TL;DR · 30-second read
The Short Version
Riot Platforms made its name mining bitcoin. It now has contracts worth about $38 billion to supply land and electricity for artificial intelligence computers.
The biggest is a 15-year, $28 billion lease in Texas with an AI company Riot has not named. The site covers roughly the electricity used by several hundred thousand homes.
Riot took in just $18.4 million from this business last quarter. The promise is huge, but most of the money depends on one customer paying rent for years.
Riot Platforms said on November 4, 2026 that it signed a 15-year, 910-megawatt lease covering its entire Corsicana, Texas campus with a tenant it describes only as a “leading Frontier AI Lab.” The lease carries about $28 billion in total contract value and about $1.8 billion in average annual rent over the initial term.
With an AMD contract and an earlier Rockdale lease with the same lab, Riot says it has leased 1,151 megawatts of critical IT capacity, the power available to computing equipment, for about $38 billion of long-term contracted revenue. Third-quarter revenue was $181.4 million, including $18.4 million from data centers.
Executive Summary
Riot’s third-quarter results, furnished with an 8-K filed November 4, show a bitcoin miner with a large data center contract book and, so far, a small data center income line. The $38 billion figure is contracted revenue rather than a statement of available power capacity, which answers part of the question hanging over miners moving into AI. Riot has signed commitments, not just sites.
The more useful question is what those contracts depend on. Corsicana alone accounts for about 74% of the contract value and 79% of the leased capacity, and the same unnamed lab also holds the Rockdale lease. The Corsicana structure lowers Riot’s capital needs and shifts most operating risk to the tenant, leaving delivery of the power infrastructure and the tenant’s ability to pay as the main variables.
Riot expects more than $2 billion of average annual net operating income, meaning property income after operating costs, at full deployment. CEO Jason Les also said the company does not “currently anticipate issuing equity to fund our announced projects.” Both statements look ahead, and both depend on how the Corsicana lease performs.
Why One Tenant Is the Real Test of the $38 Billion
The concentration follows from Riot’s own figures. Corsicana contributes about $28 billion of about $38 billion, leaving roughly $10 billion and 241 megawatts for the AMD contract and the Rockdale lease combined. Because Rockdale is with the same lab, that tenant’s share of the total is higher than Corsicana’s 74%, though Riot’s headline numbers do not separate Rockdale from AMD.
The lease terms explain why credit matters so much. It is a triple-net lease, meaning the tenant rather than the landlord carries most running costs. The tenant pays substantially all operating costs, with power passed through, and rent is due on the full 910 megawatts “irrespective of utilization.” Riot is therefore largely protected if the computing sits idle or electricity prices rise. Once the site is delivered, the main exposure left is whether the tenant keeps paying for 15 years.
That is a strong position if the counterparty is strong, and a long, fixed obligation is what infrastructure lenders generally want to see. But Riot’s description of the tenant as “leading” is not a credit measure. Shareholders and any future lenders will need more than that adjective to price this income, particularly when a single lease makes up so much of the contract book.
What the Powered-Land Structure Actually Moves
In a powered land lease, Riot supplies the land, power infrastructure and prepared pads, and keeps owning and maintaining the high- and medium-voltage equipment serving them. The tenant procures, installs, owns and operates the modular computing deployment. Riot puts total capital costs at about $6 million per IT megawatt, about half the cost of a Tier 3 build, a common data center design standard for redundancy.
Applied to 910 megawatts, that rate implies about $5.5 billion of capital, against about $1.8 billion of average annual rent, or close to $2 million per megawatt each year. On simple arithmetic, a year’s average rent equals about a third of the capital, before financing costs, maintenance and the timing of rent. That ratio suggests the tenant is paying heavily for energized land and power delivery, not for a finished building.
The comparison to a Tier 3 build needs one qualification: it measures Riot’s outlay, not the cost of the finished AI campus. The remaining cost moves to the tenant. Riot’s wording is also measured, describing the structure as “significantly limiting procurement, development, and ongoing operational risk.” Limiting risk is not the same as removing it, and the electrical work that makes the site usable stays with Riot.
Contracted Is Not Yet Collected
Riot’s data center line was $18.4 million in the third quarter, about 10% of revenue, with the other $163.0 million coming from its remaining businesses. Riot’s 10-Q now reports data centers as a segment alongside bitcoin mining and engineering, but the income statement still looks like that of a company in transition.
The scale of the change is clearest when annualized. Corsicana’s average rent of about $1.8 billion is roughly 2.5 times Riot’s third-quarter revenue run rate of about $726 million, and roughly 25 times its data center run rate of about $74 million. The expected $2 billion-plus of net operating income applies only “at full deployment,” so the path from here to there depends on delivery.
The Balance Sheet Behind “No Equity”
Riot sold 20,264 bitcoin year to date for about $1.5 billion, an average near $74,000 a coin, primarily to fund data center development. It ended the quarter with $950.2 million in cash and bitcoin and raised no equity in 2026. In effect, its bitcoin holdings have been paying for the move into data centers.
Set against about $5.5 billion of implied Corsicana capital, some of which may already be spent, $950.2 million is a fraction of the total. The commitment not to issue equity is limited to announced projects and framed as a current expectation, which leaves room for debt or other financing. Riot also says future cash flows could go to its development pipeline or to shareholders, whichever creates “the most value per share,” so that choice remains ahead.
Background
Riot Platforms, based in Castle Rock, Colorado and listed on Nasdaq, operates digital infrastructure and bitcoin mining facilities in central Texas and Kentucky, plus engineering and fabrication facilities in Denver and Houston. It now describes itself as a developer and operator of large-scale data centers.
Bitcoin mining requires large sites with substantial electrical capacity, the same input AI developers need for their computing. That overlap is what makes a move from mining into data center leasing possible, but holding power capacity is different from holding signed contracts, which is why the $38 billion figure has drawn attention. Source: Riot Platforms Inc (RIOT) (Q3 2026) Earnings Call Highlights: $38 Billion in AI Data Center …, Yahoo Finance’s highlights of Riot’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call. Primary sources: Riot Platforms 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, filed November 4, 2026; Riot Platforms 8-K filed November 4, 2026; Exhibit 99.1: Riot Platforms Reports Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Strategic Highlights; Exhibit 99.2: Riot Platforms Q3 2026 Earnings Deck.Sources