Hut 8 Stock Hits Record as Bitcoin Miner Locks In $9.8B, 352 MW AI Campus Lease in Texas

In infrastructure, power is the scarce asset—and Hut 8 just priced it like one. The Bitcoin miner signed a 15‑year, $9.8 billion lease for 352 megawatts of AI data center capacity at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, triggering a sharp rerating in the equity. HUT traded around $107 in early Wednesday action, up roughly 33% from Tuesday’s close, with an intraday high of $109.88 setting a new record. The stock has more than doubled over the past month.

The tenant—described as a confidential, high–investment-grade counterparty—plans to deploy dedicated infrastructure for AI training and inference at hyperscale. This is Hut 8’s second hyperscale AI campus lease under its “power‑first” development model, which prioritizes long-dated power, land, and interconnection rights ahead of specific customer orders.

Beacon Point was originally scoped for Bitcoin mining via Hut 8’s subsidiary, the Trump‑backed American Bitcoin. As AI demand accelerated, Hut 8 pivoted the site and redesigned mid‑build. A data hall initially planned for 224 MW was expanded to 352 MW—a 57% lift—without enlarging the land or utility footprint after Nvidia’s DSX reference architecture moved toward commercial deployment with materially higher rack‑level power densities. That densification is the tell: the margin now lives in how efficiently you translate megawatts into usable compute, not just in securing hardware.

Financially, Hut 8 is exchanging spot‑exposed hash revenue for contractual cash flows. The company now has 597 MW of contracted AI data center capacity with an aggregate base‑term contract value near $16.8 billion and an average annual net operating income of approximately $1.1 billion. The new lease includes a 3% annual rent escalator and three five‑year renewal options that could take the total value to about $25.1 billion. That structure builds in inflation protection and growth without forcing Hut 8 to time crypto cycles.

Execution still matters. AEP Texas has signed an interconnection agreement covering the full 1,000‑MW campus; initial energization is expected in Q1 2027, with the first data hall slated for Q3 2027. Long‑lead equipment, construction timelines, and grid coordination can introduce delays, and leasing to a single large customer concentrates risk—even with investment‑grade credit. Tenant confidentiality can also obscure counterparty diversification, a point sophisticated investors will watch as deliveries approach.

Strategically, the reshape is logical. Miners with scale interconnects and development rights sit on a call option to AI compute. Hut 8 is exercising that option, monetizing power as a platform and letting hyperscalers shoulder utilization and workload volatility. The model doesn’t abandon Bitcoin outright, but it reduces dependence on hash economics amid rising difficulty and price swings. If replicated across Hut 8’s broader pipeline—7,545 MW of energy capacity in various stages—the business starts to rhyme more with a power‑backed digital infrastructure operator than a pure miner.

The market reaction makes sense: investors often pay higher multiples for contracted infrastructure cash flows than for commodity‑linked mining revenue. Whether this premium sustains will hinge on timely delivery, DSX‑class density staying relevant through 2027, and Hut 8’s ability to sign additional, diversified tenants without overcommitting scarce megawatts. For now, the signal is clear: in the AI era, megawatts with interconnection are the moat, and miners who control them can reprice their story.