digital cell Secured $220 million sovereign AI GPU deal with Bell Canada
TL;DR
- HIVE’s BUZZ HPC has secured a three-year sovereign cloud AI GPU contract worth about $220 million.
- The deal brings together Bell AI Fabric, Cohere, Hypertec and BUZZ HPC around Canadian AI computing infrastructure.
- HIVE says the contract is expected to add about $70 million in annual recurring revenue once fully deployed.
- The move shows how public bitcoin miners are leaning more into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing as mining economics become more competitive.
Bitcoin miners tend to do more computing using artificial intelligence
HIVE Digital Technologies has moved deeper into the AI infrastructure market after its subsidiary BUZZ HPC closed a three-year sovereign cloud AI GPU contract tied to Bell AI Fabric and Cohere. The agreement, worth about $220 million, gives the former pure play Bitcoin Mining is another large source of non-mining revenue at a time when miners are still adjusting to the post-threshold crisis.Half Economy.
According to HIVE, the project will include 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs, with BUZZ HPC working alongside Bell Canada, Cohere and Hypertec to build a Canadian sovereign AI cluster. The contract is expected to contribute approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue once deployment is complete, the company said.
Why the deal is important to miners
The headline number is important, but the bigger point is strategic. Miners have spent the past two years trying to show investors that their power contracts, data center footprints and technical teams can serve more than just Bitcoin block production. AI and high-performance computing are becoming the most obvious adjacent markets because the same broad infrastructure base — power, cooling, utilities and operations — can be redeployed toward compute-heavy enterprise customers.
This does not mean that mining and AI computing are interchangeable. ASIC mining facilities and GPU cloud infrastructure require different hardware, clients, and service standards. But the trend is clear: Miners with access to cheap energy and scalable sites are increasingly trying to convert those assets into more predictable revenue streams.
Canada’s sovereign AI angle
The Canadian structure is also important. Bell AI Fabric, Cohere, Hypertec and BUZZ HPC are bidding on the deal as part of a sovereign domestic AI push, meaning the computing power, connectivity and model development are intended to remain within Canada’s infrastructure cluster. This topic is becoming more important globally as companies and governments look for AI systems that meet local data, privacy, and national security requirements.
For HIVE, the opportunity is to move from the cyclical narrative of Bitcoin mining to the broader digital infrastructure story. If the company can execute, the market may begin to judge part of the business based on recurring enterprise cloud revenues rather than just the hashrate, bitcoin price, and mining margins.
The risk is implementation
The obvious caveat is that AI infrastructure is not a free upgrade path. GPU purchases, uptime commitments, customer concentration, and capital intensity all create new risks. The $220 million headline number is meaningful, but investors will still want to see the deployment timeline, margin profile, and customer economics play out through actual results.
However, this is exactly the kind of deal miners have been chasing: large, contracted, enterprise-facing revenue tied to infrastructure they can reliably operate. It also gives HIVE a clearer answer to a question facing the entire mining sector: What else can these sites do when Bitcoin alone becomes more difficult to mine on a profitable scale at scale?
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Ray.
