HIVE Digital Technologies warned that the $500 billion AI infrastructure boom could worsen the global copper supply shortage, increasing costs and complicating geopolitical dynamics. The alert was reported by Crypto Briefing.
HIVE Digital Technologies, a cryptocurrency mining company, said its GPU cloud services business has secured contracts worth $180 million. The company linked the deal flow to its broader shift toward GPU cloud services, a strategy aimed at diversifying revenue and cutting reliance on the more volatile Bitcoin mining segment. The update was carried by Techub News, citing Crypto Briefing. The announcement points to HIVE’s effort to build a business mix that is less tied to swings in the crypto mining market while expanding its exposure to GPU-based cloud services. No additional contract details were disclosed in the source material.
HIVE Digital Technologies said its 2026 fiscal-year revenue reached $298 million, up 158% from a year earlier, as the company expanded both its Bitcoin mining and AI computing operations. Executive Chairman Frank Holmes said HIVE’s 504 Nvidia B200 GPUs, deployed in Bell Canada’s Manitoba AI fabric, generate about $2.90 per GPU per hour. By comparison, the company’s Bitcoin mining machines bring in about $0.12 per hour, putting GPU revenue at roughly 24 times the level of mining equipment on that measure. The company said revenue from digital currency mining increased 164% during the same fiscal year. Its average mining hashrate climbed to 22.2 EH/s, up 290% year over year, equal to about 3% of the Bitcoin network hashrate, and HIVE mined 2,885 BTC. BUZZ HPC, the unit handling AI and high-performance computing workloads, posted $19.5 million in revenue, up 94% from $10 million in the previous fiscal year. HIVE also disclosed an approximately $220 million GPU cloud agreement with Bell and AI company Cohere, alongside $75 million raised through a note issuance to expand AI infrastructure. The company is building a 320-megawatt AI data center in the Greater Toronto Area that is planned to eventually hold more than 100,000 GPUs. HIVE said the facility could generate about $360 million in annualized recurring revenue if it is fully online in the second half of 2027.
PANews’ July 31 daily roundup pulled together a wide range of market, regulatory, corporate, funding, and crypto trading updates. The report said New York’s attorney general has sued prediction market platform Kalshi and is seeking at least $36 billion. ByteDance unveiled its Seedance 2.5 video generation model, which can produce a 30-second high-quality clip in a single run, while several companies including XPeng and AgiBot are set to adopt it first through Volcano Engine partnerships. In public markets, South Korea’s KOSPI surged 17.91% to 6,595.44, marking the largest single-day closing gain on record, with SK hynix up 30% and Samsung Electronics up nearly 27%. The roundup also covered a string of crypto-linked developments. Strategy posted an $8.2 billion net loss in the second quarter, largely tied to unrealized losses on its Bitcoin holdings, while Coinbase reported $1.22 billion in Q2 revenue, below the $1.29 billion market expectation, and said its stock fell about 5% after hours. Elsewhere, Block traced a Coldcard wallet theft incident to a random number generation flaw affecting Mk2 through Mk5 devices, though another item in the same roundup noted there is still no evidence of a Coldcard RNG defect or supply-chain attack in the separate transfer of roughly 594 BTC from 500 single-signature addresses. The report also listed fresh ETF flow data, options expiry figures, AI startup financing, and sharp gains in crypto mining stocks pivoting toward AI.
Shares of several bitcoin mining companies with exposure to the AI data center trade jumped sharply on Thursday, according to market data cited by PANews from Bybit. IREN led the move with a 30.54% gain, followed by Bitdeer at 24.72%. Riot Platforms rose 21.27%, CleanSpark added 21.07%, and HIVE Digital climbed 18.34%. The Block linked the move to the forced liquidation of a public equity portfolio held by Situational Awareness, a hedge fund associated with former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner. To meet margin calls, the fund reportedly sold out of its positions, while Citadel, the firm founded by Ken Griffin, took on most of the shares. After news of the liquidation circulated, mining stocks that had faced heavy selling over the previous weeks rebounded.
Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 10.09% at block 953,568, marking the 11th-largest downward adjustment ever and the second-largest in 2026. Galaxy Research cites a 15% Bitcoin price drop in June. Miners are reallocating power to AI and HPC.
Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings is set to report Q1 earnings on May 11, with analysts forecasting $184.21M revenue and a $2.34 per-share loss. While BTC's 25% Q1 drop hit its holdings, the market focuses on its AI transition, including a $1.5B Long Ridge Energy acquisition and a 1GW data center partnership with Starwood.
A Paradigm report says Bitcoin mining accounts for 0.23% of global energy use and 0.08% of carbon emissions, arguing miners should be viewed as flexible grid load rather than a simple drain on power systems.
