Digital infrastructure and Bitcoin mining provider Alps Blockchain is the latest firm to pivot from cryptomining towards serving artificial intelligence (AI) and HPC customers.

The Italian company has announced its corporate rebranding to Alps, hoping to underscore its transition into a vertically-integrated builder and operator of competitive data centers with powerful mining applications, eventually serving high-performance computing for AI.

“From a financial perspective, producing computational power for the Bitcoin network has always provided – and continues to provide – a constant and unprecedented cash flow in the digital infrastructure industry," Francesca Failoni, Alps CFO and co-founder said in a statement. "This solid foundation allows us to plan with a long-term view and to strategically integrate new applications such as AI computing within our existing infrastructure."

Alps has been developing cryptomine data centers in Italy, Paraguay, Ecuador, Oman, and the US since its founding in 2018. It now operates in six countries across four continents, hosting 41,000 ASIC miners and some 250MW of capacity.

The company said it possesses the infrastructure and energy contracts to reach 15 EHps of computing power by the end of 2025, equivalent to around 1.5 percent of the global Bitcoin hash rate.

It operates some 20 sites in Italy, largely relying on local hydroelectric infrastructure, according to the company. It has around nine locations in Paraguay, totaling 31MW.

Its 2024 development in Oman, initially a 10MW operation, is set to scale to 150MW, potentially making it the largest in the country. A new 30MW facility is currently under construction in Bolivia.

In Iowa, the company has two sites totaling 70MW, built in partnership with Cedar Falls-based Simple Mining. The company recently introduced a customized hydro-cooling liquid, developed to remain stable during the temperature drops that are possible during the state’s harsh winters.

"This rebrand reflects what Alps has become," said Alps CEO and co-founder Francesco Buffa. "We are no longer only a blockchain company – we are an infrastructure company. We design, build, and operate high-efficiency data centers from the ground up, turning energy into the computational power that fuels the digital economy."