$28 Billion on the Slide. The $130 Rate Sums to $26.40 Billion.

$1,419,600,000.

Multiply 910,000 kilowatts by $130 by 12 and that is the year of rent Note 3 of Riot Platforms' September 30, 2026 Form 10-Q produces once every delivered block at Corsicana is online and still priced at the filed starting rate, while Exhibit 99.1 and the company page call the same lease approximately $1.8 billion of average annual rent and approximately $28 billion of contract value. Fifteen times $1.8 billion is $27.0 billion, a billion dollars apart from the other headline before any escalator is allowed into the room.

Rent steps 3 percent a year, so raise 1.03 to the 15th power, get 1.557967, subtract 1, divide by 0.03, and the annuity factor is 18.598914, which times $1,419,600,000 sums fifteen undiscounted years of the filed rate to $26,403,018,154. Call that $26.403 billion. Its average year is $1.760 billion, a rounding away from $1.8 billion, and 26.8 percent above year one rather than a substitute for it.

A billion dollars sits between the slide's own lines

The 8-K furnishes that release and the earnings deck under Item 2.02 and says neither is deemed filed, while the rate, the tenant's name, and the clock sit in the quarterly report the chief executive certified. The $28 billion line is Les's, in the furnished release, and the complete 8-K submission is the file behind that exhibit.

Clock design creates the stub, because the term starts when the first block starts and ends on the last day of the month holding the 15th anniversary of Phase 3, targeted for July 30, 2028, which puts the anniversary in July 2043. September 11, 2027 is 323 days earlier and June 28, 2027 is 398 days earlier; January 28, 2028 is 184 days earlier and December 24, 2027 is 219. Wait for each full phase and the stub, priced at $1,560,000 per megawatt-year and divided by 365.25, is $709 million. Price each phase from its first block and the stub is $867 million. Annuity plus the generous stub is $27.270 billion, still $730 million, or 2.7 percent, under $28 billion. Add that same stub to $27.0 billion and you get $27.867 billion, $133 million under the round number. Those two headlines can be talked into agreement. A start at $130 cannot.

$105, $130, and $197 are different products

On the deck, three contracts add to the 1,151 megawatts in the release: $63 million a year on AMD's 50, $451 million on the 191 at Rockdale, and $1.8 billion on Corsicana's 910, and those three averages sum to $2.314 billion against a total column that says $2.3 billion. Divide each annual figure by its megawatts, then by 12,000, and the kilowatt-month column falls out: $105.00, $130.00, $164.84, $196.77. Footnote 1 says Rockdale includes operations and maintenance while Corsicana's $1.8 billion is struck before reimbursement amortization, so the products do not match, and Rockdale's $2.361 million per megawatt-year is still 1.51 times the $1.560 million starting rate.

One defined term, two campuses: Note 3 names Anthropic PBC as the Frontier AI Lab and then uses that term for Rockdale as well as Corsicana, so 910 plus 191 is 1,101 megawatts, 95.7 percent of 1,151, and 50 plus 191 plus 910 lands on 1,151 exactly. Bitcoin Magazine already had about $1.42 billion for year one on November 5 and did not print 18.598914. Sum the deck's 2029 Corsicana phases, $784 million, $394 million, and $615 million, and you get $1.793 billion, 26.3 percent above year one, next to a slide average 26.8 percent above it and an annuity 24.0 percent above its first year. Blockspace read the contract rate as $130 a kilowatt-month, and Data Center Feed and a facilities note split the release's label from the name in the quarterly report.

Thirty-two percent is a gross yield. The fallback credit is 12 percent.

Riot's approximately 33 percent is what falls out of dividing approximately $1.8 billion by approximately $5.5 billion, and the unrounded pair, $1.760 billion over the $5.460 billion you get from $6 million times 910, is 32.2 percent, with footnote 2 parking that yield on reimbursements plus site work. Four million times 910 is the $3.640 billion cap on modules the tenant buys. Two million times 910 is $1.820 billion of site work, printed nearby as $1.8 billion. Lay $1.760 billion over that cash slice and the quotient is 96.7 percent, the wrong yield, because Path A still services project debt sized at $4.4 billion to $4.9 billion and the filing gives no interest rate.

Path B is the filed fallback: if acceptable financing is unavailable, the note turns the module cost plus 12 percent a year into a rent credit, the deck repeats the 12 percent, and one 15-year annuity on all $3.640 billion, principal times 0.12 divided by 1 minus 1.12 to the minus 15, is $534 million a year, equal to 37.6 percent of the first year and 30.3 percent of the $1.760 billion average. Early blocks have longer than fifteen years left, the note says "up to" and "actually achieved," and a phase-by-phase credit would bite less per year. CoinDesk reported the 12 percent on November 5, and the credit is large enough to move the average a reader remembers.

September 30 cash and bitcoin were $950.2 million, against a cash-equity range of $0.5 billion to $1.1 billion, so the top of the range is 15.8 percent above the pile. Add $0.11 billion of other inflows and $0.18 billion of AMD loan proceeds and the parts sum to $1.24 billion, the slide's "about $1.2 billion," which covers $1.1 billion only by counting money that was not quarter-end cash. Of the $950.2 million, cash is $748.2 million, including $79.2 million restricted, and 2,418 bitcoin are marked at $83,554.

Lateness is priced in that same report: past 60 days, credits accrue up to 270 days of base rent on the late blocks, and a phase still out 270 days after its target can be cancelled on 30 days' notice, subject to cure, with force majeure of up to 365 days. At $130, those 270 days are $1,153,183 per megawatt, or $1.049 billion if all 910 sat on the cap at once, a ceiling rather than a forecast.

What You Can Do

If you own RIOT, or someone walks you through the project debt, put $1,419,600,000 and $26.403 billion in the model and leave $28 billion as the furnished round number. Ask which day the 3 percent hits, because Note 3 says annually and names no anniversary. Do not paste 33 percent onto $2 million of site work: that percentage divides an escalated average by a $6 million stack, and $4 million of it is the tenant's modules. Rent has not started. First targeted block, June 28, 2027, and a 270-day miss is a cancellation right, on a lease that was not an 8-K exhibit and that Riot says it will file, portions omitted, with the 2026 Form 10-K. Read that exhibit on EDGAR before treating this summary as the bargain.

Limitations

This is a reading of a summary the 10-Q says does not purport to be complete and is qualified by a lease that was not exhibited on November 4. No anniversary is specified for the 3 percent, so a November 4 step or a step on each block's birthday would move the dollars, and dates inside a phase are missing, which is why the stub is a range priced entirely at $130 on a 365.25-day year rather than on whatever partial months a landlord bills. A step inside the stub would raise it. The 12 percent figure is one 15-year annuity on the maximum $3.640 billion, only if acceptable financing fails, not the phase-by-phase remainder, and with no project-debt rate on the page Path A's cash yield is simply not computed. AMD is straight-line fit-out rent, Rockdale includes maintenance, Corsicana's slide average is before the credit, and the per-kilowatt column is not a ranking of one product. Extensions are options: $54 billion over $28 billion is 1.93, against 1.96 for twenty-five years of 3 percent growth versus fifteen. Power is a pass-through, nothing here is discounted, and a September 30 balance is not a November 8 cash figure. The deck's "1.0 GW of utility load" is 91 percent critical IT only if 1.0 means 1,000. EDGAR's 10-Q index stamps 09:15:50 on November 4, after the 8-K index at 07:30:37.

The Strongest Case Against This Analysis

Riot's footnote is the defense, and it should be stated at full strength: contract value over the whole term, escalators included, reimbursements not yet amortized, was never going to equal fifteen times the starting rent, and approximately is the right word for a total that moves when pads are handed over. Price the stub from the first block, add it to fifteen times the rounded $1.8 billion, and you land $133 million under $28 billion, noise beside a figure nobody printed to the dollar. Footnote 5 calls $1.8 billion an average from full deployment, so hearing it as year-one rent is a misreading. Grant all of that. It does not make $130 times 910,000 times 12 equal $1.8 billion, and it leaves $730 million when the annuity uses the quarterly rate rather than the rounded average in a deck the 8-K says was not deemed filed.

The Bottom Line

On November 4 Riot furnished a $28 billion label for a lease whose filed rate bills $1,419,600,000 in a full year and $26.403 billion over fifteen years at 3 percent. Fifteen times the slide's own $1.8 billion is $27.0 billion, and the stub can close that hole without ever making $130 into $1.8 billion. Anthropic is the named tenant, on this campus and on 191 megawatts at Rockdale. The first block is still June 28, 2027. Use the rate in the note.

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