HIVE Digital Technologies just announced what might be the most aggressive pivot in crypto-mining history. The company plans to build a C$3.5B AI gigafactory in Ontario’s Greater Toronto Area, a facility designed to pack over 100,000 GPUs and roughly 320 megawatts of power capacity under one roof.
The market’s reaction was immediate and enthusiastic. HIVE shares surged nearly 30% in after-hours trading following the May 18 announcement, a clear signal that investors are buying the company’s transformation story from Bitcoin miner to AI infrastructure provider.
From mining rigs to GPU farms
The project will be developed through HIVE’s subsidiary BUZZ HPC, which serves as the company’s high-performance computing arm. The facility is being positioned as a “sovereign AI” campus, a term that’s become increasingly popular among governments and enterprises looking to reduce dependence on foreign AI service providers.
That sovereignty angle is not just marketing fluff. It speaks to a growing anxiety, particularly among Canadian and European institutions, about routing sensitive data through US or Chinese cloud providers. A domestic AI campus with serious compute capacity gives enterprises, academic institutions, and government stakeholders an alternative that keeps data within national borders.
