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Andy Stewart
On y'.
Charlie
All.
Colin
Welcome back to Block Space Live. Coming at y' all fresh as daisies on this Tuesday morning and we've got a freaking packed docket today, Charlie. We're going to head off the show as we discussed yesterday with our first earnings week update, specifically tackling Cipher and Hut Eights latest quarterly earnings that dropped this morning. We live streamed it on YouTube and X. If you want to go watch the full earnings calls, go ahead, head over to our YouTube and you can find them there. We'll be heading off with Hut 8 moving on into Cypher and following that we will get into the rest of the news for today. Starting off with Bit deer inking a $4.7 billion AI colocation contract in Norway with Anthropic reportedly the counterparty or one of the counterparties on this lease, according to Bloomberg. We've got the details for our first story. Following earnings after that, Andy Stewart, the CEO of Ionic Digital, comes on to talk about their latest public debut, their in scale deal for AI colocation and what we can expect from the latest bitcoin miner turned AI play to hit public markets after that. We have a note on ERCOT's Batch 0 hitting some bumps in the road. There is so much demand for the Texas grid that Governor Abbott is now mandating audits of all Batch zero applicants. We'll have that for our third story on the day. And for our final story, we've got Aaron finalizing a $625 million acquisition for Mirantis as it seeks to bolster its AI software offerings.
Charlie
That's right, Block Space goes live every weekday at 1pm Eastern. We are COMPUTE's daily live show featuring quick hits on AI data centers, markets and emerging technology. This is Earnings Week. You can catch all earnings week content here live on the podcast. If you miss the live stream, it turns into a podcast later anywhere podcasts are found and then it is supplemented by a bunch of written material which you can find all across the Internet. But the easy place to go is our website, Blockspace Media. That's right, go to our website Blockspace Media for all Blockspace content. This live stream is sponsored by CleanSpark. Nasdaq listed ticker CLSK. More on CleanSpark later on in the show. Colin we just kept adding stories to this day's live stream. It's just earnings after story after story and we're leaving off some stuff. So because we only have what hour, hour, hour and a half. So
Colin
there's a lot we could have included today and it came it's almost like the deluge hit as earnings started.
Charlie
So, yeah, yeah. So we're gonna kick it off with the earnings update because this morning we had Hut and Cipher back to back, one right after the other. In fact, they did cross over. So I like to imagine that I'm listening to both at the same time in one ear, you know, one year per earnings report.
Colin
Yeah, you kind of have to. They're all stacked up this week. In fact, tomorrow's schedule is even more hectic. We got three, two of which completely overlap, one of which two, and I also overlap with the first one tomorrow. We'll give an update on the earnings that we plan to cover tomorrow. But first headline here from block space, we'll start with Hut 8. Hut 8 misses estimates as revenue reaches 749 7, 704. 704.9 million in Q2. Excuse me. Excuse the stutters there. So Hut 8 ended up falling this morning following earnings on those misses. As this article points out, the headline numbers are as follow revenue 7, 74.9 million in Q2 2026 versus a consensus estimate of 76.8 to 80.2 million. So about a 2 to 7% miss there. The big miss though for the street came on earnings per share. An estimate of negative $1.27 earnings per share was the actual. Hut 8's actual earnings per share minus $1.27. Estimates were coming in around 48 to 64 negative in terms of earnings per share. So Hut 8 big miss there. Adjusted EBITDA came in at 10.4 million. That is less the change to the fair value of their cryptocurrency. Hut 8 still has actually a pretty significant bitcoin bag when you include that depreciation on the bitcoin stack. It came in at negative 94.6 million. Total net loss of 177.1 million. So digging into these a little bit Further, revenue was up 81% year over year, 74.9 million versus 41.3 million driven almost entirely by compute of which was 72.5 million of the total, I.e. from ASIC compute with the American bitcoin leasing deals that they have with their subsidiary AI Cloud and traditional cloud power. Revenue fell, but it was. It's a marginal amount, so it's not really material and digital infrastructure. Roughly flat at 1.3 million. There's also an additional 27 million of colocation style type revenue from its unconsolidated King Mountain jv. That shows in equity earnings, not in headline revenue. So that's important to flag. Net loss again was driven by change in its Bitcoin holdings headline. Net loss was driven by a $138.6 million write down on its Bitcoin stash versus a 217.6 million unrealized gain in the prior year period. So double edged sword there with Bitcoin. As we all know now the accounting rules allow you to actually count that as unrealized revenue and or unrealized gain on your balance sheet. So when Bitcoin's doing great, these companies look like they have more of a of a gain than they actually do because it's paper gains. Their interest expense jumped to 51.2 million, largely driven by these new project level financing notes that we'll get into here on the balance sheet. Moving on to that balance sheet, I'll cover this chart, then I'll toss it to you before I get to some of the updates on their AI business line. Total cash came in at 6.79 or restricted cash came in at 6.79 billion. Unrestricted came in at 233.6 million. That restricted cash is ring fence tied to Riverbend and Beacon Point. Per the debt that they took on for project level financing for those sites, total liquidity with cash, restricted cash and BTC holdings came in at 8.1 billion of which 7.6 billion is attributed to HUD 8 and almost 500 million to American Bitcoin. This is Hut 8 fully owned subsidiary. They own roughly a 54% stake of American Bitcoin which just does bitcoin mining. And that roughly half a billion dollars on America's Bitcoin balance sheet is largely attributable to Bitcoin holdings total debt. This is where it gets interesting because HUD8 has been cleaning up its balance sheet, so to speak, retiring some of its convertible debt so nothing can float back up to the main entity HUD 8. And focusing on these project level financing deals for Riverbend and for Beacon Point. So total debt came in at 7.9 billion roughly there around abouts specifically dominated by the 4.25 billion beacon point phase one note which is financed at 6.0 and 3.25 billion. Riverbend note at 6.192% as well. Both are non recourse to the parent. They also have a $200 million term loan, a $159.3 million convert and a $49.6 million note. One thing that's worth pointing out, There was a 150 million Coatu convertible note that was converted to equity in May 2026. So now the company says that it has no general recourse debt at the parent level. And its total bitcoin stash was valued at 1 billion fair value at the end of Q2, which is down from 1.4 billion at year end 2025. Charlie, toss it to you real quick for second thoughts before I get into some of the data center updates.
Charlie
My thoughts are pulling up DI metrics to look at the sector powershells. Roughly flat for the day overall. But that's not because it's not that everything's flat. It's because it's a mixed bag, as you say. Hut drops earnings underwhelming or underperforming expectations. Hut down currently 5.8% it looks like. So I'll throw it back to you.
Colin
Yeah, definitely taking a haircut today. Hut 8 after missing earnings. As you mentioned before, the stream. Charlie, maybe there's some noise to hear with the batch 0 distinction. Both Hut 8 and Cipher have extensive expansion, prospective expansion into Texas. We'll get to that when we cover the Batch 8 stuff. But I wanted to give a quick note on those data center builds for HUD 8, just as a reminder for those who maybe have forgotten or just to kind of give people a breakdown of where Hut 8 stands today. So the big headline for Hut 8 this quarter was the full commercialization of Beacon Point and Corpus Christi. This is a roughly 1 gigawatt facility which phase 1, 500 megawatts gross, 352 megawatt critical IT load was already leased to an unnamed tenant. Reports from Bloomberg and others say that this is likely Nvidia. That has not been confirmed by Hut 8 nor Nvidia in public disclosures. But that is the reporting as it stands from People source close to the matter. Then before quarter's end, the second 352 megawatt it lease or subsequent to quarter end. Excuse me, the second 352 megawatt IT lease, phase two was signed with the same tenant which commercializes the full 1 gigawatt of utility capacity at the site. The combined campus lease is valued at 19.6 billion over the contract terms with 1.3 billion average net operating income and renewal options. That could push the potential campus value to 50.2 billion. Construction of phase one and the campus substation is underway. Initial energization is targeted in Q1 2027, initial data haul delivery in Q3 2027. So looking at generating revenue on that site, come 2027. Riverbend is the other staple in its AI business. It is leased to Fluid Stack. This is the first deal that they announced. 330 megawatts gross, 245 megawatts critical it 15 years with 7 billion total contract value. Vertical construction has commenced along with substation construction and initial long lead equipment deliveries. The initial data hall is scheduled to come online Q2 2027. So that leaves total energy capacity under construction 408 now at 1.33 gigawatts, 330 at Riverbend, 1 gigawatt, 330 megawatts at Riverbend, 1,000 megawatts at Beacon Point and the development pipeline. They're billing at 8.66 gigawatts total with 5.4 gigawatts under due diligence, 1.88 gigawatts under exclusivity, 50 megawatts under development and 1.33 gigawatts under construction. This excludes notably 1 gigawatt of potential RiverBand expansion on which Fluid Stack holds a right of first refuse of first offer. So that's the breakdown of where HUD8 stands. There were no really big material announcements in the Q2 earnings. Mostly just a victory lap on what turned out to be a banner quarter for what has emerged as one of the front runners and the bitcoin miners turned AI companies.
Charlie
And did you add that I believe KBW kept their outperform rating on Hut? Here, I'll, I'll share this because in light of this, KBW keeps our perform on Hut with 1:57 price target following Q2 earnings. So Q, even though hut's down, that's KBW projecting again. You know, investment bank. They're talking their book, their cell.
Colin
Yeah, they're. They're on the sell side for Hut eight. But, but there's.
Charlie
We publish it because it's news like it's, you know.
Colin
Well and they always. The thing that's more interesting about the price targets there are the breakdowns and the methodology for how they're reaching them. And also they usually get into the contract terms in more detail than other sources. So.
Charlie
Yeah, so to note, let's go to Cipher.
Colin
Yeah, we will move on to Cipher. Leave it there with HUD 8 by just saying that most of this will start booking in 2027. Right now they're still leaning on their bitcoin mining business line for revenue. Overall though, some strong, some strong developments for Hut 8 last quarter. And I do want to flag the debt, the project level financing for those Le because those interest rates are some of the lowest we're seeing. They're right there with Cypher in terms of some of the lowest of the cohort. So also hat tip to the, to the finance division for getting those deals done. Alrighty, moving on to Cipher here. Also missed earnings, also punished by the street for it.
Charlie
We'll get punished a little bit harder this time. I mean it's the biggest. It's down pretty significantly today while everything but huts up.
Colin
So yeah, I mean double digit drop today. Now if you look at the five day, it's not that bad. They actually had a run up leading up to earnings that kind of cushioned some of the blow there. But the headline here from Block Space, Cipher Digital delivers Black Pearl capacity early, adds 900 megawatt Apollo option. So Cipher does actually have some material updates here. The Apollo option is a 900 megawatt site in Texas that they have that they're advertising as the option to expand there specifically as it relates to procuring power. There's no lease there yet. Just wanted to get that out of the way. Also they delivered Black Pearl early two months ahead of schedule. Worth pointing that out once we get to the operational side of things. But first we will cover the headline numbers here. Cypher's revenue for Q1 2026 24.8 million as opposed to consensus estimates of 29.3 to 32.5 about a 15 to 24% miss. Part of the reason why you're seeing them taking a beating greater than HUD 8 as the street reacts to these earnings. Earnings per share came in estimated at negative $0.14 to negative $0.24 per share. Actual came in at negative $0.65. So like hut8 as well. Large miss there on the earnings per share. Of course I do think it's worth noting out that or pointing out that both of these companies are posting revenue currently based on their bitcoin mining lines. But their valuation is 100% pegged to these AI and HPC leases that will start generating revenue in Hut 8's case, 2027, but in Cypher's case a little bit earlier here. So what drove the earnings that we're seeing from Cypher? Bitcoin mining revenue fell 43% year over year, 24.8 to 43.6 million. Hash price network difficulty. This is no surprise here. It's been very bad to be a bitcoin miner right now. And Cypher not an exception here in the sense that the entire network is down right now and margins are Incredibly thin. The net loss that we saw which was 267.5 million was largely driven by a by non cash and financing items. A 150.5 million non cash change in fair value of a warrant liability and a 66.7 million of interest expense. Also 19.4 million of depreciation and amortization. Adjusted EBITDA was mostly driven by mining revenue decline and also higher stock based comp and executive compensation. They've been hiring out for their HPC and AI business lines and those salaries come with hefty price. Those salaries come with hefty price lines. The adjusted EBITDA for Cypher coming out at negative 30 million for the year. Again mostly driven by by that stock based comp and higher compensation for some of these new employees. For the AI lines going on to Cypher's balance sheet, 831.8 million in unrestricted cash, total cash plus restricted cash came at 4.56 billion. Like with Hut 8, most of that is tied into project level financing, so they can't touch it. Except for those specific projects, total Debt stood at 6 billion. And similarly to similarly to HUD 8. Most of that debt exists in the realm of project level financing for these sites that they are building out. I will get to those sites right now, Charlie, unless you have something that you want to add so far to the numbers.
Charlie
I don't have anything to add. We haven't dropped the word batch zero yet, so.
Colin
No, yeah, yeah, we'll get there here in a second. And also I want to save most of that commentary for when we get to that actual news item because I do think there's a lot to unpack there going back to that debt before I get to the projects that is tied to you specifically in Q2 they raised 810 million in a senior secured note at 6%. Again very attractive interest rate for the Stingray facility which has that at being fully. Which Cypher says is fully funded at this point. So that AI facility has all the cash it needs to get up and running off the ground. Capex for the first half of 2026 came in at 964.3 million for property and equipment plus another 542.7 million accrued but unpaid. Again underscoring just the capital intensities of these builds. So for specific data center updates we'll start with Black Pearl which has Amazon Web Services as a tenant. 300 megawatt gross, 216 megawatt critical it 15 year lease at 5.5 billion total contract value. First capacity for this site was delivered at the beginning of August, two months ahead of schedule and rent has now commenced so expect to see that recognized on their Q3 earnings. And there are they have 96% of the equipment secured and remaining phase one halls are in fit out and phase two the foundation steel and underground electrical is being worked on. Currently moving to Harbor Lake. The fluid stack lease 300 megawatts gross, 207 megawatts of critical IT for a 10 year lease at 3.8 billion billion in total contract value. The tenant has begun beneficial use that is fluid stack which is partial building occupancy and first network racks have been delivered. 100% of the equipment is secured with initial delivery still targeted for September 2026 and rent commencement starting October 2026. So two sites coming online for Cypher. One the Black Pearl site already online, Barber Lake coming with rent commencement just at the beginning of Q4. Now looking at Stingray, the other Amazon web services site, 100 megawatts gross with 70 megawatts critical it 15 year lease valued at $2 billion. It's now fully funded like we said during via that Q2 bond deal. The earthwork grading pad prep and underground electricity are underway and concrete and steel to begin being laid in Q3 2026. 75% of the equipment is secured at the site with delivery targeted in H1 2027. There's also this new site Charlie that we touched at the beginning. Cypher has required an option, not a lease on up to 900 megawatts near San Antonio, Texas on 288 acres it has submitted as a studied load in ERCOT's Batch 0. No tenant attached yet. Like we said, that is where the batch 0 considerations are. Interesting here for Cypher because this could potentially throw a wrench into their plans to get that site on sooner rather than later depending on how things shape shake out. Its pipeline is basically unchanged. It's targeting 70 megawatts in Q3 2027 at Reva. This is a Texas site. All of these are Texas except for this one Ulysses 200 megawatts target Q4 2027 and that is in Ohio. Colcus at 1 gigawatt and McLennan four 500 megawatts Macaska, 500 megawatts. All of these are pre lease Colcus, McLennan and Macaska have been noted as having deposits funded, land secured and FEA studies submitted for batch zero. So there are three sites in that pipeline, four if you include Apollo, that are now at the whims of the new Batch 0 process, Cypher has got their foot in the door for Batch Zero. So that's good. The CEO Tyler Page actually had some comments regarding Greg Abbott' recent mandate for audits. He was upbeat and positive about the developments and specifically Cypher's ability to address them. Time will tell exactly where this is going to land because again, over 400 gigawatts of demand through this Batch 0 process and not all of that's going to get through. There are only going to be a few winners. There are going to be a lot of losers I would imagine, at least for this first round.
Charlie
So yeah, doozy, I will. Just so we can keep on schedule, I'll just pull up According to diametric cipher down 11 said a little bit earlier the entire sector is actually Flat now up 0.3% for PowerShell. But Cipher with underperforming earnings and with their power pipeline in Texas given the batch zero governor Texas, Greg Abba's comments and potential pause down 11.2%.
Andy Stewart
So
Charlie
Con, I think we rotate to the next story. I think.
Colin
Okay, I think we can leave this here. We'll cover. We'll pick back up on some of the Batch 0 stuff with Hut 8 and cipher specifically once we get to the Batch 0 segment after our interview. But overall, just to recap for Cypher, obviously a strong quarter in terms of deal flow. We should start seeing that HBC revenue hit their revenue lines on the Q3 and full year 2026 earnings when those come out. So yeah, let's go ahead and move on.
Charlie
We're going to hit the interesting Bit Deer deal up in Norway potentially with a frontier lab. But we'll get to that right after a word from our sponsor, CleanSpark.
Andy Stewart
We are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner. A publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate powered entirely by self operated infrastructure across four states. This is our proof of work. We are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and bitcoin@cleanspark.com
Colin
you know Charlie, I think we'll do a little switcheroo with the schedule here lest we keep Andy Stewart of Ionic Digital there waiting in the wings. We will have him on got him scheduled for 1:30pm ET. So let's go ahead and do the interview with Andy and then we will get on to Batch Zero. Bit Deer and iron.
Charlie
Love it. We're bringing Andy on up. Welcome to the show. Andy Stewart, thank you very much.
Andy Stewart
Good to be here.
Colin
Yeah Appreciate you joining Andy. A lot to unpack here for news today, and not least of which we wanted to have you on to discuss Ionic Digital's foray into public markets. Y' all went public in July through a direct listing. You for coming out hot out the gate with this N scale deal and you know, for background for those who have listened to the show or don't know this, it's an incredible success story. Ionic Digital itself being born out of Celsius bankruptcy case at the assets, put into new shepherdship and new ownership and now going public pursuing AI business line. So there's a lot to unpack here in terms of where the company's been or where it has been and where it is headed. And I think a good place to start, Andy, is to start with specifically the direct listing. And I'm curious what Ionic Digital's rationale was for doing this as just a straight up direct listing rather than going for an IPO route. Can you speak to that decision from a strategic standpoint?
Andy Stewart
Yeah, no, absolutely. So as you said, the history is a bit interesting and different and as part of the Celsius bankruptcy when Ionic was created, we gave shares in Ionic to 80,000 plus creditors in, in Celsius, people who had really been defrauded out of, out of their holdings. And while they had shares in Ionic, they were promised liquidity. And through kind of some ups and downs, it took a little time to get there. The board made a decision to pivot into AI which translated to the N scale contract, which I'm sure we'll talk about and, and bringing me on board. But through all that we felt it would be kind of disingenuous and even unfair to try to do an IPO as opposed to REC listing. In an IPO you typically have a significant lockup period for shareholders. The Ionic shareholders had been shoulders for a couple of years, but even before that they had their money basically stolen by Celsius. So many of them had been waiting three, even four years to get liquidity. So through a direct listing we could provide that instantly. So, so all of the shareholders who've gone through the process of registering and transfer their shares now have the ability to get liquidity. So that was really the impetus behind the direct listing approach.
Colin
That makes a lot of sense. A lot of folks waiting a long time to recoup that capital and opening into a public market that has obviously been hot on the AI names and Ionic Digital not wasting any time by having this N scale deal under its belt as it went public. I Think that's a good place to move into for the kind of the remainder of the interview I think we'll kind of focus on this as it relates to the actual contract, the terms and also approaches to financing for this. So just to kind of start, can you give us a breakdown of this deal and specifically the relationship between Ionic, Inscale and Microsoft in the chain here? Also, can you talk about the contingent where Inscale has promised to pay for construction of the site? Because that has been a deal that we have not seen replicated in the sector since core weave and CoreSCI struck it for the kind of the seminal AI deal for this entire cohort.
Andy Stewart
Yeah, it is really a unique deal. So signed in October of last year. Right. Right before I joined. So again I mentioned that the board kind of pivoted us into this space. The deal is 10 year triple net power Shell land lease. So we had the 234 megawatts at the site which was one of the most attractive aspects of the property to N Scale. And the pads were poured and the shells were in place, the steel infrastructure was there. But N Scale is doing the fit out. So when you see a headline number of $65 per kilowatt, many people see that as being low. But a better way of thinking about it is return on invested capital. So the capital that we've put in to enable the $2 billion contract is about $10 million in total n Scale. Their approach is to be vertically integrated as best as they can. So they are spending the capex to actually build out the data center. So we effectively we went cash pay on rent in August. Ionic has satisfied all of our obligations for that 234megawatts. And n Scale will take on the burden of the data center and the GPU capex going forward. And then as you mentioned N Scale, their off taker for all of that GPU capacity is Microsoft.
Colin
And so what does that mean for the expansions with regard to this? Because N Scale has granted Microsoft the right of first refusal on the remaining 377 megawatts. And that's under N scale's right of first refusal with. With Ionic.
Andy Stewart
Correct.
Colin
So if Microsoft exercises, does Ionic repaper directly with Microsoft or does N scale stay the counterparty of record for this lease specifically? Does that change anything in terms of the relationships?
Charlie
No.
Andy Stewart
So, so two things. One is Microsoft went to N Scale earlier on this year and said they needed, they wanted additional capacity so we signed a lease amendment. So the first incremental 89 megawatts that we get will go to N Scale. And I heard earlier, I'm sure you've been talking about Governor Abbott's directive yesterday. So we are in the process of adding 466megawatts of incremental grid power to our site as part of the Batch 0 process. When we have that power, when it becomes available and we're confirmed in batch 0 baseload, we'll take that to market. And Ioniq has the ability to develop the back half of the property for N Scale or frankly for anyone. N Scale certainly has a rover where they could match the terms, whether that's a turnkey build or a powered shell build. So N Scale has the ability to match those deals and you would envision N Scale then passing that along to Microsoft as part of their broader relationship. So we really have flexibility. I'd say one thing that we've been pretty conservative on is not taking that power to market yet. And the rationale is that there's so much kind of fluff and noise in the market, a lot of people trying to sell power they don't actually have. We want to be known as the group that provides certainty around power. So once we get the confirmation from Ercot, it doesn't sound like it's going to be this Friday, but hopefully soon thereafter, once we get confirmation on that, we'll take that to market and really maximize the total return we can get for our shareholders dollars.
Colin
Can you speak to Batch 0 a little bit as an operator? That's specifically in this, you know, in this massive reworking of how the Grid Pro, the ercot processes all of these large load requests. From what you've seen while working with the, working with ERCOT and working on this Batch 0 process, do you think that they're approaching this the right way in terms of how they're reevaluating what gets interconnection priority and what actually is considered, how should we say it vetted enough to actually be even, even considered for, for interconnection. Like what do you think about the new processes? Because it kind of, from the outside looking in, it seems like they're kind of building the car as they drive it. But I don't know what a better way to do it, considering how quickly things are moving in this.
Andy Stewart
No, you're spot that last point is spot on. I think they had. So they were inundated with requests and we've talked about the 450 or 450 plus gigawatts of power that are, that are kind of in the queue. That's a great headline number. What ERCOT has done is they're trying to be as objective as possible. They don't want to introduce subjectivity into it. So when was your FEA signed? When was your large loads submitted and approved and studied? So the more objective they can be in kind of setting those parameters, the more defined and clear they can be in terms of determining who's in the batch 0 baseload batch 0 to be studied or excluded from from bash 0 altogether. So I think they've kind of had to build a car as they were driving just because of the nature, but they've been sure there have been some stops and starts, but they've been pretty thoughtful and trying to be as consistent as they can be in a very fluid and dynamic market.
Colin
Andy, as y' all look towards expansion, you mentioned being conservative about forward guidance here, making sure you actually have the megawatts allocated before you or before fully, fully owned before you can actually advertise it to the market. Will Ionic Digital prioritize the deal structure that you all have struck with Inscale in terms of making the tenant pay for most of the construction while you all just cover the electricity component, or will you move towards more of a fully owned powered shell model where y' all will develop the data centers in the future? It kind of depends. Are you thinking a mix might be good?
Andy Stewart
It'll be the full spectrum. So one of the things we like to say, we're a data center team. I've been in this space since about 2008. Mark Lamborn, our chief development officer, has been building data centers for 30 plus years for enterprise, for hyperscalers. So we know and understand the business. What we will do is really focus on the best risk adjusted returns that we can achieve for any one property. That could be a capital light model where we're getting great return on invested capital, but it could go all the way to a turnkey build where we're spending 12, $14 million per megawatt and delivering the complete solution or even in a build to suit or a design build. So a lot of different kind of permutations, but the real goal is just driving the best risk adjusted returns. We think that is the recipe for a successful company for the long.
Charlie
Oh, Colin, you're muted.
Colin
Sorry, Charlie, I don't know if you have anything you wanted to throw in here before I toss a few closers.
Charlie
No, I don't. I throw it back to you.
Colin
Okay, Andy, a little bit of a hardball question before I throw a closer at you. I'm curious about the so the in scale deal is triple net lease, which makes total sense considering they're building it right. It's going to be their capital at stake and they're the ones operating the building so they need to cover all the insurance, taxes, etc. I'm curious about the credit risk on a on a build like this. We're starting to see, you know, the street make more of a fuss about the specific counterparty involved in these things. I know Microsoft as the end user of that N Scale compute probably helps a lot, but are there any fallbacks, backstops or other recourses in this lease that will protect Ionic in the case that N Scale isn't able to deliver on their obligations?
Andy Stewart
Yeah, absolutely. So we have a five year guarantee from Nvidia and that covers all rent payments over the first five years of the contract. So at the time we signed the deal in October that was kind of market leading. Since then we've seen 10 and 15 year guarantees. I'd say that we are very, very comfortable with that five year guarantee and also very comfortable with ncl, the rate at which they're growing. The investors they brought on their likely path to becoming a public company. It reminds me a lot of the discussion on Core Weave two and three years ago when a lot of data center operators were minimizing their exposure to Core Weave because they weren't really quite sure what the company was or where it would go. And once they went public that alleviated a lot of fears. So for us we've got a tremendous amount of respect for N Scale and where they're headed and feel like they're a great tenant and credit beyond that first five years of Nvidia. But Nvidia is pretty, pretty awesome to have as well.
Colin
Yeah, no doubt. It's always nice to have the kingmaker on your side, right? Well Andy, this has been great. As a closing question to give people an idea of where Yalls focus will be for the rest of the year. What is Ionic Digital prioritizing now that this first deal is moving through the construction phase? What will be the focus for the rest of 2026?
Andy Stewart
We are really focused right now and I'd say on two things so one Ward county and getting that built out and getting the additional 466 is of course the top priority because it unlocks so much additional value, but it is really to building out our development pipeline. So our thesis is a little bit different. We're focused primarily on going after what we think are inference and agentic workloads. All the data centers that I've been a part of the past 20 years were built for CPU workloads. 10, maybe 5, 10 kilowatts per rack. Air cooling, even the floor loading was based on CPUs. As you're seeing the prevalence of GPUs and TPUs and XPUs kind of pushed out for inference and agency. We think there's going to be a whole new wave of digital infrastructure built in and around the major metro markets. So while we have this great core asset in Ward county, the N scale contract, we have 112 megawatts in Midland, Texas that will be monetized in short order. A lot of focus for the rest of the years building out that development pipeline because as you guys know, it takes two, even three years to go from idea to actually monetization. So we've got to start thinking about 28 and 29 so they can provide that kind of long, steady cash flow growth for our shareholders.
Colin
We'll be keeping an eye out and definitely have to have you back on later in the year for an update. Andy, really appreciate you taking the time, man.
Andy Stewart
Yeah, I really appreciate the invite. Thank you very much.
Colin
You're welcome. Have a good day.
Andy Stewart
You too. Take care.
Charlie
All right, we're going to keep going. We swapped out Andy with the Bit Deer anthropic store. So we'll go to that here in just a moment. But before that, a word from our sponsor, Luxor.
Colin
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Charlie
All right, so single best performing stock right out the gate today was Bit deer jumping some 23% at market open. Currently it is at plus 3.3%. So a little bit correction. Why? Well, they've announced a big deal with a tenant that they cannot name in Norway. Here's the deal. Bit deer executed a 16 year colocation lease at its Tidal campus in Norway which includes 121megawatts of critical it backed by about 133 gross megawatts, $4.7 billion in contracted lease payments over the initial term. And there's an eight year renewal option that could stretch to roughly 8 billion over 24 years. And the tenant is an AI startup recently raising 300 million called Volta. They're an Nvidia cloud partner and reportedly has Nvidia as a backer. This lease is not new. This lease was announced back in June. Bitdyear signed it conditionally and the effectiveness hinged upon Volta locking down its own customer and supplier arrangements. At the time. Bit Deer sold off down about 7% when it was announced. However, Bitdeer soars because the news is who is the tenant, who is the deal that Volta has? And Bloomberg thinks that it's Anthropic. So anthropic signed a six year, $10 billion computing agreement with Volta Infra holdings and it pretty much has to be the Norway, the Norway site that Bitdeer's got. There's not that many sites that fit this profile. Bloomberg does some deduction, some sleuthing and so you put two and two together and it's just got to be this Bit Deer site. What's the deal look like between Anthropic and Volta? Well, Anthropic's reported six year computing contract, six sits above a longer infrastructure agreement between Volta and Bit Deer. As detailed in a press release Tuesday, Bit deer signed the 16 year lease services agreement. So Bit Deer puts the remaining capex at about 500 million or 400 million or I'm sorry, 4 million for each contracted it megawatt. The operator intends to pursue more debt while keeping ownership of the Tidal campus. So Bit Deer still is on the hook for financing and delivering the infrastructure behind Volta's customer commitment. I'll throw it to you for a take, Colin, but I've got some numbers on the contracted revenue per megawatt, which are pretty attractive here.
Colin
Yeah, I was actually going to run into some numbers here real quick.
Charlie
Okay, yeah, you pull up the numbers. This is pretty. Because this is pretty interesting. Nice little premium here.
Colin
Yeah, you might have a little more to tease out from what I have, but, but I do have a few just TLDRs. The remaining capex on the site is about half a billion dollars. 4 million per contracted IT megawatt. 4 million dollars per contracted IT megawatt. And bit Deer intends to debt finance that separately. Management Accepts the financing. It also free up Capital for other AI and HPC developments. This lease comes out to $2.4 million in average annual revenue per IT megawatt in the base term with 90% net operating income margin. Very attractive. The Delivery for the four data halls are in two equal phases. Phase one is targeted for 12-31-2026. Phase two targeted 03-31-2027. There's a separate 47 megawatt gross megawatt which is two more hauls outside of this lease that is targeted for H2 2027 which will round out the full title campus at 180 gross megawatts.
Charlie
Yeah. So where does this premium sit? Among other contracted capacity. So basically it sits pretty much at the top of the stack. This again is in Norway and compared to like a US comp set, this hits 25 to 40% above US comparable US deals. Just pulling some spot deals that Claude helped me pull up here using the Diametrics MCP server Cypher Black Pearl with AWS contract it per megawatt per year 1.7 million hut 8 Beacon Point undisclosed tenant 1.86 million hut 8 River Bend 1.9 and Cipher Stingray with FluidStack and AWS respectively. 1.9 million each. So bit Deer title with Volta implied or intuited. Anthropic on the back end sits at $2.43 million per megawatt. Very attractive. And why is that? Well, there's multiple reasons but I think the real obvious One is the December 2026 energization date. Everybody knows Anthropic is short. Compute. They need compute. That is the thing. That's the thing that they need above all else to compete with OpenAI and they need it yesterday. So this site, I believe it's going to be Nvidia Vera Rubins. So the new gen chips being delivered in December of 2026, this is basically the first. These are the first large scale megawatts available that can be delivered and that's why you pay the premium. I mean I know there's some other dynamics like the US deals are triple net and the tenant performs OPEX and pays power directly which depending on the deal can change but this is really just a delivery date premium is what I understand. Colin, unless I'm reading this deal wrong,
Colin
I'm curious if the diametrics, if the diametrics numbers are for critical or gross megawatts.
Charlie
Oh, that would be the 121 critical IT megawatts. So if we were to expand to gross megawatts which is what?
Colin
Well, no, I'm just. I'm asking specifically if the diametrics numbers are for gross or critical it for hut 8 and cipher. The ones that you mentioned.
Charlie
Ooh, good question. I could try to.
Colin
I think they are based on what I just queried with Claude. They are based on critical it. So for the premium. You know it's a good question Charlie, as to what the. Why that premium exists there. Maybe it is a speed to power thing. Could also be. It could also be the fact that Volta is a European company, they have stricter carbon emissions mandates. All of this is going to be hydro, right? This is like 99% plus hydro for these builds. That's me totally speculating. I could be wrong, but I wonder if that is seen as attractive. Especially considering there's not the likelihood of it being interrupted at all.
Charlie
It could also be just tax like Norway's got a history of tax taxing these like miners and it.
Colin
So maybe it's that just more expensive to operate there for a number of reasons.
Charlie
Maybe it's just more expensive to do things in Norway. But you can get reliable, you know, clean energy. So that's delivered on a short timeline. So we'll be interesting to compare these as we're able to dig into the numbers more.
Colin
I think that kind of does it for bit. Dear Charlie. Yeah, we should move on to.
Charlie
Let's go to quick batch zero.
Colin
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Charlie
Yeah, it's Gonna Batch zero. It's gonna be the word that causes PTSD across investors and miners and AI workloads everywhere.
Colin
So it is, it's becoming a huge headache for the Texas grid. And we don't have a article up on block space for this specific story. I don't think we do. Nope, we do not. But we do have all of the key talking points, and that's specifically this, that. Governor Greg Abbott orders data center audit, postpones batch zero. So this is. Oh, this is a headline that we posted last night.
Charlie
Yeah, we posted the headline last night, but it's kind of difficult to dig in because it's kind of like ongoing.
Colin
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack here and there's a lot of goal posts that are shifting. Hoping to have a guest on sometime soon that can help us make sense of it. The headline here from boxbase, though. Texas Governor Greg Abbott orders data center audit as ERCOTQ reaches 475.4Gw. So Greg Abbott directed the Public Utilities Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit every data center currently advancing through ERCOT's interconnection process and blocked those projects from moving forward until the review is complete. In response, ERCOT said it would postpone its Batch 0 Transmission Planning Study while it implements the directive so that that transmission planning study was scheduled to take place following a bunch of rule changes and meetings that we discussed in July. This coincides with a push from the for ERCOT and a push from the Public Utilities Commission of Texas to figure out how they're going to accommodate all these large loads, anything over 75 megawatts onto the grid. And for that context, yes, the Q4 interconnection in ERCOT has grown to for large loads has grown to 474 gigawatts of connection requests, more than 5x the grid's record peak demand and data centers represent roughly 90% of that requested capacity. That is per Abbott's office. So Abbott is saying we need to take a step back and look at every single one of these large load applications and make sure that they are fully audited. And those audit requirements are as follows. Projected annual and peak electricity consumption plus any planned on site generation or demand reduction measures. Disclosure of whether the project is self funded or relying on state and local incentives, grants or abatements, water use disclosures, projected annual peak consumption, supply sources, reuse plans and the cooling design, air cooled versus closed loop evaporative cooling, et cetera. The ownership and controlling interest disclosures for the project, community impact plans for noise, lighting setbacks, traffic and emergency coordination and any projects failing to meet the PUCT or ERCOT and state requirements must be denied connection per Abbott's directive. So who knows how long this audit's going to take, right? Charlie? But this pushes back the timeline for batch zero. They didn't specify when the audit would take place or the when the Badge Zero study will be completed. So this pushes back the August 7th classification notice deadline and also the broader calendar which had a number of milestones going out through like the next year.
Charlie
I mean, who knows how long it's going to last. Colin? I think it could last until November. What's in November? Governor Abbott's re election. So. Oh good tin foiler on my hat. But this is not just me doing it. I mean this is a couple internal calls from notable industry representatives do believe that this is many things. There's a community pushback angle which we could talk about a little bit. But then there's also the political angle. Like this is becoming the like cross aisle, cross socioeconomic, cross ideology like rallying point. And if you're in a somewhat contested election as governor Abbott may be like you want to what, how do you appease everyone without actually making a decision? Well, you just use your powers to pause things while we complete an audit. Now he did request, as you said, like you know, he requested, I believe or requested that data center submit information to the pct. But there wasn't a whole lot of participation in that probably for a bunch of reasons. But the, the other. So, so you know, I think the political reason is, is probably first and foremost so we'll probably have a lot more clarity as whenever that wraps up. The other one is like the, the boots on the ground community pushback has happened, has happened very, very quickly and I think the average person doesn't realize it because people, you know, people just forget that the way things have been the past two or three months have not been the way things always have been. So what, what appears to be like a resounding like massive movement, it's really only like a few months old. And this really, you see this at the county, the county level in Texas in my state of Oklahoma and the residents are pushing back and so they can find ways to delay or nullify the permit process. And so they've been inking a lot of wins and so this is a very big win for them. Yeah.
Colin
And going back to the politics versus practicality, I mean the cynical read and I don't necessarily disagree with you because it's A huge political issue is that you want to have a clear track record going into elections that you're actually addressing this in a responsible manner if you're Abbott. But there's also just the fact that if you have a 474 gigawatt interconnection queue and that's 5x your peak capacity then you're, you're going to have to change something. Right. Like you're going to have to go in and change the process, revolutionize it because the demand you're seeing is just totally unprecedented and would break a grid that wasn't responsible and trying to get ahead of the problems.
Andy Stewart
Right.
Charlie
So yeah it's certainly the pipeline is just has to be rethought like this current like linear progression as we've had I believe a former guest or two we talk about on the show like the way things are just not going to work. But then also you had like when Governor Abbott said the state's water and power survey request, I think In June only 28 out of 377 data center potential data centers went through and were able to submit that. Why is that? Maybe they didn't think was that important. Maybe it's just infeasible or impractical, whatever what have you.
Colin
So yeah, I think there are a few ways to read that. It's either companies saying this isn't worth our time which I doubt that is the reason because they, they've made a lot of noise in the Texas regulatory and political class about making sure that these new rules are hammered out. Part of me wonders if it's some of these projects just straight up don't have answers to the questions in those services.
Charlie
That's a pretty good reason because like.
Andy Stewart
Right.
Charlie
Yeah. These are ongoing deals. So it's like really difficult. It's like how yeah. If you don't even have a tenant signed yet, do you know if you're building a 50 or a 200 megawatt site like that totally changes.
Andy Stewart
Right.
Colin
And then the cynical read from a libertarian perspective is maybe they're just asking a bunch of nonsense questions and so companies don't feel like they can answer these things which I have no idea.
Charlie
All of the above. It's, it's.
Colin
Yeah there's probably a combination for sure
Charlie
and but it doesn't, you know at some point doesn't matter because that just looks bad for the industry and can be used as reference data reference by Governor Abbott to then pause this process. It looks like he's being the reasonable guy and maybe, maybe he is. This is just very, very difficult. One of those like moments where you know that a moment of flux for the industry. There's a couple fun little. Not fun. There's a couple interesting little cultural elements to this. And one is, and they're both celebrity country artists. So Willie Nelson, an unlikely ally with the anti data center movement. This is from his Facebook and he started putting, he's really started pushing on this like a week and a half ago. And this is kind of the quote of his which has been making the rounds, but quote, I grew up in Abbott, Texas. I still have a home there with farmed land where I can still see stars at night. And our community, like many others, needs to fight against data centers invading our land. The last thing we need is allowed water thieving, light polluting data center anywhere near our town or any others for that matter. The strength of rural America has never come from its big industrial footprints. It comes from generations of people, open spaces, local business and a collection connection to the land. Da da da da da da. Whoever controls food and water controls the masses. Let's not allow our demise or give up control over necessary resources. In the US and especially avid. What's funny is nothing about electricity, nothing about like what these things are being used for being posted on Facebook. It's wild to me that the issues are water, land and light pollution. All of which if you were to pull up the numbers are pretty like, pretty minuscule.
Colin
But they're just like an incredible the south will rise rallying cry there with like whoever controls the food and the water controls the mass.
Charlie
Yeah, but, but think about it like how am I gonna write, you know, a solo acoustic guitar song, you know, singing, you know, sung to 20, 000 people all smoking doobies about like, you know, the duck curve or about interconnection cues or the nuances between actually closed loop chords. Cooling uses very little water compared to about. No, you can't do it. You can't be like. Well, technically you've got, you know, you've, you've, you've got the utility and you've got the, the, you know, FERC and the federal level.
Andy Stewart
Exactly.
Colin
The fact that he didn't mention electricity prices just confirms that most people think that electricity comes from the light switch, you know.
Charlie
Well, it does.
Colin
People, people walk into their, to their kitchen, turn it on and the electricity is in the light switch, which, like, I'm just, I'm joking about the sense that people don't actually think about what's producing the, the kilowatts that power their home.
Charlie
Yeah.
Colin
So far abstracted from their understanding of what makes their lights come on that they just don't think about it.
Charlie
Yeah. The Internet is in the wi fi and the power is in the light switch. And the thing is, like, I see this comment. This is actually a pretty common comment. And I wish I had the comments linked up right now. But in the specific large Texans Against Data Centers Facebook group, there are many, many comments to the effect of we, we are. We don't have much water. We have all the electricity we could possibly need. So I don't know how you kind of how you address that. Again, it's just difficult to sing songs about that. But who's the other up and coming? Not even up and coming. He's pretty established now. Other country artists often been called a Willie Nelson analog for those in the know. So if you know, you know, country artist Charlie Crockett. I feel like I'm really reaching for a deep cut here, but like, there's someone watching this who like it. Absolutely, like spinning right now. Charlie Crockett felon also for smoking weed. Back in 2016, South Texas alt country artist Charlie Crockett sparked a. A controversy coming out in opposition to Willie Nelson speaking out against data centers. Charlie Crockett says, quote, it's difficult for me to take a celebrity serious railing against data centers when they're posting enough selfie videos to house one themselves. Charlie Crockett also in an unrelated cultural controversy. But those. But he's a darling of the outlaw country world. If you're not familiar. The outlaw brand is the music business as a marketing gimmick created by New blood record executives in Nashville to repackage Whelen. And Willie says Charlie Crockett, because he's an. He's an anti outlaw country music artist. So I bring this up just to like, give you the, you know, you have the household name of Willie Nelson. You have the real ones who like Charlie Crockett. They're feuding. And it's just weird to me that we have the singer, solo country artist, you know, up there with acoustic guitar and a bunch of beer and doobies, and they are. What are they singing about? They're talking about data centers.
Colin
It makes total sense to me. Artists are the most performative people on the planet and they will glom onto social movements as a way to increase their prestige and brand. I think, you know, it kind of makes sense that Willie. This is like the. The anti data center protest bandwagon is like very in line with like the green movement with a lot of, you know, 60s radical love and breaking down the establishment and kind of narratives. To me it makes a lot of sense.
Charlie
Yeah, well at least both Willie and Charlie can see eye to eye on the thing which unites us all, which is marijuana. Not my words. Both of theirs. They both are huge fans. So that is the, the, the totally derailed ERCOT Batch 0 segment.
Colin
Something to keep an eye on. Like I said, hoping to have a guest on sometime soon to kind of work through some of the real time updates to this because this, as Charlie said, this story is a moving target. But we will go ahead and move on to one final story here and get you all out of here. This is iron closing a $625 million acquisition of Mirantis software to add AI cloud software to its stack. This was announced in May. I believe we covered it on the show, but Iron was still working through the details and it just closed this transaction. That's 625 million in an all stock deal for Iron. Ordinary shares, no cash component mentioned. Mirantis will operate as a standalone subsidiary, so it will continue to serve an existing customer base, while Iron also taps it for its own AI cloud deployments. Iron is framing this strategically, saying it's its first deliberate move into the software layer, per its own post on the acquisition in May. Three layer quote, three layers, one compounding advantage, end quote. According to Iron's management and they have now more or less like a full stack here for the NEO cloud model. They've got the data centers, the power and the GPUs and they have the software layer that sits on top of it all. And that software layer from Miranta specifically it's Cordant AI platform. It's a control plane for provisioning GPU allocation and workload scheduling, performance tuning and scaling across bare metal rollouts of GPUs, supports, inference endpoints, event driven inference, batch processing and data sovereignty and local hosting requirements. Mirantis has like 1500 plus employees or customers, excuse me. And it's also a founding independent software vendor partner in Nvidia's AI Cloud Ready initiative. And Iron is framing this as kind of bringing four benefits, faster deployment on its GPU infrastructure, better operational visibility, more technical support, and just generally speaking, wider enterprise demand reach through Mirantis connections. Mirantis is committed to keeping Cordon open source, and that commitment is kind of worth noting since it bears on whether the acquisition changes Cordon's availability to non hiring customers. There might be a little bit of a competing case there for Iron's internal use versus other public facing stuff. Last thing I'll say on this Charlie, then I'll toss it to you for just like a third party read Dave McCarthy, he's a senior Vice President for Cloud and Edge infrastructure. Research and International Data Corporation characterized this as Iron chasing stickier customer relationships going back to that fourth main benefit for enterprise networking and recurring software and services revenue on top of pure compute sales. His framing is that the commercial test is whether Iron can match hyperscale grade support and reliability while still offering a cost advantage over Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure platform. So just one analyst take, but it is interesting to see Aaron complete this acquisition, bring that software expertise in house and specifically look at how it can use that to bolster their own network for future releases on that compute or also just turbocharge their ability to manage it for all of their customers.
Charlie
I think my quick comment is, you know we talked about this with, I forget, a recent guest to talk about where's the value accrue along the AI stack? Does it accrue to the frontier models? There's a strong argument that it accrues to the applications built on top. So if you want to diversify the uncertainty of where value accrues, maybe buy some software companies, maybe build some applications. If you're a NEO cloud, you might be providing the building and the power and the rack space, but you may want to, with all the extra cash because your stock's up, also get into the up front facing consumer game.
Colin
Yeah, that makes sense to me. Also makes sense that Iron would want to just get all of that expertise in house since they are NETWORKING the actual GPUs themselves, they're selling the compute out much different than any of the other bitcoin miners who have gone into this industry. Iron is the only one at scale that is doing fully vertebrated NEO cloud services. Everyone else is going more towards the powered shell route. Hive also doing some GPU operations as well.
Charlie
All right, this is day two of earnings week. We did Cipher and Hut this morning and tomorrow Wednesday we've got Terra, Wolf, Riot and Galaxy. Back to back to back. Right at the start of the day, starting 8am Central, we'll be broadcasting these onto our platforms. Then for the live stream tomorrow we have Patrick Fleury, CFO of Terrorwolf, who will be talking about of course Terror Wolf's latest announcements. Again, this is a packed week. This is just the schedule for this week. Next week we'll also have a lot of earnings on Thursday of this week we have Clean Spark, Amara. And then on Friday, we have Core Scientific with an interview with Asher Ganute, CEO of Hut 8. Thank you for listening to Block Space Live Computes Daily Show. Covering AI data centers, markets and emerging technology. This show is brought to you by CleanSpark. Nasdaq listed ticker CLSK. I'm Charlie.
Colin
I'm Colin. And one quick thing. Tomorrow's stream will be at 12pm ET.
Charlie
Yes. Bumping up one hour. So you'll be awake anyway, because you'll have gotten up early for those earnings
Colin
call for those Sweet, sweet. Fresh 10Q's, bud.
Charlie
Yeah. Fresh 10Qs. All right, see you all tomorrow.
Episode: Cipher Digital and Hut 8 Q2 Earnings, Ionic Digital CEO Interview, BTDR’s $4.7B AI Deal, ERCOT’s Batch Zero Hiccup
Date: August 4, 2026
Hosts: Colin & Charlie
Special Guest: Andy Stewart (CEO, Ionic Digital)
This packed episode of Blockspace dives into Q2 earnings from leading data center operators Hut 8 and Cipher Digital, touches on the massive Bitdeer $4.7B AI deal in Norway, dissects the ongoing turbulence with Texas’s ERCOT Batch Zero process, and features an in-depth interview with Ionic Digital’s CEO, Andy Stewart, discussing their public debut, deal structures, and future strategy for AI infrastructure. The hosts break down industry reactions, Wall Street perspectives, operational details, and mounting local/political tensions in the data center and AI infrastructure markets.
[03:08–13:17]
Results Overview:
Key Drivers & Notes:
AI & Data Center Buildout:
Market Reaction:
[14:11–23:31]
Results Overview:
AI & Operational Updates:
Power Deals & Risks:
Market Reaction:
[25:09–38:47]
“Through a direct listing we could provide [liquidity] instantly… many had been waiting three, even four years.” — Andy Stewart [26:14]
Unique 10-year triple-net PowerShell lease with N Scale (signed Oct 2025).
Ionic provides land/shells & power; N Scale fits out/builds.
N Scale pays for buildout capex:
“The capital that we’ve put in to enable the $2 billion contract is about $10 million in total… N Scale [covers] the data center and GPU capex going forward.” — Andy Stewart [28:31]
Microsoft is N Scale’s off-taker; has right-of-first-refusal on future site expansion.
Ionic’s strategy: Don’t pre-lease/market capacity until ERCOT confirms allocation.
“We want to be known as the group that provides certainty around power.” — Andy Stewart [30:15]
No rigid model; capital-light tenant-built projects and full turnkey development both options.
Security: 5-year rent guarantee from Nvidia.
“Since then we’ve seen 10 and 15 year guarantees. I’d say we’re very, very comfortable with that five year guarantee and also… with N Scale’s likely path to becoming a public company.” — Andy Stewart [36:02]
Priorities:
“We think there’s going to be a whole new wave of digital infrastructure built in and around the major metro markets.” — Andy Stewart [37:26]
[39:57–47:54]
Deal Summary:
Financials & Operations:
Market Takeaway:
[49:12–63:45]
Crisis Context:
Audit Requirements:
Motivations & Politics:
Industry Frustrations:
[64:07–68:51]
Deal Recap:
Strategic Logic:
Industry Implications:
On Hut 8’s miss, but future prospects:
“Most of this will start booking in 2027. Right now they’re still leaning on their bitcoin mining business line for revenue. Overall though, some strong developments for Hut 8 last quarter.” — Colin [13:23]
On industry contract trends:
“The capital that we’ve put in to enable the $2 billion contract is about $10 million in total… N Scale will take on the burden of the data center and GPU capex going forward.” — Andy Stewart [28:31]
On Texas politics:
“The cynical read… is that you want to have a clear track record going into elections that you’re actually addressing this in a responsible manner if you’re Abbott.” — Colin [55:18]
Willie Nelson, anti-data center localism:
“Our community… needs to fight against data centers invading our land. The last thing we need is a loud, water-thieving, light-polluting data center near our town”— [59:41]
Next up:
(For all links, detailed site maps, and full transcripts, visit Blockspace Media.)