Bitcoin Miners Hut 8 and IREN Expand Into AI Data Centers
Fresh multibillion-dollar agreements highlight how Bitcoin miners are expanding into AI data center infrastructure.
Bitcoin mining companies Hut 8 and IREN are expanding their presence in the artificial intelligence sector after announcing billions of dollars in new infrastructure agreements, reinforcing an industry-wide shift toward high-performance computing and AI data center services.
The announcements, released on July 20, were welcomed by investors, with shares of both companies rising by double digits as the market responded to growing demand for AI computing capacity and long-term leasing opportunities.
Hut 8 Fully Leases 1 GW Texas AI Campus
Hut 8 announced it has signed a second 15-year lease worth $9.8 billion for its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, bringing the site’s entire 1-gigawatt capacity under commercial contract.
The agreement doubles the footprint of the campus’s existing investment-grade customer from 352 megawatts (MW) to 704 MW and was completed under substantially the same terms as the original lease signed in May.
With the latest agreement, the combined base-term value of Beacon Point contracts reaches $19.6 billion.
Across its broader AI infrastructure portfolio, Hut 8 now has:
- 949 MW of contracted IT capacity.
- 704 MW located at Beacon Point.
- 245 MW at its River Bend campus.
- $26.6 billion in total contracted base-term value.
- More than $1.75 billion in expected average annual net operating income.
The customer is the same investment-grade tenant that secured the initial Beacon Point lease earlier this year. That first agreement covered 352 MW of IT capacity designed around NVIDIA’s DSX reference architecture.
According to the company, Beacon Point was developed using its “power-first” strategy, under which Hut 8 first secured 1,000 MW of utility capacity through an interconnection agreement with AEP Texas before marketing the site to hyperscale AI customers. Each lease also includes three optional five-year renewal periods, potentially increasing the campus’s total contract value to $50.2 billion.
“Our tenant at Beacon Point chose to double its footprint at the site, the strongest validation an asset can receive,” said Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8.
Beyond AI infrastructure, Hut 8 remains one of the largest publicly traded corporate holders of Bitcoin, with more than 10,000 BTC on its balance sheet.
IREN Raises AI Revenue Outlook After $2.8 Billion in New Contracts
Australian infrastructure company IREN also strengthened its AI business, announcing $2.8 billion in new multi-year cloud agreements that prompted it to raise its AI Cloud annualized run-rate revenue target for the end of 2026.
The company now expects the business to generate more than $4 billion annually, up from its previous forecast of $3.7 billion. According to IREN, approximately 85% of the revised revenue target is already secured under contract.
Its expanding AI customer base now includes major technology companies and AI developers such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, Perplexity, Figure AI, Together AI, Fluidstack, Fireworks AI, Fal AI, Hume AI, as well as an additional unnamed AI developer.
A notable feature of the latest agreements is that customers will provide prepayments covering roughly 45% of the GPU capital expenditure required for their deployments. The company said this significantly lowers the amount of capital IREN must invest upfront.
As of June 30, IREN reported holding approximately $7.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
Demand for AI infrastructure continues to exceed the company’s available capacity.
According to Daniel Roberts, IREN’s co-founder and co-chief executive, the company has rapidly expanded from approximately 3 MW of internally built AI Cloud capacity to 480 MW scheduled for delivery this year, while targeting 1.2 GW by 2027.
Bitcoin Miners Continue Expanding Into AI Infrastructure
The latest announcements underscore a broader trend across the cryptocurrency mining industry, where companies are leveraging existing power infrastructure, grid access, and data center expertise to serve AI and high-performance computing customers.
Industry analysts, including Bernstein, have argued that established Bitcoin miners possess a significant competitive advantage because they already control large-scale energy capacity, allowing them to deploy AI infrastructure more quickly than developers building entirely new facilities.
Several mining companies have recently announced similar moves.
Earlier this month, CleanSpark revealed a 20-year AI data center lease expected to generate $6.6 billion in contracted revenue, marking a significant expansion beyond its traditional Bitcoin mining business. TeraWulf also entered the AI infrastructure market through a 20-year agreement with Anthropic, a partnership projected to produce approximately $19 billion in contracted lease revenue while supporting the company’s long-term AI computing strategy.
As demand for AI computing continues to outpace available capacity, access to reliable electricity is becoming one of the industry’s most valuable assets. For many Bitcoin miners, that existing infrastructure is evolving into a competitive advantage that extends well beyond cryptocurrency mining, positioning them as key providers in the rapidly growing AI data center market.
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