Hut 8 Corp.'s shares jumped over 30% in pre-market trading as the company inked a $9.8 billion lease tied to an artificial intelligence data center campus designed to NVIDIA's compute architecture.
The deal marks the first phase of Hut 8's commercialization of its Beacon Point data center campus in Nueces County, Texas. Hut 8 said its unnamed tenant will use the compute infrastructure to support AI training and "inference workloads at hyperscale." If all renewal options are exercised on the lease, Hut 8 said it could end up being worth over $25 billion.
Hut 8's shares (HUT) were up 34% to $107.87 per share as of 9:33 a.m. ET, according to The Block's crypto equity data.
"Originally underwritten on a speed-to-power thesis to serve Hut 8's affiliated customer, American Bitcoin Corp, the site was repositioned to AI infrastructure as power demand accelerated and customer requirements broadened," the company said in a statement. "Hut 8 transitioned Beacon Point from its original commercialization pathway with ABTC to deliver an AI data center campus with contracted, investment-grade cash flows, marking the first phase of asset-level value creation at the campus."
Hut 8 also reported first-quarter earnings, posting a net loss of $253 million, an increase of 89% when compared to the $134 million loss it reported during the same period last year. On the upside, quarterly revenue rose to $71 million due primarily to $66 million in compute-related revenues.
"ASIC Compute revenue was generated primarily through American Bitcoin; AI Cloud revenue from the Company's wholly owned Highrise AI subsidiary; and Traditional Cloud solutions delivered under the Hut 8 Canada brand," the company said.
Last year during the first quarter, Hut 8 reported $22 million in revenue, with $16 million coming from compute.
As with some of its peers, the bitcoin miner has been evolving its business model as demand surges for high-performance computing. Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer has characterized Hut 8 as transforming from a "bitcoin mining company into an energy-infrastructure platform."
"In the first quarter of 2026, we continued to execute against our conviction that power is the foundational layer for the next generation of energy-intensive technologies, and that those who secure it at scale will build and compound a durable competitive advantage," Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot said in a statement.
The company also said it held $1.3 billion in cash and Bitcoin holdings at the end of Q1, with $795.6 million "attributable to Hut 8 and $489.0 million attributable to American Bitcoin."
American Bitcoin, ticker symbol ABTC on the Nasdaq, is a bitcoin-focused digital asset treasury company. Hut 8 owns a majority stake in the company.