This bitcoin miner is set to buy four Canadian power plants

Fresh off a strategic combination, Hut 8 looks to further accelerate its growth by snatching up four Canadian power plants and a new bitcoin mining site.

The company’s subsidiary, BidCo, has won a bid to acquire these Ontario natural gas power plants, as well as the North Bay bitcoin mine, from Validus Power Corp, Hut 8 said Tuesday. The four plants have a total capacity of 310 megawatts (MW).

The deal is set to close by January, pending court approval. The bid amount was not disclosed.

Hut 8 merged with US Bitcoin Corp. as part of a deal that closed earlier this month.

The combination gives the new-look firm greater geographic diversity and more revenue streams, industry watchers and executives have said. It has 7.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) of installed self-mining capacity at six sites across Canada, New York, Nebraska and Texas.

CEO Jaime Leverton said during a Dec. 5 call that the company’s so-called stalking horse bid for the Ontario sites — offered to a bankrupt company before a public auction — were part of its vision “to scale both rapidly and cost-effectively.”

Read more: New-look Hut 8 eyes AI-related opportunities after merger

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice greenlit Hut 8’s bid for the sites in November, though only now has it been deemed “successful,” a Tuesday news release noted.

Leverton said last month that acquiring the facilities would allow the crypto miner to use idle infrastructure and machinery, as well as boost its energy pricing certainty.

It is also expected to allow Hut 8 to sell energy to the market, mine bitcoin or power high-performance computing applications, such as those related to artificial intelligence. Such use of the facilities “is not only in keeping with our infrastructure-first strategy, but also affords us very compelling flexibility ahead of the halving,” Leverton added.

Hut 8 acquired five Canada-based data centers in early 2022 through its buy of wireless connectivity company TerraGo as part of a plan to use the facilities’ unused cloud space.

Mike Ho, the firm’s chief strategy officer, said earlier this month the firm is seeking more opportunities to invest in “the immense growth potential of AI.”

He added in an email to Blockworks: “There is a clear opportunity to leverage our capabilities across the data center infrastructure and software value chain to build a presence in nascent markets like AI infrastructure and compute.”