Hut 8 Files $399M Build for Texas AI Campus With 704MW of Signed Leases
TREE NEWS reports: Hut 8 has filed a construction project valued at nearly $399 million for its Beacon Point AI data center campus near Corpus Christi, Texas. The filing covers a single data center building of roughly 657,000 square feet, with construction expected to begin September 28 and complete in November 2027.
The scale of the commercial commitments behind the filing is what separates it from a routine permitting notice. Beacon Point has already signed two 15-year leases of 352MW each, for 704MW of total contracted capacity. The base-term contracts carry a combined value of about $19.6 billion, and the first phase has secured $4.25 billion in financing support.
From Bitcoin Mining Shells to AI Landlord
Hut 8’s trajectory mirrors a broader pivot across North American mining. Companies that spent the last cycle assembling land, interconnection rights, and substation capacity at utility-scale sites are now repricing those assets against hyperscaler demand for AI training and inference. A 15-year lease with an investment-grade counterparty converts volatile, hashprice-exposed cash flows into something closer to regulated utility revenue — long-dated, contracted, and financeable.
The numbers illustrate the arbitrage. Bitcoin mining revenue per megawatt swings with the hashprice and network difficulty; a long-term AI colocation lease fixes a revenue stream per megawatt for over a decade. That predictability is precisely what allows project finance lenders to underwrite $4.25 billion for a single phase.
Why Texas, and Why Now
- Power and land: ERCOT’s deregulated market and the Texas Gulf Coast’s industrial land and gas infrastructure allow rapid, large-scale interconnection.
- Speed to energization: Existing mining substations and switchgear shorten the path from filing to live load compared with greenfield hyperscale builds.
- Capital availability: Institutional appetite for contracted AI infrastructure has widened the lender base beyond crypto-native funds.
The 2027 completion date also matters. It places Beacon Point’s capacity in service as the first wave of AI data center commitments from 2024–2025 begins to be absorbed, and as power constraints in Virginia, Ohio, and parts of the Southwest intensify.
Forward Look
The key question is execution, not demand. Hut 8 must deliver 657,000 square feet on schedule while managing transformer lead times, turbine and grid interconnection queues, and skilled construction labor — the same bottlenecks pressuring every AI campus developer. Watch three signals: whether the second 352MW lease counterparty is disclosed and its credit quality, whether the $4.25 billion first-phase financing closes on expected terms, and whether Hut 8 retains or monetizes additional capacity at the site.
If executed, Beacon Point reframes Hut 8 from a bitcoin miner with AI optionality into a contracted digital infrastructure landlord — a materially different asset class, with a materially different valuation framework.
