Bitcoin Miners Pivot to AI as Hut 8 and IREN Ink Billions in Deals

Hut 8 has fully commercialized its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, following a second 15-year lease agreement. The deal covers 352 megawatts of IT capacity, effectively doubling the tenant’s footprint to 704 MW. This latest contract brings the total base-term value of the Beacon Point campus to $19.6 billion. CEO Asher Genoot noted that the tenant’s decision to expand at the site serves as a strong validation of the company's infrastructure strategy. Across its entire portfolio, Hut 8 now reports 949 MW of contracted IT capacity, carrying a combined base-term value of $26.6 billion.

Simultaneously, IREN has expanded its AI Cloud reach, raising its year-end 2026 annualized revenue target to over $4 billion. The company reported $2.8 billion in new multi-year agreements with developers including Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Perplexity. Notably, IREN’s recent contracts feature advance payments covering roughly 45% of GPU capital spending, a move that eases the firm's direct funding requirements. With plans to scale from 480 MW in 2026 to 1.2 GW by 2027, IREN is leveraging its existing energy footprint to bypass the lengthy grid-connection delays typically faced by new data center developers. This industry-wide migration sees miners capitalizing on their established access to electricity, a resource now valued at over 27 gigawatts of planned capacity across the global sector.