Anthropic Spends $3.4 Billion to Take Over OnePWR Orders, Securing 1.7GW of Gas Power Capacity
Anthropic secured 1.7GW of gas turbine capacity by taking over a supplier's existing orders for $3.4 billion, revealing how AI companies are bypassing multi-year equipment and grid waitlists.
According to Reuters, Anthropic has agreed to spend $3.4 billion to secure 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of gas-fired generators for its AI data centers. Rather than purchasing new equipment directly, the company took over existing generator orders previously placed with Caterpillar by Texas-based supplier OnePWR Solutions. The agreement, reached in late September 2026, also covers the engineering and construction work needed to install the equipment.
This move highlights the core bottleneck facing current AI infrastructure expansion: power supply. Global gas turbine orders have reportedly exceeded 100GW, while manufacturing capacity stands at an estimated 60GW to 70GW. Average delivery times in the U.S. have reached six years, with some prospective orders extending into 2030 or 2031. By taking over OnePWR's orders, which were placed roughly two years ago but required additional financing, Anthropic avoided starting from scratch and significantly shortened its timeline for acquiring power.
Bypassing traditional grid connections and manufacturer waitlists is becoming common across the AI industry. Elon Musk's xAI recently installed eight converted General Electric jet turbines at a data center in Mississippi, yielding a potential combined output of 400MW. OpenAI's first Stargate data center followed a similar route, with builder Crusoe acquiring 29 GE Vernova gas turbines. However, Anthropic is taking a different path by stepping into existing supply chain backlogs rather than buying new equipment or relying on retrofitted retired aircraft engines.
While this strategy rapidly solves the power issue for computing facilities, it has drawn environmental criticism. Shakeel Hashim, founder of ReadTransformer, noted that these kinds of generators are terrible for the environment. This points to an ongoing issue as AI companies expand their power infrastructure: securing electricity quickly does not remove the environmental costs of generating it.