Shares of HIVE Digital Technologies jumped more than 10% after the company announced a major $220 million, three-year sovereign AI infrastructure agreement involving Bell Canada and AI startup Cohere. The deal marks one of the largest sovereign AI computing contracts announced by a publicly traded crypto mining company and further accelerates HIVE’s transformation from a Bitcoin miner into a full-scale AI infrastructure provider.
The agreement will see HIVE’s BUZZ High Performance Computing (BUZZ HPC) division deploy more than 2,300 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs at Bell’s AI Fabric facility in British Columbia. The infrastructure will serve as the dedicated computing backbone for Cohere’s enterprise AI models used by Canadian government agencies and private-sector organizations.
HIVE Continues Its Shift Beyond Bitcoin Mining
For years, HIVE was primarily known as one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies powered by renewable energy. However, the company has spent much of the past two years aggressively expanding into AI cloud computing and high-performance computing services.
The new agreement is expected to generate approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue, pushing HIVE’s contracted AI and HPC revenue above $100 million annually. Investors responded positively because recurring AI infrastructure revenue is generally viewed as more predictable and higher margin than Bitcoin mining revenue.
The contract reinforces management’s strategy of leveraging existing data center expertise to capitalize on the explosive demand for AI computing power.
Canada Bets Big on Sovereign AI
The project is part of Canada’s broader effort to build what policymakers call “sovereign AI infrastructure.” The concept centers on ensuring that AI models, data, and computing resources remain under domestic control rather than relying on foreign-owned cloud providers.
Under the agreement, all computing infrastructure and data processing will remain on Canadian soil. This aligns with growing concerns among governments worldwide regarding data sovereignty, national security, and dependence on foreign AI providers.
The deployment will support Cohere, one of Canada’s leading AI companies and a major competitor to firms such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the enterprise AI market.
BUZZ HPC Emerges as HIVE’s Growth Engine
The latest contract follows a series of major AI infrastructure announcements from HIVE throughout 2026.
In recent months, the company announced plans for a 320-megawatt AI gigafactory in the Greater Toronto Area capable of supporting more than 100,000 GPUs at full capacity. The project is expected to become one of Canada’s largest domestically controlled AI computing centers.
HIVE has also expanded sovereign AI initiatives in New Brunswick and British Columbia, building fiber networks, liquid-cooled data centers, and AI cloud infrastructure designed specifically for government and enterprise workloads.
These projects are all being developed under the BUZZ HPC brand, which management increasingly describes as the company’s primary growth platform.
Nvidia Remains the Backbone of the AI Boom
A significant aspect of the deal is the deployment of Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs, currently among the most sought-after AI chips in the world.
Demand for advanced AI accelerators continues to outpace supply as governments, cloud providers, and enterprises race to build AI infrastructure. By securing access to thousands of next-generation Nvidia GPUs, HIVE strengthens its position in one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology.
The agreement also demonstrates how crypto infrastructure companies are increasingly repurposing expertise in data center operations, power management, and cooling systems to support AI workloads.
Crypto Miners Are Becoming AI Companies
HIVE is not alone in making this transition. Across the industry, former Bitcoin miners are investing heavily in AI data centers and high-performance computing infrastructure as they seek to diversify revenue streams.
Companies that once relied almost entirely on mining rewards are increasingly generating income from AI cloud services, enterprise computing contracts, and GPU hosting agreements. This shift has become one of the most important trends in the post-halving crypto mining landscape.
Investors have generally rewarded companies that successfully execute this strategy because AI infrastructure often commands higher valuations than traditional mining operations.
What This Means for Crypto
The $220 million Bell-Cohere contract highlights a major evolution occurring throughout the digital asset industry. Companies that built expertise operating large-scale Bitcoin mining facilities are increasingly leveraging those capabilities to participate in the AI infrastructure boom.
For HIVE, the deal validates years of investment into high-performance computing and sovereign AI infrastructure. For the broader crypto sector, it demonstrates how mining companies can evolve into diversified technology infrastructure providers rather than remaining solely dependent on cryptocurrency prices.
As governments and enterprises continue investing billions into artificial intelligence, firms that can provide secure, domestically controlled computing resources may become some of the biggest beneficiaries. HIVE’s latest agreement suggests that the future of crypto infrastructure may be just as much about AI as it is about Bitcoin.
