Anthropic has agreed to pay $3.4 billion for gas-fired generators to power its data centers, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The paper said it is the biggest known single purchase of power equipment by an AI company.
The deal covers 1.7 gigawatts of large generators, according to the FT, which cited one person who knows about it. A gigawatt is a billion watts, and 1.7 of them is in the range of what one or two large nuclear reactors produce. The FT account gives no other terms, and none from Anthropic.
The arithmetic is simple. $3.4 billion for 1.7 gigawatts works out to about $2 billion per gigawatt, or roughly $2 million per megawatt of capacity. The report does not say whether that covers installation or only the machines.
The notable part is the kind of thing being bought. AI companies have spent the past few years competing for chips. A generator order means competing for electricity too, and owning the hardware that makes it on site instead of waiting on a utility. Connecting a large new facility to the grid can take years in many regions, which is one plausible reason to build your own supply. The source does not say that is Anthropic's reasoning, so treat it as context rather than motive.
It also marks a different style of deal from earlier power moves by tech firms. Microsoft's 2024 agreement to buy electricity from a restarted reactor at Three Mile Island was a long-term supply contract. This is equipment purchased outright, and gas-fired equipment at that, which is a fossil fuel choice.
Where the generators will sit and when they arrive remain unreported. For now the $3.4 billion figure rests on a single unnamed person, relayed by one newspaper.