Hut 8 shares experienced a notable surge of 20% in pre-market trading following the company’s announcement of a significant long-term lease agreement with Fluidstack, an AI infrastructure firm. The deal involves a substantial 15-year lease valued at $7 billion, granting Fluidstack access to 245 megawatts (MW) of IT capacity at Hut 8’s River Bend campus located in Louisiana.
This landmark agreement not only includes the immediate lease but also provides Fluidstack with a Right of First Offer (ROFO) for an additional 1,000 megawatts of IT capacity, positioning the company for future growth as the campus expands. The contract is structured to include three renewal options extending for five years each, potentially elevating the total value to around $17.7 billion.
In a strategic move to mitigate counterparty risk, Google is backing the financial aspect of the base lease term. Hut 8 projects that this deal will yield a significant cumulative net operating income of $6.9 billion over the 15-year period, translating to approximately $454 million per year.
Construction and commissioning of the River Bend facility are set to begin in the second quarter of 2027. The development is anticipated to be financially supported through project-level debt financing, which is expected to cover up to 85% of the total development costs. Major financial institutions, including JPMorgan as the lead underwriter and Goldman Sachs, are involved in this venture.
This strategic partnership follows a similar deal struck by Cipher Mining, which recently announced a 10-year high performance computing agreement with Fluidstack, also backed by Google, highlighting a trend of significant collaboration in the burgeoning fields of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
