The former Bitcoin miner will deploy thousands of NVIDIA GPUs at a British Columbia facility, marking its biggest step yet into sovereign AI infrastructure
HIVE Digital Technologies just landed the kind of deal that makes its Bitcoin mining origins feel like a previous life. The company’s subsidiary, BUZZ High Performance Computing, has signed a three-year GPU cloud agreement with Bell AI Fabric worth approximately $220 million.
The contract, announced on June 18, 2026, calls for deploying 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs at Bell’s facility in Merritt, British Columbia. Operations are expected to go live in late 2026 or early 2027, and once the infrastructure is humming, HIVE expects it to generate roughly $70 million in annual recurring revenue.
The anatomy of the deal #
The partnership didn’t materialize overnight. BUZZ HPC and Bell Canada established a preferred partnership back on August 3, 2025, laying the groundwork for integrating NVIDIA GPU clusters with Bell’s national infrastructure.
The new deal brings together a surprisingly deep bench of technology partners. Canadian hardware manufacturer Hypertec is supplying locally built equipment, while Cohere, the enterprise AI company, provides the AI models that will run on the infrastructure. NVIDIA’s Grace Blackwell GPUs serve as the computational backbone.
The entire arrangement is built around the concept of “sovereign AI,” meaning the data stays in Canada, processed on Canadian soil, using Canadian-manufactured hardware. Bell AI Fabric essentially becomes the front door for enterprise and government customers who need GPU compute power without the sovereignty headaches that come with hyperscaler alternatives headquartered in the US.
From Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure #
HIVE has been steadily repositioning itself toward high-performance computing and AI infrastructure. The company has set a target of 5x growth in its HPC and AI operations for 2026. Landing a $220 million contract with one of Canada’s telecom giants suggests that target isn’t just aspirational marketing copy.
What this means for investors #
The $70 million in projected annual recurring revenue changes HIVE’s financial profile in a meaningful way. Recurring revenue from enterprise contracts is valued very differently by the market than the volatile income streams tied to Bitcoin’s price swings.
The sovereign AI angle creates a moat that pure-play cloud providers struggle to replicate. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft can offer more total compute capacity, but they can’t easily guarantee that every byte of data stays within Canadian borders on Canadian-built hardware.
The contract doesn’t go live until late 2026 at the earliest, meaning revenue won’t flow immediately. GPU infrastructure deployments at this scale involve complex supply chain coordination, and any delays in NVIDIA chip delivery or facility buildout could push timelines further.
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