Hut 8 has secured the winning bid for two Texas data center sites formerly run by bankrupt crypto miner Poolin, agreeing to pay $140 million in cash and other consideration for the Pyote and Tarbush facilities. The transaction still requires approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, with a sale hearing scheduled for September 29.
The price is far above the initial $52 million combined stalking-horse bids. Thor CALAP had offered $15 million for Pyote and $37 million for Tarbush, DigiPower X submitted a $36.5 million backup bid for Pyote, and Pecos Industrial Development proposed $100.5 million for Tarbush. Hut 8 already has about 1.5 gigawatts of deployed power capacity in Texas across sites in operation or under development, and the new assets would meaningfully expand that footprint.
Hut 8's shift toward power-first infrastructure is already reflected in its operating numbers. In the second quarter, the company reported 949 MW of contracted IT capacity, an estimated total value of $26.6 billion in base-term contracts, average projected annual net operating income above $1.75 billion, and $7.5 billion in investment-grade financing. The first Beacon Point AI lease of 352 MW, valued at $9.8 billion, helped push Hut 8's stock up almost 32% in a single day in May.
Industry data helps explain the premium for energized sites. CoinShares' Q2 report highlights more than 225 data center development restrictions across 30 states, with 151 still in effect. While the U.S. interconnection queue has over 2,600 GW of capacity, data centers account for 87% of ERCOT's large-load queue, or about 410 GW. CBRE separately noted that Northern Virginia had only 0.3% vacant data center space in the first quarter, and three fully leased AI facilities in the region sold for roughly $27 million per MW. By comparison, some listed miners' energized but unleased capacity is valued at less than $3 million per MW.
Converting mining infrastructure to AI-grade capacity is expensive, with CoinShares estimating costs of about $8 million to $15 million per MW, versus $0.7 million to $1 million per MW for mining infrastructure. However, AI workloads can generate three to twenty-five times more revenue per MW than Bitcoin mining. CoinShares estimates AI work could earn around $1.5 million in annual profit per MW, compared with about $0.5 million for mining.
The Bitcoin mining backdrop has also been challenging. Bitcoin ended June at $58,400, while listed miners faced a weighted-average ex-tax cash cost of about $75,500 per coin, leaving the sector below cash breakeven overall. Conditions improved by mid-August as Bitcoin recovered and hash price strengthened, pushing most operators back above cash breakeven.
In Texas, regulatory scrutiny is intensifying. Hut 8 said on August 10 that it welcomed state focus on grid reliability and community impacts. On September 21, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to pause data-center permits until ERCOT completes an audit. The broader demand picture remains strong: the IEA expects data-center electricity demand to roughly double from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030, while PwC projects $31.6 trillion in global data-center capital spending through 2050. For Hut 8, the $140 million Poolin bid is part of a larger repricing of power and grid connections that increasingly determines the value of mining and compute infrastructure.
