Anthropic recruits ex-Google data center veterans to build its own AI infrastructure empire

Anthropic is gearing up to invest heavily in its own data center capacity, bringing on seasoned ex-Google managers to lead the effort.

The AI company is internally discussing "securing at least 10 gigawatts of capacity over the next several years," at a potential cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, The Information reports. As a startup without a strong credit rating, Anthropic needs powerful partners to back the project. Google has already stepped in as a guarantor for a data center in Louisiana, and Anthropic also plans to access up to one million TPUs in 2026.

Until now, Anthropic has rented compute from cloud providers, but it plans to start leasing its own data centers. To pull this off, it hired Tim Hughes from Stack Infrastructure and Brett Rogers, who spent six years building data centers at Google. Winnie Leung, with over 20 years of Google experience, is already on the team.

The new moat is compute

For context: OpenAI last year announced alliances with Nvidia for at least 10 gigawatts, Broadcom for 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators, Oracle for 4.5 gigawatts, and AMD for up to 6 gigawatts. Whether these plans materialize—and whether both companies can grow revenue fast enough to foot the bill—remains open. Anthropic has at least shown strong revenue growth lately.

OpenAI has framed infrastructure as its main competitive edge, arguing the next AI leap will come from letting models think for much longer periods. CFO Sarah Friar said the company could have grown even faster with more compute, suggesting a direct link between capacity and revenue.

AI data centers face growing community pushback

The rapid expansion is creating friction with local communities. Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI have all pledged to cover their data centers' electricity costs to shield residents from rising bills. Microsoft went first in January 2026, followed by OpenAI and Anthropic in February 2026.

The commitments came under mounting political pressure, since data center regions had seen electricity prices rise 12-16 percent faster than the national average, and lawmakers in New York and Washington were drafting bills to hold AI companies financially responsible. The stakes are high: data centers could consume 12 percent of all US electricity by 2028, up from 4.4 percent in 2024.