Mr. Asher Genoot reports

HUT 8 ENERGIZES VEGA DATA CENTER

Hut 8 Corp. has initially energized Vega. Based on publicly available information, the company believes Vega to be the largest single-building bitcoin mining facility by nameplate hash rate. Spanning the equivalent of five football fields and covering 162,000 square feet, Vega is powered by 205 megawatts (MW) of nameplate energy capacity and at full energization will support up to approximately 15 exahashes per second (EH/s) of Bitmain U3S21EXPH servers for bitcoin mining ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) compute, or nearly 2 per cent of current global bitcoin network hash rate.

Vega debuts a new Tier 1 data centre form factor that narrows the gap between legacy air-cooled ASIC infrastructure and liquid-cooled GPU (graphics processing unit) infrastructure. Unlike traditional mining facilities that rely on forced-air cooling and shelving systems that constrain compute density, Vega features a proprietary, rack-based, direct-to-chip liquid cooling system designed in-house by Hut 8. The architecture supports ASIC deployments at densities of up to 180 kilowatts (kW) per rack.

The system's modular architecture -- including pump skids, fluid distribution networks, server racks, switchboards and smart power distribution units -- was designed by Hut 8's in-house development organization to optimize thermal efficiency, miner stability and operational reliability. The result is materially higher compute density, greater thermal control and improved uptime in high-ambient environments like Texas. Initial customer discussions support the potential viability of this architecture for future iterations of high-density, direct-to-chip, liquid-cooled infrastructure to support emerging HPC (high-performance computing) workloads and customer needs.

"Vega exemplifies our innovation-driven approach to digital infrastructure design," said Asher Genoot, chief executive officer of Hut 8. "We built it for where, we believe, the market is going, using modular architecture and adaptive thermal systems designed to scale and evolve as workload requirements grow more complex. Over the past several weeks, as we've brought the site on-line, it has become clear how well this architecture performs under real-world conditions."

"Vega's design is particularly relevant for AI training and other non-customer-facing HPC workloads, where we believe speed, density and cost-efficiency will increasingly take precedence over traditional redundancy standards," said Jake Palmer, senior vice-president of development at Hut 8. "The project represents a design philosophy we intend to scale, refine and deploy as we continue to bridge the gap between high-cost, high-redundancy builds and lower-cost, application-optimized infrastructure."

Bitmain is the client for the full approximately 15 EH/s deployment at Vega under an ASIC co-location agreement. Based on ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) forward energy prices, the agreement is expected to generate between $110-million and $120-million in annualized revenue upon full energization, subject to factors including ERCOT energy pricing and facility uptime. The agreement also includes a purchase option that allows Hut 8 to acquire all or part of the hosted fleet in up to three tranches at a fixed price, exercisable within six months of each tranche's energization. This structure gives Hut 8 the ability to convert the deployment into self-mining capacity for its bitcoin mining subsidiary, American Bitcoin Corp., supporting growth in its scale from 10 EH/s to 25 EH/s.

"We are proud to have partnered with Hut 8 to successfully develop and commercialize the next generation of ASIC compute technology," said Irene Gao, vice-president of mining at Bitmain. "Vega demonstrates what is possible when two industry leaders with deep technical expertise come together to push the boundaries of performance, efficiency and design. We believe this collaboration has set a new benchmark for the industry, and we look forward to expanding on this success in the coming years."

Project highlights:

• Industrial scale -- Two hundred five MW of nameplate capacity with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.06, powered behind the metre by a wind farm and front of the metre by the ERCOT grid.
• Rack-based architecture -- Proprietary rack-based architecture supports 180 kilowatts per rack, 50 per cent higher than the 120 kW requirement of Nvidia Blackwell HGX GPUs.
• Next-generation ASIC compute technology -- Site will host up to 17,280 Bitmain U3S21EXPH servers (at full energization), the first ASIC miner mass commercialized by Bitmain with direct liquid-to-chip cooling within a U form factor, each delivering up to 860 terahashes per second (TH/s) at 13 joules per terahash.
• Direct-to-chip liquid cooling -- Ninety-six custom-designed cooling modules circulate 120,000 gallons of glycol-water solution through a closed-loop, reverse return system designed to reduce water consumption versus conventional high-density cooling systems.
• Capital efficiency -- Estimated all-in cost of approximately $430,000 to $450,000 per MW of nameplate capacity.
• Time to market -- From site acquisition in July, 2024, to initial energization in June, 2025, Vega was brought on-line in under a year, demonstrating Hut 8's ability to use bitcoin mining infrastructure development to rapidly monetize power assets.
• Commercialization through ASIC co-location -- Bitmain will consume the full approximately 15 EH/s deployment at full energization pursuant to a co-location agreement that will generate revenue for Hut 8's digital infrastructure segment and includes a purchase option that, if exercised, would enable American Bitcoin to scale its self-mining capacity from 10 EH/s to approximately 25 EH/s.

About Hut 8 Corp.

Hut 8 is an energy infrastructure platform integrating power, digital infrastructure and compute at scale to fuel next-generation, energy-intensive use cases, such as bitcoin mining and high-performance computing. The company takes a power-first, innovation-driven approach to developing, commercializing and operating the critical infrastructure that underpins the breakthrough technologies of today and tomorrow. Hut 8's platform spans 1,020 megawatts of energy capacity under management across 15 sites in the United States and Canada: five bitcoin mining, hosting and managed services sites in Alberta, New York and Texas; five high-performance computing data centres in British Columbia and Ontario; four power generation assets in Ontario; and one non-operational site in Alberta.

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