Shares of TeraWulf Inc. surged nearly 18 percent in early trading Monday after the company announced a 20-year artificial intelligence infrastructure lease agreement with Anthropic, along with the sale of its majority stake in a separate joint venture, marking the latest step in the company’s transformation from a bitcoin mining operator into a major AI and high-performance computing infrastructure provider.

TeraWulf shares were trading at $24.95, up $3.77, or 17.82 percent, as of 9:49 a.m. Eastern time Monday, according to Yahoo Finance data. The stock’s sharp move followed the pre-market disclosure of two significant corporate actions: a long-term lease agreement with AI company Anthropic covering TeraWulf’s Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, and the sale of the company’s 50.1 percent stake in the 168-megawatt Abernathy Joint Venture to a group led by Fluidstack.

According to the company’s announcement, the 20-year lease with Anthropic is expected to generate approximately $19 billion in contracted revenue over its initial term and will be supported by an investment-grade credit structure. The Kentucky campus is designed to accommodate roughly 401 megawatts of critical IT load and will be developed in multiple phases, with initial capacity expected to come online during the second half of 2027 and the site reaching full capacity by early 2028.

The Anthropic agreement adds a high-profile hyperscale AI tenant to TeraWulf’s growing roster of contracted customers, further validating the company’s pivot toward long-term, credit-backed infrastructure leasing rather than the more volatile revenue streams associated with bitcoin mining. That shift became structurally visible in the company’s first-quarter 2026 results, when revenue from high-performance computing operations, at $21 million, surpassed bitcoin mining revenue of $13 million for the first time in the company’s history.

Alongside the Anthropic lease, TeraWulf also announced the sale of its majority interest in the Abernathy Joint Venture to the Fluidstack-led group, a transaction that is expected to monetize roughly $450 million of invested capital at a premium. Company officials described the sale as a move to free up capital for the expansion of wholly owned AI infrastructure assets, which carry higher long-term margin potential compared with joint-venture holdings.

Monday’s rally followed a difficult stretch for TeraWulf shares, which had declined roughly 26 percent over seven consecutive trading sessions since late June before Monday’s rebound. Analysts covering the stock have generally maintained a bullish outlook despite the recent volatility. TeraWulf carries an all-Buy consensus rating from Wall Street analysts, with firms including Morgan Stanley, Bernstein and Clear Street each raising their price targets on the stock in recent weeks. Citi initiated coverage of the company late last month with a Buy rating and a $36 price target, implying meaningful upside from the stock’s trading levels at the time.

TeraWulf’s broader transformation has accelerated over the past year as the company has aggressively expanded its infrastructure footprint to meet growing demand for AI and high-performance computing capacity. In May, the company completed its acquisition of the Muskie Data Campus in Eastern Kentucky from Industrial Equity Partners, a 285-acre site capable of supporting more than one gigawatt of AI and HPC data center capacity. The company has said it plans to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online at that site by the second half of 2028, with an additional 500 megawatts targeted by 2030, expanding its total infrastructure inventory to approximately 3.8 gigawatts.

The company has also pursued significant financing to support its expansion plans, including a $3.2 billion high-yield bond sale earlier this year to fund the buildout of its Lake Mariner campus in New York, a facility that is backed by Google as a guarantor once operational. That financing arrangement has been cited by analysts as further evidence of TeraWulf’s growing credibility as a scaled AI infrastructure developer capable of attracting institutional-grade financial backing.

Over the past year, TeraWulf shares have posted extraordinary gains, with some reports citing increases ranging from roughly 80 percent to as much as 500 percent or more depending on the specific measurement period, reflecting the market’s growing enthusiasm for companies positioned to benefit from the ongoing buildout of artificial intelligence computing infrastructure. That rally has come even as the company continues to post net losses, with analysts forecasting continued losses per share in the year ahead as TeraWulf invests heavily in expanding its data center capacity ahead of generating the full revenue potential of its contracted leases.

Company leadership has framed the shift away from bitcoin mining as a strategic response to the broader economics of the crypto mining industry, where rising operational costs have made mining less profitable for many operators, alongside a recognition of surging demand for data center capacity tied to AI development. TeraWulf co-founder and CEO Paul Prager has previously discussed the company’s transition toward becoming a data center supplier as a direct response to what he has described as tremendous demand tied to the broader AI boom.

Monday’s stock movement occurred against a broader market backdrop in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly topped 53,000 for the first time and the Nasdaq Composite advanced to a fresh record high, led largely by strength in chip and technology stocks. Even so, analysts noted that TeraWulf’s outsized gain Monday appeared to be driven primarily by company-specific news rather than broader macroeconomic conditions, given that the stock’s pre-market advance significantly outpaced the moves in major indexes.

Despite the strongly bullish reaction to Monday’s announcements, some risks remain for the company as it continues its rapid infrastructure buildout. TeraWulf holds more than $17 billion in total contracted revenue commitments, according to recent company disclosures, but faces ongoing execution risk as it works to convert those contracts into operating cash flow while simultaneously managing an aggressive capital spending program. The company has also disclosed a limited cash runway based on recent free cash flow trends, along with periods of significant stock price volatility and some insider selling activity in recent months, factors that investors will likely continue to monitor as the company works to scale its newly signed agreements into recurring revenue.

With the Anthropic lease now anchoring TeraWulf’s Kentucky campus and proceeds from the Abernathy joint venture sale available for redeployment into wholly owned infrastructure, the company appears positioned to continue its transition toward becoming a significant player in the AI data center sector, even as questions remain about how quickly its expanding contract backlog will translate into sustained profitability.