Cryptomining company Hive will acquire the Boden Type One data center in Boden, Sweden.

The small facility was originally developed through the EU Horizon 2020 initiative and built by H1 Systems for the Swedish research institute RISE, as a project to show how one could make data centers more efficient.

DCD visited the facility in 2019, and profiled it again in a follow-up in 2021. At the time, it boasted a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of just 1.0148.

It managed this through holistic cooling, synchronizing IT fans with cooler fans, and taking advantage of the cold ambient temperatures.

It also has a chicken coop design that allows for a natural chimney effect, and saves on power by dropping the UPS system required by most enterprise data center designs.

The 500kW deployment was designed to try out different workloads, with four modular pods. One was filled with Open Compute Project CPU servers gifted to research group RI.SE by Facebook, one filled with GPUs for rendering, and another with crypto mining ASICs, with the fourth left as a control room.

After the project ended in 2021, asset owners H1 Systems and EcoCooling sold the facility to visual effects rendering business Turis AB.

Turis has now sold the facility to Bitcoin miner Hive for $2.25 million in cash and shares. Regulatory approvals, including from the TSX Venture Exchange, are required for the deal to close.

“We are pleased about this acquisition and our continued expansion in Boden," Johanna Thornblad, Hive Sweden’s country president, said.

"The property is strategically located and provides Hive with the opportunity to expand its operation, contributing to the company’s overall growth strategy.”