Anthropic in talks to lease up to 1GW of compute from Apollo-backed developer

According to The Information, Anthropic is negotiating to lease as much as 1 gigawatt of data-center capacity from a developer majority-owned by Apollo Global Management, with talks to become a direct tenant of Stream Data Centers facilities. The move would mark a significant strategic pivot: rather than sourcing all its frontier compute through cloud partners like AWS and Google, Anthropic would take on infrastructure control closer to the metal.

One gigawatt is a massive commitment — enough power for a hyperscale AI campus — and reflects the scale of compute Anthropic now needs to train and serve models like the just-released Claude Opus 5.5 and its next generation. It also fits a broader industry pattern of AI labs signing direct power-and-real-estate deals to lock in capacity amid a compute crunch.

Competitively, this echoes moves by OpenAI and others to secure dedicated data-center capacity, and it complicates Anthropic's relationship with cloud partners who both host and compete with it. Direct tenancy can lower long-run cost per token and reduce exposure to cloud pricing, but it shifts operational and capital burden onto Anthropic.

The timing is notable: it lands the same week Anthropic disclosed Claude now drives 26% of its own R&D and is weighing a new model launch ahead of a possible IPO — all of which point to a company scaling aggressively despite its CEO's public call to pace the frontier. What to watch is whether the talks convert to a signed lease and how the financing (Apollo's involvement) is structured, since a 1GW commitment is a multi-billion-dollar obligation.