Ex Bitcoin Miner Hut 8 Signs $7bn AI Data Center Lease, Highlighting Scramble for AI Power and Data Center Capacity

Hut 8’s move to lease and develop a large-scale data center in Louisiana is more than a single corporate expansion. It is another marker of how the artificial intelligence boom is reshaping the digital infrastructure industry and accelerating the decline of cryptocurrency mining as a core business model.

The company announced on Wednesday that it had signed a deal valued at approximately $7 billion to lease a data center site at the River Bend campus in Louisiana, where it plans to develop a 245-megawatt facility under a 15-year agreement. Investors welcomed the announcement. Hut 8’s shares jumped 21% in premarket trading, extending a rally that has already lifted the stock by around 80% this year as markets reassess the company’s future away from bitcoin mining.

Construction of the first phase of the data center is expected to be completed by early 2027, a timeline that reflects the growing complexity and long lead times associated with building power-intensive AI infrastructure. Once operational, the site is expected to host high-density computing workloads designed to support large-scale artificial intelligence models, a segment where demand is rapidly outpacing available capacity.

Hut 8’s shift mirrors a broader industry realignment. Companies that once focused almost entirely on cryptocurrency mining are increasingly repurposing their assets to serve AI developers. Access to high-voltage power, advanced cooling systems, and suitable industrial real estate, once optimized for mining digital tokens, has become critical infrastructure for training and running AI models.

Firms such as CoreWeave and Applied Digital have made similar pivots as competition for Nvidia graphics processing units and other specialized hardware intensifies.

The Louisiana deal also stands out for the partners involved. The project includes collaborations with AI model developer Anthropic and infrastructure provider Fluidstack. Alphabet-owned Google is providing a financial backstop for the 15-year lease term, a signal of how aggressively major cloud and technology companies are moving to secure long-term capacity for AI workloads. For cloud providers, locking in power and physical space has become as strategic as developing the models themselves.

The agreement fits into a much larger expansion plan. Hut 8 said the collaboration with Anthropic could ultimately scale to as much as 2.3 gigawatts of capacity, far exceeding the initial 245-megawatt phase in Louisiana. Last month, Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment plan to build data centers alongside Fluidstack, underscoring the scale of capital now being committed to AI infrastructure globally.

Hut 8 has been laying the groundwork for this transition over the past year. Once viewed as a pure-play bitcoin miner, the company now describes itself as an energy infrastructure platform. It said last month that it controls a total power pipeline of 8.65 gigawatts, spanning projects at various stages, from early site diligence to 1.53 gigawatts of late-stage developments already under active construction planning.

The pivot reflects changing economics in both crypto and AI. Cryptocurrency mining has become increasingly volatile, with margins squeezed by energy costs and regulatory uncertainty. At the same time, demand for AI computing has surged as companies race to deploy large language models and other machine learning systems, pushing up the value of reliable power and purpose-built data centers.

Hut 8 is betting that AI infrastructure will offer more predictable revenues and stronger growth prospects than its former core business by tying up long-term power capacity with blue-chip partners and financial backing from a major technology firm. More broadly, the deal illustrates how the AI boom is not only transforming software and models but also redrawing the map of who controls the physical foundations of the digital economy.