HIVE Secures $129 Million Loan at 9% for Cohere AI Project
Key Takeaways
- BUZZ HPC obtained approximately $129 million in capital for AI infrastructure.
- The financing is set at a 9.0% fixed interest rate.
- The arrangement utilizes an 80% loan-to-cost ratio to support the BUZZ Alpha Cloud expansion.
HIVE Digital (NASDAQ: HIVE)’s BUZZ HPC business secured approximately $129 million in three-year financing at a fixed 9% interest rate to fund computing infrastructure for its Cohere contract.
The company said in a Wednesday announcement that the facility covers roughly 80% of a $165 million Nvidia GB200 cluster. The borrower, BUZZ Alpha Cloud, signed with an unnamed institutional lender, with principal and interest amortizing over the loan’s term.
Security includes project assets and BUZZ HPC’s equity in the borrower, alongside a limited-recourse guarantee. HIVE will fund the balance from earlier zero-interest convertible-bond proceeds. The facility itself involves no common-share issuance.
HIVE now values the three-year Cohere contract at $225 million, including connectivity and storage. It said the previously disclosed $220 million covered GPU computing alone. Hardware delivery is expected toward the end of 2026. Repayment will depend on contract revenue, and the loan includes debt-service coverage requirements.
The project forms part of a Canadian AI infrastructure partnership announced in June. Bell is providing data center capacity and connectivity at its Merritt, British Columbia, facility, while BUZZ supplies the cloud computing layer using Canadian-built Hypertec hardware.
Cohere plans to run its foundation models and enterprise AI services on the platform for government and corporate customers. The arrangement is intended to give customers greater control over where their data and computing workloads reside.
When HIVE announced the contract on June 18, it expected the deployment to enter service in late 2026 or early 2027 and add approximately $70 million in annual recurring revenue.
The expansion comes as HIVE builds its AI cloud business alongside bitcoin mining. In September, the company reported average GPU cloud revenue of approximately $100,000 a day and bitcoin production of about 12 coins daily since Aug. 21, based on preliminary, unaudited estimates. It also outlined plans to wind down Swedish bitcoin mining while assessing the facilities for AI use.
