Anthropic has locked in $10 billion worth of computing capacity from Volta Infra Holdings — a cloud startup that didn't exist six months ago — in the latest escalation of the AI compute arms race.
The six-year deal, first reported by Bloomberg, secures capacity from a data center in Tydal, Norway, where Bitcoin miner Bitdeer Technologies runs hydropower-fed infrastructure packed with Nvidia's latest Vera Rubin chips. Volta puts the capacity at 133 megawatts, with handoff happening in two phases through March 2027, and says it has secured 1 gigawatt of power for data centers in the near term. Bitdeer's stock jumped 14% after the announcement.
Volta was founded in early 2026 by former managers from asset manager Brookfield. Alongside the Anthropic deal, the company raised $300 million in venture capital led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital, with Nvidia and Michael Dell also investing, at a valuation of $2.4 billion. Volta has also set up a $5 billion financing pool to help customers front the cost of expensive AI chips.
Anthropic is scaling its compute capacity aggressively — it already has agreements with Google, Broadcom, Amazon, SpaceX and AMD. The move comes as AI labs race to secure supply of scarce GPU capacity.
Critics warn that the tangled web of dependencies between chip suppliers and AI developers could amplify losses if AI demand falls short of expectations. Volta itself illustrates the pattern: Nvidia is both an investor in the startup and the supplier of the chips it deploys.
