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Anthropic buys $3.4B of gas generators for AI

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According to the Financial Times, Anthropic took over about $3.4 billion of gas-fired generators, 1.7 gigawatts in total, from Texas-based OnePWR Solutions. It did not buy the supplier; it took over the Caterpillar order slots and the engineering and construction work needed to install them.

· 2 min read

Gázüzemű erőmű piros-fehér kéményekkel egy víztározó partján
Image: Pexels / Nur Andi Ravsanjani Gusma · Pexels · Source

What happened

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Anthropic struck a deal worth about $3.4 billion with San Antonio-based OnePWR Solutions in late September. It covers 1.7 gigawatts of heavy-duty gas-fired generators for AI data centers (CNBC).

Anthropic did not acquire OnePWR, and none of its employees moved over. The deal does include the engineering and construction (EPC) capacity needed to install the generators. Neither Anthropic nor OnePWR commented.

Why generators

Grid Status says the machines are Caterpillar generators that OnePWR ordered two years ago. Anthropic effectively bought an existing place in the queue, which is valuable when manufacturing backlogs run for months or years. These are behind-the-meter installations that generate power on site instead of drawing from the grid, so there is no wait for a grid connection (Grid Status).

The analyst notes that such on-site gas generation is less efficient than grid power plants. With US gas prices relatively low, the numbers still work, especially compared with the value of the compute.

Why it matters

Demand for Claude keeps pushing Anthropic to secure more compute and power. Reuters reported in September that the company expects to spend more than $500 billion on AI infrastructure over ten years. 1.7 GW is roughly the output of a large power plant.

Frontier labs are now buying their own power, not just GPUs. Part of the reason is growing local resistance to data centers, which showed in the US midterms (US midterms: voters push back on data centers). Gas generators come with emissions, which is likely the next fight.

    By Mikola Máté Patrik

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