Cryptomine firm Riot Platforms is the latest Bitcoin firm to pivot towards HPC data centers.

The company has acquired 200 acres of land at its campus in Rockdale, Texas, and will be leasing capacity at the site to chip designer AMD.

On Friday, the firm announced the fee simple acquisition of 200 acres of land at Rockdale, currently occupied by Riot, for $96 million. The land purchase was funded entirely by the sale of approximately 1,080 Bitcoin from Riot’s balance sheet.

Concurrently, it also announced the signing of a data center lease and services agreement with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) at the Rockdale site.

The lease includes an initial deployment of 25MW of critical IT load capacity to be delivered in phases beginning in January 2026 (5MW) and completing in May 2026. The agreement includes the potential to expand to a total of up to 200MW of critical IT load capacity at the campus.

The initial deployment will leverage Riot’s existing infrastructure at the Rockdale Site, and the company has commenced retrofitting one of its existing buildings. Riot said the retrofit capex for the initial deployment will total $89.8m.

The ten-year lease is expected to generate up to $311m in revenue for Riot. The contract includes three five-year lease extensions, which could take the agreement’s total revenue to $1 billion.

AMD holds an expansion option for an additional 75MW of critical IT load capacity and a right of first refusal for another 100MW. If both are exercised, AMD’s total leased capacity at the Rockdale site would increase to 200MW, totaling the entirety of two buildings.

“I am pleased to share the substantial progress we have made at Rockdale, which expands our fully approved data center power portfolio to 1.7GW and, through the signing of a data center lease with AMD, firmly establishes Rockdale as a leading data center development opportunity,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot. “This partnership represents a validation of Riot’s infrastructure, development capabilities, the attractiveness of our sites, our readily available power capacity, and our ability to offer innovative solutions to meet the requirements of top-tier tenants."

The Milam County campus outside Austin was previously operated under a long-term ground lease. Now fully owned and operated by Riot, the company said it intends to convert the site’s full 700MW of gross power capacity for data center tenants.

“At AMD, advancing high-performance computing and AI requires partners that can match our pace and scale,” said Hasmukh Ranjan, CIO of AMD. “We’re excited to work with Riot, whose capabilities, power availability, and high-density solutions align with our infrastructure roadmap. This collaboration strengthens our ability to deliver the performance and scalability the AI ecosystem demands.”

Work started on the seven-building Rockdale site in 2020, completing in 2023. Two buildings, totaling 200MW, utilize immersion cooling, while the remaining five buildings (500MW) use air cooling. Riot said the purchase removes $130m in potential future lease payments. Easements have also been secured for potential expansion beyond 700MW.

Formerly known as Riot Blockchain, Riot is one of the world's largest Bitcoin miners, but has been in discussions about a pivot towards AI and HPC data center since 2024.

Riot owns and manages more than 1,100 acres and 1.7GW of power capacity across its two Texas facilities. The other site – known as Corsicana – is located outside Dallas. Construction is ongoing on the first two 56MW buildings. The site could eventually total 11 buildings and 672MW, with potential to expand further to 1GW.

It also owns two operational sites in Kentucky, totaling 60MW, after acquiring Block Mining in July 2024. The sites could total more than 300MW at full build-out.

Greenpeace previously accused Riot of operating the “largest, and one of the most energy and carbon-intensive, Bitcoin mines in the US.”

Recent years have seen cryptomine-focused companies, including Core Scientific, Applied Digital, Mara, Iren, Cipher Mining, TeraWulf, Soluna, CleanSpark, Hut 8, Bitfarms, Northern Data, and others, pivot towards hosting cloud and AI firms at their sites.