Anthropic bets $10B on AI cloud newcomer Volta to wean off Big Tech compute

Anthropic is making a $10 billion wager that it doesn’t need to be entirely dependent on Amazon or Google to fuel its AI ambitions. The company has reportedly signed a massive six-year compute deal with Volta, an AI cloud startup founded just this year. The move signals that the race for specialized hardware is pushing frontier labs into unconventional partnerships.

What makes this arrangement particularly interesting is who Volta brought in to build the actual infrastructure. Bitdeer, a company better known for crypto mining, will develop the Norwegian data center underpinning the contract. The facility will deliver 133 megawatts of capacity, running on Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips. For a crypto miner, this represents a serious pivot into the AI infrastructure gold rush, leveraging existing expertise in power management and data center operations for a very different kind of customer.

Volta operates within Nvidia’s Cloud Partner program, a consortium of providers that essentially function as an alternative distribution network for Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs. By going through a partner like Volta rather than directly to a hyperscaler, Anthropic may be able to secure access to Vera Rubin systems faster or on more favorable terms. TechCrunch noted that Bloomberg’s reporting relied on anonymous sources, and Anthropic hasn’t commented publicly on the deal.

This isn’t Anthropic’s only effort to diversify its compute supply. The company has recently announced deals with SpaceX and, ironically, still maintains its deep partnership with Amazon. The Volta deal suggests a pragmatic recognition at Anthropic that hedging is survival. When every frontier model release depends on having enough chips, getting locked into a single provider’s timeline is a strategic risk no lab can afford. Whether a six-year commitment to a startup with a crypto mining partner pays off depends entirely on Bitdeer’s ability to deliver a flawless, Vera Rubin-ready data center on time.