Hut 8, IREN add $9.8B and $2.8B in AI deals as miners pivot to data centers
What's the deal? Hut 8 and IREN announced billions in new AI infrastructure contracts on Monday, 20 July 2026 as former Bitcoin miners pushed deeper into data centers and cloud computing. Hut 8 signed a second 15-year, $9.8 billion lease at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, while IREN added $2.8 billion in multi-year AI cloud deals. Shares of both companies rose, with Hut 8 up 12% and IREN up 8%.
Inside Hut 8's Texas campus: The new lease covers 352 megawatts of IT capacity and doubles the tenant's contracted footprint at Beacon Point to 704MW. Hut 8 describes the customer as a high-investment-grade counterparty but has not named it. The second deal follows an identical $9.8 billion, 352MW agreement announced in May 2026, bringing the campus's combined base-term contract value to $19.6 billion.
Hut 8 now reports 949MW of contracted IT capacity across its AI portfolio, including 245MW at River Bend, with a combined base-term value of $26.6 billion and expected annual net operating income above $1.75 billion. Renewal options could lift Beacon Point's potential total to $50.2 billion.
"Our tenant at Beacon Point chose to double its footprint at the site, the strongest validation an asset can receive," Hut 8 chief executive officer Asher Genoot said.
IREN raises its target: IREN said new contracts with AI developers added $2.8 billion in total contract value and lifted its year-end 2026 annualized run-rate revenue target from $3.7 billion to more than $4 billion. Roughly 85% of that target is now under contract. Customers named include Microsoft, NVIDIA, Perplexity, Figure AI, Together AI, Fluidstack, Fireworks AI, Fal AI, and Hume AI.
The company said recent agreements include advance payments equal to about 45% of the related GPU capital spending, reducing what it must fund directly. IREN held about $7.6 billion in cash and equivalents as of 30 June 2026, including restricted cash.
Why now? IREN has expanded from about 3MW of self-built AI Cloud capacity over the year to mid-2026 and plans to deliver 480MW in 2026, targeting 1.2GW for 2027. The revised target builds on a five-year, $3.4 billion NVIDIA agreement and an earlier $9.7 billion Microsoft deal.
"Our vertically integrated AI Cloud platform is scaling at pace," co-founder and co-chief executive officer Daniel Roberts said.
The signal: Both announcements underline a broader shift across the Bitcoin mining industry, where companies that already control large power connections, land, and data center infrastructure are repurposing those assets for AI. The scale of these contracts suggests that pivot is accelerating.
Read more: crypto.news
Image credit: U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command
