Galaxy Digital получает $460 млн для трансформации в ИИ-центр Translation: Galaxy Digital secures $460 million for transformation into an AI hub

Galaxy Digital has entered into an agreement to secure strategic investments amounting to $460 million through a stock sale.

The transaction is set to close by mid-October.

As per the press release, the investor is described as «one of the largest and most respected asset management companies.»

Galaxy intends to use the funds for “general corporate purposes,” as well as to convert the former Helios mining data center into a facility for supporting the AI sector.

Under the terms of a 15-year lease agreement with CoreWeave, the company must deliver 133 MW of critical IT load by the first quarter of 2026. The total contracted capacity for the AI computing service provider could reach approximately 393 MW.

At the end of 2022, Galaxy acquired Helios for $65 million from Argo Blockchain, which was facing financial difficulties. According to the company, the data center has a total capacity of 800 MW, with potential expansion up to an additional 1.7 GW. The firm is exploring ways to enhance the facility’s capabilities in light of the evolving infrastructure for AI services.

“Strengthening our balance sheet is crucial for effectively scaling Galaxy Digital’s data center business while maintaining financial flexibility to support future growth,” stated CEO Mike Novogratz.

Bitcoin miners have emerged as unexpected beneficiaries of the explosive demand for AI computing infrastructure, according to analysts at Bernstein, as reported by The Block.

Miners hold the advantage of having guaranteed access to energy resources, which experts believe has made companies in the industry critically important partners for AI infrastructure service providers, allowing them to reduce data center deployment times by 75%. For new projects, connecting to the grid can take several years.

“Access to the network has become an extremely scarce resource in the United States,” Bernstein emphasized.

As an example, analysts pointed to IREN, which has operational or planned capacities around 3 GW. The company has increased its GPU inventory of NVIDIA’s Blackwell models to 23,300 units. It is expected that in the first quarter, the firm’s revenue from cloud AI computing will reach $500 million.

Galaxy anticipates earning up to $1 billion annually under its contract with CoreWeave. However, IREN, unlike Novogratz’s company, maintains strong positions in mining, with a Bitcoin hash rate of about 50 EH/s.

Bernstein pointed out that around half of IREN’s revenue is already derived from its AI solutions.

In August, the cloud AI platform Fluidstack expanded its use of the TeraWulf Bitcoin miner’s data center under financial guarantees from Google amounting to $3.2 billion.

In September, the tech giant assisted Fluidstack in securing a lease agreement with another cryptocurrency miner, Cipher Mining.