Anthropic has agreed to pay approximately $3.4 billion for commitments covering 1.7 gigawatts of gas-fired generators to power its data centers, the Financial Times reported on November 8, citing a person familiar with the matter1,5. The FT described the transaction as the largest known single purchase of power-generation equipment by an AI lab2,4.
The deal, struck in late September, covers heavy-duty generators ordered through OnePWR Solutions, a San Antonio, Texas-based company that builds microgrids and on-site power plants3. The arrangement also includes the engineering and construction work needed to install the equipment.
How the deal came together
The generators are not fresh orders. OnePWR ordered them from Caterpillar approximately two years ago but needed financing to complete the purchase, according to the FT. Anthropic initially planned to buy electricity from OnePWR as a customer before opting to take over the equipment orders directly. That works out to roughly $2 million per megawatt of capacity.
Anthropic did not acquire OnePWR itself, and none of the supplier's employees transferred to the AI company. A separate transaction disclosure by Piper Sandler lists a $3.4 billion sale of OnePWR's power-generation platform to an unnamed AI lab in September; the investment bank, which served as OnePWR's exclusive financial adviser, does not identify Anthropic as the buyer.
Anthropic, OnePWR Solutions, and Caterpillar have not commented publicly on the report. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the FT's account.
Energy as the binding constraint
The FT report does not say where the generators will be installed or which data centers they will serve. Stepping into an existing equipment queue matters because power-generation hardware has become one of the tightest bottlenecks in the AI build-out, the FT noted.
The purchase sits within a much larger spending trajectory. Anthropic disclosed on November 2 that it intends to spend more than $895 billion in the years ahead, mostly on computing capacity and infrastructure. Reuters separately reported in September that Anthropic expects to spend more than $500 billion over the next 10 years building AI infrastructure.
ANALYSIS By taking over generator orders rather than buying power on contract, Anthropic is inserting itself directly into the energy supply chain, a step that extends its infrastructure commitments well beyond purchasing compute from cloud partners. The move trades capital for control over a scarce resource at a moment when lead times for heavy power equipment remain long.