Bernstein maintains $36 TeraWulf target after $19 billion, 20-year Anthropic lease

Bernstein maintained its Outperform rating and $36 price target on TeraWulf (WULF) after the company signed a $19 billion, 20-year lease with Anthropic and sold its majority stake in the Abernathy joint venture to a Fluidstack-led investor group.

The lease covers 401 megawatts of IT load at TeraWulf's Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, and delivers better economics than Bernstein had modeled, with an average annual yield of $2.4 million per IT megawatt, compared with the firm's earlier $1.9 million assumption.

TeraWulf signed the agreement on Monday, in a deal expected to generate about $19 billion in revenue, The Block reported.

A shift to direct customer leases

Bernstein flagged the two transactions as a change in TeraWulf's business model toward full ownership, direct customer relationships, and complete operational control.

The Anthropic lease is TeraWulf's third AI deal, joining earlier agreements with Core42 and Google-backstopped Fluidstack. The 20-year term is the longest signed by an emerging AI infrastructure player among diversifying bitcoin miners, most of whom are still securing 10- to 15-year base contracts, according to Bernstein.

TeraWulf's AI orderbook now stands at roughly $27 billion in contracted revenue against about 839 megawatts of IT load, spanning deals of 10 to 20 years, Bernstein said.

The Anthropic contract carries two five-year renewal options that could extend it another decade. Also, the firm expects initial capacity to come online in the second half of 2027, with full delivery by early 2028.

The Abernathy exit

TeraWulf agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy JV for $530 million, a roughly 18% return on the $450 million equity stake it invested, according to Bernstein.

The joint venture was established in October 2025 to develop a 168-megawatt data center campus in Abernathy, Texas, with Fluidstack as both partner and anchor tenant. The buyer group is led by Fluidstack.

Payment comes in three installments, including $250 million within 14 days of signing, $150 million by the end of 2026, and the remaining roughly $130 million by April 30, 2027, subject to adjustment.

TeraWulf plans to redeploy the proceeds into fully owned AI infrastructure buildouts, Bernstein said.

Model largely unchanged

The improved Anthropic yield is offset by the loss of Abernathy JV income, leaving Bernstein's steady-state estimates little changed. The firm raised its CY30 adjusted EBITDA estimate by about $43 million after both adjustments.

Analysts expect net AI revenue to climb from $209 million in CY26 to $1.7 billion by CY30, a compound annual growth rate of 70%. Bernstein also projects TeraWulf's HPC EBITDA to grow at a 94% CAGR over the same span, reaching $1.5 billion by CY30, with margins stabilizing around 85%.

The firm values TeraWulf at 21 times one-year forward EV/EBITDA on its CY30 steady-state estimate, discounted to a target enterprise value of $25 billion, arriving at the $36 target after adjusting for $6.6 billion in net debt.

TeraWulf controls about 3.6 gigawatts of power assets across New York, Kentucky, and Maryland, a runway the firm expects to support 250 to 500 megawatts of new critical IT load each year, according to Bernstein.

The analysts flagged customer concentration as a downside risk, noting the orderbook rests on a handful of tenants that the company will need to diversify over time.

WULF shares closed at $22.21 on Monday, up 4.9%, according to The Block's stock data.