CleanSpark To Get Up $11.6bn from AI Data Centre Deal; Shares Rise

On 14 Jul, the company announced a 20-year infrastructure lease with an unnamed technology company for its Sandersville, Georgia, campus. The agreement covers 175 MW of critical IT load and is worth $6.6bn in contracted revenue, rising to as much as $11.6bn if the extension options are exercised. The company expects to translate into about $330mn a year in net operating income. 

The news sent CleanSpark shares up as much as 22% intraday before the gain narrowed to 9.2%, with the stock trading at $13.50 as of 19:47UTC. 

The company is joining a broader move by Bitcoin miners to diversify into AI infrastructure, sometimes shifting away from crypto completely.  Over the past two years, miners have announced more than $100bn of long-term AI and high-performance computing contracts as the flood of investment into AI combined with deteriorating mining economics push the sector's biggest operators to redeploy power and data-centre capacity towards AI.   

Speaking on an analyst call after the announcement, Chief Executive Officer Matt Schultz said the deal reflected growing demand from technology companies for large portfolios of power. "Companies are not shopping for a single data hall. They demand diversity of geography, a mix of low latency and large-scale deployments and a developer they can trust and in order to build a multi-decade relationship," Schultz said.  

CleanSpark plans to continue mining Bitcoin at the site until power is transferred to the data-centre development. The deal would give the company a more predictable source of income than Bitcoin mining, but requires it to fund an estimated $1.75bn to $2.1bn buildout and deliver the first data hall by late 2027.

"Power ramp isn't an issue because the substations are already built and operating," Schultz said on the call.  

Financing the shift 

The company plans to fund most of the construction with debt tied to the project and its lease payments. "Recent project debt financing transactions in the space have been as much as six times oversubscribed, indicating significant interest and availability of capital in the current market environment," Chief Financial Officer Gary Vecchiarelli said on the call.  

Possible funding sources included high-yield bonds and traditional construction loans from large banks. "This is a real-estate deal at the end of the day," Vecchiarelli said.  

As of 30 Jun, CleanSpark had about $200mn in cash, nearly 14,000 Bitcoin (BTC) worth roughly $900mn and access to a further $400mn through an unused Bitcoin-backed credit line, management said. 

Mining as a bridge 

CleanSpark increasingly views Bitcoin mining less as an end business and more as a way to secure and monetize power. "Our Bitcoin mining capability is a power acquisition tool for us," Harry Sudock, CleanSpark's chief business officer, said during the call.   

He said Bitcoin mining lets CleanSpark begin using and paying for newly secured power sooner than a traditional data-centre developer could. "That operates independent of Bitcoin mining economics because ultimately, the acquisition of power is one of the most valuable activities we can engage in as a business," he said.   

Texas under exclusivity 

CleanSpark has not named the tenant, describing it in regulatory filings only as a "high investment-grade global technology company." Unconfirmed reports in June said the company had been in talks with Meta over a potential lease. 

The same tenant signed a letter of intent and exclusivity arrangement covering the company's entire Texas portfolio, which spans 718 acres and includes as much as 885 MW of secured and planned capacity.