Google involved in BTC miner TeraWulf’s ‘standout’ hosting deal
Tech giant’s part in long-term HPC agreement gives it “more financial certainty” than other deals, consulting firm exec argues
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TeraWulf’s stock soared Thursday after revealing a 10-year deal with AI cloud platform Fluidstack that also aligns the bitcoin miner with Google.
The decade-long high-performance computing (HPC) colocation agreements — with two five-year extension options — come as bitcoin miners have looked to diversify income streams in recent years away from volatile crypto-linked revenues.
TeraWulf is set to deliver to Fluidstack more than 200 megawatts of critical IT load at its Lake Mariner datacenter in New York, the company said Thursday. TeraWulf estimates $370 million in annual revenue from this deal.
Perhaps a bigger takeaway from the deal is Google taking a roughly 8% stake in TeraWulf. The tech giant — as a result of backstopping $1.8 billion of Fluidstack’s lease obligations — is set to acquire about 41 million shares of WULF common stock.
Read more: CoreWeave’s pending Core Scientific buy gives ‘optionality’ as AI needs evolve
TeraWulf’s move to host AI workloads exhibits how a large miner can turn its energy infrastructure into stable, long-term revenue, said BlocksBridge Consulting founder Nishant Sharma.
“The scale and Google’s financial backing make it a standout and could inspire similar moves from peers,” Sharma added.
Despite Google’s involvement making the deal unique, TeraWulf’s deal resembles similar recent pivots across the mining segment. Sharma pointed to Bit Digital entering into a $44 million credit facility in June with the Royal Bank of Canada to expand its AI-focused infrastructure.
Gaining more attention was Core Scientific last year signing various 12-year contracts with CoreWeave. The bitcoin miner offered 200 MW of infrastructure to host the cloud provider’s HPC services; expected annual revenue stemming from the deal was $290 million.
CoreWeave then revealed last month that it would acquire Core Scientific in an all-stock deal.
“Like Core Scientific’s multi-hundred-megawatt hosting deals with CoreWeave, this is a major long-term HPC commitment,” Sharma said.
“But TeraWulf’s version adds a strategic investor and backstop, giving it more financial certainty and independence.”
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