The digital asset market continues to show a fundamental shift: mining companies are increasingly diversifying their businesses through artificial intelligence. On July 20, Hut 8 signed a 15-year lease agreement for the second phase of the Beacon Point AI campus in Texas, valued at $9.8 billion. This deal fully commercializes the entire 1 GW campus.
The agreement was made with the same highly reliable tenant as the first phase (the counterparty's name is not disclosed, but a high investment rating is indicated). Hut 8 will build an additional 352 MW of computing capacity on Nvidia architecture, bringing the tenant's total contracted capacity at the site to 704 MW.
The base value of the Beacon Point contracts now stands at $19.6 billion, and including renewal options, it could grow to $50.2 billion. Across Hut 8's entire AI data center portfolio, 949 MW are contracted, with a total base value of agreements reaching $26.6 billion. The average annual net operating income from these contracts exceeds $1.75 billion.
The market reaction was immediate: Hut 8 shares surged 10% to $104.51. The wave of positivity also swept over other miners developing AI capabilities: Cipher Mining's shares rose 15.4%, and TeraWulf's gained 5.4%. The CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF increased by 10.6%.
IREN: New Contracts and Record Forecast
Meanwhile, another Bitcoin miner, IREN, announced the signing of cloud AI service contracts worth $2.8 billion. Amid these deals, the company raised its annual revenue forecast for the AI Cloud segment for the end of 2026 from $3.7 billion to over $4 billion. Approximately 85% of this amount is already secured by signed agreements.
IREN's clients include technology giants: Microsoft, Nvidia, Perplexity, Figure AI, Together AI, Fluidstack, Fireworks AI, Fal AI, and Hume AI. The company described one new customer as a "leading AI developer" without disclosing the name.
Importantly, the new contracts include prepayments — covering about 45% of the capital expenditures for the corresponding GPUs. This significantly reduces the need for deployment financing. The weighted average term of client agreements is approximately four years. As of June 30, IREN held about $7.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
"Our vertically integrated AI Cloud platform is scaling at a rapid pace. Over the past 12 months, we have grown from approximately 3 MW of own capacity to 480 MW being delivered this year, with a target of 1.2 GW by 2027," said Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of IREN.
Following the announcement, IREN shares rose by 18.7%.
Expert opinion: We are witnessing not just a temporary trend, but a systemic transformation of the mining industry. Companies that previously relied solely on Bitcoin's volatility are now building long-term AI assets with predictable cash flow. Prepayments from clients are a powerful signal of trust, and total contracts worth tens of billions of dollars confirm that miners are becoming key players in artificial intelligence infrastructure.