Hut 8 shares jump 20% after blockbuster Fluidstack AI data-center deal
Hut 8 (HUT) popped about 20% in pre-market trading after unveiling a major long-term leasing agreement with AI infrastructure provider Fluidstack that positions the bitcoin-and-AI miner as a significant player in the fast-growing AI data-center market.
Deal highlights
- Length and size: A 15-year lease worth $7 billion for 245 megawatts (MW) of IT capacity at Hut 8’s River Bend campus in Louisiana.
- Expansion rights: Fluidstack gets a Right of First Offer (ROFO) on up to an additional 1,000 MW as the campus expands.
- Optional extensions: The agreement includes three 5-year renewal options, lifting the potential total contract value to roughly $17.7 billion if exercised.
- Google backstop: Google is providing a financial backstop for the base lease term, materially lowering counterparty risk.
- Financials: Hut 8 projects the contract will generate about $6.9 billion of cumulative net operating income over 15 years — roughly $454 million per year.
- Timeline and financing: River Bend is slated to begin commissioning in Q2 2027. Project-level debt financing is expected to cover up to 85% of development costs, with JPMorgan serving as lead left underwriter alongside Goldman Sachs.
Why it matters
The deal marks a major pivot by a publicly traded bitcoin miner into large-scale AI infrastructure, locking in long-term revenue and demonstrating strong institutional backing via Google and top-tier banks. It also follows a recent Fluidstack partnership with Cipher Mining that similarly included Google support, highlighting growing demand for turnkey high-performance computing capacity from hyperscalers and AI firms.
Bottom line
The agreement not only provides Hut 8 with a multi-year revenue anchor but also signals intensifying convergence between crypto miners’ power and cooling expertise and the booming market for AI compute real estate — a trend investors rewarded immediately with a sizable stock bump.
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