HIVE Digital secures $129M financing for Canadian sovereign AI infrastructure

what happens is that a lot of the credit, uh, departments turn around and make it difficult, and they start changing the terms to laying you the money. But what it really shows is that our our vision is to build a sovereign AI infrastructure in Canada.

All right, welcome back inside our Proactive News Room and joining me now is Frank Holmes. He is the executive chairman of Hive Digital Technologies. and Frank, it's good to see you again. How are you?

Outstanding, my friend.

Good. Good to have you along. Exciting news out that, uh, through your subsidiary Buzz, you've secured 129 million in financing, uh, for Canadian Sovereign AI infrastructure. So, this is a, uh, significant and huge milestone for the company, Frank.

Yes, I think which's really important Steve is is against the backdrop of skepticism toward the Neil Cloud sector. And our team, you know, it stayed very focused and delivered. Um, this past weekend, um, all in is a podcast and they like to announce this is the largest podcast in the world. And and for the past month, every week, they come out and it's been very negative regarding the debt structure. And what happens is that a lot of the credit, uh, departments turn around and make it difficult and they start changing the terms to laying you the money. But what it really shows is that our our vision is to build a sovereign AI infrastructure in Canada. And this team at Hive including Buzz, uh did the hard work of securing the financing and it was day in, day out. And the demand is still so big and I think that there's so much negative narrative going into the election in the US. Um, it's very negative data centers, even though, uh, no data center, no iPhone, uh, no internet, no Google, no Netflix, no Spotify. There's this disconnect that it's free like air.

But it's it's really interesting to watch that. But the team delivered on the goods, so we are scaling in our AI business. and what's also interesting is it's predominantly US institutions and credit funds uh that are in this business. It's really not the Canadian ecosystem doesn't have those capital markets and the banks are very much not in lending anything really of significance to data center expansions.

Yeah, it it's a favorable term uh for this uh this loan that you got and it obviously will allow you to to start uh scaling in a massive way. So just how important was this to finally get this done and and what does it allow you to do now? What will you take the funds and move forward with?

Well, I I think it's really important for Canada. I I think it's really important for having sovereign data centers being funded, predominantly by American institutions, uh and Canadian know-how and Craig de Varus is doing an amazing job and and Iden Killick on pulling in this all together, but Craig has done this fabulous job. So it's for cohere, uh which is the darling for Canada. So this is extremely bullish um, uh regarding investing from outside coming into Canada and building it up, but it still allows us to keep our sovereign status because it's that no American is really controlling that data center.

Yeah. Uh, you're expected to have uh some some of these, uh, this infrastructure in place in the fourth quarter of 2026, but is this really about 2027 and beyond, Frank?

Yeah, I I think that we've made lots of press releases on on this buildout for this next 12 months. and now is lining up the funding for each of these mechanisms and um and a lot of delays and disappointments. And in the US in particular has been a lots of negative sentiment towards CoreWeve, uh Oracle, uh forced Majure with Blue Owl. Uh all these negative storytelling uh does impact it, but we are just staying focused Steve. And uh like we said we would build out our tier one data centers uh from 6 to 25 exahash. Uh we're now doing with with HPC building up for AI factories. So we're very excited about this growth for Canada.

Yeah. And and lastly Frank, just on a point you mentioned earlier, I want to just get you to address it again, and that is the the need for the sovereign part of it and and keeping this within Canada and the buildout within Canada, and just how important that is, because there's a a buildout and there's obviously people who are are weary sometimes of when you talk about data centers and things like that, but if you don't, you're going to get left behind. Is that accurate?

Absolutely. You can see what happened under, um, uh Justin Trudeau's 10 years. There's lots of data showing the under investing in technology and infrastructure in Canada and that the GDP per capita fell way behind the US. and the same thing happens in Europe, a huge fallback. So, I think under Prime Minister Carney, it's a game changer. He's the first of the G20, uh, to have a an AI minister. Um, it's very positive regarding and I guess this experience of Brookfield being chairman, and and there's such big players in the data center business. This is really positive for the country for Canada. Um, and I think with Bell Canada is really also showing tremendous leadership. also I share with you the the idea of exporting gas across Canada. Well, all of a sudden you can turn around and build a big data center right near the gas field and you can have higher gas prices and you can export compute power. And that's the going to game changer. We're seeing that taking place in Texas. Uh we're seeing it modestly, I would say in Alberta. But the deal in Saskatchewan is really important when you look at that you can't build a pipeline. That's okay. We're just going to turn around and we're going to export compute.

All right, well we'll keep an eye on that for sure, Frank. Thanks so much. Good to see you again.

It's great to be with you. Stay long.

Yeah, there's Frank Holmes, the executive chairman of Hive Digital Technologies.