Hut 8 signed a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease with an unnamed tech giant, and the market noticed immediately. Shares climbed from a 2026 low near $44 all the way to $133 before settling around $108, a gain of roughly 128% since January. That kind of move doesn't happen without a story behind it, and the story here is a near-complete pivot away from Bitcoin mining.

CEO Asher Genoot told CNBC the transition was deliberate and is already showing up in the numbers. The new deal adds 704 megawatts of capacity to Beacon Point, the company's AI data center campus in Texas, and is expected to generate about $653 million in annual revenue on its own. A year ago, Hut 8 had zero revenue-generating AI contracts. Now its total contracted AI services backlog sits at roughly $27 billion, with annualized EBITDA of around $1.75 billion.

What Happened to the Mining Side

Hut 8 didn't walk away from Bitcoin mining quietly. In March 2025, the company spun the operation out into a separate entity called American Bitcoin Corp., keeping a majority stake in the new company. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. came on as shareholders of ABTC, which continued expanding its mining fleet and accumulating Bitcoin.

The results have been brutal for outside investors. American Bitcoin shares are down more than 76% since the start of 2026. That collapse reportedly wiped over $600 million from the value of Eric Trump's position alone. The contrast with Hut 8's trajectory is hard to ignore: two businesses that were once the same company, now moving in opposite directions as markets assign very different multiples to AI infrastructure versus proof-of-work mining.

Analysts haven't fully bought into Hut 8's transformation yet. Skeptics point to high electricity costs at Beacon Point and question whether a $27 billion backlog can realistically convert into sustained revenue at the pace the company implies. Translating contracted value into cash is a different problem from signing deals, and the gap between backlog figures and actual EBITDA delivery will be what the next few quarters are really about.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.