TeraWulf Seeks $3B Debt Backed by Google for Data Centers
Debt Talks Backed by Google
TeraWulf, a BTC miner that also trades high-performance compute, is viewking $3 billion in debt financing to expand its data centers, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The financing is being supported by Google, which holds a 14% stake in the company, and arranged by Morgan Stanley, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Fleury said. Terms are still under negotiation, with a potential launch in October.
Google’s backing could improve the debt rating for TeraWulf’s offering. The financing will support development at the firm’s Lake Mariner campus in New York, one of its core sites for .
Investor Takeaway
AI Compute Deals Drive Growth
The debt push follows last month’s announcement of a $3.7 billion, 10-year AI compute contract with FluidStack. Under that deal, FluidStack will lease TeraWulf’s compute capacity. Four days later, a 160-megawatt expansion option added another $1.4 billion in commitments, lifting Google’s backstop to about $3.2 billion and its pro forma stake in TeraWulf to around 14%.
If FluidStack exercises two five-year extensions, the agreement could be worth as much as $8.7 billion. That news drove TeraWulf shares higher at the time, though the more recent debt announcement has not had the identical effect: shares of WULF are down about 1.3% over the past five days, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Competition Heats Up
Rival BTC miner Cipher signed a similar agreement with FluidStack this week, also backed by Google. That deal is worth $3 billion over its initial term and as much as $7 billion with extensions. As part of the arrangement, Google will take a stake of about 5.4% in Cipher. Cipher also announced plans to raise $1.1 senior notes maturing in 2031.
The activity underscores the surge in AI-infrastructure financings, coming later than CoreWeave’s $1.5 billion debt raise in July. Google has been a consistent backer across these transactions, signaling a broader strategy to secure compute capacity for AI workloads while taking equity in multiple providers.
Investor Takeaway
What Comes Next
TeraWulf’s debt financing, if completed, would be one of the largest raises tied to AI compute infrastructure this year. The company is positioning itself as both a crypto miner and an that high-capacity data centers can serve dual roles as demand grows for machine learning workloads.
The negotiations will determine whether the financing gains traction with investors beyond Google. If successful, it could bolster TeraWulf’s balance sheet ahead of the multi-year rollout of its FluidStack contract and put it in closer competition with peers like Cipher and CoreWeave.
