Hut 8 wins Poolin’s Texas site with $140M bid as AI reprices mining power

Hut 8 has acquired the two failed Texas data centers of Poolin at the auction for a price of $140 million based on the Poolin bankruptcy records.

The sale will be completed only after getting the approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the District of New Jersey, which is scheduled to take place on September 29.

The actual reward is not just the land. Hut 8 currently possesses approximately 1.5 gigawatts of deployed power capacity in Texas at various sites in operation or under development.

The addition of Poolin’s Pyote and Tarbush assets would enlarge an already significant power footprint at a crucial time when connectivity to the power grid has come to be regarded as one of the most important components of AI infrastructure and Bitcoin mining.

Hut 8’s power-first bet is already paying out

In the second quarter, Hut 8 announced 949 MW of contracted IT capacity, an estimated total value of $26.6 billion in base-term contracts, an average projected annual net operating income of over $1.75 billion, and $7.5 billion in investment-grade financing obtained so far.

This represents a significant departure from Hut 8’s focus on miner-centric operations. Cryptopolitan reported in May that the first Beacon Point AI lease of 352 MW was valued at $9.8 billion, driving the company’s stock up nearly 32% in a single day.

It is clear that the plan now is to first attain the necessary power and then use it for whichever workload offers the better profits.

Why an energized site now costs more than a permit

CoinShares’ Q2 report shows why ready access to power has become so valuable. The report states that there are over 225 restrictions for data center development across 30 states, and 151 are still in effect. While the U.S. interconnection queue has over 2,600 GW of capacity, data centers make up 87% of ERCOT’s large-load queue, totaling 410 GW.

The same pressure on supply is highlighted in a report by CBRE. The company presents that the available capacity in the four largest data center markets in North America has reached its lowest point so far, with Northern Virginia having only 0.3% of vacant space in the first three months of the year.

That makes an already energized site much more valuable. CoinShares notes that three fully leased AI facilities in Northern Virginia recently sold for about $27 million per MW, while some listed miners’ energized but unleased capacity is valued at less than $3 million per MW.

That gap helps explain the appeal of Poolin’s Texas assets. The market is increasingly putting a premium on grid access and the potential to repurpose sites for higher-value workloads, not just on the mining equipment they already contain.

The math steering capital away from mining

Converting mining infrastructure to AI-grade is expensive. CoinShares estimates costs of roughly $8 million to $15 million per MW, compared with $0.7 million to $1 million per MW for mining infrastructure.

However, there is a justification for the investment in terms of revenues. According to industry data reported by Cryptopolitan, AI workloads have the potential to generate three to twenty-five times greater revenues for each MW compared to Bitcoin mining.

According to CoinShares, its model estimates that AI work could earn around $ 1.5 million in profit each year for each MW, as opposed to only $ 0.5 million for mining.

Mining also had a difficult second quarter. Bitcoin ended June at $58,400, while listed miners faced a weighted-average ex-tax cash cost of about $75,500 per coin, putting the sector below cash breakeven overall. Conditions improved by mid-August, though, as Bitcoin recovered and a stronger hash price pushed most operators back above cash breakeven, according to CoinShares.

That makes the move toward AI about more than escaping a weak Bitcoin market. For miners, the bigger opportunity is turning scarce power into contracted compute revenue that could offer steadier and potentially higher returns.

Texas is watching the grid

Hut 8 said on August 10 that it welcomed Texas scrutiny focused on grid reliability, local resources, and community impacts.

On September 21, Governor Greg Abbott went further, directing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt data-center permits until ERCOT completes an audit, alongside reviews of grid and water impacts.

The pressure is global. 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.

Hut 8’s $140 million Poolin bid is therefore more than a bankruptcy purchase. It is one transaction in a much larger repricing of power, grid connections, and sites that can be turned into compute capacity.

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