Hut 8 Rallies After Signing $9.8 Billion Lease for Texas AI Data Center Expansion

Lease expands Vega Point buildout

According to a July 20 report cited by CoinDesk, Hut 8 signed a 15-year lease for Phase 2 of the Vega Point campus. The agreement is valued at $9.8 billion.

The customer is the same investment-grade tenant that previously leased Phase 1 of the site. Under the new arrangement, Hut 8 plans to add 352 megawatts of AI computing capacity using Nvidia data center architecture.

If completed as planned, the customer’s total contracted capacity at Vega Point would reach 704 megawatts. Hut 8 said that would fully commercialize the campus’s 1-gigawatt power capacity.

Contracted value doubles to $19.6 billion

The Phase 2 lease would materially increase the economics of the Texas campus. Based on the figures in the report, Vega Point’s total base contracted value would rise to $19.6 billion over the initial lease term.

That marks a doubling from the value implied by the earlier Phase 1 arrangement, reflecting the addition of another 352 megawatts for the same customer. The project also underscores Hut 8’s positioning not only as a Bitcoin miner, but as a company seeking revenue from AI infrastructure.

Stock jumps and peers follow

Investors responded quickly to the announcement. Hut 8 shares rose as much as 14% intraday, reaching $104.51.

The move spread across related names in the sector. IREN gained 15%, Cipher Mining rose 11%, and TeraWulf added 6.4% during the session. The CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF, WGMI, was also up 9.3%.

The broad rally suggested the market viewed Hut 8’s lease as a supportive signal for companies linked to data center capacity and high-performance computing infrastructure.

Recovery after recent pressure

The gains came after a period of weakness for AI infrastructure stocks. Sentiment had been pressured by the release of open-source AI models from Chinese companies that were seen as requiring less computing power than Western rivals, raising questions about future data center demand.

Another factor weighing on the group was a report that Meta Platforms was considering a cloud service that would lease AI computing capacity. That report added to concerns about possible oversupply in the market.

Against that backdrop, Hut 8’s new lease appeared to offer investors a concrete example of demand being contracted on a long-term basis, even as broader questions around capacity needs and supply remained in focus.

The announcement ties Hut 8’s near-term market move to a specific commercial development at Vega Point while also feeding into a wider debate over whether AI infrastructure demand will remain strong enough to support continued expansion across the sector.