Hut 8 Corp (Nasdaq: HUT) — formerly a Bitcoin miner, similar pivot trajectory to IREN — announced on May 6 the commercialization of the first phase of its Beacon Point AI data center campus on a 525-acre site in Nueces County, Texas (near Corpus Christi). The deal structure: 15-year IT lease for 352 MW of capacity with an undisclosed high-investment-grade tenant (Hut 8's Q1 2026 earnings disclosure characterized the tenant as a 'leading AI hyperscaler' but did not name them); $9.8B in base-term contract value; triple-net (tenant pays operating expenses and property taxes); take-or-pay (tenant pays for the full capacity whether utilized or not). Three 5-year renewal options at the tenant's discretion would bring total contract value to ~$25.1B if all exercised. The first building was originally scoped at 224 MW of IT capacity in the lease term sheet but was upsized to 352 MW during final design — Hut 8's executive commentary attributed the upsize to a tenant request for higher GPU density per square foot consistent with NVIDIA's DSX reference architecture. Hut 8 has executed an interconnection agreement for the full 1,000 MW of utility capacity at the campus; initial energization is expected Q1 2027. After the transaction, Hut 8's total contracted AI data center capacity is 597 MW with aggregate base-term contract value of approximately $16.8B (across this lease and earlier deals at other Hut 8 sites). HUT shares jumped 27-30% in after-hours / next-day trading on the announcement. Source: Hut 8 / PRNewswire, DCD, KRIS-TV (Nueces County local), CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance.
Primary source · Hut 8 / PRNewswire / DCD / KRIS-TV / CoinDesk ↗
Why it matters
Three updates. (1) Beacon Point is a Texas Gulf Coast hyperscale campus in ERCOT South Zone — different transmission posture from the Permian / West Texas concentration where most recent ERCOT hyperscale activity has clustered (Stargate Abilene, Sweetwater, Crusoe Goodnight, Meta El Paso). The Gulf Coast siting is unusual because (a) AEP Texas Central is the local utility, with different SB 6 / Batch Zero exposure than the West Texas zone; (b) the proximity to Corpus Christi industrial corridor (refineries, LNG export) creates a load-mix story different from greenfield West Texas; (c) the 1 GW interconnection agreement was executed *before* SB 6's grid-disconnect-during-emergency provisions take full operational effect, which means the Beacon Point campus is grandfathered under pre-SB-6 interconnection terms — a meaningful operational advantage if grid stress events become common. Cliff's submission validator should add a 'pre-SB-6 grandfathered IA' field for Texas sites, and Beacon Point is a clean reference case. (2) The $9.8B / 352 MW = ~$27.8M/MW base-term lease value, ~$71M/MW with all renewals — is the highest disclosed lease economics for an AI hyperscale lease to date. The closest comparable is Crusoe / Stargate Abilene at ~$22M/MW (covered last quarter); Meta / El Paso BTM at ~$35M/MW (covered Wednesday, but BTM-financed not lease-priced). The premium reflects three things layered: (a) the take-or-pay structure transferring capacity-utilization risk fully to the tenant; (b) the 15-year + 15-year-option duration which is longer than typical (most hyperscale leases are 10-15 year initial); (c) the NVIDIA DSX architecture spec which limits Hut 8's redeployment optionality. The implication for Cliff's underwriting tools: lease economics for AI-hyperscale leases are now $25-30M/MW for triple-net take-or-pay 15-year initial, materially above the $15-18M/MW that was standard for colo-hyperscale leases two years ago. Update firm-equivalent-mw-underwrite.md against this anchor. (3) The Hut 8 + IREN announcements (May 6 + May 7) are the same template: a former Bitcoin miner pivoting to AI hyperscale via partnership with NVIDIA's DSX architecture and an investment-grade hyperscaler counterparty. The 36-hour cadence of two structurally similar deals from two different former-miner operators is itself the signal — the BTC-miner-to-AI-DC pivot is now the dominant capacity-supply growth channel in the US hyperscale market. Marathon Digital, Riot Platforms, Cipher Mining, and Bitfarms are the next dominoes; Cliff should compile an internal tracker of BTC-miner-to-AI-DC pivots with sites, MW, NVIDIA partnership status, and disclosed counterparties — that's the supply-side signal that pairs with the demand-side hyperscaler-capex tracker.
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