Riot Secures AMD Lease and Begins Rockdale HPC Retrofit

The Daily Dig:

Riot Platforms just signed a Data Center Lease and Services Agreement with AMD for 25MW of critical IT load at their Rockdale, Texas site. The lease starts with a 10 year term, and Riot expects to bring in about $311 million in contract revenue. If AMD exercises all three of their five-year extension options, that number jumps to around $1 billion. AMD also has the option to add another 75MW and gets first dibs on an additional 100MW, so this site could end up running 200MW total if everything plays out.

At the same time, Riot bought roughly 200 acres at the Rockdale campus for $96 million, so they now own the land outright. The site already has a 700MW grid connection, plus water and fiber infrastructure in place. They're retrofitting an existing building to handle AMD's equipment, with a retrofit budget of about $89.8 million. They're doing it in two phases, Phase 1 should be done by January 2026, with everything finished by May.

Snapshot:

• Owner / Developer: Riot Platforms, Inc.

• Sector: Data Center / High-Performance Computing

• Value: $96.0M land acquisition; $89.8M retrofit capex (overall project value not disclosed)

• Location: Rockdale, Milam County, Texas

• Timeline: Phase 1 delivery January 2026; final completion May 2026

TheJobWalk Thoughts:

This is a real deal with real money and actual deadlines, not just a press release. Riot buying the land outright shows they're planning to be here for a while. But here's the catch: converting a crypto mining building into a high performance computing facility for AMD isn't simple. You've got the power hookup, sure, but HPC is a whole different beast. You need tight electrical work, cooling that actually works when it's 105 degrees outside, and systems that get commissioned right the first time. The building's already there, which helps, but this job is going to come down to execution.