Anthropic $3.4B deal raises questions on AI's insatiable power needs
The AI buildout has shown that it needs a large amount of electricity, and Anthropic just made a move that emphasizes that need. The company behind Claude AI recently spent $3.4 billion on 1.7 gigawatts of gas generators, according to Financial Times.
That is enough electricity to run over a million homes. However, Anthropic is putting that power into the data centers that train and run AI models.
The deal closed in late September through a San Antonio firm called OnePWR Solutions. The firm had already placed heavy generator orders with Caterpillar (CAT), but Anthropic stepped in and took over the entire order book.
This large power deal shows where the AI money is going. It’s not just about building data centers. Power generation firms and industrial suppliers are also becoming an important part of the AI trade.
Inside the Anthropic, OnePWR, and Caterpillar arrangement
According to CNBC‘s report, Anthropic paid for the equipment and the engineering work needed to install the generators that OnePWR had ordered from Caterpillar at its own data center sites in Texas. Anthropic did not buy OnePWR, and no employees changed hands.
Also read: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a biblical-level warning about AI
Caterpillar makes construction machines, diesel engines, natural gas generators, and gas turbines, which is how it earns most of its money.
With this deal, they just earned a lot of money from Anthropic. Industry blog FourWeekMBA estimated that Anthropic’s order alone was worth about 99% of Caterpillar’s third-quarter power generation sales.
That shows just how much Anthropic needs power for its data centers. Melissa Busen, Caterpillar’s senior vice president for electric power, has described gas generation systems as “core infrastructure for data centers,” based on comments shared for a project Monarch that DataCentreMagazine reported.
Why electricity has become the AI race’s main bottleneck
For years, people interested in the AI trade focused on chip supply, and companies like Nvidia (NVDA) were at the center of most related conversations. Now another main issue is catching attention. That issue is finding enough electricity to keep those chips running.
New data centers that are trying to connect to the U.S. grid might have to wait as long as five to seven years to be hooked up, Hanwha Data Centers reported. That’s why many companies are trying to find a way around the grid. Anthropic’s workaround is to own its generators and skip that wait.
Elon Musk’s xAI used a similar method for its Memphis “Colossus” site this year. The company bought about $2 billion in mobile gas turbines to supply its power needs.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who co-founded Nvidia over three decades ago, has also pointed out in July that AI needs “1,000 times more power than we currently have.”
How the spending looks to incoming IPO investors
Anthropic filed to go public on the Nasdaq on October 26, 2026 under the ticker ANT.
Its IPO filing disclosed that Anthropic had an $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of 2026. The filing also showed that the company has about $895 billion in long-term computing power and infrastructure commitments, the Washington Post reported.
Those numbers mean that Anthropic is spending money at a pace similar to a major oil company building refineries. It cannot fund that kind of spending alone, so it will have to rely on loans. Google has already backstopped roughly $15 billion in data center loans for Anthropic’s Texas projects, Yahoo Finance reported.
More AI Stocks:
- AMD’s biggest AI deals come with a 320 million share catch
- Banks that raced to fund neoclouds like CoreWeave are now hesitating
- Palantir’s business beyond government just got a lot bigger
Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, told NBC News earlier in 2026 that “building AI responsibly can’t stop at the technology” and must extend to the infrastructure behind it. In my view, the Caterpillar order is Anthropic playing its part in that philosophy.
How investors can read this signal
Many industries are now benefiting from the AI boom. Power equipment makers and pipeline operators could see years of strong demand as AI firms continue to lock in their own supply.
However, that demand outlook does not make these stocks easy bets. Caterpillar shares still fell by 6% on November 5 as a broader AI selloff spread to some industrial companies. The selloff came after a state-level pushback against building new data centers in Texas, TIKR reported.
Also, burning natural gas to power AI data centers creates complications with the climate pledges tech giants made just a few years ago. Those complications could lead to local opposition or new regulations.
