HIVE Digital Technologies has signed a $220 million contract with Bell Canada to supply AI infrastructure, the companies announced. The deal marks a pivot for the publicly traded firm, which has historically focused on cryptocurrency mining.
A shift in strategy
The multi-year agreement moves HIVE deeper into high-performance computing. Instead of using its data centers solely for mining Bitcoin, HIVE will now dedicate a significant portion of capacity to power AI workloads for Bell. The company says the contract improves its financial footing, though specific revenue projections weren't disclosed.
HIVE operates several data centers globally, and the Bell contract is one of its largest single deals to date. The shift toward AI services comes as crypto mining margins face pressure from increased competition and energy costs. For HIVE, the deal offers a more predictable income stream tied to long-term service agreements rather than volatile digital-asset prices.
Sovereign AI ambitions
The contract also positions HIVE as a player in what it calls sovereign AI — locally owned and operated infrastructure that keeps data within Canada's borders. Bell, a major telecom, is building out its own AI capabilities and wants compute resources that don't rely on foreign cloud providers.
HIVE will provide the hardware, power, and management for AI model training and inference. The company hasn't specified exactly which processors or accelerators it will use, but the scale suggests a cluster capable of handling large language models and other enterprise AI tasks.
For Bell, the deal is part of a broader push to offer AI services to corporate clients while maintaining control over data sovereignty. Canada's telecom sector has faced increasing scrutiny over where customer data is stored and processed.
Neither HIVE nor Bell provided a timeline for when the infrastructure will go live. The companies are expected to provide updates during HIVE's next earnings call, scheduled for early next quarter.
