Sources: Anthropic has signed a $35B cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda; Nvidia will hold the lease on and supply chips to a Texas data center built by Hut 8 (Anissa Gardizy/Wall Street Journal)

Anthropic has signed a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, to rapidly expand its artificial intelligence (AI) capacity, according to a source familiar with the matter. The deal involves the development of a data center in Texas by Hut 8. Nvidia is set to hold the lease on this data center, which is located in Nueces County, Texas.

The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on the agreement, stating that Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and leading AI chip provider, would leverage its financial resources to bolster computing infrastructure, thereby fueling demand for its technology. Anthropic, known for its Claude chatbot, is a significant customer for data center power.

Recently, Anthropic committed $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia and signed cloud deals worth $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack and $45 billion with SpaceX, a company founded by billionaire Elon Musk. Anthropic did not comment on the latest agreement. Lambda is reportedly in discussions to raise up to $3 billion, with a potential valuation of up to $12 billion or more, according to sources.

The company raised over $1.5 billion in a November funding round and has partnered with Microsoft to deploy AI infrastructure powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors.