Mining giant HIVE Digital switches to AI: $220 million contract with Bell Canada for NVIDIA GPUs
A major player in Bitcoin mining, HIVE Digital Technologies, is making a strategic pivot toward high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence. Their subsidiary, BUZZ HPC, has signed a massive three-year agreement to provide cloud GPU services to Canadian telecom giant Bell Canada and Cohere. The contract is valued at a staggering $220 million.
Under the deal, HIVE will deploy 2,304 next-generation NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs at the Bell AI Fabric facility located in British Columbia. The infrastructure launch is scheduled for late 2026 to early 2027. This is not merely equipment leasing; it is a full-fledged partnership that fundamentally reshapes the miner's revenue structure.
Financial Impact for HIVE will be impressive. The company forecasts that this contract will increase its annual recurring revenue by approximately $70 million. For comparison, HIVE's current contracted revenue level is around $35 million per year. Thus, with this single deal, HPC service revenues will triple.
Why This Matters for the Market
This move confirms a global trend: mining companies, which possess vast power capacities and expertise in energy management, are actively repurposing their data centers for AI needs. Miners no longer want to rely solely on Bitcoin's volatility. They see enormous demand for computing resources to train and run large language models.
HIVE Digital, historically known as one of the most efficient Bitcoin miners, is now betting on diversification. Signing the contract with Bell Canada sends a strong signal to the market that, even amid the halving and declining mining profitability, there is an alternative path to monetizing capacity.
My Analysis: The $220 million sum and the three-year contract are not a speculative story but a long-term strategy. I view this move as extremely timely. While many miners struggle to survive after the halving, HIVE is not just surviving—it is shaping a new business profile that allows it to hedge risks and enter a high-margin market. Given the shortage of GPU capacity for AI, this contract could become a benchmark for the entire industry.