Data center cryptomine firm Hut 8 is set to lease a campus in Louisiana to AI cloud firm Fluidstack in a deal backed by Google. The deal is part of a wider partnership with Fluidstack and AI company Anthropic, which was announced this week.

Hut 8 leases River Bend

The company this week announced a 15-year, 245MW lease with Fluidstack for capacity at the River Bend data center campus in Louisiana, in a triple net (NNN) deal valued at $7 billion, potentially rising to $17.7 billion if all options are exercised.

The initial data hall at the site in West Feliciana Parish is scheduled for completion and commissioning in Q2 2027, with more due over the rest of the year.

As well as three five-year renewal options, the agreement grants Fluidstack a Right of First Offer (ROFO) for up to an additional 1GW of IT capacity at future expansion phases of the campus.

Acquired in March, the site totals 627 acres, with potential expansion to 2,988 acres. Reports that Hut 8 was looking to develop in the area, located just outside Baton Rouge, surfaced at the end of last year. The company got the green light from local officials for a data center project in January.

Google is backstopping the deal. J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are providing loan financing for the project.

Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8, said: “River Bend reflects the strength of Hut 8’s power-first, innovation-driven development model, validated by the world-class counterparties we are executing alongside. This Agreement is the result of disciplined, patient execution as we focused on securing the right transaction, not just the first.

"Together with the State of Louisiana, Entergy, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Vertiv, and Jacobs, we expect to deliver next-generation AI and high-performance computing infrastructure at scale, and we are committed to applying the same rigor and long-term focus as we advance commercialization across our broader development pipeline.”

Noah Wintroub, global chairman of investment banking for J.P. Morgan, added: “River Bend demonstrates how, when Hut 8 brings together the combination of innovative thinking, an aligned team, and institutional discipline to a rapidly evolving sector, it translates into real, enduring value.

"We’re proud to bring the full power of J.P. Morgan to bear for this project, Hut 8, and our communities to help them succeed. This project highlights our commitment to playing a role in helping America build the critical infrastructure needed to compete, while also creating jobs and investing in a region that is vital to our nation’s future.”

Hut 8 partners with Anthropic and Fluidstack

The deal comes the same day that Hut 8 announced a partnership with AI company Anthropic and Fluidstack to "accelerate the deployment of hyperscale AI infrastructure in the United States."

As part of the partnership, Hut 8 will develop and deliver at least 245MW and up to 2.295GW of AI data center infrastructure for Anthropic, leveraging clusters operated by Fluidstack.

The first 245MW will be at the River Bend site, with options for an additional 1GW at the site.

Beyond River Bend, Hut 8 and Anthropic may also jointly develop up to 1GW of additional optional capacity across Hut 8’s development pipeline.

Hut CEO Genoot said: “Through our partnership with Anthropic and Fluidstack, we are aligning power, data center design, and compute deployment into an integrated platform capable of delivering at gigawatt-scale.”

Generative AI company Anthropic recently announced a $50bn partnership with Fluidstack to develop data centers in Texas and New York. It has also announced a 1GW+ Google Cloud deal with up to one million TPUs worth "tens of billions of dollars."

While unconfirmed, the Texas capacity could be Fluidstack's previously announced 168MW Abernathy facility, co-developed with TeraWulf, and/or its 244MW project with Cipher Mining. The New York site is likely a 360MW Fluidstack-TeraWulf project in Lake Mariner.

Google is also backstopping all those deals – meaning it will take on the capacity or pay a fee if Fluidstack goes under – and has taken stakes in both TeraWulf and Cipher.

Google is an investor in Anthropic, best known for its Claude series of large language models, holding a 14 percent stake.

James Bradbury, head of compute at Anthropic, added: “This partnership is an expansion of our existing work with Fluidstack and marks a new opportunity to collaborate with Hut 8 to bring additional capacity online by early 2027. Hut 8’s ability to source and deliver infrastructure at scale provides the runway necessary to continue advancing the capabilities of our models.”

Gary Wu, co-founder and CEO of Fluidstack, said: “Fluidstack was built to solve compute challenges at scale, across every level of complexity. As Anthropic pushes the frontier of AI, we’re proud to work alongside partners such as Hut 8 to design, deploy, and operate the foundational infrastructure that leading labs rely on to win.”

Nasdaq-listed Hut 8 currently has around a dozen data center sites either in operation or in development, including six Bitcoin mining facilities and five colocation data centers.

The company acquired five colo data centers in Canada from TeraGo in 2022, and merged with US Bitcoin in 2023. The firm has spun out its mining operations to American Bitcoin, which is leasing capacity at its sites. Hut 8 also offers GPU-as-a-Service through its Highrise brand.

In August, the company announced plans for four new sites across the United States, totaling 1.53GW of capacity under development. In total, Hut 8 claims to have 10.6GW of capacity in various stages of its pipeline. It has around 1GW in operation, 1.5GW in development, 1.25GW under exclusivity, and a further 6.8GW under evaluation.