HIVE Digital Technologies has signed a five-year GPU cloud services agreement valued at approximately $350 million, a contract that would add about $70 million in annualized revenue through its BUZZ High Performance Computing subsidiary and deepen the Bitcoin miner’s shift toward AI infrastructure.
The unnamed customer was described by HIVE as an investment-grade enterprise. Under the agreement, BUZZ HPC will deploy a dedicated cluster of 2,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs at the Bell AI Fabric facility in Merritt, British Columbia, with the system expected to enter service later this year.
HIVE said the contract raises BUZZ HPC’s total annualized revenue to roughly $180 million. Of that amount, about $35 million is currently being realized, while a further $145 million is scheduled to be activated by the fourth quarter of 2026. The company expects the new cluster to generate approximately $500,000 in daily HPC and AI revenue once fully delivered in the fourth quarter.
The deal places a substantial portion of HIVE’s future revenue outside the volatile economics of Bitcoin mining, where earnings depend heavily on the Bitcoin price, network difficulty and transaction-fee income. Cloud contracts, by comparison, give infrastructure operators a defined customer commitment over multiple years, provided they can build and operate the required capacity.
Hive will retain ownership of the GPU infrastructure
The planned deployment carries capital expenditure of about $185 million, according to HIVE. Funding will include an upfront customer deposit of around $35 million, equivalent to 10% of the contract’s value, proceeds from HIVE’s June 2026 zero-percent convertible bond, and equipment financing.
HIVE will retain ownership of the GPU cluster rather than transferring the machines to the customer. That structure gives the company an asset base it can continue operating or potentially redeploy after the five-year service term, though it also leaves HIVE responsible for executing the buildout, maintaining the equipment and managing the technology’s depreciation cycle.
The hardware will use NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 rack-scale systems, which combine Blackwell Ultra GPUs into larger configurations designed for AI training and inference workloads. The cluster will also include NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking and VAST Data storage, following NVIDIA’s reference architecture.
InfiniBand is a high-speed networking technology used to connect large numbers of GPUs with low latency. Its inclusion signals that the installation is being designed for computationally intensive enterprise AI workloads rather than smaller-scale cloud graphics or general computing tasks.
The Bell AI Fabric site in Merritt runs on renewable hydroelectric power and uses closed-loop liquid cooling, HIVE said. Those characteristics are particularly relevant for dense GPU deployments, where electricity and cooling can represent major operating costs and determine how much computing equipment a facility can support.
Second major Merritt contract in two months
The agreement is BUZZ HPC’s second large GPU-cluster contract announced within two months. In June, HIVE said the subsidiary signed a three-year sovereign AI cloud agreement valued at $220 million for the same Merritt facility.
That earlier project involves NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems and is tied to Bell and Canadian AI company Cohere, according to HIVE. Together, the two contracts suggest Merritt is becoming the company’s main location for converting its data-center operating experience into contracted AI computing capacity.
HIVE reported $79.1 million in quarterly revenue on Friday, including $7.1 million from BUZZ HPC. The company said BUZZ HPC revenue rose 47% year over year, while contracted GPU cloud annual recurring revenue reached approximately $110 million.
The difference between contracted annual recurring revenue and the newly stated $180 million total annualized revenue reflects the timing of deployments. HIVE expects a significant share of the contracted capacity to become operational over the next several quarters, rather than immediately.
HIVE shares closed 4% higher on Friday and traded nearly 8% higher in pre-market activity on Monday, following the announcement and the company’s quarterly results.
Bitcoin miners are repurposing power and cooling capacity
The agreement arrives as several former or current Bitcoin miners pursue long-term AI and high-performance computing contracts using land, power access, cooling systems and data-center expertise developed for mining operations.
The strategy does not eliminate a company’s exposure to Bitcoin if it continues mining, but it can reduce the proportion of revenue tied directly to block rewards. A five-year cloud contract also differs sharply from mining income, which can change daily with cryptocurrency prices, transaction fees, energy costs and changes in the network’s total computing power.
HIVE’s move follows similarly large announcements across the sector. CoreWeave and Microsoft have been linked to a multibillion-dollar cloud arrangement, while other data-center companies have announced agreements connected to AI firms including Anthropic, Google and Fluidstack. The scale of those projects has increased competition for power-connected sites, advanced GPU hardware and financing.
For HIVE, the immediate challenge is narrower: delivering more than 2,000 Blackwell Ultra GPUs within its projected timetable and turning contracted revenue into operating revenue without allowing construction costs or financing needs to overwhelm the business.
The company’s use of a customer deposit and equipment financing reduces the amount of capital it must provide upfront. Retaining the hardware means the project could create a longer-lived computing platform, but its value will depend on continued demand for the specific generation of GPUs and HIVE’s ability to keep the facility utilized.
The $350 million agreement gives HIVE a clearer path to recurring AI-cloud revenue through 2031, while its mining business remains exposed to the much less predictable conditions of the Bitcoin network.
Want to capitalize on AI-driven crypto trends like HIVE’s pivot? Explore how AI complements blockchain for smarter strategy.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is provided for general informational purposes only and does not represent the views or financial advice of Toobit. We make no guarantees regarding the accuracy or completeness of this information and shall not be held liable for any errors, omissions, or outcomes resulting from its use. Investing in digital assets involves risk; users should independently evaluate their financial situation and the risks involved. For further details, please consult our Terms of Service and Risk Disclosure.
