Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) just signed the kind of deal that makes investors sit up and pay attention. The company announced Wednesday it has locked in a 15-year lease agreement with Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of IT capacity at its River Bend data center campus in Louisiana. The headline number? A cool $7.0 billion in contract value.
But here's where it gets interesting. This triple-net lease comes with a 3% annual base rent escalator, and if Fluidstack exercises all three of its five-year renewal options, the total contract value could balloon to $17.7 billion. That's the kind of long-term revenue visibility that transforms a company's financial profile overnight.
And there's more upside potential baked in. Fluidstack also secured a Right of First Offer for up to an additional 1,000 MW of future expansion capacity at the site, assuming the power infrastructure can support it. In other words, this deal could be just the beginning.
The Google Factor Changes Everything
What really makes this deal stand out is the backing behind it. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), is providing a financial backstop that covers lease payments and pass-through obligations during the entire 15-year base term. When one of the world's most valuable companies is essentially guaranteeing your revenue stream, banks tend to get comfortable pretty quickly.
Hut 8 expects the lease to generate cumulative net operating income of approximately $6.9 billion over the term, working out to an average of about $454 million per year. That's substantial recurring income from a single project.
The institutional firepower assembled for this project reads like a who's who of Wall Street and infrastructure. JP Morgan (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS) are expected to underwrite project-level financing of up to 85% loan-to-cost, subject to definitive agreements and customary closing conditions. That means Hut 8 can build this thing without draining its own balance sheet.
On the construction and operations side, Jacobs Solutions (J) is serving as the EPCM partner, working alongside Vertiv Holdings (VRT) on critical infrastructure delivery. These aren't fly-by-night contractors. They're established players with track records in large-scale data center builds.
Timeline and Operating Structure
The first data hall at River Bend is scheduled for completion and commissioning in the second quarter of 2027, with additional halls expected to come online through the rest of that year. So this isn't revenue that hits tomorrow, but the timeline is concrete and the financing is essentially locked in.
Hut 8 and Fluidstack also plan to enter into an Operations Services Agreement for ongoing data center management once the facility is up and running. Google will provide an additional payment backstop for these operational services, further de-risking the entire arrangement.
Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8, framed the deal as validation of the company's strategy: "River Bend reflects the strength of Hut 8's power-first, innovation-driven development model, validated by the world-class counterparties we are executing alongside."
The Broader AI Infrastructure Play
River Bend isn't just a standalone project. It fits within a broader partnership between Hut 8, Anthropic, and Fluidstack aimed at scaling hyperscale AI infrastructure across the United States. The idea is to create a repeatable deployment model that can be replicated as AI compute demand continues to surge.
In this framework, River Bend serves as an anchor project, essentially a proof of concept for a much larger buildout strategy. The partnership establishes a pathway to deploy significantly more capacity beyond Louisiana as additional power sources and suitable sites are identified and developed.
The AI infrastructure arms race is very real, and companies are scrambling to secure the power capacity and real estate needed to support the next generation of AI workloads. Hut 8 is positioning itself as a key infrastructure provider in this ecosystem.
Power, Scale, and Economic Impact
Hut 8 secured an initial 330 MW of utility capacity for River Bend through Entergy Louisiana (ETR), with the potential to scale by another 1,000 MW. At full buildout, this campus could rank among the largest data center developments anywhere in the world and would represent one of Louisiana's largest private capital projects.
The economic impact for the region is substantial. At peak construction, the project is expected to employ roughly 1,000 workers. Once operational, it's projected to support at least 75 direct jobs and 190 indirect and induced jobs in West Feliciana Parish. For a relatively rural area, that's meaningful employment creation.
Following the transaction announcement, Hut 8 reclassified 330 MW at River Bend as "Energy Capacity Under Construction," bringing its total pipeline capacity to 9,520 MW across all stages of development. That's a massive pipeline for a company that started as a Bitcoin mining operation.
The market's reaction was swift and enthusiastic. Hut 8 shares jumped 23.61% to $45.55 during premarket trading on Wednesday. When you announce a $7 billion revenue contract with Google backing it up, investors tend to notice.
