Shares of Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) jumped 30% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after the company announced a new 15-year AI infrastructure lease valued at $9.8 billion. The triple-net lease covers 352 megawatts of IT capacity at the Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas. The tenant, described as a “top-tier enterprise” deploying AI training and inference workloads, was not named.
Second AI Data Center Deal
This marks Hut 8’s second major AI data center commercialization following its River Bend project with cloud AI firm Fluidstack. Together, the two campuses represent 597 MW of contracted IT capacity and approximately $16.8 billion in total contract value over the base term. Beacon Point is designed as a gigawatt-scale campus, with 1,000 MW of network capacity under an interconnection agreement with AEP Texas.
The first phase of the project — supporting 352 MW of IT load — is expected to begin energizing in Q1 2027, with initial data hall delivery slated for Q3 that year. Once stabilized, the lease is projected to generate roughly $655 million in average annual net operating income. Including three five-year renewal options, the potential contract value could reach approximately $25.1 billion.
Power-First Strategy: From Bitcoin Mining to AI
Beacon Point was originally designed to support Hut 8’s bitcoin mining subsidiary American Bitcoin (NASDAQ: ABTC), before being pivoted to AI infrastructure. The company redesigned the first building based on NVIDIA’s evolving DSX AI Factory reference architecture, increasing planned IT capacity from 224 MW to 352 MW — a 57% boost — without expanding the land or utility footprint.
On financing, Hut 8 plans to use asset-level structures to reduce capital costs and limit corporate leverage. Earlier this month, the company separately closed a $3.25 billion bond issuance to fund its River Bend campus tied to the Fluidstack lease. This trend reflects a broader shift among bitcoin miners and energy-focused infrastructure operators, who are increasingly repositioning their large power sites toward AI and hyperscale computing as demand for high-density GPU infrastructure accelerates.