In this engaging episode on theCUBE, Asher Genoot, Chief Executive Officer of Hut 8, joins John Furrier of SiliconANGLE Media Inc. to delve into AI factories and their transformative role in the data centers of the future. This discussion, part of the renowned NYSE Wired Community’s "Data Center of the Future" series, explores the innovations powering the AI landscape and the energy needs that accompany this technological evolution.
Asher Genoot, a prominent leader in the energy infrastructure domain, shares insights into Hut 8's operations and its significant role in the AI and Bitcoin industries. The conversation, hosted by John Furrier of theCUBE Research, highlights the synergy between energy, AI and computing power. Genoot reflects on how Hut 8 is strategically positioning itself at the intersection of technology and energy by leveraging its vast infrastructure capabilities.
Key takeaways from the discussion focus on Hut 8's growth trajectory and its strategic initiatives to secure megawatts of power for expanding its footprint in AI technology. Genoot provides insights into how the company embraces energy reuse and optimizes site placements to maximize power availability and efficiency. This approach serves both the immediate demand within AI projects and longer-term growth focused on sustainability and innovation.
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Asher Genoot, Hut 8
In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future event, Glean co-founder and CEO Arvind Jain joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to unpack what’s really working in enterprise AI today and what comes next. Jain explains why knowledge access remains the first successful AI use case at scale and how Glean’s enterprise search brings AI into everyday work. He details the past year’s lessons with AI agents – from the need for guardrails, security, evaluation and monitoring to democratizing agent building so business owners (not just data scientists) can create production-grade agents.
The conversation dives into Glean’s vision of the enterprise brain powered by an enterprise graph, highlighting the importance of deep context, human workflows and behavior to reduce “noise” and drive outcomes. Jain outlines core building blocks – hundreds of enterprise integrations and a growing actions library – that let agents securely read company knowledge and take actions across systems (e.g., CRM updates, HR tasks, calendar checks). He discusses how organizations are standing up AI Centers of Excellence, prioritizing “top 10–20” agents across functions like engineering, support and sales, and why a horizontal AI data platform that unifies structured and unstructured data – accessed conversationally and stitched together via standards like MCP – sets the foundation for AI factory-scale operations. Looking ahead, Jain says Glean’s upgraded assistant is evolving from reactive tool to proactive companion that anticipates tasks and accelerates productivity.
In this conversation from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future, Asher Genoot, chief executive officer of Hut 8 and executive chairman of American Bitcoin, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to unpack how power, not just silicon, is becoming the defining constraint for AI factories. Genoot explains Hut 8’s evolution into a long energy, next-generation infrastructure platform with about a gigawatt of commercialized capacity, several more gigawatts in development and under exclusivity, and an ecosystem that spans American Bitcoin for ASIC-ba...Read more
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What recent developments have occurred with American Bitcoin and how do they relate to the overall energy and business ecosystem?add
What are Hut 8's long-term goals regarding power acquisition and its use cases?add
>> Hello, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in our NYSE CUBE Studio as part of our Data Center of the Future, AI Factory series in the NYSE Wired Community and program. Big popular series around the future of AI and what's going to power it. And we have one of the major players here to talk about the power and the energy. Asher is the CEO of Hut 8 and the executive chairman of American Bitcoin. Asher, thank you for spending the time with us today. Bill Tai certainly laid down a lot of commentary in previous CUBE interviews, so thanks for coming on.
Asher Genoot
>> Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me on. Excited for the discussion today.
John Furrier
>> So right out of the gate, I did see some news today, American Bitcoin announced acquiring more Bitcoin and increasing the strategic reserves. Quick comment, because I want to get into the energy conversation with you guys around this, but this is a signal of more action. The market is growing, there's more business model innovation. Just quick comment on the news.
Asher Genoot
>> Definitely. We continue to grow all of the verticals we have. So Hut 8 is the energy infrastructure company. Hut 8 is a long energy company. We have energy assets, we have data center assets, power plants, data centers for AI, data centers built for Bitcoin. Then we have two businesses. One is American Bitcoin, which owns the servers for Bitcoin, and then Highrise that owns the GPUs for AI and cloud. And so American Bitcoin is continuing to grow. They had a big announcement today. They're continuing to scale and grow. And so this is our overall ecosystem, and we're lucky that we see growth on all elements of those different pillars of the ecosystem today.
John Furrier
>> We've been following their journey for a long, long time since Bill started and the team put Hut 8 together. What's interesting is the creation of American Bitcoin and then you said Highrise AI, you have the mining side and now the data center side. You're essentially scaling energy infrastructure under management, and talk about that power envelope. What does the headroom look like? Can you share the dynamics? Because you got the mining. That's key. You got the scalable infrastructure on the GPU side. What does that do from a scale perspective? What does that mean in terms of numbers, gigawatt to what?
Asher Genoot
>> So today, Hut 8 has about a gigawatt under management that we've commercialized, we've built and we're receiving revenues and profit from. We have over a gigawatt in the development pipeline of sites where we've either had the option on the land, own the land, the power agreements, and we're developing those projects today. And then we have a couple of gigawatts under exclusivity or diligence in which we are continuing to drive into the development phase. And so we have give gigawatts in our overall kind of megawatts that we have. And for us at Hut 8, it's a pretty simple perspective. As technology continues to evolve, its consumption of power will increase. That doesn't matter if it's data centers for AI, data centers for Bitcoin, advanced manufacturing. We have the conviction and belief that power is going to become more scarce, that power is going to become more valuable. And so how do we sit at that intersection at Hut 8 in energy and technology and build infrastructure that supports these use cases? That's why you see us heavily entrenched in the AI theme and the demand that we see there, but also continuing to scale and build on Bitcoin and securitizing the future of finance as well. And so at Hut 8, you see us not being technology-focused, more technology-agnostic and more infrastructure and energy-focused.
John Furrier
>> You guys have a managed power solution, I call it that. It's my word, probably a word that means it. The power is, everything's bounded by the power. Is there a difference between the energy side for say true AI-ready GPUs, power density interconnects versus standard mining capacity? Is there a difference between the two, and how would you discuss that?
Asher Genoot
>> So power is fungible, whether you pull a megawatt or gigawatt from the grid and you use it for AI use cases or for Bitcoin use cases. There's a difference in the build itself. So with AI, you build more redundancy into the data center itself and you have a higher PUE. And so that means that you're a little less efficient because you have so much more cooling and infrastructure and redundancy supporting the actual chips so they have a more stable and predictable workflow. And so when you think about the overall data center, something that we're excited that we're continuing to build and innovate on is how do you build infrastructure that may be able to support different types of chips? At the end of the day, people use AI and people use Bitcoin as the terms, but really it's what actual servers are using in the compute. AI today is using GPUs primarily from Nvidia. And then on the Bitcoin side, it's primarily ASICs, but you will start having ASICs power AI compute as well. And so I think when we think about, it's what type of compute are we using, what type of servers are we using, and what is the actual load dynamics of those servers? And so we're very excited because we see continued demand and growth and energy and infrastructure assets, and we're trying to build and support all of that demand today.
John Furrier
>> I think you guys did a really good job. I love that, I won't say pivot, because it's more of an extension. You didn't really change directions, you just kind of created a scalable model for energy, and energy infrastructure, I guess is the category. I was talking to a friend about this this weekend and I told him I was going to be interviewing you. He says, "Oh, ask him a question." So I'm going to ask you a question from a friend. This is classic social media. Hey, asking for a friend. Here's the question. What's your crisp North star or KPI that that you're working through this next year? Is it watts contracted, GPUs deployed, EBITDA mix, something else? What's the focus? How would you answer that question? Because you're bringing up the economics between AI and Bitcoin mining, which you just laid out. As you look forward with this market, what's that KPI, that North star that you look at?
Asher Genoot
>> So I'll focus on Hut 8, because American Bitcoin and Highrise have their different goals and KPIs, which is why we separated the companies into its own leadership and management teams as well. For Hut 8, the long-term goal and vision is how do we increase the amount of megawatts in our overall footprint and access to the power that we have over term? Because we believe that the value of that power will continue to increase. In the short term, looking at the next one plus years, it's how do we lock in those megawatts, but also contract those megawatts for different use cases. And today, for example, the return on AI use cases is very high. So continuing to lock in power for AI use cases as well. The beauty about American Bitcoin being a customer for Hut 8 is that we're able to lock up sites really, really quickly, be our own customer through American Bitcoin and its demand, and then be able to then focus on looking at what is the value of those megawatts over the long term. And so for Hut 8, it's continuing to lock in megawatts for American Bitcoin, continuing to lock in megawatts for AI use cases, and being able to commercialize those in the short term. And in the long term, just continue to expand the overall footprint and access the power that we have as a business.
John Furrier
>> Okay, thank you so much. On the footprint and the deployment, the site deployments, what's the issue there from a balancing of resource speed? Do you optimize for a certain equation? You get speed, cost, efficiency, obviously key factors. Is there a formula or kind of algorithm that you lean into optimize around?
Asher Genoot
>> Look, today, speed is paramount in this industry. People need access to these data centers to distribute as quickly as possible, and so we're looking at providing different solutions and innovative designs that offer that with great partners. And so speed is paramount, speed to power, speed to energization, speed to compute. Over term, as we look at overall moat as a company, I believe speed is important, I believe cost is important and I believe quality is important. And usually people say you have to choose two out of the three, but I push our team to try to optimize it all.
John Furrier
>> I talked to Bill Tai about this, a little bit off-topic, but if we talk about the sovereignty of the world relationships, as you look at the regional strategy as you expand, energy is a strategic resource. How does that impact how you guys select and deploy the regional strategies? Because power will, well, this is my narrative that Bill and I talked about, regional sovereignty around relationships, if you've got the power, that's going to create some sovereignty opportunities. And if you don't have the power, you have to think about that. How does that impact, I mean, it's a little bit out there, but what's your view on that? Because you're selecting areas to deploy for your business. What's your thoughts on it? What's your reaction to that?
Asher Genoot
>> Right now, we're very focused on North America and the US in terms of additional expansion and growth. There's a lot of opportunities internationally that we've looked at, but we think there's enough opportunity in the US to focus here and scale and grow from there. We're obviously looking at different regions within the US. Louisiana is an area that we're heavily committed to that we have one of our campuses called River Bend there, and we're very excited and been very welcomed by the local community, the utility and so forth. And so where we look to build is areas that have a great power story, but also have a community that welcomes us and wants us to build there. And that's a really important part as we think about the overall investments in campuses that we're developing, the scale that we're looking to develop.
John Furrier
>> Talk about the energy innovation strategy that you guys see, and then your partners. The grid is under pressure from cyber attacks to just capacity, sometimes antiquated, a little bit outdated. Is there new opportunities or innovations that you see? And you guys are taking a task on for helping make the grid better, but also expand it and new capabilities. Are there things out there that you can share and things that you're riding?
Asher Genoot
>> A lot of, as you think about these power systems today, historically it's tell the grid, "Hey, I want this much power," and go build it. That doesn't work anymore. What you need to do is think about what is the long-term growth of the specific campus? Do I need to help bring generation to help the grid as well? So not only are you bringing demand, you might have to bring your own generation with you as well, depending on the timelines in which you want to energize and come online. And so as you think about these campuses, it's no longer just the data center or the infrastructure around the load element. You have to think about the campuses as the overall campus of supply and demand, and how do you solve these, but how do you connect them into the grid as well rather than fully off the meter, off the grid. And so you're able to be intertwined with the grid, but also be able to help bring in the redundancy, help bring in the generation or the capacity to support it. And so the problem has widened in terms of scope as you build these campuses. And now you have to think about power generation. You have to think about the data center capacity, the compute. And I think we're really fortunate and lucky because today, Hut 8 owns four power plants that we run and operate. We own data center capacity that we run and operate. We own a GPU compute business that we have a neocloud that we run and operate. So we have experience across the whole stack from beginning to end, and now it's taking that experience from our different teams and bringing it together to create a holistic solution.
John Furrier
>> You got the innovation, you've got all the puzzle pieces. Talk about the energy reuse. This is an important feature. Where's the innovation and learnings from what you guys have done that you're deploying today? Can you share some of the things that actually maybe help on a sustainability basis? Because you guys have been doing this. What's the learnings? Where's that coming back into the system?
Asher Genoot
>> Yeah, so as you think about where to place data centers, we think it's really important you start with power. Power is the bottleneck today. And so as you think about where's power generated, we just announced a site that we built earlier this year in Amarillo, Texas, and it's a site called Vega where there was an abundancy of renewable power that was being developed and we had a wind farm that was being developed there. And we were able to help that wind farm not go into negative price power. We were able to consume that power when other people didn't need it, right? In Louisiana, similar story. We found a parcel of land that had high voltage transmission lines. One of them that we're interconnected to directly connects to their nuclear substation there. And so as you think through the power story and what is able to be used, it's really important to think about you place sites where the power is. Otherwise, if you place sites where you want it to be and want the power to come there, then you're just going to be waiting for a long time. And because speed is so important, the whole industry is kind of flipping around how they're developing sites today.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. You guys are trailblazing, you've been doing it, you've got the expertise, now you've got the focused execution and growth. Is it fair to call you guys energy infrastructure? What category would we put you in? I mean, if you had to do a category creation, or you're in multiple categories. How would you describe your business today and kind of what you're thinking about, how people should view you? Because it's a platform. You got the focuses. What's the category? How would you describe it?
Asher Genoot
>> We think of ourselves as a next generation energy infrastructure platform that is going to further promote technologies that move humanity forward. And so we think of ourselves as an energy infrastructure platform, and everything that goes into consuming from an energy infrastructure platform.
John Furrier
>> That's awesome. Asher, thanks for taking the time on our AI Factory. Certainly the factory starts what you do with what you're doing. Share what you're working on in terms of the customers. Can you identify and just give a plug for the company?
Asher Genoot
>> Yeah, we're very excited. We have a couple of large-scale campuses we're building for AI customers today. We have deep dialogue with customers across different sites, and we'll be sharing more with the world in short order about those projects and the continued development of them.
John Furrier
>> Asher, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it.
Asher Genoot
>> Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me.
John Furrier
>> Okay, Hut 8 on theCUBE. This is the innovation that you see with the AI factories. If you look at all the CapEx build out, it's coming down to do you have the right footprint? Can you support the gigawatts, and then ultimately connect to these AI factories? So we got it here covered on theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.
John Furrier