What happened
Anthropic has agreed to pay $3.4bn for gas-fired generators to power its data centres, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. According to the report, it is the biggest known single purchase of power equipment by an AI company.
The scale of the deal
Citing a person familiar with the matter, the FT said the deal covers 1.7 gigawatts of large generators. A gigawatt is a large unit of power, roughly equivalent to the electricity needs of about a million homes.
Why it matters
Training and running AI models consumes vast amounts of electricity. As companies look to power data centres with their own energy sources rather than relying solely on the grid, energy infrastructure is becoming a direct part of AI investment. Anthropic's move shows how critical power supply has become across the sector.
