Hut 8 secures $9.8 billion lease, fully commercializes Texas AI data center

Hut 8 Corp. announced a second 15‑year lease valued at $9.8 billion for its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Nueces County, Texas. The agreement adds 352 MW of IT capacity, doubling the unnamed high‑investment‑grade tenant’s footprint at the site to 704 MW and fully commercializing the 1‑gigawatt campus.

The lease brings the campus’s base‑term contract value to $19.6 billion, with renewal options that could raise total value to $50.2 billion. Across Hut 8’s AI portfolio the contracted capacity now totals 949 MW, backed by 1,330 MW of utility capacity and an aggregate base‑term value of $26.6 billion. The company expects to deliver the first Phase 2 data hall in Q2 2028.

Shares rose following the news, with pre‑market gains of about 5 % reported by Reuters and later reports of up to a 30 % jump as investors priced in the firm’s pivot from cryptocurrency mining to AI infrastructure. The deal underscores growing demand for power‑intensive AI compute and Hut 8’s strategy of leveraging its energy assets to serve the expanding generative‑AI market.