(I personally own shares in Nvidia)
Nvidia is leasing a data center in Texas to secure massive computing capacity for the AI developer Anthropic through the provider Lambda.
The AI developer Anthropic has signed another cloud computing contract worth billions. The agreement is worth $35 billion and will be handled through Lambda, the cloud provider backed by Nvidia. What makes this transaction unique is that chip giant Nvidia itself holds the actual lease agreements for the underlying data center in Nueces County, Texas.
The campus is being developed by data center developer Hut 8. Nvidia had already secured the capacity there a few weeks ago through a lease agreement, with the intention of passing it on to Anthropic via Lambda. This unusual arrangement underscores Nvidia’s growing role as a financier and intermediary in the AI ecosystem: The company is leveraging its enormous financial clout to secure large-scale contracts for emerging neocloud providers like Lambda while simultaneously ensuring sales of its own high-performance chips.
Capacity Bottlenecks Force Massive Multicloud Expansion
For Anthropic, the agreement is part of an aggressive procurement strategy after the company hit capacity limits due to the enormous demand for its Claude models. Just a few weeks ago, the developer closed a $45 billion cloud deal with provider Nscale for facilities in West Virginia.
An interesting side note regarding the Texas transaction: Hut 8 is also separately building Rechenzentren for Anthropic, which will utilize Google’s competing TPU chips. Google has provided financial guarantees to support Hut 8 in raising debt capital. Hut 8 had reported in July that a tenant with top creditworthiness had leased the entire 700-megawatt campus for 15 years—as has now been revealed, that tenant was Nvidia.
