Anthropic is spending $3.4 billion on Caterpillar natural gas turbines capable of producing up to 1.7 gigawatts of electricity, according to a Financial Times report. The AI company, which plans to go public this year, acquired the generators that equipment supplier OnePWR had originally ordered but could not finance.
The purchase marks a shift for Anthropic, which historically preferred to rent computing power rather than buy infrastructure. The company disclosed in its May S-1 filing that it pays SpaceX subsidiary xAI $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for computing access and stated it expects to enter into additional similar service contracts.
The move reflects intensifying power constraints in the AI industry. Natural gas turbine backlogs stretch into the early 2030s, and grid connection queues are equally long. Anthropic likely secured the generators directly from Caterpillar to prevent competitors from accessing the capacity.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have all announced plans to build on-site natural gas power plants for their data centers. If the buildout proceeds as planned, U.S. data centers alone could consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035. One analyst expects natural gas prices could more than triple by the end of the decade in some markets.