HIVE Digital Technologies (TSX:HIVE) has acquired land in Ontario, Canada, as part of a new industrial-scale artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure facility, also known as an AI gigafactory.
The project is expected to become one of Canada’s largest AI gigafactories, designed to support fully vertically integrated AI supercomputers and host more than 100,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) at full buildout.
An AI gigafactory is the industrial infrastructure of the intelligence economy — a facility that converts compute into intelligence, helping make Canadian businesses more competitive.
Through the company’s wholly owned subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing, 21 acres of land has been purchased for C$46 million ($46.79 million), as well as an additional parcel of land adjacent to the main parcel — measuring four acres for C$12 million.
Both parcels collectively comprise a contiguous site benefitting from a 320-megawatt (MW) power allocation. BUZZ HPC has secured a milestone along the project’s power pathway to develop sovereign AI infrastructure in the Toronto-Waterloo innovation corridor.
The Toronto-Waterloo innovation corridor is considered one of the primary drivers of Canada’s economy, with a gross domestic product of C$476 billion, according to Waterloo EDC.
It is a 105km economic corridor linking Toronto and Waterloo by rail and road, with a population of more than 9.4 million people. It is home to more than 373,600 tech workers and 26,000 tech companies — making it the third-largest tech cluster in North America.
Expanding AI capabilities
HIVE Digital CEO Aydin Kilic says the company now has more than 850MW of power globally, including a pipeline of 400MW of capacity expected to be brought online in 2027.
“Globally diversified growth, this includes our 100MW of operating data centres in Canada, now with a pipeline of 320MW for 2027,” Kilic says.
“BUZZ has done a phenomenal job expanding our footprint in Canada. With 5,500 GPUs online today doing AI compute, along with our 70MW New Brunswick Grand Falls site, and now our 320MW GTA site, we have the land and power to develop a pipeline of infrastructure to support approximately 130,000 GPUs.”
AI relies heavily on several resources and minerals, as the backbone of the technology requires critical minerals to build semiconductors, data centres, and robotics.
Some of the key minerals include copper, gallium and silicon, lithium, and rare earths.
AI is also heavily used in the mining industry, as the sector integrates machine learning, computer vision, and autonomous robotics across the entire value chain to optimise extraction, enhance worker safety, and boost sustainability.
Recently, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) developed an AI-driven workflow that replaces slow iterative materials discovery with a targeted, data-driven approach.
Unlike previous trial-and-error approaches, the UNSW team’s systems work backwards from a desired outcome — such as how a material should handle electrical charge — to identify molecules that could deliver it.
HIVE Digital Technologies prioritises mining digital assets powered by green energy. The company now builds and operates next-generation tier one and tier three data centres across Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Hive Digital Technologies
