Anthropic has committed $3.4 billion to secure gas-fired power generators for its data centers — the largest direct investment in power generation equipment ever made by an AI company, according to the Financial Times.

The buyer's identity took weeks to surface. In late September, investment bank Piper Sandler disclosed in a short memo that it had advised San Antonio-based equipment supplier OnePWR Solutions on a $3.4 billion sale of its power generation platform to an unnamed "frontier AI lab." That lab, the FT now reports, is Anthropic.

The deal covers 1.7 gigawatts of heavy-duty natural gas generators. Anthropic takes over generator commitments OnePWR had previously made with Caterpillar, plus the engineering and construction capability needed to install the equipment. The generators should become available within the next two years. Anthropic and OnePWR did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.

The timing matters. Anthropic filed its S-1 registration statement with the SEC in September and is seeking a $1.3 trillion valuation, selling 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each.

How big is the bill behind it?

The S-1 lays out the scale of Anthropic's infrastructure ambitions in hard numbers. The company disclosed approximately $900.9 billion in aggregate committed spending on computing and infrastructure, including purchase commitments and lease agreements. About $451.6 billion is expected to be spent before 2030, with most of the rest stretching through 2045. Another $70.7 billion falls due within 12 months of September 30, according to the amended S-1 filed in November.

Power is the choke point. Anthropic's filing warns that transformers, turbines, generators, substations and other electrical equipment can take years to procure, with manufacturers facing higher prices, tariffs and limited production capacity. The company also concedes it may have to buy long-lead-time power generation at prices above market rates.

Gas itself carries risk. The S-1 flags dependence on natural gas as a threat to the data center buildout through volatile prices.

"As data center operators increasingly rely on natural gas-fired generation, and because behind-the-meter and on-site arrangements are feasible only in some jurisdictions given the applicable regulatory frameworks, we expect increased competition among users for the same natural gas supply and pipeline capacity in those areas," the filing reads.

Anthropic also disclosed that some planned facilities depend on dedicated natural gas-fired generation, exposing it to fuel line fluctuations, pipeline capacity constraints and supply disruptions.

Why buy generators instead of renting cloud?

The answer sits in the S-1 under the label "Anthropic Direct." The strategy lets Anthropic lease chips directly and place them in dedicated data centers built on its behalf. It splits the company's "commitments for data center capacity" from its "commitments for the compute infrastructure deployed inside them."

"Because data centers require longer lead times but represent a smaller fraction of total compute costs," the S-1 reads, "this approach enables us to secure data center capacity early while deferring larger accelerator investments until our specific compute needs are more certain."

Until now, Anthropic's infrastructure has relied on several technology suppliers: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Nvidia and AMD. Owning generation shifts the balance toward self-sufficiency.

Who else is buying power?

Anthropic's deal is the biggest, but the pattern is industry-wide:

• Alphabet acquired energy developer Intersect Power for $4.75 billion in December 2025, gaining control over how quickly new generation comes online next to its data centers.
• xAI turned to natural gas turbines for its Colossus data centers in Tennessee and Mississippi after grid connections proved insufficient.
• Meta is pursuing on-site gas generation for its Ohio data center campus with energy infrastructure firm Williams, a project worth roughly $1.6 billion in generation equipment, according to the Milken Institute.
• Microsoft signed a 20-year, $16 billion agreement with Constellation Energy in September 2024 to buy electricity from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
• Amazon expanded its relationship with Talen Energy for a nuclear-powered data center campus next to the Susquehanna plant in Pennsylvania.

"We're making the largest private sector investment in state history — $20 billion — to bring 1,250 high-skilled jobs and economic benefits to the state, while also collaborating with Talen Energy to help power our infrastructure with carbon-free energy," said Kevin Miller, AWS vice president of global data centers, in a Talen press release.

The message from all of them is the same. Compute is purchasable; power is the scarce asset, and whoever locks in electrons early owns the runway.