Hut 8 Carves Out Bitcoin Mining Segment For American Bitcoin

'By carving out our mining business into a standalone entity, which will raise its own capital, we align each segment of the business with its respective cost of capital,’ said Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8, in a statement. ‘The transaction creates two focused yet complementary businesses, each purpose-built for its respective mandate.’

Fast-growing data center and high-performance computing player Hut 8 is carving out its bitcoin mining operation into a subsidiary called American Bitcoin, which will operate under an exclusive, long-term colocation agreement on Hut 8’s infrastructure.

American Bitcoin will be led by CEO Matt Prusack, who was previously chief commercial officer of US Bitcoin Corp., which was acquired by Hut 8 in November 2023. Eric Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, is listed as a co-founder and chief strategy officer of the new organization.

“The launch of American Bitcoin marks a pivotal evolution in our platform strategy,” Genoot said in a statement. “By carving out our mining business into a standalone entity, which will raise its own capital, we align each segment of the business with its respective cost of capital. The transaction creates two focused yet complementary businesses, each purpose-built for its respective mandate.”

Hut 8 operates in four divisions with power, digital infrastructure, compute and other operations.

To create American Bitcoin, Hut 8 is turning over its Compute division, which generated $80.7 million in revenue in the most recent fiscal year. It is transferring nearly all of its ASIC miners to American Bitcoin and will keep an 80 percent stake in the subsidiary.

“All mining operations previously reported under our Compute segment as Bitcoin Mining will remain under our Compute segment, but operate through the American Bitcoin brand,” the company wrote in a filing with the SEC on Monday.

Meanwhile, existing shareholders of American Data Center Inc. will own 20 percent of the new entity. CRN has reached out to Hut 8 for more details about the deal.

American Bitcoin will collocate its miners at Hut 8 sites, with Hut 8 serving as its exclusive infrastructure partners. The goal is for American Bitcoin to become a publicly traded company as the world’s largest, most efficient pure-play Bitcoin miner and increase its Bitcoin reserve, according to a presentation filed with the SEC.

The leadership team will be comprised of Hut 8 Chief Strategy Officer Mike Ho, Prusack and Eric Trump.

Earlier this month, Hut 8 announced a massive new data center campus in Louisiana that will be ready to provide power to workloads beginning this year, the company said in a press release.

The Miami-based data center provider announced the 300-megawatt facility will be built in stages, with phase one coming online in the fourth quarter of 2025, and the full facility completed by calendar year 2026.

The company currently has 1.02 gigawatts of energy capacity under management across sites in the United States and Canada: five Bitcoin mining, hosting, and managed services sites in Alberta, Canada; New York; and Texas. It also has five high-performance computing data centers in British Columbia and Ontario, four power generation assets in Ontario, and one non-operational site in Alberta.

The company offers 1,000 Nvidia H100s for AI workloads, which are managed and operated through its GPU-as-a-service subsidiary, Highrise AI.

During Hut 8’s earnings call earlier this month, Genoot told investors that the company expects to significantly grow that capacity in the future with 12.3 gigawatts in its development pipeline.

“We aim to optimize returns, mitigate sector-specific volatility, accelerate speed to market, and deliver innovation at every stage of the development value chain,” Genoot said in a statement that accompanied earnings. “To align our reporting structure with this model as we enter this next phase of growth, we have realigned our operating segments around the three layers of our platform: Power, Digital Infrastructure, and Compute, as reflected in our results.”

Hut 8 recently announced 2024 revenue of $162.4 million, up from the $96 million it generated the previous year, with much of that bump due to Hut 8’s merger with US Bitcoin Corp.

Hut 8 and US Bitcoin announced a “merger of equals” in February 2023. The deal closed last year.

Genoot – who recently completed a massive infrastructure deal with HPE and Advizex – told CRN in September there is tremendous growth ahead for Hut 8 and its customers.

“We’re extremely excited about what the future holds,” he said. “We’ve done a great job with building a very large power footprint and now we see the intersection between AI and power and how to actually go fuel this next-generation compute. What we’re doing is bringing together our understanding of power, data center infrastructure, and the chips to fuel this AI technology revolution.”