Anthropic secures 1.7 GW of gas generators in a 3.4 billion dollar deal

On November 9, 2026, Anthropic announced it had secured 1.7 GW of heavy-duty gas-fired generators for its data centers in a $3.4 billion deal, according to the Financial Times. This represents the largest single purchase of power-generation equipment ever made by an AI lab, according to the FT.

The 1.7 gigawatt commitment was secured from San Antonio-based equipment supplier OnePWR Solutions in late September, and the machines themselves are built by Caterpillar. Engineering and construction work for installation is included in the agreement. Importantly, Anthropic did not acquire OnePWR, and no employees from the supplier moved to Anthropic. Instead, the company went directly to Caterpillar to take over existing orders, as per TechCrunch.

This shift in strategy for Anthropic, which has historically rented compute rather than owning physical infrastructure, is driven by long wait times for new gas turbines and grid connections. Backlogs for new gas turbines stretch into the early 2030s, and grid connection queues can be similarly lengthy. Per the FT and TechCrunch, competitors xAI and Alphabet have also made significant investments in alternative energy sources recently.

The deal signals that Anthropic is now treating power equipment as a direct asset, with capacity planning starting at the power layer. Building AI infrastructure increasingly means considering generation equipment, delivery timelines, and installation engineering as part of the procurement cycle, just as GPU availability was once factored into roadmaps. As such, teams planning AI buildouts now need to factor equipment lead times into their timelines.