US aluminum producer Alcoa Corporation has sold its former Massena East smelter in upstate New York to an unnamed data center firm.

In its Q3 2026 results last week, the aluminum company this week announced that it had entered into definitive agreements with an unnamed data center firm to sell portions of the Massena East site for up to $315 million.

The buyer wasn't named in the announcement, but cryptominer NYDIG has previously been linked to the site, and one of its affiliates has filed to develop a campus on what appears to be the smelter site.

Expected to close within the next six months, the company said the transaction “creates the potential for meaningful cash proceeds as approved data center capacity is developed by the buyer.”

At closing, Alcoa expects to initially receive approximately $50m to $65m, depending on the amount of approved data center capacity. The company said it may receive an additional approximately $60m to $250m for approved capacity expansions and as approved capacity is commissioned during the seven-year period following closing. Most of the proceeds are expected to be received during the first five years.

In the company’s earnings call, Alcoa CEO Bill Oplinger said the agreement “represents meaningful progress against our asset monetization strategy.”

“It gives us some cash up-front, but it will give us cash further over the next five years as that data center first gets built and then gets increased in size. So, it gives us a lot of upside," he said.

Located in Lawrence County along the St. Lawrence River in Massena, New York, Alcoa closed the smelter in 2014, citing a lack of competitiveness in the face of high energy costs and lower-cost overseas aluminum producers. The 1,600-acre former Reynolds Metals Facility was constructed in 1958 and taken over by Alcoa in 2000.

In the earnings call, Alcoa EVP and CFO Molly Beerman said the site is initially permitted for 180MW, but could reach 635MW in phases.

Bitcoin mining firm NYDIG was previously named as being in advanced talks with Alcoa over the Massena East site.

While NYDIG is yet to comment, BizJournal reports the site will be developed by North Country Colocation Services, an affiliate of NYDIG.

The cryptofirm already has a presence in Massena and filed to expand further in the area over the summer.

Site plans filed with the town of Massena planning board name the firm’s latest development site at 182 & 194 County Road 45 as the former Alcoa East/Reynolds Campus. The 88-acre project could total 635MW across two buildings and 870,000 sq ft to support “modern computing operations.”

Alcoa has been seeking buyers for ten former smelter sites across the US, targeting data center firms as potential customers.

During the earnings call, Oplinger said the firm has two other deals that the company believes “could happen quickly,” but didn’t share more details.

One former Alcoa smelting plant is already in the midst of being converted into a data center park. In Maryland, TPG Real Estate Partners (TREP) is developing a 2,100-acre, gigawatt-scale data center park some 25 miles (40.2km) north of Ashburn in Adamstown, Frederick County.

Former heavy industrial sites are increasingly being considered for reuse as data center campuses. Terra Hosting announced the acquisition of a former military base in Indiana in early April.

In February, Century Aluminum sold its Hawesville smelter in Kentucky to digital asset firm TeraWulf, which said it planned to develop the site into a digital infrastructure campus.