TheBlock
HIVE Digital Technologies has finalized a three-year sovereign cloud infrastructure contract valued at approximately $220 million, deploying 2,304 Nvidia GB200 NVL72 Blackwell GPUs through its BUZZ HPC unit inside Bell AI Fabric's Merritt, British Columbia facility. The stack pairs Cohere's enterprise AI models with Bell's connectivity and BUZZ's liquid-cooled GPU cloud, marketed to Canadian enterprise and government buyers as a fully domestic AI infrastructure tier.
HIVE is funding the Blackwell systems with a portion of its $115 million convertible note financing closed in April, and chairman Frank Holmes said the deployment should enter service between late 2026 and early 2027, layering roughly $70 million of contracted annual recurring revenue on top of the company's $35 million realized ARR. The contract aligns with Canada's federal AI strategy by keeping data, compute, and model inference under domestic control, and the Merritt site is powered by renewable energy with ultra-low PUE design.
Why it matters
The deal is the clearest signal yet that the Bitcoin-mining-to-AI-infrastructure pivot is producing institutional-scale, multi-year contracted revenue rather than speculative capacity plays. HIVE reported $297.8 million in fiscal 2026 revenue earlier this week, up 158% year-on-year, with a record $19.5 million contribution from HPC — the $70 million ARR add from this single contract would more than triple that line and shift the company's mix decisively toward compute. Pairing with Cohere, the only foundation-model vendor of meaningful scale headquartered in Canada, also positions HIVE as the natural infrastructure layer for any sovereign-AI procurement that requires domestic data residency.
Market impact
Shares of HIVE jumped more than 11% in pre-market trading to $4.40, up from a $3.97 close, on the announcement. The contract also de-risks the pivot narrative for the broader Bitcoin-miner cohort that has been redirecting power and ASIC capacity toward HPC tenants — Hive's willingness to lock a three-year, $220M tenor with a Tier-1 Canadian telco provides a benchmark for what similar capacity at peer miners might command.
Frequently asked questions
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What did HIVE Digital Technologies actually announce?
HIVE's BUZZ HPC unit finalized a three-year, ~$220 million sovereign cloud infrastructure contract with Bell AI Fabric to deploy 2,304 Nvidia GB200 NVL72 Blackwell GPUs at Bell's Merritt, British Columbia facility, running Cohere's enterprise AI models for Canadian enterprise and government customers.
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How much new annual revenue does the Bell AI Fabric deal add?
Chairman Frank Holmes said the deployment should enter service between late 2026 and early 2027 and add approximately $70 million in contracted annual recurring revenue on top of HIVE's current $35 million realized ARR — more than tripling the HPC line.
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How is HIVE paying for the Nvidia Blackwell systems?
HIVE is funding the Blackwell acquisition with a portion of the proceeds from its $115 million convertible note financing that closed in April 2026.
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What is HIVE's broader AI and HPC footprint beyond the Bell deal?
HIVE reported $297.8 million in fiscal 2026 revenue, up 158% year-on-year, including a record $19.5 million from its HPC business. It also secured municipal approval to acquire the 32 MW Big Boden data center in Sweden, which it has operated as a tenant since 2018 and plans to upgrade to Tier III.
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How did the market react to the HIVE Bell AI Fabric contract?
Shares of HIVE rose more than 11% in pre-market trading on Thursday to $4.40, up from a previous close of $3.97, according to Yahoo Finance data.
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