A nineteen billion dollar lease book signed against sixty megawatts that actually run

01Snapshot

Key figures, each tagged by provenance. Balance-sheet items are struck at March 31, 2026, the most recent reported balance sheet, except cash, which is carried to June 30, 2026 from the second-quarter release; the price is four and a half months after the March date.

No enterprise value is shown. Cash and debt are reported at March 31, 2026 and the price at August 18, 2026, and three capital events fall between them: an equity offering of 54,510,000 shares at $19.00 in April, $190.9 million of at-the-market sales, and a definitive agreement in July to sell the Abernathy joint venture interest. A figure combining the two dates would be a guess with a decimal point.

02Business model

TeraWulf owns land, interconnection rights and electrical infrastructure at utility scale, builds liquid-cooled data center shells on it, and leases the finished capacity to operators of AI compute under long-dated triple-net-style agreements. It is a landlord to the AI industry rather than a compute provider: it does not own the GPUs, does not sell inference, and takes no position on which model wins.

The unit of sale is the critical IT megawatt, contracted years in advance and delivered in phases as buildings energize. Leases run 10 to 25 years with contractual escalators and renewal and contraction options. Rent begins at commencement of each phase, not at signature, which is why a large contracted book and a small revenue line coexist.

Two things distinguish the model from a conventional data center developer. The first is that the company came from bitcoin mining and still runs it: roughly 49,400 miners at Lake Mariner representing 9.3 EH/s at December 31, 2025, a flexible load that occupies energized capacity until a lease tenant needs it. The second is credit enhancement. The Fluidstack leases at Lake Mariner and Abernathy, and the Anthropic lease at Hawesville, are supported by investment-grade backing from a third party rather than by the tenant's own balance sheet, which is what made the debt financing possible at the size it reached.

Where the megawatts are

03Revenue streams

Two streams, and they crossed over in the quarter just reported.

HPC lease revenue did not exist before 2025 and reached $21.0 million in a single quarter, more than the $16.9 million booked across all of 2025. Against that, digital asset revenue fell from $34.4 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $13.0 million in the first quarter of 2026, a decline of 62%. Total revenue was flat as a result: $34.0 million against $34.4 million.

The durability of the two streams differs completely. Lease revenue is contracted for 10 to 25 years with escalators and, on the Fluidstack and Anthropic agreements, third-party credit support. Mining revenue is a function of the bitcoin price, network difficulty and the company's own decision to keep giving the load to miners rather than to tenants. The company states that capital allocation is now directed at HPC and that mining occupies infrastructure pending conversion, which makes the decline in mining revenue partly a choice rather than only a market outcome.

04Industry & market backdrop

The binding constraint in AI infrastructure has moved from chips to electricity. Interconnection queues at the regional transmission organizations run years long, and a site with energized capacity and a signed service agreement is worth more than a site with land and a plan. TeraWulf's own framing is explicit on the point: management told investors in May 2026 that the defining constraint is power, transmission infrastructure and execution certainty rather than computing hardware.

That backdrop favors the converted bitcoin miners, which is why so many of them are attempting the same pivot. They hold three things a greenfield developer does not: land already zoned for heavy industrial use, interconnection already granted, and substations already energized. What they generally lack is the balance sheet to build a hyperscale data center and the customer relationships to fill it, which is why the sector's deals are structured around third-party credit support.

The grid data corroborates the scale of what is being requested rather than what is delivered. NYISO's load interconnection queue carries two TeraWulf-affiliated requests at the Kintigh 345 kV substation in Zone A, each for 250 MW of peak load, and two at the Milliken 115 kV substation in Zone C for 162 MW and 88 MW. Those are requests in study, not delivered capacity.

Two features of that table are worth stating plainly. The 500 MW of Zone A requests match the 10-K's statement that Lake Mariner can scale to approximately 500 MW in the near term, and the further step to roughly 750 MW is described in the same document as requiring additional NYISO approval, which is consistent with no third request being lodged. The Zone C requests sit under Cayuga Operating Company rather than a TeraWulf entity, which is the related party that leases the Lansing site to the company.

05Competitive position

Named peers on comparable metrics. Every company below is attempting the same conversion from mining to AI hosting, and they are competing for power, for capital and for the same handful of creditworthy tenants.

The peer set is unusually well defined because the tenants are few. Fluidstack, backed by Google, appears in TeraWulf's leases at two campuses. CoreWeave appears in the contracts of Core Scientific, Applied Digital and Galaxy Digital. Anthropic now appears in TeraWulf's. A tenant list that short means a single counterparty's change of plan moves several issuers at once.

A peer comparison published by Big Digital Energy on June 3, 2026, drawn from its own reading of public filings and struck at April 16, 2026 market values, places the group as follows. It is reproduced as the published view of another issuer, not as this document's valuation.

Source: Big Digital Energy investor presentation, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, June 3, 2026. Market values as of April 16, 2026. Market

On the published figures TeraWulf carried the second-highest enterprise value per contracted megawatt in the group at that date. Read alongside the July announcements, which added 401 MW at Hawesville and agreed the disposal of 168 MW at Abernathy, the denominator has moved by 233 MW since the presentation was struck.

06Financial performance

The trend is of a company whose losses are increasingly financial rather than operational. Revenue has grown every year, from $69.2 million to $168.5 million across two years, and the operating loss has grown faster, from $29.4 million to $186.2 million, as the company spends ahead of capacity delivery. But the FY2025 net loss of $661.4 million is dominated by a non-cash item: $429.8 million of fair value movement on the Google warrants and the embedded conversion feature of the 2031 notes, of which $329.2 million was the warrants alone. The same effect recurred in the first quarter of 2026 at $216.3 million.

Two further items deserve attention. Cost of revenue fell from $24.6 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $2.4 million in the first quarter of 2026, which is consistent with mining capacity being taken out of service or reallocated rather than with a cost improvement in a continuing operation. Selling, general and administrative expense reached $127.6 million in a single quarter against $46.6 million a year earlier, an increase larger than total quarterly revenue.

The company also recorded a $25.7 million impairment of property, plant and equipment in the first quarter of 2026, and its auditor is Deloitte & Touche LLP, appointed after the dismissal of RSM US LLP in August 2024 and ratified by shareholders on June 9, 2026 for the year ending December 31, 2026. Management concluded that internal control over financial reporting was effective at December 31, 2025 and the auditor issued an unqualified opinion on that assessment.

07Capital structure & dilution

Five debt instruments, one warrant block struck at a cent, and an at-the-market program that is now exhausted.

The 2030 Senior Secured Notes were issued by Wulf Compute LLC and are secured by first-priority liens on substantially all the assets of that subsidiary and its guarantors, on the equity of Wulf Compute held by its parent, and on a designated Fluidstack lockbox account. Google separately pledged the Google warrants to the collateral agent for the benefit of those lenders, a pledge that releases on the earlier of Fluidstack lease commencement and discharge of the notes. The effective interest rate on those notes is 8.7% against a 7.75% coupon.

Dilution arithmetic

Taking the stated conversion rates rather than the approximate prices, and the warrant block at its full size:

Equity issuance during 2026 has been heavy. The company sold 54,510,000 shares at $19.00 in an underwritten offering that closed on April 16, 2026, raising approximately $1,035.7 million gross, and sold a further 10,326,000 shares for $190.9 million gross under its at-the-market program between 31 March and May 8, 2026. The 10-Q states that no amount remained available under that program, which removes the company's most flexible funding route until a new one is registered. Shares outstanding moved from 425,050,328 at March 31, 2026 to 495,532,645 at May 5, 2026.

No preferred stock was outstanding at March 31, 2026, against 9,566 shares a year earlier. Treasury stock stood at 24,468,750 shares. Authorised common was raised from 600,000,000 to 950,000,000 during 2025.

08Valuation

Multiples shown with their basis and pricing date. No target price is derived here.

Revenue multiples are close to meaningless for this business and are shown mainly to make that visible. The company is being valued on capacity it has contracted but not delivered, so the informative denominators are megawatts, and the spread between them is the whole argument: $75.9 million per energized megawatt against $9.2 million per contracted megawatt is an eightfold gap that closes only through construction.

The $19 billion of contracted revenue announced on July 6, 2026 is the company's own expectation over a 20-year initial term, which is approximately $950 million a year once fully ramped. Set against FY2025 revenue of $168.5 million, that single lease is a step change in scale if it commences as described. It is also a claim about 2028 onward: nothing in it reaches the current financial year.

Third-party coverage

Twelve firms carry a dated, attributed action. Eleven were read from two aggregators on August 4, 2026 and are cited to them rather than to the firms; the twelfth was read from the firm's own note. Price at publication throughout is the close on the last trading day before the action, which is what the author could see when the target was struck. That convention moves four rows back more than a day, all of them Monday actions pricing off the preceding Friday: 15 June off 12 June, 29 June off 26 June, 27 July off 24 July and 3 August off 31 July. The other eight price off the session immediately before.

Targets run from $30 to $72 against the $15.62 close, so every one of them sits above the market and the top of the range is more than four and a half times it. Eleven of the twelve actions fall after May 27, 2026, which makes this a coverage universe assembled in the twelve weeks to the as-of date rather than a settled one. The prices at publication carry the same message from the other side: the June actions were struck against $25.83 and $26.06, roughly two thirds above the current close.

Two services publish a consensus and they disagree. One gives $38.39 across 18 analysts and the other $34.74 across 20, both read on August 4, 2026. Each is that provider's own published figure and is reported here as market data. No average, median or midpoint is computed from the twelve rows above, because striking one would be this document deriving a target. The $3.65 between two providers counting different populations is the more useful figure, and it is a caution about treating either as the market's view.

Three of the twelve underwrote the company's own equity. The prospectus supplement of April 16, 2026 for the 47,400,000-share offering is headed as an underwriting section carrying conflicts of interest, names Morgan Stanley as representative with BofA Securities and Citigroup Global Markets among the syndicate, and discloses a conflict under FINRA Rule 5121 because underwriter affiliates are lenders under the Bridge Credit Facility that the proceeds repaid. Stated as a distribution rather than as a superlative: a disclosed banking relationship sits at the top of the range at $72 and twice in its lower half at $36 and $34, while the three lowest targets of $30, $30 and $32 come from firms with no underwriting role in this issuer's filings. The relationship does not sort the views.

Two limits travel with the table. What each firm discloses about this issuer in its own note is established for one of the twelve and not for the other eleven, and the cells say so rather than resting on a firm's book-wide base rate. And the company's own statement of who follows it was not read, so a firm that has quietly ended coverage would still show a target on an aggregator with nothing on the page to reveal it. None of this is adopted: this document issues no rating and derives no target of its own.

09Growth drivers

Phased delivery at Lake Mariner. Sixty megawatts were energized for Core42 at March 31, 2026, with CB-3 delivered in May 2026 and CB-4 and CB-5 scheduled for delivery and rent commencement during 2026. Each phase converts contracted capacity into recognized revenue, and the 378 MW of Fluidstack capacity at Lake Mariner is the largest single block of that conversion.

The Anthropic lease at Hawesville. Approximately 401 MW of critical IT load on a 20-year term, expected to be supported by an investment-grade credit, with initial capacity targeted for the second half of 2027 and full ramp by early 2028. It roughly doubles the contracted book and introduces a second named AI tenant.

Capital recycling. The agreement to sell the 50.1% Abernathy interest converts a stated $450 million investment into cash at what the company describes as a premium to invested capital, and removes joint venture accounting from the statements. The company has said the proceeds are for redeployment into wholly owned sites.

The uncontracted pipeline. Muskie in eastern Kentucky is expected to support more than 1 GW over time, with initial 500 MW ramping from the second half of 2028 and a further 500 MW targeted for the second half of 2030; Kentucky Power is constructing a 345 kV substation connected to the existing 765 kV network, and transmission and energy service agreements were executed at acquisition. Lake Hawkeye in Lansing is in site plan review. Chesapeake Data at Morgantown would add roughly 210 MW of grid-connected generation with expansion potential the company puts at up to 1 GW.

The stated development target. Management reaffirmed in May 2026 a goal of contracting 250 MW to 500 MW of new critical IT capacity a year. The Anthropic lease at 401 MW satisfies that target for 2026 on its own.

10Risks

Severity-ranked, most severe first.

11Bull / base / bear

Each case with its preconditions: what must be true, not what might be.

12Research summary

TeraWulf has assembled, in under two years, a contracted lease book that on its own announcements reaches roughly $19 billion at Hawesville alone, tenants that include Anthropic and a Google-backed Fluidstack, $3.09 billion of cash, and six campuses across four power markets. It has also assembled $5.29 billion of debt, a warrant block that dilutes by 15% on its own, negative shareholders' equity, and sixty megawatts of capacity that actually run.

The gap between those two paragraphs is the investment question, and it is a question about construction and dates rather than about demand. Demand is evidenced: the leases are signed, the counterparties are named, and the credit support is disclosed. What is not yet evidenced is delivery. The company has energized 102 MW of a contracted 839 MW on the post-July basis, and the credit enhancement that makes the contracts bankable does not take effect until each lease commences.

Three things would change the reading. Rent commencement at CB-4 and CB-5 during 2026 would show the Fluidstack relationship converting on schedule. Documentation of the investment-grade support behind the Anthropic lease would move that $19 billion from an expectation to a contractual claim on a rated counterparty. And closing the Abernathy sale would prove the company can realize value from a developed asset rather than only build them.

The reported net loss will remain a poor guide throughout. Two thirds of the FY2025 loss and half of the first-quarter 2026 loss were fair value movements on warrants that rise when the shares do. Readers tracking this company should watch energized megawatts, rent commencement dates and the secured notes' covenant tests, and treat the bottom line as an accounting artefact of the financing structure.

13Null categories

Requested categories with nothing to report. Status reads Covered above, None where a named source was checked and found empty, or Not established where the category was not examined. A category nobody looked at is a gap, not an absence.

14Methodology & sources

Pricing basis, the tagging scheme, and, importantly, what was not checked.

Pricing basis

Market figures are struck at the close of August 18, 2026, the most recent completed session, on which the shares fell 11.25% from the $17.60 close of 17 August on volume of 48.5 million shares, about 1.6 times the mean of the nine preceding sessions. The share price is $15.62 and the 52-week range of $8.60 to $29.84 rests on 251 daily sessions to that close, a full year with no gap. The low moved because the sub-$5 prints of August 2025 fall outside a window ending here, not because the company did anything. This matters because the company's registrant name has changed twice on its EDGAR record, from Chromaline Corp to Ikonics Corp in 2002 and to TeraWulf Inc. in December 2021, and a price history keyed to a symbol rather than to the issuer can silently begin at a rename. The session count is stated so the window can be checked rather than assumed.

Provenance tags

Primary sources

What the counterparty disclosed and the issuer did not

Century Aluminum Company filed its own Form 8-K on the Hawesville transaction on February 2, 2026, the same day TeraWulf announced the acquisition. Century's filing states the consideration: $200,000,000 in cash plus a 6.8% non-dilutive minority equity interest in Raylan Data Holdings LLC, for approximately 750 acres at 1627 State Route 3543, Hawesville. TeraWulf's own subsequent-events note describes the same transaction as covering "more than 250 buildable acres" and records the 6.8% interest, but states no price. The acreage figures are not in conflict, since one is the whole parcel and the other the buildable part; the cash consideration appears only on the seller's side of the record.

Filing sweep

The sweep was run against Central Index Key 0001083301 rather than the ticker, which is what makes it survive the two former registrant names. The complete index holds 1,231 filings from April 7, 1999 to August 17, 2026, and all of it was read for form type, not only the recent page. Both spellings of the beneficial-ownership schedules were included: 85 filings carry the legacy prefix and 20 the form of the name EDGAR has emitted since December 2024, and a sweep matching only the older spelling would have missed all 20, including every filing by Vanguard, BlackRock, Lone Pine Capital and Jane Street since November 2025. Exhibit lists were enumerated rather than form types alone, which is how the Century Aluminum consideration and the Big Digital Energy peer table were reached, both of which sit in exhibits rather than in the filing body. Full-text search was run to find the company named inside other parties' filings.

What was not checked

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission eLibrary was attempted on August 3, 2026 and could not be queried; its search interface did not return data to an automated request. No filing or docket number for the Morgantown authorisation under Federal Power Act Section 203 has therefore been established, and the status of that approval rests on the company's own statements. This is a gap, not a finding of absence, and it should be re-attempted.

Credit ratings on the 2030 Senior Secured Notes were not examined; no rating agency publication was consulted. Federal and state court dockets were not searched, so no statement is made about securities litigation. The Southwest Power Pool and PJM interconnection queues were not retrieved, so the Abernathy, Hawesville, Muskie and Morgantown capacity claims are not corroborated by grid data in the way the New York sites are. Kentucky Public Service Commission and Maryland Public Service Commission records were not examined. No investor call transcript was read; the quarterly figures come from the filings and the earnings release rather than from management commentary on the call. Institutional positions are now quantified from the schedules themselves, and the register has rotated hard in the twelve weeks to June 30, 2026. Bank of Nova Scotia is the largest disclosed holder at 39,824,376 shares, 7.70%, up from 27,383,209 and 6.20% at December 31, 2025, filed under Exchange Act Rule 13d-1(b). Moving the other way, both index managers fell below the reporting threshold at the same June 30, 2026 event date: BlackRock to 22,317,400 shares and 4.5%, filed July 30, 2026, and Vanguard Portfolio Management to 22,404,941 and 4.52%, filed July 31, 2026. Morgan Stanley filed an initial statement on August 13, 2026 at 30,388,221 shares and 6.1%, at the same June 30, 2026 event date, with no sole voting or dispositive power and shared dispositive power over the whole position; it is the second-largest percentage disclosed on the passive side and the register did not previously carry it. Filed Schedules 13G and 13G/A, 15, Jul 30 and 31 and Aug 13, 2026

Vanguard's line needs reading as two filings rather than three. The Vanguard Group amended to zero on March 27, 2026 from 33,643,009 shares and 8.03%, and Vanguard Portfolio Management then filed a fresh statement on April 29, 2026 at 22,741,937 and 5.36%. Read separately that is a disposal followed by a purchase; read together it is one holder changing which entity reports, and the second entity has since fallen to 4.52%. The remaining passive holders are Lone Pine Capital at 21,745,129 shares, 5.1%, on April 15, 2026, and Revolve Capital at 18,985,071 and 4.9%. Filed Schedules 13G and 13G/A, Jun 2025 to Jul 2026

Two market-making books cross the threshold in both directions and should not be read as ownership. Citadel Securities ran 5.4% at December 1, 2025, 3.7% at March 31, 2026 and 5.9% at May 19, 2026; Jane Street ran 5.1%, 4.2% and 5.8% across the same period. Positions that cross and recross a reporting threshold three times in six months are inventory, not a stake. Filed Schedules 13G and 13G/A, Nov 2025 to May 2026

The only Schedule 13D positions are the chief executive's and one other. Paul B. Prager reports 43,364,058 shares, 10.7%, at a August 12, 2025 event date on Amendment No. 15, with Stammtisch Investments and Lucky Liefern both reporting nil at that date, so the holding is his directly rather than through the two vehicles that previously held it. Bayshore Capital LLC with Bryan J. Pascual reports 20,076,021 shares, 4.9%, on Amendment No. 4 of August 29, 2025, below the threshold and still on the activist schedule. Neither has been amended since August 2025. Filed Schedules 13D/A, Aug 18 and 29, 2025

Figures after March 31, 2026 come from the second-quarter Form 10-Q and the Form 8-K of August 5, 2026 and from the July Form 8-K. The revenue, loss, cash and capacity lines above rest on the second-quarter report; the remaining balance-sheet lines are still those of the March 31, 2026 Form 10-Q, so the debt, warrant liability and equity figures do not reflect the April equity raise, the July lease or the agreed Abernathy disposal.

15Document log

Newest first. The original build entry is never removed or rewritten.