The AI Boom’s Latest Winner: A Brand-New Startup That Just Landed a $10 Billion Deal With Anthropic

Things change fast in the AI world, and the market is evolving so quickly that brand-new companies are able to make a splash in the same way that more established brands can. Case in point: a Bloomberg report says AI giant Anthropic has invested $10 billion for access to computing capacity from a startup called Volta Infra Holdings Ltd. The startling factor here is that Volta was only established at the start of this year, and yet it’s suddenly a key player in the AI game. Though the deal has yet to be made public, Bloomberg learned that Anthropic’s contract centers around access to a data center managed by Volta. This is exactly Volta’s business—it’s all about supplying the behind-the-scenes tech that is powering the AI revolution. The company’s website says it thinks ”Compute should be a utility. Not a bottleneck” and promises it’s “developing, financing, and operating AI factories at global scale.” Not much else has been reported about the California-based startup, though the U.K.’s Times newspaper noted that its cofounder and CEO Ricard Boada Rafart, a Spaniard living in the U.K., set up the company with a single £1 of share capital. Anthropic has been trying to keep up with increasing demand for its AI products like its Claude chatbot, Bloomberg reported, and the deal is the latest maneuver by the large firm to gain access to computer power. Anthropic has also signed deals with other suppliers to gain access to powerful AI computer resources, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX. SpaceX absorbed Musk’s AI outfit XAI prior to its recent IPO, and has long term plans to put AI processing servers in orbit as part of its Starmind project. Volta, for its part, did not acknowledge Anthropic’s interest to Bloomberg. But in a LinkedIn post, Boada acknowledged a “$10 billion strategic partnership with a leading AI lab to develop an AI Factory in Europe, generating approximately $1.7 billion of annual revenue for Volta.” He also explained that the company’s belief is simply that “AI infrastructure needs both technology and institutional capital. One without the other isn’t enough.” Bloomberg says the Volta deal is in partnership with a bitcoin mining firm, Norway’s Bitdeer Technologies Group. Bitdeer’s data center is said to be equipped with Nvidia’s new Vera Rubin AI chips, and Bloomberg notes this maneuver is part of a trend where tech firms pivot away from cryptocurrency mining and toward the AI market. Nvidia’s newest AI chips were also recently at the center of another AI infrastructure deal, where the chipmaker itself invested $5 billion in another small AI startup, Safe Superintelligence. Separate reports say that Volta has also raised $300 million in a funding round led by new investors, including well-known VC firm Andreessen Horowitz LLC and also Nvidia. This funding means the seven month-old startup is valued at a staggering $2.4 billion. Depending on how Anthropic’s rumored investment is structured, this valuation could even skyrocket. Anthropic declined to comment to Inc. Volta directed Inc. to a press release that confirmed the existence of a $10 billion deal but did not add any additional information beyond that reported previously. The deal is a reminder that AI really is the hottest tech game playing out right now. Volta achieved a multi-billion dollar valuation incredibly quickly, simply by solving an important middle-layer infrastructure issue for a leading AI supplier. If your company is looking for new fields to venture into, it would seem that the right moves in AI tech can lead to big wins. There’s a little more to think about here, however. When you buy an AI service from a supplier like Anthropic or OpenAI, you may assume that your data and chatbot queries are handled by that firm alone. The fact is that this is not true for many AI suppliers, and in reality your data could be being shepherded around the globe to wherever the supplier can find computer power at affordable prices. For most of your AI needs, this is not going to be an issue. But for some firms, this could represent a potential compliance complication. Meanwhile, the fact that third party AI compute suppliers are involved should be another reminder that AI models are not necessarily secure, and extra links in the supply chain may increase the risk of data leaking out. This kind of third-party supplier issue has stung other tech firms in the past. Cyber risk management firm FortifyData is keeping a running total of notable leaks this year, and it warns: “Third-party data breaches are no longer rare. They’re becoming the new normal.” Lastly, the news could prompt savvy CEOs to beef-up AI security and safety training for their workforce. Too many users trust AI models implicitly, and you may be surprised at how many of your workers are riskily exposing your own company data by typing it into chatbots. BY KIT EATON @KITEATON