Needham sees AMD-Anthropic deal boosting Riot Platforms leasing prospects

AMD just committed up to $5 billion to Anthropic along with a massive supply of its next-gen AI chips. And somehow, one of the biggest beneficiaries might be a Bitcoin mining company. Needham analyst John Todaro sees the AMD-Anthropic deal, announced on July 22, as a catalyst for Riot Platforms. The logic is straightforward: more AI chips need more data center space, and Riot happens to have a lot of it. Needham maintained its Buy rating on RIOT and nudged its price target to $28.50. The AMD-Anthropic pipeline AMD is supplying up to 2 gigawatts worth of its Instinct MI450 AI accelerators to Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model. Riot Platforms already has a relationship with AMD. Back in January 2026, Riot signed a data center lease with AMD at its Rockdale, Texas facility. The initial agreement covered 25 megawatts of capacity, with room to scale up to 200 megawatts. The initial deal alone is projected to generate roughly $311 million in revenue for Riot. If the full expansion plays out, that number could approach $1 billion. Todaro’s thesis is that AMD’s deepening commitment to AI infrastructure through the Anthropic partnership raises the odds that AMD will need even...