HIVE Digital Technologies signs a $220 million contract to build AI infrastructure in Canada
HIVE Digital Technologies, a well-known player in mining and high-performance computing, has signed a three-year contract worth $220 million to deploy GPU infrastructure for sovereign artificial intelligence in Canada. This move marks a strategic shift for the company toward enterprise AI solutions, reflecting the growing demand for computing power for model training and inference.
Under the agreement, the BUZZ High Performance Computing division will install 2,304 Nvidia Grace Blackwell accelerators at a facility in Merritt, British Columbia. These GPUs, representing Nvidia's latest generation of chips, will deliver high performance for AI-related tasks, including processing large language models and data analytics.
The computing capacity will be used for Cohere's enterprise AI models, which target government agencies and the business sector. This underscores the growing role of sovereign AI infrastructures, where data and computing remain under the control of local jurisdictions, which is critical for security and privacy. The project is expected to launch in late 2026 to early 2027.
Expert opinion: This contract is not just a commercial deal but a signal of the maturity of the AI infrastructure market. HIVE Digital Technologies, previously primarily associated with cryptocurrency mining, is diversifying its business by betting on a long-term trend. However, the launch timeline (late 2026 to early 2027) indicates that infrastructure projects of this scale require significant time to implement, and competition in this segment will only intensify.