Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 has struck one of the largest AI-infrastructure leasing deals to date, signing a 245MW agreement with Fluidstack for its River Bend campus in Louisiana, an arrangement backed financially by Google and positioned as the opening phase of a multi-gigawatt buildout tied to Anthropic.
What Happened
The 15-year triple-net lease, valued at roughly $7 billion and expandable to $17.7 billion if all options are exercised, covers the first development phase at River Bend, a massive 627-acre site that could scale to nearly 3,000 acres.
The initial data hall is expected to go live in Q2 2027, with additional capacity rolling out through the year.
Fluidstack will also receive a right of first offer for as much as 1GW of additional IT load in future phases.
Google is underwriting the deal, while J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are providing financing, an indication of how aggressively major financial institutions and hyperscalers are now backing compute-heavy, AI-focused infrastructure.
Why It Matters
Hut 8 said the contract reflects its long-term strategy of developing “power-first” AI campuses designed around energy availability and scalable compute.
CEO Asher Genoot described the project as the product of “disciplined, patient execution,” emphasizing the scope of partnerships required to build multi-gigawatt AI facilities.
J.P. Morgan’s investment banking chair, Noah Wintroub, called River Bend an example of the type of infrastructure needed for the U.S. to remain competitive in high-performance computing.
The leasing deal landed the same day Hut 8 unveiled a broad partnership with Anthropic and Fluidstack aimed at deploying between 245MW and 2.295GW of AI capacity across the United States.
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The first 245MW will sit at River Bend, with up to 1GW of optional expansion onsite.
Separately, the three firms may develop another 1GW of capacity at Hut 8’s other development sites.
Anthropic, which already has major multi-billion-dollar infrastructure agreements with Fluidstack and Google Cloud, said Hut 8’s ability to secure large amounts of power and build at scale makes the collaboration critical to supporting the next generation of its models.
Fluidstack CEO Gary Wu said the partnership is designed to meet increasing demand for highly specialized compute across AI research and enterprise workloads.
Hut 8 now controls one of the largest AI-aligned data center pipelines in North America.
Across mining sites, colocation facilities and new AI campuses, it claims roughly 10.6GW of capacity in various stages of development, an enormous footprint for a company that only recently diversified beyond Bitcoin mining.
The firm has operationalized around 1GW, has another 1.5GW under construction, and is evaluating nearly 7GW more.
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