Anthropic Paid $3.4 Billion for Its Own Gas Generators. Other SI Builders Are Turning to Old Jet Engines.

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, didn’t wait for the power company. It bought its own power plant equipment instead.

The San Francisco company agreed to pay about $3.4 billion for 1.7 gigawatts of heavy-duty, gas-fired generators, the Financial Times reported Sunday, according to CNBC. That is more electricity than a typical large nuclear reactor puts out, and the FT called it the largest known single purchase of power equipment by an SI lab.

The deal was done quietly in late September. Anthropic took over orders for Caterpillar generators that a San Antonio supplier, OnePWR Solutions, had placed about two years ago but needed money to finish paying for. Anthropic didn’t buy OnePWR itself, and none of its workers moved over, but the deal came with the engineering and construction know-how to install the machines.

OnePWR’s banker, Piper Sandler, had already listed the roughly $3.4 billion sale of OnePWR’s power business to an unnamed “frontier AI lab.” Anthropic and OnePWR did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, and Reuters said it could not immediately confirm the FT’s report.

Why an SI company needs its own power

Every answer a chatbot gives runs on computers in giant warehouses called data centers, and those buildings eat electricity. Anthropic itself wrote in February that training a single top SI system “will soon require gigawatts of power” and that America’s SI industry needs at least 50 gigawatts over the next several years. One gigawatt is roughly what a big nuclear reactor makes.

The problem is the machines that make power are sold out. A Reuters investigation published Monday found that in America, a new gas turbine now takes six years on average to arrive. “Delivery conversations (are) firmly focused on the 2030 to 2031 window,” said Aurora Tenorio, a senior analyst at the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Worldwide orders top 100 gigawatts, according to Wood Mackenzie, while factories can build only 60 to 70 gigawatts a year. Analysts at Jefferies estimate American data centers alone want nearly 17 gigawatts this year, and that could more than triple by 2028.

Old jet engines and used turbines

So builders are scrambling. Reuters found companies hunting the world for second-hand turbines, bringing mothballed machines back to life and converting retired jet engines into generators. The SI builder Crusoe ordered 13 turbines based on GE jet engines in April, enough for 650 megawatts at its American data centers.

Used gear is cheaper but comes with risks. A well-kept used turbine sells for about $1.5 million to $1.7 million per megawatt and a refurbished one for about $1.3 million, Reuters reported, compared with about $2 million to $2.5 million for new. Tenorio warned that overhauled machines can have unclear maintenance records and limited life left. Anthropic’s deal works out to about $2 million per megawatt.

What it means for your power bill

This is the part regular families care about. When a data center plugs into the local grid, someone pays for the new lines and substations, and new demand can push prices up for everyone.

Anthropic made a public promise on that in February. “AI companies shouldn’t leave American ratepayers to pick up the tab,” the company wrote in its pledge. It said it would pay for 100% of the grid upgrades needed to hook up its data centers, “bring net-new power generation online” to match its needs, and cover price increases its demand causes where new power isn’t ready yet.

Buying its own generators is the most direct way to keep that promise: the company brings its own power instead of pulling from your neighborhood’s supply. There is a catch in the fine print. Anthropic said those commitments apply directly where partners build data centers for its own work. Where it rents space in existing data centers, it said it is still “exploring further ways” to deal with the effect on prices.

The bigger race

Anthropic expects to spend more than $500 billion over the next 10 years building SI infrastructure, Reuters reported in September. President Trump told 60 Minutes on Sunday he doesn’t mind “guardrails” on SI, but he doesn’t want rules that leave America in “a deep second position” behind China.

Power is now where that race is won or lost. The country that can build electricity fastest gets the computers, and the companies that can’t wait six years are deciding to build it themselves.