Anthropic And OpenAI Seek Smaller AI Data Center Deals

According to CNBC, Anthropic and OpenAI are looking for smaller AI data center deals as they expand access to compute capacity for workloads, after striking larger agreements over the past year. Anthropic has explored 20-30 MW arrangements in the U.K. and the Nordics, while OpenAI has been pursuing similar opportunities in the Nordics, and one source said both companies have also discussed U.S. deployments at that scale. OpenAI said it is building a diversified compute portfolio to meet rising demand for AI worldwide and that it evaluates partners based on requirements, performance, reliability, timing and cost. Anthropic did not comment. The article said smaller allocations can be attractive because they offer faster access to usable capacity, while inference workloads can be run on smaller clusters than training workloads. The report also said Anthropic signed a roughly $45 billion cloud deal with Nscale in August for about 460 MW of compute capacity at a data center development in West Virginia. OpenAI said in April that it had surpassed the original 10 GW commitment to its Stargate AI infrastructure project and has since committed to an additional 3 GW in Georgia and 8 GW in Ohio. Separately, Crusoe said on Thursday it raised a $3.9 billion funding round at a $30.9 billion post-money valuation.