Hut 8 Shares Surge 30% on $9.8B AI Data Center Lease

Hut 8 Corp. shares surged more than 30 percent Wednesday after the company announced a 15-year, $9.8 billion triple-net lease for the first phase of its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Nueces County, Texas, marking a key expansion into high-performance computing infrastructure.

The agreement covers 352 megawatts of IT capacity, equivalent to about 500 megawatts of utility power, with an investment-grade tenant using the facility for AI training and inference workloads. The base-term contract includes a 3 percent annual escalator and three five-year renewal options that could increase its value to over $25 billion. Chief Executive Asher Genoot described the deal during the company's first-quarter 2026 earnings call as part of a "power-first" strategy, stating, "Beacon Point underscores why we start with power and maintain flexibility across end markets."

The Beacon Point campus, with 1 gigawatt of secured utility capacity, initially targeted bitcoin mining but was repositioned for AI demands. Hut 8 partnered with NVIDIA on the design, which boosted IT capacity from 224 megawatts to 352 megawatts within the same footprint, adding $3.6 billion to the contract value. Partners...