Anthropic and OpenAI hunt for smaller data center deals, sources tell CNBC, in race to deploy AI capacity

Anthropic and OpenAI are pursuing smaller data center deals (20-30 megawatts of compute capacity) across the UK, Nordic countries, and the US, in addition to their existing large-scale infrastructure agreements. These smaller deployments appeal because they offer faster access to usable computing power and are better suited for inference (running trained AI models to respond to user requests), which is expected to become a larger portion of data center workloads than training by 2027.