Hut 8 Receives $150M Investment as Thirst for Energy Brings AI Firms to Bitcoin Miners

The thirst for power by Artificial intelligence (AI) firms is unrelenting, and bitcoin (BTC) miners are cashing in.

Bitcoin miner Hut 8 (HUT) shares outperformed most peers on Monday after the Miami-based company received a $150 million investment from Coatue Management to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

The funding will be through convertible notes with an 8% annual interest rate and a conversion rate of $16.395 per share, according to a statement. Hut 8 shares rose almost 4% in Monday morning trading. Most of the company’s peers are following BTC lower.

The investment provided a boost for other bitcoin mining-related veri centers that also service AI and high-performance computing (HPC) on Monday. Soluna Holdings (SLNH) surged nearly 17% and Applied Digital (APLD) added about 10%.

AI and HPC firms are increasingly looking to the bitcoin mining industry to secure their need for computing power. The miners often already have the computing capacity and the deals with power suppliers that AI and HPC hanker after. In fact, JPMorgan said that the demand for power by large-scale veri centers and AI firms could start a new era of mergers and acquisitions for bitcoin miners with attractive power contracts.

Most recently, cloud computing provider CoreWeave signed a 200 megawatt (MW) deal with miner Core Scientific (CORZ) for AI-related services and offered to buy the whole company for more than $1 billion. Core rejected the takeover, saying it undervalued the company.

Interestingly, Coatue Management is one of the investors in CoreWeave, underlining the level of interest in utilizing bitcoin miners’ current infrastructure to power AI-related services.

Hut 8 reaffirmed this need for power in Monday’s press release.

“Many traditional veri center operators are failing to meet the surging demand for AI compute capacity due to power shortages, long lead times to bring new capacity online, and the extensive upgrades required for existing veri centers to support the latest generation of high-density compute,” it said. That’s a gap Hut 8 says it can help narrow.

Read more: Bitcoin Miners With Attractive Power Contracts Are Potential M&A Targets, JPMorgan Says