Fortitude has brought a 12-megawatt mining facility in Grand Island, Nebraska, online, completing what the company described as its first greenfield data center and expanding its owned power portfolio to more than 60 megawatts across seven sites.
Announced Tuesday, the Digital Currency Group-owned miner said the facility has finished construction and electrical testing and is now ready for commercial operations. The update comes before Fortitude’s planned public listing through its previously announced business combination with HeartSciences, the Nasdaq-listed medical technology company that trades under HSCS.
Owned power sits at the center of Fortitude’s strategy
Chief Executive Andrea Childs told Decrypt that Fortitude’s model is built around owning and operating power assets rather than leasing outside capacity.
“Our power strategy is owned-and-operated, and that discipline is what underpins our vertically integrated Zcash strategy and our venture mining platform,” Childs said. “Owning the asset rather than leasing capacity from someone whose incentives run opposite to ours is intended to give us a degree of flexibility that we believe few operators have.”
Fortitude said the Nebraska site is expected to reduce its direct cash cost of mining Zcash from about $70 per coin to roughly $40 per coin, assuming mining equipment is deployed successfully and power, network, and market conditions stay stable. For reference, the company said Zcash is currently trading at $489 per coin with an $8 billion market capitalization.
The projected savings, according to Fortitude, come from lower-cost owned power and more efficient next-generation mining hardware.
Site design and power costs
The company said the facility is expected to buy electricity at about $0.045 per kilowatt-hour. It sits between two solar generation facilities and next to a substation with excess capacity, a setup that allows it to operate as an interruptible load and cut electricity use during periods of peak demand.
As data centers face closer scrutiny over electricity and water consumption, officials in Grand Island said Fortitude’s mining facility was designed to operate as a flexible grid resource while limiting its impact on the surrounding community.
Expansion plans and Zcash focus
Fortitude launched in January 2025 from Foundry’s mining division within Digital Currency Group. The company said it mines Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies through what it calls a venture mining strategy, and that it would reinvest mining profits into new equipment and site acquisitions as it expands its infrastructure footprint.
Childs said Fortitude sees Zcash in a different position from Bitcoin.
“In our view, Zcash today is at a completely different stage than Bitcoin. Our perspective is that Bitcoin’s mining economics are mature and crowded when compared to Zcash,” Childs said. “We believe Zcash’s time is now, and our vertically integrated structure, coupled with our long-term conviction and history mining the asset, has positioned us to benefit from Zcash’s continued growth and importance in the future of the financial system.”
The Nebraska project comes as crypto miners compete for cheaper power, with rising demand from AI data centers increasing competition for electricity and suitable sites.
“Competition for power has intensified, but in our view, it hasn’t slowed us down,” Childs said. “By developing and owning our own sites, we seek to control our power costs directly rather than relying on third-party vendors to set them for us.”