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Anthropic signs a $3.4 billion deal for gas generators to power its data centers, the Financial Times reports
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Anthropic is taking over 1.7 gigawatts of gas-fired generation that OnePWR Solutions had ordered from Caterpillar, in a deal worth $3.4 billion closed at the end of September. The agreement covers setting up the equipment, with no purchase of OnePWR by Anthropic. The Financial Times describes it as the biggest known buy of its kind made by an AI lab.
Anthropic, the company that develops Claude, wants more control over the electricity that powers its data centers.
According to the Financial Times, which cites a person familiar with the matter, the company signed a $3.4 billion deal at the end of September with OnePWR Solutions, based in San Antonio, Texas. In return it gets high-power industrial gas generators that add up to 1.7 gigawatts, plus the engineering and construction work needed to get them running. Investing.com picked up the report on Sunday, November 8, in a story published on Yahoo Finanzas.
OnePWR had ordered that equipment from Caterpillar roughly two years ago, but it lacked the money to complete the purchase. Anthropic first considered becoming a OnePWR customer and ended up taking over the orders already placed. According to the British paper, it has not bought the company, and none of OnePWR's employees have moved to Anthropic.
The paper sees it as the largest known single purchase of power generation equipment by an AI lab. Other tech companies have taken similar steps: xAI, SpaceX's AI subsidiary, bought mobile gas turbines for $2 billion earlier this year, and Alphabet, Google's parent company, acquired the energy developer Intersect in late 2025.
The deal comes amid rising demand and a shortage of generation equipment, with manufacturing lead times now stretching over several years. Anthropic has disclosed computing commitments of nearly $900 billion through 2045 and, until now, relied mainly on partners to secure power, chips, data centers and land. According to Ámbito, Reuters could not confirm the report on its own, and neither Anthropic nor OnePWR answered its questions right away.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
The AI race is no longer decided by chips alone: it also depends on who gets electricity in time. With the power grid growing more slowly than data centers and generator makers quoting waits of years, taking over orders already placed is a way to skip the queue. The move brings Anthropic closer to what other big tech companies already do as they shift from buying energy to producing it. It comes at a cost: gas ties these centers to a fossil fuel and its price, and it is not clear where the equipment will be installed or when it will run. For other businesses the consequence is indirect but real: if the largest players snap up generators and turbines, any project that needs power, from a factory to a regional data center, may face longer waits and higher prices.
Source: Yahoo Finanzas · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
