HIVE Digital secures $220M sovereign AI deal with Bell and Cohere

Canada's push for sovereign AI infrastructure just got its largest private-sector commitment — a $220 million GPU cloud partnership that triples HIVE Digital Technologies' contracted high-performance computing revenue.

HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE) shares surged as much as 12% in pre-market trading Thursday after the company announced a three-year, $220 million GPU cloud services agreement with Bell Canada and artificial intelligence developer Cohere. The deal will deploy 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs at Bell's AI Fabric facility in Merritt, British Columbia, forming the compute layer for Cohere's enterprise AI models serving Canadian government and corporate clients.

"This partnership with Bell and Cohere is a defining moment," Frank Holmes, executive chairman of HIVE Digital Technologies, said. "BUZZ HPC is the GPU factory layer that transforms Canada's AI ambitions from political promises into productive national assets."

The NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems, interconnected with Quantum InfiniBand networking and utilizing liquid cooling, are expected to go live between late 2026 and early 2027. HIVE is funding the equipment purchase through a portion of the $115 million convertible note financing it closed in April. Canadian OEM Hypertec is handling system integration and commissioning.

The contract is projected to generate approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue, pushing HIVE's total contracted HPC revenue past $100 million. That compares with roughly $35 million in current realized ARR, underscoring the scale of the company's pivot from bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure. HIVE shares had already gained 125% over the prior year before Thursday's move.

Sovereign AI as a national priority

The partnership directly supports Ottawa's push to reduce reliance on foreign-controlled AI technology. All compute infrastructure will remain on Canadian soil, combining Bell's nationwide data center network, Cohere's security-first enterprise AI platforms, and BUZZ HPC's NVIDIA-accelerated GPU cloud into a single integrated stack.

Canada's federal AI strategy has prioritized domestic technology sovereignty, and this deal represents the most concrete industrial-scale deployment to date. Cohere's enterprise AI platforms are already used by Canadian federal agencies and major corporate clients, making data residency and operational governance central requirements.

The arrangement also strengthens BUZZ HPC's position as a sovereign AI cloud provider in a market where hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud dominate but operate under US jurisdiction. For enterprise and government customers, the Canadian-controlled stack offers enhanced control over compute sovereignty, model security, and performance.

Infrastructure expansion on two continents

In a separate announcement, HIVE completed the purchase of its 32-megawatt Swedish data center in Boden, converting from lessee to property owner after operating at the facility since 2018. The company has invested more than 960 million Swedish kronor, or roughly $100 million, in the Boden area over eight years and contributed over 575 million kronor in municipal tax payments.

The dual announcements — a major North American AI infrastructure contract and a European data center acquisition — signal that HIVE's transformation from a pure-play cryptocurrency miner into a diversified high-performance computing operator is gaining commercial traction. The company now operates Tier-I and Tier-III data centers across Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay, serving both bitcoin mining and GPU-accelerated AI computing clients.

What it means for investors

HIVE's contracted HPC revenue backlog of more than $100 million provides multiyear revenue visibility that the company previously lacked as a bitcoin miner exposed to volatile cryptocurrency prices. The $70 million in new ARR from the Bell-Cohere deal alone represents a threefold expansion of HIVE's current run rate. With the NVIDIA Blackwell infrastructure not expected to generate revenue until late 2026 at the earliest, the financial impact will phase in over the next 12 to 18 months. HIVE trades as a hybrid entity — part bitcoin proxy, part AI infrastructure play — and the market's 12% pre-market reaction suggests investors are assigning increasing weight to the HPC side of the business.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.