms prepaid a $200 million loan backed by its bitcoins. The Texan miner thus recovers his collateral. Above all, the operation comes a month after a $9.1 billion lease signed with Anthropic, OpenAI’s rival.
Key Points
Riot extinguished its $200 million loan on September 21, seven months before maturity
The 5,821 BTC pledged at Coinbase regain their freedom
According to Bloomberg, Anthropic leases 191 MW to Rockdale for $9.1 billion over 20 years
In Corsicana, an authorized gigawatt is already the subject of a letter of intent
Riot Platforms settles its Bitcoin-backed loan before maturity
Riot opened this credit line at Coinbase Credit in April 2025, for $100 million. The following month, the group increased it to double. Its originality lay in the collateral: bitcoins from the treasury, supplemented with USDC and cash, blocked at Coinbase Custody. This type of loan makes it possible to raise liquidity without selling a single satoshi. On the other hand, it exposes the borrower to a margin call as soon as the price drops. However, it has become a reflex among American miners.
The pledge therefore jumped seven months before the April 2027 deadline, without penalty. In the process, Riot erases an interest expense of around $12 million per year, at a fixed rate of 6.15%. As of June 30, the lender held 5,821 BTC as collateral. This represents more than half of an already thinned reserve of 11,380 BTC. The group has in fact sold 27% of its treasury in bitcoins to finance its shift towards AI.
This hygiene matters because Riot must finance data centers of several hundred megawatts. However, a balance sheet without collateral on its main asset opens the door to infrastructure funds. Their tickets are in the billions, not hundreds of millions. Banks first look at what the borrower has already promised to someone else.
Riot leases Rockdale to Anthropic and keeps Corsicana in reserve
This household follows a much heavier construction site. In mid-August, Riot signed a 20-year lease for 191 MW of IT capacity on its Rockdale campus. The contract brings in $9.1 billion over the initial term, and up to $16.1 billion with extensions. Riot does not name its tenant. However, it is Anthropic according to Bloomberg, which relies on sources close to the matter. Riot plans to deliver 96 MW in December 2027, then all in June 2028. At the end of 2025, Anthropic also announced $50 billion in American data centers, with Fluidstack. The first projects are targeting Texas and New York State.
Riot also keeps a second card in hand. In Corsicana, south of Dallas, the group has one gigawatt of authorized power. In August, it signed a non-binding letter of intent for 756 MW of IT capacity. The sole tenant remains anonymous. No AI laboratory can produce such power in eighteen months. Indeed, AI data centers lack energy. In Texas, the connection queue is now measured in years.
IREN, Cipher, TeraWulf: Bitcoin miners become AI donors
Riot is not the first. IREN signed $9.7 billion with Microsoft. Cipher Mining got 5.5 billion with Amazon. As for TeraWulf, it concluded nearly 9.5 billion with Fluidstack, under Google guarantee. Each time, the operator exchanges an income indexed to the hashprice against a rent of five to twenty-five years. However, the equity markets reward this visibility much more than a mined block.
However, the mining industry paid for these megawatts alone. Riot first connected Corsicana and Rockdale to produce SHA-256 hashing. Back then, no one was competing for a dusty plot of land in Navarro County. Today, AI laboratories therefore rent electrical infrastructure that Bitcoin has financed.
Riot thus emerges from the operation with a treasure in bitcoins free of any collateral. It also holds a first IA lease in Rockdale and an authorized gigawatt in Corsicana. The treasure can be purchased on the market in a few clicks. The gigawatt is negotiated with the Texan network manager, after several years of waiting.
