HIVE Digital Technologies stock increased more than 7% on Thursday following the announcement of a $220 million GPU cloud contract. This agreement with Bell Canada and Toronto-based AI firm Cohere marks HIVE’s largest deal to date and signals its firm entry into the AI infrastructure business. The contract spans three years and will be delivered through HIVE’s subsidiary, BUZZ High Performance Computing.
The deal involves 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs, which are chips designed for advanced AI model training and inference. These GPUs will be installed at Bell’s purpose-built data center located in Merritt, British Columbia. Cohere, a large language model company that develops AI systems for enterprises and governments, will utilize this compute layer to operate its platform for Canadian clients.
The concept of “sovereign AI” refers to AI systems that run on infrastructure within a country’s borders, using locally controlled data. This is particularly relevant when government agencies are clients. Canada has actively promoted this approach, with Ottawa allocating over $2 billion to domestic AI compute as part of its Sovereign AI Compute Strategy. An additional $240 million has been directly invested into Cohere, making this deal a foundational component of that national strategy.
Cohere serves as a key partner in this arrangement. The Toronto-based company is one of the few globally developing foundation models, which are the base-layer AI powering various applications from enterprise chatbots to government document processing. Cohere recently announced a merger with Germany’s Aleph Alpha, valuing the combined entity at approximately $20 billion. Bell and Cohere had an existing partnership established in July 2025, and this contract provides the underlying compute infrastructure for that collaboration.
Frank Holmes, executive chairman at HIVE Digital Technologies, stated that Canada has historically lacked the industrial infrastructure to commercialize its AI talent at scale. He described the partnership with Bell and Cohere as a defining moment, positioning BUZZ HPC as the “GPU factory layer that transforms Canada’s AI ambitions from political promises into productive national assets.”
For HIVE, which reported $278.3 million in Bitcoin mining revenue in its last quarter, this contract represents the latest development in a strategic pivot initiated in 2022. The company began its shift towards AI by reallocating GPU capacity previously used for crypto mining. This transition included a deal with Dell for new GPUs last November and the closure of a $115 million convertible note offering in April.
The long-term implications for HIVE’s revenue mix and operational focus remain to be seen as the company continues to expand its AI infrastructure services. Future developments will likely involve monitoring the deployment of the NVIDIA GPUs and the utilization rates by Cohere and its clients.
Observers will also watch for further government initiatives in Canada’s sovereign AI strategy and how they might influence similar infrastructure deals. The success of this partnership could set a precedent for other nations seeking to develop domestic AI capabilities.