The British business newspaper the Financial Times (FT) reported the deal on Sunday 8 November, citing a person familiar with the matter. Other outlets have summarised the FT’s report. In a story published by CNBC, Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report. Anthropic and OnePWR did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Anthropic agreed the deal in late September, the FT reported. The deal is worth about $3.4 billion, and the generators have a combined capacity of up to 1.7 gigawatts.

Anthropic took over OnePWR’s orders

OnePWR Solutions, an equipment supplier based in San Antonio, Texas, ordered the generators from Caterpillar about two years ago. DCD reported that OnePWR placed the order before recent price increases but needed financing to complete the transaction. In the end, Anthropic took over the Caterpillar orders itself, although it was originally meant to be a OnePWR customer.

Anthropic did not buy OnePWR, and none of OnePWR’s employees moved to Anthropic. The deal does, however, include the engineering and construction work needed to install the generators. DCD said the generators are expected to be available within two years.

TechCrunch asks why OnePWR failed to secure financing despite Anthropic’s interest. The publication speculates that Anthropic wanted to keep the generating capacity for itself before a competitor could buy it.

Power has become a bottleneck

The deal is the largest known single purchase of power-generation equipment by an AI company, the FT reported, as summarised by Heise. The paper said AI companies are using their financial muscle to bypass intermediaries because delivery times for gas turbines and generators have stretched to years.

Tom’s Hardware wrote that turbine orders worldwide reportedly exceed 100 gigawatts, against an estimated manufacturing capacity of 60–70 gigawatts. The average delivery time in the US is six years, it said. TechCrunch reported that the backlog of gas turbine orders runs into the early 2030s, and connecting to the grid can take just as long.

TechCrunch notes that Anthropic has usually leased capacity rather than buying it. In its S-1 filing in May, the company disclosed that it is paying SpaceX subsidiary xAI $1.25 billion a month for computing power until May 2029. TechCrunch sees the generator deal as a last resort. The FT reported that Anthropic has compute commitments worth nearly $900 billion running to 2045.

The deal has also drawn criticism. Tom’s Hardware reported that Shakeel Hashim, founder of ReadTransformer, wrote on X: ‘This is pretty grim—these kinds of generators are terrible for the environment.’ TechCrunch also points out that gas exposes companies to price swings. One analyst estimates that gas prices could more than triple in some markets by the end of the decade.