Shares of Hut 8 (NASDAQ:HUT) are surging in Monday morning trading, with the stock up 10% to $100.58 after the energy infrastructure operator announced a second hyperscale AI data center lease that fully commercializes its flagship Texas campus. The move extends a volatile stretch for the name, which had fallen 23% over the past month heading into the announcement.
The rally is dragging peer miners higher in sympathy. Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA | MARA Price Prediction) shares are up 8% to $11.57, and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT) shares are trading 4% higher at $19.03. The CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (NASDAQ:WGMI) is along for the ride, with the ETF up 8% to $51.58.
Notably, the sector is rallying while Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) trades slightly lower over the past 24 hours at $64,317. That divergence signals the move is idiosyncratic to the AI infrastructure theme rather than a crypto beta trade.
Beacon Point Deal Fully Commercializes Texas Campus
Hut 8 signed a second 15-year, $9.8 billion lease that fully commercializes its 1-gigawatt Beacon Point AI data center campus in Nueces County, Texas. The existing high-investment-grade tenant doubled its contracted footprint to 704 MW, and the campus base-term contract value now stands at $19.6 billion, rising to as much as $50.2 billion if all renewal options are exercised.
The total contracted portfolio value across Beacon Point and River Bend now reaches $26.6 billion, with expected average annual net operating income above $1.75 billion. The Phase 2 data hall spans 352 MW and is designed to NVIDIA‘s (NASDAQ:NVDA) DSX reference architecture, tying Hut 8 directly to the NVIDIA AI factory buildout that CEO Jensen Huang has called “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history.”
Campus energization is on track for Q1 2027, with first Phase 2 delivery expected in Q2 2028. Beacon Point was originally developed on a speed-to-power basis for affiliated miner American Bitcoin before being converted to AI leases.
KBW Reiterates Outperform
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) maintained an Outperform rating with a $138 price target on Hut 8 shares following the announcement. That target sits above the current print and reinforces the analyst community’s read that Hut 8’s shift toward contracted, investment-grade cash flow is worth a premium to the mining peer set.
The setup echoes prior notes. Benchmark’s Mark Palmer had already lifted his Hut 8 price target to $165 from $85, and Lucid Capital Markets initiated the stock at Buy with a $226 price target.
Hut 8’s Peers Ride the Theme
To be clear, the concrete news belongs to Hut 8 alone. Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms shares are moving on renewed enthusiasm for the Bitcoin-miner-to-AI-infrastructure pivot rather than company-specific catalysts.
Marathon Digital is pursuing its own transition through a Starwood partnership converting roughly 90% of non-hosted mining capacity to AI and critical IT compute sites, plus a pending acquisition of the 505 MW Long Ridge Energy plant expected to close in H2 2026. Riot Platforms has already booked debut data center revenue from its $636 million, 10-year Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) lease at Rockdale and is targeting portfolio NOI of $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion on full development.
The WGMI ETF offers a basket way to play the cohort. However, the fund is narrow and volatile, with meaningful concentration risk.
What to Watch Now
Traders can watch for whether today’s crypto-stock gains hold into the close. The next anticipated catalyst is Hut 8’s Q2 2026 earnings release on August 4, before the open, which management has flagged may look messy on mark-to-market accounting.
For Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms, the read-through is simpler. If hyperscale tenants keep signing 15-year and 20-year deals at gigawatt scale, the miner-to-AI pivot narrative likely has room to run, even if Bitcoin drifts sideways.
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