Hut 8 surges on $9.8 billion AI data-center lease, lifting compute sector

Finance Hut 8 surges on $9.8 billion AI data-center lease, lifting compute sector The long-term deal sparked a rebound in AI compute stocks after investors questioned demand for new data center capacity. By Krisztian Sandor | Edited by Sheldon Reback Jul 20, 2026, 1:49 p.m. 1 min read Make preferred on Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Make preferred on Hut 8 Beacon Point Data Center: Rendering. (Hut 8/Press) Summary Show Hut 8 shares jumped as much as 14% Monday after the company signed a $9.8 billion, 15-year lease for the second phase of its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas. The deal, with the same investment-grade tenant as the first phase, adds 352 megawatts of Nvidia-based AI capacity and fully commercializes the 1-gigawatt site, bringing the tenant’s total commitment to 704 megawatts and the campus’ base contract value to $19.6 billion. The announcement helped lift other bitcoin miners repositioning as AI infrastructure providers, with IREN, Cipher Mining, TeraWulf and the CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF all climbing in early trading. Bitcoin BTC $ 64,651.63 miner and AI infrastructure developer Hut 8 (HUT) jumped as much as 14% after announcing a $9.8 billion, 15-year lease for the second phase of its Beacon Point data center campus in Texas, helping lift shares across the sector. The agreement, signed with the same investment-grade tenant that leased the first phase of the project, fully commercializes the 1-gigawatt campus. Hut 8 will build another 352 megawatts (MW) of AI computing capacity based on Nvidia's data center architecture, bringing the tenant's total contracted capacity at the site to 704 MW. The second lease fully commercializes Beacon Point's 1-gigawatt power capacity and raises the campus' base contract value to $19.6 billion over the initial lease term. Hut 8 rose to as high as $104.51 on Monday, and the announcement spilled over to peers in the high-performance compute sector. IREN (IREN) climbed 15%, Cipher Mining (CIFR) gained 11% and TeraWulf (WULF) added 6.4% in early trading. The CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) advanced 9.3%. The share-price surge comes after AI infrastructure companies stumbled in recent weeks as investors questioned whether the industry's breakneck spending on data centers would continue. Earlier buoyant sentiment cooled after Chinese firms released open-source AI models that appeared to require less computing power than Western rivals. Before that, reports that Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) was considering a cloud service to rent AI computing capacity also raised concerns that additional supply could weigh on data center operators. 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Why it matters : CEX trading volumes rose for the first time in five months in June, with spot climbing 15.3% to $1.11T and RWA perpetual volumes surging to a record $311B. View Full Report More From Finance Tom Lee's Bitmine slowed ether purchases as it bought back $86 million in stock Saylor's Strategy raises cash reserves to $3.2 billion, leaving bitcoin holdings unchanged Bank of Korea prepares for live CBDC transactions with 9 banks in September More From Bitcoin Tom Lee's Bitmine slowed ether purchases as it bought back $86 million in stock Saylor's Strategy raises cash reserves to $3.2 billion, leaving bitcoin holdings unchanged Brazil’s securities regulator sets up task force with 60-day deadline for tokenization proposal