TeraWulf Plans $3.5 Billion Debt Raise for Anthropic's 401 MW Kentucky Campus
TeraWulf plans to raise $3.5 billion in leveraged loans and high-yield bonds to finance Anthropic's 401 MW Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, locking up exactly the kind of brownfield, high-voltage site miners have historically targeted.
TeraWulf's first leveraged loan deal will finance a 20-year, ~$19 billion Anthropic lease, setting a power-market benchmark that reprices the brownfield sites Bitcoin miners depend on.
Key takeaways
- TeraWulf plans to raise $3.5 billion in leveraged loans and high-yield bonds, its first-ever entry into the leveraged loan market, to construct the 401 MW Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky for Anthropic, first reported by Bloomberg on July 9, 2026; Morgan Stanley is expected to lead.
- The campus is anchored by a 20-year lease with Anthropic PBC signed July 6, 2026 (per SEC 8-K), projected to generate ~$19 billion in contracted revenue, with initial capacity targeted for H2 2027 and full 401 MW delivery by early 2028.
- The deal implies roughly $950 million per year for 401 MW of power capacity, a benchmark Bitcoin miners cannot match on block-reward economics alone, accelerating displacement from the exact type of energy-advantaged brownfield sites miners have historically targeted.
TeraWulf (Nasdaq: WULF) plans to raise approximately $3.5 billion through a mix of leveraged loans and high-yield bonds to fund construction of the Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, first reported by Bloomberg on July 9, 2026. The financing, expected to launch before year-end 2026 with Morgan Stanley leading, marks TeraWulf's first-ever entry into the leveraged loan market, per CFO Patrick Fleury.
The campus is already contracted. TeraWulf subsidiary Raylan Data LLC signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic PBC for the full 401 MW facility, filed with the SEC on July 6, 2026, and projected to generate approximately $19 billion in contracted revenue over the initial term. Anthropic holds two five-year renewal options, extending the potential relationship to 30 years.
The Deal Structure
The SEC Form 8-K filed July 6 outlines phased delivery: initial capacity in H2 2027, full 401 MW online by early 2028. The Hawesville site carries roughly 480 MW of existing power availability, acquired by TeraWulf in February 2026 specifically because of that pre-permitted, high-voltage infrastructure.
The math from the filing is straightforward. Nineteen billion dollars over 20 years is approximately $950 million per year for 401 MW, or roughly $2.4 million per MW annually. That is the contracted rate Anthropic is willing to pay for this power profile.
Fleury noted, per Bloomberg, that many lenders from TeraWulf's existing $250 million revolving credit facility are expected to participate in the Justified Data financing. The $3.5 billion raise would be a new debt layer on top of TeraWulf's existing balance sheet.
The same 8-K disclosed a second transaction: TeraWulf agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy Joint Venture to Fluidstack, monetizing its legacy Bitcoin mining joint venture at a premium. The exact sale price was not disclosed in the filing.
What This Repricing Means for Miners
TeraWulf started as a Bitcoin miner. The Hawesville site was not acquired as AI infrastructure; it was acquired because it fit the brownfield-industrial, pre-permitted, high-voltage-transmission profile that Bitcoin miners target. The $19 billion Anthropic contract converts that profile into a 20-year AI tenancy at ~$2.4 million per MW per year.
Bitcoin mining economics cannot generate that kind of contracted offtake. Block subsidies halve on a fixed schedule, fees remain unpredictable, and there is no counterparty writing a 20-year lease backed by investment-grade credit. When an AI hyperscaler with Anthropic's backing is willing to sign that contract, it sets a clearing price for energy-advantaged sites that miners simply cannot bid against. The power gold rush that was theoretical a year ago is now showing up in SEC filings.
The Abernathy JV sale to Fluidstack compounds the signal. TeraWulf is not just building for AI, it is liquidating legacy Bitcoin mining joint-venture infrastructure at AI valuations. That exit market is new. It tells every miner sitting on a brownfield site with good transmission access that there is now a buyer class willing to pay a premium for exactly what they built. Some will sell. Some already have.
This is the structural shift the Stargate buildout made visible at the macro level. TeraWulf's deal makes it visible at the site level, with a specific dollar figure and a named 20-year counterparty.
The falsifiable version of this thesis: if Bitcoin mining revenues (block subsidy plus fees) rise to a level where miners can outbid or co-locate alongside AI tenants at comparable lease economics, or if AI capex contracts start getting renegotiated or defaulted at scale, the asymmetry narrows. Neither condition is present today.
What to Watch
The $3.5 billion raise has not been filed with the SEC; it is a plan, not a closed transaction. The deal launches before year-end 2026 per Fleury, so the term sheet and lender syndication are the next concrete milestones. Capacity delivery begins in H2 2027, giving a roughly 18-month construction window. Bitcoin miners with energy-advantaged sites in their acquisition pipeline should be tracking how quickly similar brownfield profiles get absorbed into long-term AI tenancies before those options disappear.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
Justified Data is a 401 MW AI data center campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, developed by TeraWulf subsidiary Raylan Data LLC. TeraWulf acquired the site in February 2026 because it offered approximately 480 MW of existing power availability with pre-permitted, high-voltage transmission infrastructure. Anthropic PBC signed a 20-year lease for the full campus on July 6, 2026.
As of March 31, 2026, TeraWulf carried approximately $5.8 billion in total debt, comprised of $2.5 billion of convertible notes at TeraWulf, $3.2 billion of senior secured notes at WULF Compute LLC, and $100 million of delayed-draw bridge loans at its Kentucky subsidiaries, per the company's preliminary Q1 2026 financial results. The planned $3.5 billion raise for Justified Data would layer on top of that existing balance sheet, making the Anthropic lease's contracted revenue the primary debt-service backstop for the new facility.
The Anthropic lease sets a market-clearing benchmark of roughly $2.4 million per MW per year for the type of brownfield, high-voltage, pre-permitted site that Bitcoin miners compete for. Miners cannot offer a 20-year contracted offtake backed by investment-grade credit to match that rate. Every comparable site that gets locked into long-term AI tenancy reduces the available pool of energy-advantaged locations for new mining capacity.
