Anthropic takes over $3.4bn Caterpillar generator order for 1.7GW

Anthropic signed a $3.4 billion deal for Caterpillar gas generators covering 1.7GW of data center power, taking over an equipment order Texas supplier OnePWR Solutions placed two years ago.

OnePWR ordered the generator sets before recent price increases and needed financing to complete the transaction, according to a Data Center Dynamics report on Nov. 9 that cites the Financial Times. Instead of becoming a OnePWR customer, Anthropic took the Caterpillar orders over directly.

For allocators underwriting data center power, the counterparty carrying the generators changes: the orders now sit with the compute company instead of the equipment supplier that placed them. That likely moves delivery and price risk onto Anthropic's balance sheet, alongside the $895.4 billion of cloud and data center commitments through 2045 it disclosed earlier this month, according to Data Center Dynamics. Financing terms for the takeover were not disclosed.

OnePWR will help with installation of the generators at Anthropic data centers, including engineering and construction needs, and the sets are expected to be available within the next two years, the report says.

The 1.7GW order is just under half of the more than 3.5GW of compute Anthropic is expected to have this year, according to New York Times reporting cited by Data Center Dynamics, with a similar amount due in 2027. The outlet described the generator purchase as the largest known single purchase of power-generation equipment by a frontier lab.

The deal is aimed at giving Anthropic greater control over its data center portfolio, part of a push further down the data center stack into facility construction and power, according to the report. Anthropic has also signed a $50 billion deal with Fluidstack and contracts with TeraWulf and Hut 8.

Some of those commitments lean on other parties' financing. The $44.6 billion Nscale agreement runs until 2033 and requires Nscale to try to obtain qualifying financing for its Nvidia GPUs, while a $41.3 billion Lambda deal to 2034 requires Lambda to secure its facility lease in a timely manner, the report says.

Whether the generator takeover carries OnePWR's pre-increase pricing onto Anthropic's books is the open question for anyone modelling the company's power costs.