HIVE Digital signs $220M AI cloud deal in pivot from Bitcoin mining

HIVE Digital Technologies secured a $220 million sovereign AI cloud contract, marking the Bitcoin miner's largest bet yet on high-performance computing.

HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. closed a $220 million, three-year GPU cloud contract through its BUZZ HPC subsidiary, deploying 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs for Canadian sovereign AI infrastructure.

"The partnership with Bell and Cohere is a defining moment," Frank Holmes, executive chairman at HIVE Digital Technologies, said. "BUZZ HPC is the GPU factory layer that transforms Canada's AI ambitions from political promises into productive national assets."

The deal combines Bell Canada's data center network, Cohere's enterprise AI platforms and BUZZ HPC's NVIDIA-powered cloud infrastructure. HIVE expects the deployment at Bell's Merritt, British Columbia facility to go live between late 2026 and early 2027, contributing approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue on top of its existing $35 million realized ARR from a 504 NVIDIA B200 GPU cluster in Manitoba.

The contract pushes HIVE's contracted HPC revenue target past $100 million, a milestone that repositions the company as a hybrid crypto-AI infrastructure provider. The NVIDIA GB200 systems are funded through proceeds from HIVE's $115 million convertible note offering completed in April 2026.

HIVE's AI Pivot Gathers Speed

The deal is the latest and largest step in HIVE's multiyear shift from pure Bitcoin mining toward AI and cloud computing. The company reported $278.3 million in Bitcoin mining revenue in its most recent quarter, but its HPC division generated $19.5 million in fiscal 2026, nearly double the prior year. HIVE's Bitcoin treasury fell to 150 BTC from 481 BTC a quarter earlier, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET.

The Merritt deployment builds on an expanded partnership announced in March 2026, when Bell said BUZZ HPC had secured 6.5 megawatts of immediate gross capacity with an option for additional power. Hypertec, a Canadian OEM, is handling hardware procurement, system integration and ongoing support for the NVIDIA Blackwell systems.

Sovereign AI as a Growth Catalyst

The contract sits at the intersection of Canada's push for domestic AI compute and the growing demand for data-sovereign infrastructure. Ottawa has committed more than $2 billion to its Sovereign AI Compute Strategy and invested $240 million directly in Cohere, the Toronto-based foundation model company that recently merged with Germany's Aleph Alpha at a roughly $20 billion valuation.

Bell framed the partnership as part of its own AI revenue push. John Watson, Bell's group president for business markets, AI and Ateko, said the deal "provides another important layer to the Bell AI Fabric ecosystem" and that such partnerships are "instrumental to BCE Inc. delivering on our ambition to grow our revenue from AI-powered solutions to $2 billion by 2028."

Separately, HIVE received approval from the municipal council of Boden, Sweden, to acquire the Big Boden 32 MW data center it has operated since 2018, transitioning from tenant to owner. The company has invested more than $100 million in the region over the past eight years.

The broader Bitcoin mining sector is undergoing a similar transformation. Mining difficulty fell 10.09 percent on June 14, one of the largest downward adjustments in the network's history, as weaker economics and power reallocation toward AI projects weigh on hashrate growth. Rivals including IREN and TeraWulf have also expanded into AI and high-performance computing, a structural shift in how publicly traded miners deploy their infrastructure.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.