Hut 8 signs $9.8 billion AI data center lease, fully commercializes Texas campus

Reuters

Mon, July 20, 2026 astatine 5:40 AM CDT 2 min read

July 20 (Reuters) - Hut 8, a crypto-mining turned AI information halfway company, said connected Monday it has signed a 2nd 15-year ‌lease worthy $9.8 cardinal with an existing investment-grade customer, afloat commercializing its ‌1-gigawatt Beacon Point field successful Texas.

Shares of the company, which person astir doubled this year, roseate ​about 5% successful premarket trading.

Like respective erstwhile bitcoin miners, Hut 8 has pivoted toward AI infrastructure, seeking to leverage powerfulness assets and information halfway expertise developed during the cryptocurrency roar to service AI customers.

Demand for compute infrastructure has ‌accelerated since the motorboat of ⁠generative AI services, prompting exertion companies to perpetrate hundreds of billions of dollars toward information centers packed with precocious ⁠chips from Nvidia and others.

The unreserved has shifted contention beyond semiconductors to power, transmission entree and construction-ready sites, making energy availability 1 of the industry's biggest constraints.

The ​new ​agreement covers 352 megawatts of IT capableness ​and doubles the unnamed tenant's ‌total contracted footprint astatine the tract to 704 MW. Hut 8 said the field present has a base-term declaration worth of $19.6 cardinal implicit 15 years, rising to arsenic overmuch arsenic $50.2 cardinal if renewal options are exercised.

Total contracted AI information halfway capableness crossed Hut 8's portfolio has accrued to 949 MW, ‌backed by 1,330 MW of inferior capacity, ​with aggregate base-term declaration worth reaching $26.6 billion, ​according to the company. All ​of the contracted capableness is leased to, oregon backed by, ‌investment-grade counterparties.

Hut 8 said it redesigned ​the archetypal information hallway ​at Beacon Point astir Nvidia's architecture, expanding capableness by 57% wrong the aforesaid onshore and inferior footprint. The existing tenant subsequently doubled ​its contracted capableness astatine ‌the campus.

Hut 8 expects to statesman delivering the archetypal Phase 2 ​data hallway successful the 2nd 4th of 2028.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram ​in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)