Hut 8 Acquires Four Canadian Power Plants and Bitcoin Mining Site

According to Blockworks, Hut 8's subsidiary, BidCo, has won a bid to acquire four Ontario natural gas power plants and a North Bay bitcoin mine from Validus Power Corp. The four plants have a total capacity of 310 megawatts (MW), and the deal is set to close by January, pending court approval. The bid amount was not disclosed. Hut 8 recently merged with US Bitcoin Corp., resulting in a new-look firm with greater geographic diversity and more revenue streams. The company has 7.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) of installed self-mining capacity at six sites across Canada, New York, Nebraska, and Texas. CEO Jaime Leverton said that the company's bid for the Ontario sites was part of its vision to scale both rapidly and cost-effectively. The acquisition of the facilities is expected to allow Hut 8 to use idle infrastructure and machinery, as well as boost its energy pricing certainty. It is also expected to enable the company to sell energy to the market, mine bitcoin, or power high-performance computing applications, such as those related to artificial intelligence (AI). Hut 8 acquired five Canada-based data centers in early 2022 through its purchase of wireless connectivity company TerraGo, as part of a plan to use the facilities' unused cloud space. Mike Ho, the firm's chief strategy officer, said that the company is seeking more opportunities to invest in the immense growth potential of AI. He added that there is a clear opportunity to leverage their capabilities across the data center infrastructure and software value chain to build a presence in nascent markets like AI infrastructure and compute.