If you only read the headlines, it sounds simple: “bitcoin miners pivot to AI.” Look closer, and the strategies start to diverge fast.
HIVE Digital is gradually winding down part of its Swedish bitcoin mining footprint while turning Canadian sites into liquid‑cooled AI data centers.
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Cango, by contrast, has just sold thousands of BTC from its treasury to pay down debt and free up room for an AI infrastructure makeover at its grid‑connected mining sites.
HIVE: phasing down Sweden, doubling down on Canadian AI
HIVE is scaling back its ASIC‑based bitcoin mining in Boden, Sweden, after years of disputes and enforcement actions from local tax authorities over how mining equipment and VAT should be treated.
Regulators have demanded cash collateral against contested assessments, creating enough operational uncertainty and balance‑sheet drag that running large mining fleets there looks less and less attractive.
Instead of pouring more capital into that model, HIVE plans to convert the 7 MW Boden facility into a Tier‑III data center designed for enterprise‑grade GPU clusters, targeting AI and high‑performance computing workloads based on NVIDIA’s next‑generation GB300 architecture.
In Canada, its BUZZ High Performance Computing subsidiary is expanding liquid‑cooled AI data‑center capacity from about 4 MW to 16 MW across Manitoba and a new site in British Columbia, via a colocation partnership with Bell Canada’s AI Fabric that gives it a path to more than 6,000 AI‑optimized GPUs and roughly 200 million dollars in annualized HPC revenue by March 2027, without needing new capex to secure power and space.
HIVE still mines bitcoin in other locations, including hydro‑powered projects in Paraguay and planned expansions elsewhere, but Sweden is being repurposed into AI infrastructure rather than simply switched off, letting the company reuse power, land, and cooling in a way that could generate steadier, contract‑based revenue than pure hashrate.
Cango: selling BTC to repair the balance sheet and fund AI
Cango’s pivot looks more aggressive on the treasury side. The miner has sold roughly 4,451 BTC on the open market for about 305 million dollars in USDT, using the entire amount to partially repay a bitcoin‑collateralized loan and cut leverage.
With more than 400 million dollars in debt and negative free cash flow, management is under pressure to repair the balance sheet before it can credibly fund a big infrastructure shift.
The company frames the BTC sale as a way to strengthen its finances and create room to build out an AI and high‑performance‑computing platform across 40‑plus grid‑connected sites worldwide.
The plan is to deploy modular, containerized GPU nodes for AI inference, initially serving small and mid‑size enterprises, and later layering on a software orchestration platform to coordinate distributed compute across its locations.
All while continuing to mine bitcoin, just with a smaller treasury stack and a more diversified revenue mix.
Same buzzword, different balance‑sheet bets
Both companies are responding to the same macro pressure: tighter mining margins after the halving, volatile BTC prices, and surging demand for AI compute that rewards anyone sitting on cheap power and industrial‑scale facilities.
But “AI pivot” hides very different choices under the hood. HIVE is reallocating geography and power, exiting a hostile tax and regulatory environment in Sweden, leaning into Canadian renewable‑powered data centers, and largely financing expansion through earlier deposits and colocation partnerships instead of dumping a massive BTC treasury.
Cango is using bitcoin on its balance sheet as the funding bridge, turning stored BTC into debt reduction and future AI capacity at the cost of trimming its direct upside if bitcoin rallies sharply from here.
It looks like not all miner‑to‑AI pivots are created equal: the sector is starting to look more like the data‑center business, but how much bitcoin exposure survives on each company’s books will depend on exactly which trade‑offs they choose to make between hashrate, debt, and AI revenue along the way.
Crypto market researcher and external contributor at Kriptoworld
Wheel. Steam engine. Bitcoin.
📅 Published: March 18, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: March 18, 2026
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