"Canada helped pioneer modern artificial intelligence. What we have lacked is not talent, it is industrial infrastructure to commercialize that talent at scale before others do it for us." That's Frank Holmes, executive chairman at HIVE Digital Technologies, and those words just got a $220 million contract to back them up.
HIVE's stock jumped over 7% this week after the company announced a three-year GPU cloud deal with Bell Canada and AI firm Cohere. It's the largest single contract in HIVE's history, and it signals that the company's long-running bet on AI infrastructure is finally landing serious returns.
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From crypto mining rigs to GPU factories
HIVE started pivoting away from pure Bitcoin mining back in 2022, redirecting existing GPU capacity toward compute workloads instead. The move looked speculative at the time. Now it looks prescient.
The deal runs through HIVE's specialized subsidiary, BUZZ High Performance Computing, and involves deploying 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs at Bell's purpose-built data center in Merritt, British Columbia. These aren't general-purpose chips. Grace Blackwell hardware is specifically engineered for frontier AI model training, the kind of heavy compute work that large language models demand at scale.
Holmes framed the subsidiary's role bluntly: "BUZZ HPC is the GPU factory layer that transforms Canada's AI ambitions from political promises into productive national assets."
For context on how GPU-heavy infrastructure plays into the broader digital economy, check out our Hytale ultimate mining guide for a look at how resource extraction and hardware efficiency intersect even in gaming worlds.
Why Cohere and Bell needed this deal
Cohere isn't a household name yet, but it's one of the few companies globally building foundational AI models from scratch. The Toronto-based firm powers enterprise applications ranging from chatbot platforms to government document processing. Earlier this year, Cohere finalized a merger with Germany's Aleph Alpha, valuing the combined entity at $20 billion.
The key here is sovereignty. Canada's government has committed over $2 billion to domestic AI compute, including a $240 million direct injection into Cohere as part of its Sovereign AI Compute Strategy. Sovereign AI means running systems on domestic infrastructure with locally controlled data, which matters enormously for government agencies that can't afford to route sensitive workloads through foreign servers.
Bell and Cohere had already established a working partnership in July 2025. This new contract delivers the physical compute layer that makes their collaboration operational at scale.
HIVE's balance sheet behind the pivot
HIVE still generated $278.3 million in Bitcoin mining revenue during its most recent quarter, so the crypto side of the business hasn't collapsed. The AI infrastructure push is additive, not a desperate escape from a failing model.
The company closed a $115 million convertible note offering in April to finance additional hardware purchases, and secured a hardware agreement with Dell last November. The $220 million contract with Bell and Cohere is the payoff on that capital deployment.
HIVE isn't alone in this playbook. Keel Infrastructure, formerly known as Bitfarms, sold its final Bitcoin mining facility in Paraguay this April and is now pursuing a comparable shift toward high-performance computing. The pattern is becoming an industry trend rather than an outlier move.
For readers tracking how web3 infrastructure companies are evolving alongside gaming and digital asset ecosystems, our gaming guides hub covers the intersection of technology and interactive entertainment across multiple verticals.
What this means for the GPU compute race
NVIDIA's Grace Blackwell architecture is in high demand globally, and securing 2,304 units for a dedicated sovereign AI facility is a meaningful hardware commitment. The chips will sit at Bell's Merritt, BC data center and serve Cohere's Canadian enterprise and government clients directly.
HIVE's transition from a Bitcoin miner into a GPU infrastructure provider mirrors the broader shift happening across the tech sector, where the same hardware that once secured blockchains now trains the models powering enterprise AI. The company's BUZZ HPC subsidiary is positioned as the operational layer between hardware ownership and AI workload delivery.
With the Canadian government's sovereign AI strategy still in early deployment and Cohere continuing to expand its enterprise footprint, HIVE's three-year contract window gives the company a stable runway to build out further capacity. Watch for additional hardware announcements as BUZZ HPC scales to meet demand. If you're interested in how web3 companies are building real-world infrastructure around digital assets, our HV-MTL Forge guide offers a useful look at how asset-backed systems work in practice.
