CoinDesk
Hut 8 shares jumped as much as 14% on Monday after the company signed a $9.8 billion, 15-year lease for the second phase of its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas. The deal, struck with the same investment-grade tenant as phase one, adds 352 megawatts of Nvidia-based AI capacity and fully commercializes the 1-gigawatt site, bringing the tenant's total commitment to 704 megawatts and the campus' base contract value to $19.6 billion.
Why it matters
The agreement lands in the middle of a pullback that had punished AI infrastructure names for weeks. Investors had grown nervous that breakneck data center spending would slow after Chinese open-source models appeared to require less compute than Western rivals, and after reports that Meta was weighing a cloud service that could add supply pressure on existing operators. A $9.8 billion, 15-year lease at a single site is the strongest counter-evidence yet that the demand thesis is still intact, and that bitcoin miners repositioning as AI/HPC providers can actually lock in the kind of long-duration contracted revenue that data center REITs and hyperscalers trade on.
Market impact
Hut 8 set an intraday high of $104.51, and the announcement dragged the rest of the miner-to-AI cohort higher. IREN climbed roughly 15%, Cipher Mining added 11%, TeraWulf rose 6.4%, and the CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) advanced 9.3% in early trading. With Beacon Point now fully commercialized, the read for the sector is that the HPC pivot is no longer a slide-deck story but a contracted backlog, and that the bar for what counts as a credible AI infrastructure operator just got re-set at gigawatt scale rather than pilot-project scale.
Frequently asked questions
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What did Hut 8 announce on Monday?
Hut 8 signed a $9.8 billion, 15-year lease with an investment-grade tenant for phase two of its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas, adding 352 MW of Nvidia-based capacity and fully commercializing the 1 GW site.
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How much capacity does the tenant now have at Beacon Point?
The tenant's total contracted capacity at Beacon Point now stands at 704 megawatts, with the campus' base contract value reaching $19.6 billion over the initial lease term.
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Which stocks moved on the Hut 8 news?
Hut 8 rose as much as 14% to an intraday high of $104.51, while IREN climbed about 15%, Cipher Mining added 11%, TeraWulf gained 6.4%, and the CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) advanced 9.3%.
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Why was the AI infrastructure sector under pressure before this announcement?
Sentiment had cooled on concerns that breakneck data center spending might slow, after Chinese open-source AI models appeared to require less compute than Western rivals and after reports that Meta was weighing a cloud service to rent AI capacity.
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What does this lease mean for bitcoin miners pivoting to AI?
A $9.8 billion, 15-year lease at a single site reframes the bitcoin-miner-to-AI-infrastructure pivot as contracted long-duration revenue rather than narrative, and resets the credibility bar for the sector at gigawatt scale.
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