Anthropic joins AI’s natural gas frenzy, buys $3.4B worth of turbines

Anthropic is spending $3.4 billion on natural gas turbines, a striking departure for an AI company that has generally avoided owning physical infrastructure. The deal, reported by the Financial Times, covers Caterpillar generators capable of producing up to 1.7 gigawatts of electricity — a sign that the AI industry's power crunch has grown acute enough to push even cloud-native buyers into the hardware business.

The turbines were originally ordered by equipment supplier OnePWR a couple of years ago, but OnePWR couldn't secure financing to complete the purchase. Anthropic had planned to buy them from OnePWR; instead it went straight to Caterpillar, the manufacturer. The source material doesn't explain why OnePWR failed to land financing despite Anthropic's apparent interest as a customer, but the article suggests Anthropic likely wanted to keep the generating capacity out of competitors' hands.

The purchase breaks with Anthropic's stated preference for renting rather than owning. In its May S-1 filing, the company disclosed paying $1.25 billion per month to SpaceX subsidiary xAI for computing power through May 2029, and told investors it expects to enter additional similar services contracts. The market for power, however, has grown uncertain: backlogs for natural gas turbines stretch into the early 2030s, and grid interconnection queues can be just as long — constraints that may have forced Anthropic's hand.

Anthropic joins a crowded field. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have all announced plans to build large natural gas plants to power data centers on site instead of drawing from the public grid. The buying binge has given a second wind to fracking, and if the buildout proceeds as planned, U.S. data centers alone could burn more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035.

The long-term economics remain an open question. Hyperscalers' reliance on natural gas exposes them to price swings, and one analyst quoted in the report expects prices could more than triple by the end of the decade in some markets. Watch whether Anthropic's turbine order signals a durable shift toward owned generation across AI labs, whether more deals bypass intermediaries like OnePWR to go direct to manufacturers, and how gas price volatility reshapes the cost models behind these multi-billion-dollar bets.

Anthropic is also planning to go public this year, meaning investors will get a clearer look at how a hardware-heavy power strategy sits alongside its existing rent-compute commitments — and which approach proves cheaper over time.