HIVE Digital secures $129M loan at 9% for Cohere AI GPU cluster
HIVE Digital's BUZZ HPC unit secured about $129 million at a fixed 9% rate to fund a $165 million Nvidia GB200 cluster for a $225 million Cohere contract.
MININGAI & CRYPTONEWS
Daniel Hartley
10/29/20261 min read
HIVE Digital Technologies, the Bitcoin miner listed on Nasdaq and the TSX, said on Oct. 28 that its BUZZ HPC unit has secured about $129 million in debt financing to build a GPU cluster for Canadian AI company Cohere. The three-year loan from an unnamed institutional lender carries a fixed annual rate of 9%.
The facility covers roughly 80% of a $165 million cluster based on Nvidia GB200 NVL72 systems, with 2,303 GPUs expected to arrive toward the end of the fourth quarter. Principal and interest amortize over the term, and HIVE will own the hardware outright once the loan is repaid. No common shares will be issued; the remainder is to be funded from earlier zero-interest convertible bond proceeds, according to The Energy Mag.
The loan is secured by the GPUs and related assets of the borrower, BUZZ Alpha Cloud, a pledge of BUZZ HPC's equity in that subsidiary and a limited-recourse guarantee. HIVE now puts the total value of its three-year sovereign AI contract with Cohere, first announced in June, at $225 million including connectivity and storage, compared with $220 million previously disclosed for compute alone.
From hashrate to GPUs
Executive chairman Frank Holmes argued that sovereignty in AI will hinge on where computing capacity sits and who controls it. Chief executive Aydin Kilic said the company has signed $600 million in total contract value across three GPU cloud deals this year.
The financing shows how Bitcoin miners keep redirecting capital toward AI hosting as mining margins tighten. HIVE is winding down Bitcoin mining in Sweden and assessing those sites for AI use, The Energy Mag reported. The deal also lands as network difficulty rose another 5.54% on Oct. 29 and hashprice dropped to about $33 per PH/s per day, according to CryptoSlate.
Investors will now focus on hardware delivery and the cluster's ramp-up, which determine when revenue from the Cohere contract begins to flow.
Source: HIVE Digital Technologies, The Energy Mag, CryptoSlate