HIVE trims Sweden bitcoin hashrate, doubles down on AI data centers in Canada

HIVE Digital Technologies is recalibrating its compute mix. The company is scaling back bitcoin hashrate production at its Boden, Sweden site and redirecting capital toward artificial intelligence and high‑performance computing infrastructure, with a heavier buildout in Canada.

The catalyst is jurisdictional friction. HIVE’s Swedish subsidiaries have encountered enforcement actions and what the firm characterizes as misapplications of existing tax rules. Authorities have required a security deposit tied to disputed VAT assessments, even after HIVE obtained favorable views from multiple law firms, a tier‑one accounting firm, and local VAT academics. That uncertainty has constrained the economics of running ASIC‑based hashrate consistently, prompting HIVE to explore a broader phase‑out of its bitcoin mining model in Sweden while redeploying resources to AI/HPC in Europe.

Execution has already started. The 7‑megawatt Boden facility is being upgraded to Tier‑III high‑performance standards to host enterprise‑grade GPU clusters. Once construction completes, the site is expected to support systems based on NVIDIA’s GB300 architecture for AI training and inference.

The larger expansion is in North America through BUZZ High Performance Computing, HIVE’s HPC arm. In partnership with Bell Canada AI Fabric, HIVE plans to lift its liquid‑cooled AI data center capacity from 4 MW in Manitoba to 16.6 MW across two provinces: - A new British Columbia colocation brings 5 MW immediately, with an option to add 7.6 MW. - The BC site is built to accommodate roughly 2,000 next‑generation AI‑optimized GPUs, complementing about 2,000 GPUs at HIVE’s existing Manitoba installation.

Taken together, HIVE now sees a near‑term ramp to more than 4,000 GPUs in Canada and a pathway to over 6,000 deployed GPUs across partner sites and its own facilities. The company is targeting approximately $200 million in contracted annualized run‑rate revenue from its HPC business by the end of its fiscal year ending March 31, 2027.

What matters here isn’t just a miner chasing the AI boom; it’s the strategic trade between probabilistic cash flows and contracted compute. Bitcoin mining exposes operators to hashprice volatility and policy shifts. When a regulator imposes security deposits amid VAT disputes, the effective cost of capital on each terahash jumps, and uptime planning becomes guesswork. By contrast, enterprise GPU clusters can be matched with multi‑year contracts, where power density, cooling, and interconnect fidelity become the competitive moat—areas miners already understand. The constraint is different: GPU supply cadence and customer aggregation, not network difficulty.

HIVE’s approach tries to arbitrage those constraints. Upgrading Boden to Tier‑III specs with support for NVIDIA GB300 aligns the site with AI training needs if the Swedish policy environment stabilizes. In Canada, liquid cooling and Bell’s AI Fabric shortcut go‑to‑market, turning power and real estate into serviceable, higher‑yield compute. That shift doesn’t repurpose ASICs—those are single‑purpose—but it leverages the same muscle: power contracts, data center operations, and thermal engineering adapted for GPU clusters.

There are risks worth flagging. AI demand can be cyclical at the application layer even if infrastructure looks tight today; the delivery timeline for next‑gen GPUs may slip; and the sales motion for contracted HPC is relationship‑driven, not purely capacity‑driven. Still, for miners navigating patchy policy regimes, diversifying into GPU compute can reduce exposure to one jurisdiction’s tax interpretation or a single commodity‑linked revenue stream.

Market reaction reflected cautious optimism: HIVE shares traded up roughly 5.6% in early Monday action, though the stock remains down about 16.7% year‑to‑date. If HIVE hits its HPC run‑rate goal by FY2027, it would validate a model many public miners are testing—using mining‑grade infrastructure to underwrite AI‑grade revenue—while keeping optionality to dial hashrate where policy and power cooperate.