The American company Anthropic, the developer of the Claude neural network, entered into an agreement in the amount of approximately 3.4 billion dollars to supply electric generators powered by gas to data centers. This was reported by the "Financial Times", citing a source familiar with the terms of the deal.
At the end of September, Anthropic purchased the rights to supply Caterpillar generators with a total capacity of 1.7 GW from Texas-based OnePWR Solutions. The equipment is designed to supply power to data centers used for artificial intelligence.
The agreement includes the engineering and construction work required to install the generators. At the same time, Anthropit did not acquire OnePWR itself, and its employees did not transfer to the AI company.
“The deal was the largest known acquisition of energy equipment by an AI developer. It illustrates how the fight for electricity forces technology companies to delve deeper into the energy industry. AI developers typically rely on utilities and specialty energy companies, but as demand for gas turbines and generators soars — and manufacturing lead times stretch to years — the tech giants are tapping into their financial resources and direct supply.
OnePWR ordered generators from Caterpillar two years ago, but needed financing to complete the deal, a person familiar with the matter said. Entropic initially planned to become a OnePWR customer, but ultimately chose to commit to ordering equipment from Caterpillar.
The FT notes that direct access to energy equipment played a key role in the rapid launch of large-scale data centers by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Earlier this year, xAI (an entity related to SpaceX) purchased $2 billion worth of portable gas turbines.