Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) shares surged 30% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after the company announced a new 15-year AI infrastructure lease that expands its push into hyperscale data center development.
$9.8 Billion Lease Details
The Miami-based company said it signed a $9.8 billion triple-net lease for 352 megawatts of IT capacity at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas. The unnamed tenant was described as a “high-investment-grade company” deploying infrastructure for AI training and inference workloads. This deal marks Hut 8's second major AI data center commercialization after its previously announced River Bend project with AI cloud company Fluidstack. Together, the two campuses now account for 597 MW of contracted IT capacity and about $16.8 billion in aggregate base-term contract value, according to the company.
Beacon Point Campus Plans
Beacon Point is designed as a gigawatt-scale campus with 1,000 MW of utility capacity under interconnection agreement with AEP Texas. Hut 8 said the first phase of the project — representing roughly 500 MW of utility capacity to support the 352 MW IT load — is expected to begin energization in the first quarter of 2027, with initial data hall delivery targeted for the third quarter of that year. The agreement is expected to contribute approximately $655 million in average annual net operating income once stabilized, Hut 8 said. Including three optional five-year renewal terms, the potential contract value could rise to roughly $25.1 billion.
Power-First Strategy and AI Transition
The latest deal further reinforces a broader shift underway among bitcoin miners and power-focused infrastructure operators, which are increasingly repositioning large power campuses toward AI and hyperscale computing as demand for high-density GPU infrastructure accelerates. Hut 8 explicitly framed Beacon Point as an example of its “power-first” development strategy, in which the company initially secures large-scale power access before deciding how to commercialize the site. The company said Beacon Point was originally underwritten to support its affiliated bitcoin mining venture American Bitcoin (NASDAQ: ABTC) Corp., before being redirected toward AI infrastructure.
Hut 8 also disclosed that it redesigned the first building at Beacon Point after NVIDIA's evolving DSX AI factory reference architecture increased rack-level power density requirements. Hut 8 said the redesign boosted the building's planned IT capacity from 224 MW to 352 MW — a 57% increase — without expanding the underlying land or utility footprint.
Financing Structure and Industry Trends
The structure of the Beacon Point agreement also resembles a growing trend in AI infrastructure finance where operators increasingly pursue long-duration, infrastructure-style lease contracts backed by investment-grade counterparties. Hut 8 said it plans to fund the project through asset-level financing structures designed to lower capital costs while limiting pressure on corporate leverage. Earlier last month, Hut 8 separately closed a $3.25 billion bond offering to fund its River Bend campus tied to its 15-year lease agreement with Fluidstack.
This article first appeared in The Energy Mag. The original article can be viewed here. The Energy Mag (formerly The Miner Mag) provides news, data, and insights on the energy–compute–markets nexus.