Hut 8 Names Former Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal as Board Chair

Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) Corp. named E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch & Co., as chair of its board, the latest governance change as the company pushes deeper into energy and AI infrastructure.

O’Neal, who has been an independent director of Hut 8 since November 2023, succeeds William “Bill” Tai, Hut 8’s founding chair. Tai will remain on the board and continue serving on the nominating and governance committee, the company said Wednesday.

The move comes as Hut 8 is trying to reposition itself from a bitcoin mining operator into a broader energy infrastructure platform focused on power, digital infrastructure and compute for energy-intensive technologies. That strategy has gained momentum this year through Hut 8’s Beacon Point campus in Texas, where the company has signed a 15-year, 352 MW IT lease with a base-term contract value of $9.8 billion and arranged $4.25 billion of senior secured notes to finance the project.

“Our ambition is to build at the intersection of energy and next-generation technologies for decades to come,” Chief Executive Officer Asher Genoot said in the statement. He said O’Neal would bring “the discipline and judgment required of a major institutional leader” as Hut 8 scales its business.

O’Neal served as Merrill Lynch’s CEO from 2002 and became chairman in 2003, holding both roles until October 2007. His tenure gives Hut 8 a board chair with experience leading a large public financial institution, though Merrill’s later exposure to mortgage-related losses during the credit crisis also made O’Neal one of the more closely scrutinized Wall Street executives of that era.

He has also served on the boards of Clearway Energy, Element Solutions, General Motors and Arconic, according to Hut 8. Before joining the Hut 8 board, O’Neal was a director of U.S. Data Mining Group, known as US Bitcoin Corp., from March 2021 through its merger with Hut 8 Mining Corp.

O’Neal said the “reorganization of capital around energy, digital infrastructure, and compute” is among the largest shifts he has seen in his career. He said Hut 8 has built a “power-first foundation” and an operating model suited to evolving markets.

Tai served as chair of the Hut 8 board from November 2023 to June 2026 and previously chaired Hut 8 Mining Corp. from March 2018 through its merger with US Bitcoin Corp. A venture capitalist, Tai was an early backer of companies including Canva, Dapper Labs, TweetDeck and Zoom Video, and has served as a director of seven publicly listed companies.