Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 announced Wednesday an AI data center lease agreement valued at $ 7 billion with cloud infrastructure provider Fluidstack. This reinforces an increasing trend among crypto miners to invest in AI infrastructure.
Following the announcement, Hut 8's stock rose sharply, breaking a long period of volatile stock performance and showing renewed interest among investors.
Behind Hut 8's groundbreaking AI lease agreement
The agreement includes 245 megawatts of AI computing power at Hut 8's River Bend facility in Louisiana under a 15-year base lease agreement.
The agreement includes three optional extensions of five years, which could increase the total contract value to approximately $ 17.7 billion over the entire period. The agreement also gives Fluidstack priority to lease up to an additional 1000 megawatts as the facility expands.
Beyond the original lease agreement, this is part of a broader collaboration between Hut 8 and AI developer Anthropic, which could ultimately provide up to 2.3 gigawatts of capacity.
Google (owned by Alphabet) acts as financial security for the first lease period, highlighting how important it is for large cloud providers to secure access to power for energy-efficient AI services in the long term.
Hut 8 expects that the project will generate around $ 6.9 billion in net operating income over the first lease period.
Investors reacted positively, and Hut 8's stock rose about 20% in pre-market trading after the announcement.
This reflects the company's efforts to stabilize operations and mirrors a broader trend where Bitcoin miners are investing in AI computing power to ensure future relevance.
Bitcoin mining faces a structural change
Throughout the year, Bitcoin mining has become a structurally more demanding business. Increased network difficulty, periodic increases in hash rate, higher energy costs, and halving effects have collectively pressured the margins.
As a result, many publicly traded miners who have exclusively focused on Bitcoin have struggled to deliver stable results or a clear growth story. Many have therefore begun to diversify their operations beyond mining alone.
At the same time, the rapid development of artificial intelligence has led to a significant increase in demand for computing power. Since Bitcoin miners already have access to large amounts of energy and industrial infrastructure, the investment in AI data centers has become a practical and increasingly necessary strategy.
Hut 8 has observed this market development, especially as the stock has struggled to find stability in recent weeks due to increased volatility in Bitcoin prices.
