HIVE Digital Closes $220 million Sovereign AI GPU deal with Bell Canada
TL; DR
- HIVE’s BUZZ HPC has signed a three-year sovereign AI GPU cloud contract worth approximately $220 million.
- The deal brings together Bell AI Fabric, Cohere, Hypertec and BUZZ HPC around Canada’s AI computing infrastructure.
- HIVE says the contract is expected to add approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue once fully implemented.
- This move shows how public Bitcoin miners are increasingly focusing on AI and high-performance computing as the mining economy becomes more competitive.
Bitcoin Miner further relies on AI Compute
HIVE Digital Technologies has delved deeper into the artificial intelligence infrastructure market after its subsidiary BUZZ HPC secured a three-year sovereign AI GPU cloud contract tied with Bell AI Fabric and Cohere. The deal, worth about $220 million, gives the former pure-play Bitcoin miner another large non-mining revenue stream at a time when miners are still adjusting to the thinner post-halving economy.
According to HIVE, the project will include 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs, with BUZZ HPC working with Bell Canada, Cohere and Hypertec to build out a Canadian sovereign AI stack. The company said the contract is expected to contribute approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue once implementation is complete.
Why the deal matters to miners
The main issue is important, but the bigger point is strategic. Public miners have spent the past two years trying to show investors that their power contracts, data center footprints and engineering teams can serve more than just the production of Bitcoin blocks. AI and high-performance computing have become the clearest adjacent markets, as the same broad infrastructure base – power, cooling, facilities and operations – can be deployed for enterprise customers that use high computing power.
That doesn’t mean mining and AI computers are interchangeable. ASIC mining facilities and GPU cloud infrastructure require different hardware, clients and service standards. But the direction is clear: miners with access to cheap energy and scalable locations are increasingly seeking to turn these assets into more predictable revenue streams.
The Canadian AI corner
The Canadian structure also matters. Bell AI Fabric, Cohere, Hypertec and BUZZ HPC are pitching the deal as part of a domestic sovereign AI push, meaning compute capacity, connectivity and model development are intended to remain within a Canadian infrastructure stack. That theme has become more important worldwide as companies and governments look for AI systems that meet local requirements in the areas of data, privacy and national security.
For HIVE, there is an opportunity to move from a cyclical Bitcoin mining story to a broader digital infrastructure story. If the company can execute on this, the market may start to judge part of the business on recurring business cloud revenue rather than just hash price, Bitcoin price and mining margins.
The risk is execution
The obvious caveat is that AI infrastructure is not a free upgrade path. GPU purchasing, uptime obligations, customer concentration and capital intensity all create new risks. The headline figure of $220 million is meaningful, but investors will still want to see the implementation timeline, margin profile and customer economics flow through the actual results.
Yet this is exactly the kind of deal miners are looking for: large, contracted, entrepreneurial revenues, coupled with infrastructure they can credibly operate. It also gives HIVE a clearer answer to a question facing the entire mining industry: What else can these sites do if Bitcoin mining alone becomes harder to scale profitably?
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.