Hut 8 signs 15-year AI lease backed by Google, stock jumps 25% premarket

Hut 8 announced Wednesday it has signed a 15-year lease with Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of IT capacity at its River Bend data center campus in Louisiana. The base-term contract is valued at $7 billion and could reach about $17.7 billion if all renewal options are exercised.

The triple-net lease includes annual rent escalators and grants Fluidstack a right of first offer for up to an additional 1,000 megawatts of future expansion capacity at the site.

The agreement is supported by a financial backstop from Google, which covers lease payments and related obligations over the 15-year base term.

Discussing the River Bend agreement, Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot said it validates its development strategy, which prioritizes power availability and long-term execution alongside blue-chip partners.

“Together with the State of Louisiana, Entergy, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Vertiv, and Jacobs, we expect to deliver next-generation AI and high-performance computing infrastructure at scale, and we are committed to applying the same rigor and long-term focus as we advance commercialization across our broader development pipeline,” Genoot noted.

Hut 8 also announced today that it has formed a partnership with Anthropic and Fluidstack to develop a comprehensive AI data center infrastructure in the US, planning to deliver between 245 and 2,295 megawatts of data center capacity.

Shares of Hut 8 rose about 25% in premarket trading after the company announced the agreements, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock closed up 4% on Tuesday, extending its gains for the year to around 80%.