Riot lands $9.1B AI data centre deal, backed by $573M from Morgan Stanley
What's the deal? Riot Platforms has raised $573 million in post-IPO debt from Morgan StanleyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to fund its expansion into AI data centres. The financing underpins a new 20-year contract with an unnamed leading AI lab to lease 191 megawatts at its Rockdale, Texas site.
How big is the contract? Riot expects roughly $9.1 billion in revenue from the deal. Two five-year extensions could lift the total to $16.1 billion.
What's the endgame? Riot is shifting from pure bitcoin mining to operating large AI data centres. Combined with a January contract with AMDDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, ramping through 2027, it now leases 241 megawatts and projects cumulative net operating income of $7.8 billion to $8.7 billion over the base terms.
Why now? The mining business is losing weight. Second-quarter 2026 mining revenue fell 19%, from $140.9 million to $113.7 million — even as Riot produced more bitcoin, 1,587 BTC versus 1,426 a year earlier.
The squeeze: A lower bitcoin price drove the drop. The average value of mined BTC fell 27%, from $98,800 to $71,667, while direct mining costs rose 1.9% to $49,912 per BTC. Including hardware depreciation, costs hit $90,631 per BTC — well above the average production value.
The signal: Riot follows Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and other miners renting out compute to AI customers. As mining economics tighten, the sector's power and data centre footprint is proving more valuable pointed at AI than at bitcoin.
Read more: BTC-Echo
Image credit: U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command
