Crypto World
Hut 8 Posts Q4 Loss, Signs $7B AI Data Center Lease
Hut 8 (HUT) reported a fourth-quarter net loss Wednesday of $279.7 million, from income of $152.2 million a year earlier.
Revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 31 was $88.5 million, compared with $31.7 million in the same period a year earlier.
In its earnings report released Wednesday, Hut 8 said compute revenue for the three-month period totaled $81.9 million, up from $19.2 million a year earlier. The company did not disclose quarterly Bitcoin (BTC) production or sales figures.
Operating results were affected by a $401.9 million loss on digital assets in the quarter, compared with a $308.2 million increase a year earlier.
Hut 8 said it ended the year with about $1.4 billion in cash and Bitcoin reserves and up to $400 million in revolving credit capacity.
During the quarter, the company signed a 15-year lease for 245 megawatts of AI data center capacity at its River Bend campus valued at $7 billion. The agreement includes payments financially backstopped by Google and builds on Hut 8’s broader expansion into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
The company also completed the sale of a 310 MW natural gas portfolio in February and said it launched American Bitcoin Corp. as a separately listed vehicle focused on Bitcoin accumulation.
According to BitcoinTreasuries.NET data, Hut 8 holds 13,696 BTC, ranking it among the larger public Bitcoin holders. Shares were down about 4.5% at last look in Wednesday morning trading. Industry tracker CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI) was up less than 1%.
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AI and infrastructure initiatives stoke mining stocks gains
Even as Bitcoin has fallen to about $68,150 from about $87,500 at the start of the year, per CoinGecko data, shares of most of the biggest publicly traded Bitcoin miners by market capitalization have posted year-to-date gains.
TeraWulf is up more than 50% this year, while Riot Platforms and Hut 8 have advanced about 30% and 29%, respectively, according to data from BitcoinMiningStock.io.
The divergence suggests investors may be valuing miners not solely on Bitcoin price exposure, but increasingly on their energy infrastructure and data center strategies.
In August, TeraWulf signed 10-year colocation leases with AI infrastructure provider Fluidstack valued at $3.7 billion. Google is backing about $1.8 billion of the lease obligations and providing debt financing, receiving warrants for about 41 million WULF shares, or about 8% of the company.
Last week, activist investor Starboard Value urged Riot Platforms to speed up its push into high-performance computing and AI data centers, saying Texas-based development could unlock $9 billion to $21 billion in equity value. Starboard holds about 12.7 million Riot shares.
Other miners are also repositioning toward AI-linked infrastructure. CleanSpark, Core Scientific, HIVE Digital and MARA Holdings have repurposed portions of their infrastructure or outlined similar AI and high-performance computing initiatives.
Cango said it sold $305 million worth of Bitcoin on Feb. 9, in part to finance its planned expansion into AI and HPC.
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