HIVE Digital Technologies (TSX-V:HIVE, NASDAQ:HIVE) executive chairman Frank Holmes talked with Proactive about the company’s major milestone of hitting 10 Exahash (EH/s) in Bitcoin mining capacity.
He detailed how Hive was able to achieve this rapid growth through the acquisition of partially completed Bitfarms facilities in Paraguay.
This strategic move accelerated progress beyond expectations, with Holmes noting the company is now targeting 18 EH/s by August or September.
Holmes also discussed Hive’s high-performance computing subsidiary, Hive HPC, which has reached a $20 million annual run rate.
He credited Craig Tavares, the new president of Hive HPC, with driving this growth while enabling operational focus on Paraguay.
Proactive: Welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. Joining me now is Frank Holmes, executive chairman of Hive Digital Technologies. And Frank, it's always great to have you on. How are you?
Frank Holmes: I'm great, my friend. I just came back from a week in Las Vegas. 35,000 people attended. Vice President J.D. Vance spoke, in addition to Michael Saylor, which packed the room. Other companies like Metaplanet, which is the best-performing stock in the world that adopted that model of owning Bitcoin as a treasury. So it was very exciting.
Yeah. You got to bring a big message there. And that is that the company has hit 10 Exahash, which is a very key milestone for a number of different reasons. Frank, talk us through why this is so key.
Well, in the gold space, you find a junior gold stock that's producing 60-70,000 ounces a year — it really can't get much traction with institutions. When it goes through 100,000 ounces, it's still a junior, but it starts getting a higher valuation for the same revenue and the same cash flow when they do multiples. The next big threshold is 500,000 ounces, and then it's 1 million ounces. Very few mining companies get to that threshold of 1 million ounces. So what you're seeing in the Bitcoin ecosystem is hitting 10 Exahash, then hitting 20 Exahash. We are now through the 10 Exahash, and that all of a sudden creates a greater quality for institutions — for investment grade.
Yeah, Frank, how were you able to do it so quickly? I mean, it seems like almost every week you're increasing your Exahash to the point where you're now at 10.
Well, we explained that the acquisition of Bitfarms' facilities in Paraguay, where they were only partially done and we could fast-track the finishing of them — that really accelerated our program. We expected to be up to 15 Exahash by August or September. All of a sudden, now we're at 10 and we should be at 18 by then, the way the numbers are growing. So I think that the acquisition of those other assets really fast-tracked our growth. And we also stated that we had a surplus of miners which were leading up to being unprofitable in Canada, but they’re profitable in Paraguay because the cost of energy is cheaper. And one penny does make a significant difference. So we were able to plug in immediately a surplus of machines. And that's the other key factor.
Yeah, Frank, you're obviously surrounded by some HPC — some high-performance computing — computers there. And your Hive HPC, which is a subsidiary of the company, has now hit a $20 million run rate. It's really impressive.
Yeah, it's very exciting for us. And hiring a new president to run that operation, Craig Tavares, who has a wonderful track record in Canada, has been taking it to the next level. That allows Aydin Kilic to really focus on this massive growth that we're doing in Paraguay. Craig is doing a great job. We think that we'll get to $50 million, hopefully by year-end, as we look at operations and what those opportunities are. We're very thrilled — our H200s are up and going, the Nvidia chips. So very, very exciting for the company.
And just on that, Frank, how important is it to have a subsidiary like that doing so well in order to support what you're doing on the Hive side as well? It sounds like they're really working in conjunction to move forward and really fuel growth.
Well, both are data centers. So therefore, they both need electricity and they both need this infrastructure. The only difference with high-performance computing — the cost of the infrastructure is ten times or more what it costs for a Bitcoin facility. What you're seeing around the world is the building of Bitcoin facilities, capturing stranded electricity and surplus electricity, is setting the stage for high-performance computing. We've seen this in the US, where hyperscalers like CoreWeave have gone and partnered with Core Scientific because they had Bitcoin mining surplus electricity. All that they do is spend more money on their data centers to get up to be able to use the AI. The big boom is AI. I think that’s what it is.
What you also have to realize is that when you go down the high-performance computing route, you also have to have the fiber optics. So the telecom companies have to have spent the fiber optics. We’ve found that really some of the properties we have are stranded — not because of electricity now, but because the telecom companies haven't kept up the speed with the huge explosion in the capacity of the Nvidia chips. But everyone's running.
I think the big operative word, you're going to hear more and more this year is "sovereign" — sovereign data centers. Québec doesn’t want their data in another province. The U.S. doesn’t want it in another country. Texas doesn’t want it in Louisiana. The idea of protecting the data and the value of your data is growing dramatically with the ability to analyze the data with AI chips.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style