HIVE Digital Technologies eyes $100M in AI revenue as it expands in Paraguay - ICYMI

HIVE Digital Technologies (TSX-V:HIVE, NASDAQ:HIVE) executive chairman Frank Holmes talked with Proactive about the company’s strategic growth through its expansion into Paraguay and the scaling of its high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities.

Holmes outlined how HIVE increased its electricity capacity from 100MW to over 300MW in Paraguay by acquiring Bitfarms' operation.

In terms of financials, the company reported $115 million in revenue with $53 million in EBITDA for the past year,

Holmes highlighted the rapid growth of HIVE’s AI and HPC revenue, from $10 million in the past year to $20 million in just six months, with expectations to reach $100 million.

Proactive: Hello. You're watching Proactive. Joining me is Hive Digital Technologies executive chairman, Frank Holmes. Frank, great to speak with you. Your full year 2025 was described as a transformative year for Hive. What were the key decisions that unlocked this next phase of growth?

Frank Holmes: Well, it started about a year ago and that was the expansion into Paraguay for hydroelectricity. And take surplus electricity, help build up their grid. And it's all just moving along nicely and the opportunity to buy a Bitfarms' operations. That took us. And so that was the big scaling element that takes us from 100 megawatts of electricity to over 300 megawatts just in Paraguay. So that’s the big scaling that we did. Our HPC for AI. And what we saw there, as our review is, last year was $10 million. In the six months now it’s $20 million and it will scale to $100 million.

And we announced two days ago that we bought a data center that will repurpose, from what they call bitcoin mining into high performance computing. And that’s why that’s where I am right now — at MIT, taking a course with 100 CEOs from 80 countries on how AI is going to change the future and augment our professional skills and career, not eliminate them. So it’s really exciting to be here with people from all over the world.

And here we are building data centers and our revenue in Hive just on the bitcoin mining will go from 115 million last year to about 415 million of bitcoin at 100,000. A lot of people believe bitcoin is going to a quarter million. Well, that just means we’re going to scale even more. And scaling really is you’re not hiring as many people, but you get profit margin expansion with the revenue. And that’s what we’re scaling — both our AI business and high performance computing with Nvidia chips and in Paraguay with our bitcoin mining facilities.

Frank, how does this scale translate to shareholder value in the near term?

Well, you think of the revenue — I think we have about 25 employees — and we’re going to go from 115 million to 400 million. Add the AI, we are going to push 500 million in revenue, and we’re not going to be hiring thousands of people and hundreds of people. So that means we should be able to deliver that margin expansion. And we have been profitable. And that’s a nice part, is we announced our year-end results for March. We did 115 million in revenue. We had EBITDA of 53 million. And it was a tough year because we had to go through this another transformation of going from IFRS accounting over to US GAAP. So we did all of that. And our operating income was still 25 million. Now going to expand to about, I think about 100 million as well. I look at it at this time next year, the operating income would be, the EBITDA should be something like 200 million.

Frank, just looking at that HPC revenue there — triple this year. How big can this division become relative to mining and how do the margins compare?

Well, it’s a great question. When you’re either bitcoin mining or you’re in high performance computing with Nvidia’s chips for machine learning, etc., they’re in data center business logic. You have to realize. And when you’re in bitcoin mining, it’s a lot less expensive to build a data center. But it’s a stepping stone to go to high performance computing. So when we look at bitcoin mining, it’s 1 million dollars per megawatt of electricity infrastructure and equipment. But when it comes to high performance computing, it’s 10 million dollars per megawatt. And then you start to buy those very expensive chips. So they are different, but they both need data centers.

Frank, with 25 exahashes per second targeted by year-end, how confident are you in reaching that milestone, and what does it mean for Hive’s competitiveness post-halving?

Well, this year we hired two great leaders — one to build out our HPC, Greg Tavares, and for Paraguay, we have another young man, Gabriel Ramos, and he’s been doing a phenomenal job. So no one expected us to already be at 11 exahash. And so we’re just every couple of weeks we’re adding an exahash. So I think it’s pretty straightforward. Unless there’s some logistics equipment not getting delivered in time, it’s pretty straightforward what we’re going to be.

Hive continues to generate strong adjusted EBITDA, as you’ve pointed out. How are you thinking about capital allocation going forward, including dividends or buybacks?

They’re not on the scope right now. And the focus on the strategy is grow, grow, grow, build, build, build, because you can take a look at OpenAI’s numbers — only a couple of years from a million subscribers in a day. Now he’s talking about 500 million active users. They hit 10 billion in a couple years. 10 billion in revenue. That just tells you how immense this boom is in AI and how it’s going to change the world. And that’s why I’m trying to learn as much as possible being here at MIT with my peers.

Frank, I hope you enjoy the rest of that MIT conference. Good luck there. And thank you very much for the update today.

Alright, happy investing.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style