Shares of crypto miner Hut 8 jumped nearly 17% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the company announced a major artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership with Anthropic and cloud compute provider Fluidstack.
The deal marks a significant expansion beyond Hut 8’s traditional bitcoin mining roots, positioning the company as a developer and operator of large-scale data centres designed to support next-generation AI models.
$7 billion contract anchors long-term growth
Under the agreement, Hut 8 will develop and deliver at least 245 megawatts of AI data centre infrastructure for Anthropic, with capacity potentially rising to as much as 2,295 megawatts across multiple phases.
The initial contract is valued at around $7 billion, according to the company, with the overall value climbing to as much as $17.7 billion if all renewal options are exercised over the 15-year lease term.
Hut 8 said Google will provide a financial backstop for the lease, adding an extra layer of security to the long-dated agreement.
Financing for the project will be structured with an 85% loan-to-cost ratio, funded by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
The first data hall is scheduled to be completed and commissioned in the second quarter of 2027.
Louisiana campus forms the starting point
The initial phase of the partnership will be based at Hut 8’s River Bend campus in Louisiana.
There, the company plans to deliver 245 megawatts of IT capacity, supported by 330 megawatts of utility power.
The agreement also includes options for Anthropic to expand by up to 1,000 megawatts at the River Bend site, subject to additional power availability, as well as a further 1,050 megawatts across Hut 8’s broader development pipeline in the United States.
The scale of the project reflects the rapidly growing power needs of advanced AI systems, which require vast amounts of energy and specialised infrastructure to train and run large language models.
Executives highlight power-first strategy
Asher Genoot, chief executive of Hut 8, said the partnership underscored the central role of power in scaling frontier AI.
“Scaling frontier AI infrastructure is, at its core, a power challenge,” Genoot said, adding that Hut 8’s development model allows it to bring greenfield data centre sites online at the pace required by leading AI developers.
Anthropic’s head of compute, James Bradbury, said the deal builds on the company’s existing relationship with Fluidstack and would help bring additional capacity online by early 2027.
Gary Wu, co-founder and chief executive of Fluidstack, said the collaboration was aimed at delivering the foundational infrastructure that leading AI labs depend on.
Anthropic’s rising profile
The announcement comes amid growing investor interest in Anthropic, which has emerged as a key enterprise-focused AI model provider.
Last month, Microsoft said it would invest up to $5 billion in the company, while Nvidia committed up to $10 billion.
Those investments have reportedly lifted Anthropic’s valuation to an estimated $350 billion, up from about $183 billion in September.
Anthropic has also been deepening its commercial partnerships.
Earlier this month, it expanded its relationship with Snowflake in a multi-year deal worth $200 million, making its Claude models available to thousands of enterprise customers across major cloud platforms.
Analysts remain bullish on Hut 8
All 15 brokerages covering Hut 8 rate the stock a buy or higher, according to LSEG data, with a median price target of $60.
The sharp market reaction highlights how investors are increasingly rewarding companies that can tap into the surging demand for AI infrastructure, even as the sector’s energy and capital requirements continue to grow.
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