Google backstop de-risks TeraWulf's $19 billion Anthropic lease

TeraWulf said on 4 November that it has secured a credit backstop from Alphabet's Google for its Hawesville, Kentucky data-centre project, which is leased to Anthropic. The Reuters report says the deal is part of a wider trend of large tech firms backing smaller AI companies and data-centre developers with multi-billion-dollar guarantees.

The size of Google's backstop has not been disclosed. TeraWulf's SEC filing said Anthropic's payment obligations were expected to be backed by an investment-grade credit provider, but the provider was not named until this announcement. Earlier coverage says TeraWulf is lining up about $3.5 billion in debt for the Kentucky campus, which would be its first leveraged-loan financing.

Google is not new to TeraWulf's balance sheet. Earlier coverage says it already provides a $3.2 billion financial backstop for TeraWulf's debt, which raised its equity stake to 14% from 8%.

TeraWulf signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for the campus in July 2026, through its subsidiary Raylan Data LLC. The site is expected to generate about $19 billion in contracted revenue and support 401 megawatts of critical IT load, with initial capacity online in the second half of 2027. TeraWulf also announced an expanded agreement with construction and engineering firm Fluor Enterprises for the site. Data Center Frontier has covered the lease and TeraWulf's brownfield strategy.

TeraWulf's shares fell about 3% in premarket trading, in a broader slide in AI data-centre stocks. Reuters reports that investors are weighing possible tighter regulation after Democrats gained control of Congress.

TeraWulf is the clearest near-term beneficiary. A credit backstop from an investment-grade provider should make the $3.5 billion debt raise easier to place, and it puts a hyperscaler's balance sheet behind a project whose revenue depends on one tenant. Google gains as well, though its exposure to TeraWulf is growing: it now carries a $3.2 billion debt backstop, a larger equity stake, and this new credit support.

The open questions are the backstop's size, which remains undisclosed, and whether the $3.5 billion debt closes on the terms it is seeking. Earlier coverage says Anthropic is weighing Nvidia GPUs, Amazon Trainium and Google TPUs for its compute, with a vendor selection expected within four months. Whether Hawesville will use Google TPUs is unconfirmed, so watch that decision closely.