Caterpillar

Anthropic is spending $3.4 billion on Caterpillar natural gas generators capable of producing up to 1.7 gigawatts, marking a major shift for a company that has historically rented compute rather than owning physical infrastructure. With turbine backlogs stretching into the early 2030s and grid interconnection queues long, the purchase secures power supply but exposes Anthropic to the risk of electricity prices tripling later this decade.

Anthropic paid $3.4B for 1.7GW of Caterpillar gas generators, the largest known power-equipment purchase by an AI lab. It took over orders that supplier OnePWR Solutions placed two years ago but could not finance, so the engines arrive within two years instead of joining multi-year manufacturing queues. The deal, alongside xAI's $2B mobile gas turbines and Alphabet's Intersect acquisition, shows the compute race shifting toward direct control of power and infrastructure.