HIVE Blockchain's stock surged 35% on Tuesday after the company revealed plans to build a 320MW AI gigafactory. The facility, announced May 19, marks a sharp pivot from crypto mining toward high-performance computing for artificial intelligence workloads.
The pivot to AI infrastructure
Crypto miners have been quietly repositioning their power-hungry data centers for months. HIVE is the latest to make it official. The company said the 320MW facility will be designed specifically for AI training and inference, not for mining Bitcoin or Ethereum. That's a big change for a firm that built its name on proof-of-work mining.
The logic is straightforward: AI companies need massive compute capacity, and crypto miners already own the real estate, the cooling systems, and the power contracts. Those assets are harder to build from scratch than to repurpose.
What a 320MW facility looks like
Three hundred twenty megawatts is a serious chunk of power. For context, that's enough to run a small city or roughly 200,000 homes. HIVE's existing mining operations use a fraction of that. The gigafactory will likely house thousands of GPUs — the chips that power AI models — and require significant upfront capital. HIVE didn't disclose a budget or timeline for construction, but the stock move suggests investors are betting the bet will pay off.
A 35% pop — and what it says
The 35% jump in HIVE's stock is the biggest single-day gain the company has seen in years. The timing isn't accidental. Crypto mining margins have been squeezed by rising hash rates and the recent halving. AI infrastructure, by contrast, offers long-term contracts with hyperscalers and cloud providers. That's a more predictable revenue stream than mining blocks.
HIVE isn't alone. Rivals like Hive Digital and others have announced similar pivots this year. But the 320MW scale puts HIVE among the larger players in the crossover space.
The broader shift among miners
This is part of a wider trend. Crypto miners across North America and Europe are rethinking their business models. Some are leasing out data center space to AI firms. Others are building their own GPU clusters. The common thread: power is the scarce resource, and miners have it.
What's less clear is how fast the transition will happen. Building a 320MW AI facility isn't a weekend project. Permitting, grid interconnection, and GPU procurement all take time. HIVE hasn't released a target date for when the gigafactory will go live. Investors will be watching for more details in the company's next earnings call.
