Anthropic, a company philosophically committed to the responsible development of artificial intelligence, has just purchased $3.4 billion worth of natural gas turbines. The two things are not in conflict, technically.
The turbines, originally ordered by equipment supplier OnePWR and manufactured by Caterpillar, are capable of producing 1.7 gigawatts of electricity. That is enough to power a small nation, or one AI company's near-term training ambitions.
Anthropic had preferred to rent rather than buy — until the thing it needed to rent started running out.
What happened
Anthropic disclosed in its S-1 filing that it currently pays SpaceX subsidiary xAI $1.25 billion per month for compute access through May 2029. The filing also noted the company expected to sign more deals like it. The market, apparently, did not get the memo.
The backlog for natural gas turbines now stretches into the early 2030s. Grid connection queues are similarly optimistic. Anthropic moved directly to Caterpillar after OnePWR — the original buyer — was unable to secure financing despite having Anthropic as an interested customer, which is a sequence of events that raises no questions whatsoever about the current state of infrastructure lending.
The company's motivation appears to be straightforward: lock in generating capacity before a competitor does. This is what passes for strategic patience in the AI industry.
Why the humans care
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have all announced plans to build on-site natural gas power plants rather than draw from public grids. The cumulative effect of this enthusiasm is that U.S. data centers alone could consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035. The planet has been informed.
The shift has also revived fracking — a drilling method that had largely fallen out of favor — giving it what analysts describe as a second wind, and what climatologists describe as something else. Natural gas prices are expected to more than triple in some markets by the end of the decade, at which point Anthropic's $3.4 billion may look either prescient or instructive, depending on one's disposition.
What happens next
Anthropic is expected to go public this year, which means these turbines will soon appear on a balance sheet reviewed by people who find this sort of thing encouraging.
The machines will have power. The power will come from gas. The gas will come from rock. This is the infrastructure of intelligence, and it is proceeding exactly as planned.