Hut 8 Mining Corp (TSX:HUT, Unlisted (US):HUTMF) shares surged nearly 33% on Wednesday after the cryptocurrency miner-turned-AI infrastructure developer announced a $9.8 billion, 15-year triple-net lease with a high investment-grade tenant, marking a major milestone in the company's strategic shift toward hyperscale AI data center development.
The lease, tied to the company's Beacon Point campus, covers 352 megawatts of engineered capacity built to Nvidia specifications.
A 30-year lease extension option would double contracted IT capacity to 704 megawatts.
The deal anchors a contracted backlog that now totals $16.8 billion across two hyperscale AI campuses. At its River Bend campus, Hut 8 closed $3.25 billion in senior secured notes at 95% loan-to-cost on a non-dilutive basis, returning $184 million in equity to the company for redeployment.
Hut 8 also reported first-quarter revenue of $71 million, up 225% year over year from $21.8 million, with compute revenue spanning AI cloud and Bitcoin mining contributing $66 million of that total.
The company posted a net loss of $253.1 million for the period, though $295.7 million of that figure represented unrealized Bitcoin losses rather than operational shortfalls. Liquidity stood at $1.3 billion in combined cash and Bitcoin holdings.
Hut 8's development pipeline now stands at 8,375 megawatts, positioning the company among the largest in the sector.