 has extended the contracted lease life of its [Barber Lake data center](https://baxtel.com/data-center/cipher-digital-barber-lake) i...](https://cdn.baxtel.com/data-center/cipher-digital-extends-barber-lake-lease-to-20-years-revenue-tops-9-billion/logo/cipher-digital-extends-barber-lake-lease-to-20-years-revenue-tops-9-billion-featured.jpeg){kind=logo}
Cipher Digital has extended the contracted lease life of its Barber Lake data center in Colorado City, Texas from 10 years to 20, lifting total contracted revenue at the site from $3.8 billion to more than $9 billion. The increase, announced in late September as the first buildings near completion, pairs an amended lease 
Wide-angle ground-level view of Cipher's Texas data center building and power infrastructure.with AI cloud provider Fluidstack and a binding commitment from an unnamed artificial intelligence lab to take the campus for a further decade.
The agreements
Under the agreements, Cipher amended its existing Barber Lake lease with Fluidstack while the unnamed AI lab committed to lease the facility for 10 years after that lease concludes, on economic terms substantially consistent with the current contract. Cipher expects the follow-on term alone to generate approximately $5.2 billion in incremental contracted revenue, according to the company's release, with the extended commitments reported this week by Data Center Dynamics. "Extending Barber Lake's contracted life from 10 to 20 years and adding approximately $5.2 billion of contracted revenue reflects the enduring value of the infrastructure we're building," said Tyler Page, Cipher's chief executive. Page said the campus was designed as a long-lived asset and that the longer commitment demonstrates the durability of demand for hyperscale computing capacity.
Cost overruns and delivery
The amendment also resets how construction overruns are shared at the site. Cipher will absorb the first $359.3 million of costs above the original lease budget, a figure that points to how far tenant requirements have moved since the deal was signed. Beyond that threshold, the tenant reimburses half of the excess over the 20-year term as additional rent, calculated to give Cipher a contracted return on the reimbursed amounts, according to Stocktwits.
Delivery is phased. Individual data halls come online from the fourth quarter of 2026 through the first quarter of 2027, with rent starting on each hall as it is delivered.
From Bitcoin mining to AI credit
Cipher signed the original 10-year Fluidstack lease in September 2025, covering 168 MW of critical IT load and roughly $3 billion in contracted revenue, with Google backstopping $1.4 billion of Fluidstack's obligations and taking a 5.4 percent equity stake in Cipher. Two months later Fluidstack expanded to the site's full 300 MW, and Google's backstop rose to $1.73 billion. A 15-year, $5.5 billion hosting agreement with Amazon Web Services followed, and the former Cipher Mining rebranded as Cipher Digital this year as it lined up new debt financing for its conversion pipeline. That pipeline, anchored on former mining land with secured power, now spans campuses across Texas and Ohio.
Site and market context
Baxtel tracks Barber Lake at 587 acres, with 244 MW under construction for late 2026, a 56 MW addition due in early 2027, and a further 500 MW phase planned beyond that. The surrounding West Texas market now counts 171 data center facilities, with tracked power capacity up more than 400 percent since 2022 as former Bitcoin miners convert power-secured land into AI campuses. Fluidstack has pursued the same playbook with TeraWulf in Texas, also with Google credit support.
Separately, Cipher, Fluidstack and Anthropic committed $10 million in September to repair and expand Colorado City's municipal water system.
Why it matters
A 20-year contracted life changes what Barber Lake is. The site stops being a speculative conversion play and starts looking like long-duration infrastructure, with two decades of revenue that lenders can underwrite against real tenancy rather than projections. For former miners sitting on power-secured Texas land, that is the valuation argument made concrete.
The cost-sharing clause is the quieter signal: AI tenants are now absorbing construction risk to lock in capacity, and that trade will shape the next wave of West Texas deals.
