A Canadian AI infrastructure company just signed a $350 million contract to build a massive GPU cluster powered by renewable hydroelectric energy, marking a significant bet on sustainable AI compute. HIVE Digital Technologies' subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing announced the five-year agreement with an investment-grade enterprise customer, adding approximately $70 million in annualized revenue to its growing AI cloud business.

What Makes This GPU Deal Different from Other Data Center Contracts?

Most AI infrastructure deals focus purely on computing power and speed. This one adds a sustainability angle that's becoming increasingly important to enterprise customers. The dedicated cluster will consist of 2,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs in NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 rack-scale systems, interconnected with NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking and supported by VAST Data's high-performance storage platform. The entire system is designed according to NVIDIA's reference architecture to support large-scale AI training, inference, and advanced enterprise workloads.

What sets this deployment apart is its power source and cooling approach. The cluster will operate at the Bell AI Fabric facility in Merritt, British Columbia, powered by 100 percent renewable hydroelectric energy. The facility also uses advanced closed-loop liquid cooling technology, which eliminates ongoing water consumption for cooling, addressing two major pain points in data center operations.

How Does This Contract Impact BUZZ HPC's Business Growth?

This agreement represents a major milestone in BUZZ HPC's expansion strategy. The contract brings the company's total annualized recurring revenue to approximately $180 million, comprised of approximately $35 million in active, realized revenue today and approximately $145 million in contracted revenue expected to come online through the fourth quarter of 2026. When the cluster reaches full deployment later this year, HIVE's HPC and AI daily revenue is expected to reach approximately $500,000.

The financial structure of the deal reveals how BUZZ HPC is managing capital efficiently. The company expects capital expenditures associated with the deployment to total approximately $185 million, including the accelerated computing cluster and all associated hardware and service warranties. The customer will provide an upfront deposit of approximately 10 percent of the total contract value, or roughly $35 million, which together with HIVE's previously announced financing initiatives and additional equipment financing, will support the deployment.

Importantly, HIVE will retain ownership of the NVIDIA AI infrastructure after deployment, creating what the company describes as a long-lived strategic asset with potential for continued cash flows beyond the five-year contract term. This ownership structure gives HIVE ongoing value from the infrastructure's useful life.

Steps to Understanding the Strategic Importance of This Deal

• Canadian Sovereignty Focus: BUZZ HPC is positioning itself as a leading Canadian AI cloud provider, delivering sovereign accelerated computing infrastructure to customers in Canada and internationally, addressing growing concerns about data residency and national AI capabilities.
• Long-Term Revenue Visibility: The five-year term provides BUZZ HPC with predictable, contracted revenue from an investment-grade customer, reducing business uncertainty and enabling better capital planning for future deployments.
• Sustainable Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage: By combining renewable energy, advanced cooling technology, and NVIDIA accelerated computing, BUZZ HPC is building AI infrastructure designed to meet both performance and sustainability requirements increasingly demanded by enterprise customers.
• Dual-Engine Business Model: HIVE operates both ASIC computing infrastructure for traditional data centers and GPU-based AI infrastructure, leveraging shared expertise in securing renewable energy and building high-performance facilities.

Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE Digital Technologies, emphasized the company's execution capabilities and future potential. "A year ago, our team was focused on rapidly scaling HIVE's ASIC computing power and Tier-I data center footprint by over 300 percent," Holmes stated. "Today, we are applying that same discipline and execution to scaling our GPU-based AI infrastructure." He added that with approximately 400 megawatts of capacity in Canada for Tier III data center development, HIVE has the potential to bring over 120,000 GPUs online over the next two years.

Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE Digital Technologies

"We are pleased to announce this agreement as we accelerate towards our year-end target of $200 million of annualized revenue for our GPU cloud business," said Aydin Kilic, President and Chief Executive Officer of HIVE Digital Technologies. "The five-year term, expected stable cash flows from an investment-grade enterprise customer, and upfront deposit of approximately 10 percent of total contract value supports an attractive economic and return profile for this deployment."

Aydin Kilic, President and Chief Executive Officer of HIVE Digital Technologies

Craig Tavares, President and Chief Operating Officer of BUZZ High Performance Computing, highlighted the company's positioning in the competitive AI infrastructure market. "This contract demonstrates our ability to consistently execute on large-scale AI infrastructure deployments while securing long-term, high-quality customers," Tavares explained. "We're rapidly establishing BUZZ as one of Canada's leading sovereign AI cloud providers, combining best-in-class NVIDIA infrastructure with strategic partners such as Bell and VAST Data to deliver enterprise-grade AI compute at global scale".

Craig Tavares

The timing of this announcement reflects broader industry trends. As AI workloads continue to grow exponentially, enterprises are increasingly concerned about both the performance and environmental impact of their computing infrastructure. This contract demonstrates that investment-grade customers are willing to commit substantial capital to providers who can deliver cutting-edge GPU performance while addressing sustainability concerns through renewable energy and efficient cooling technologies.

The deployment is expected to become operational later in 2026, adding meaningful computing capacity to Canada's AI infrastructure landscape. For HIVE, this represents validation of its strategy to build a portfolio of high-performance accelerated computing infrastructure serving both Canadian sovereign AI requirements and global enterprises seeking sustainable, reliable AI compute resources.