Investment bank Needham sees upsides for Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) following AMD and Anthropic’s newest announcement.
The investment bank maintained its “Buy” rating and $28.50 price target, compared with Riot’s Wednesday closing price of $23.38
AMD announced on Wednesday a deal in which Anthropic is set to use as much as 2 gigawatts of its AI chips, with the first gigawatt due to start deployment in the first half of 2027. AMD also said it will invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic, with the commitment tied to deployment milestones. AMD was reportedly discussing a financial backstop for Anthropic’s future data-center leases, a measure Needham said could make AMD customers and partners more attractive tenants for infrastructure operators such as Riot.
AMD’s Rockdale expansion rights Riot currently has 50 MW of critical IT load contracted with AMD at Riot’s Rockdale data center. AMD also retains rights covering another 150 MW, potentially bringing its total footprint at the site to 200 MW, according to Riot’s March quarterly filing. The structure includes 50 MW of reserved capacity under an existing expansion option.