Crypto and AI data center firm Hut 8 has acquired a majority stake in the data center company set up by the sons of President Donald Trump, and is moving its crypto operations to the newly acquired unit.
The company this week announced the launch of American Bitcoin Corp., a majority-owned subsidiary of Hut 8 focused on industrial-scale Bitcoin mining and strategic Bitcoin reserve development.
Hut 8 said it has taken a majority 80 percent interest in American Data Centers, Inc., a company formed by a group of investors including Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., with American Data Centers, Inc. renamed and relaunched as American Bitcoin.
“The launch of American Bitcoin marks a pivotal evolution in our platform strategy,” said Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8. “By carving out our mining business into a standalone entity, which will raise its own capital, we align each segment of the business with its respective cost of capital. The transaction creates two focused yet complementary businesses, each purpose-built for its respective mandate.”
As part of the deal, American Bitcoin is being seeded with “substantially all” of Hut 8’s ASIC miners. Hut 8 will serve as American Bitcoin’s exclusive infrastructure and operations partner through a series of long-term commercial agreements.
Hut 8 said American Bitcoin aims to become the “world’s largest, most efficient pure-play Bitcoin miner while building a robust strategic Bitcoin reserve.”
“The transaction combines Hut 8’s proven mining operations, cost-efficient infrastructure development capabilities, and disciplined approach to capital allocation with Eric Trump’s commercial acumen, capital markets expertise, and commitment to the advancement of decentralized financial systems,” the company added.
Led by CEO Matt Prusak – previously chief commercial officer at Hut 8 – Eric Trump will be chief strategy officer of the newly-renamed American Bitcoin.
“It is a great honor to partner with Hut 8, a recognized leader in the Bitcoin space, as we launch American Bitcoin,” said Eric Trump, Co-founder of American Bitcoin. “By combining Hut 8’s proven operational excellence in data centers with our shared passion for Bitcoin and decentralized finance, we are poised to strengthen our foundation and drive significant future growth.”
Nasdaq-listed Hut 8 currently has 19 data center sites either in operation or in development, including ten Bitcoin mining projects, five high-performance computing data centers, and four power-generation assets.
The company acquired five colo data centers in Canada from TeraGo in 2022, and merged with US Bitcoin in 2023.
Hut 8 offers GPU-as-a-Service through its Highrise brand. Its first HPE-Cray cluster, comprising 1,000 Nvidia H100s, launched in September 2024 in a Chicago data center. The cluster is serving an unnamed AI cloud developer for five years under a revenue-sharing agreement.
In a shareholder presentation on the deal’s rationale, Hut 8 said the deal will enable the parent company to evolve into a “low-volatility energy and digital infrastructure company.”
American Bitcoin will initially colocate at Hut 8’s Alpha, Medicine Hat, and Salt Creek facilities, and likely take space in Hut 8’s upcoming Vega site.
US investment firm Dominari Holdings launched American Data Centers alongside the elder sons of US President Donald Trump last month, holding a 32 percent ownership of the company. At the time, Dominari said American DC aimed to build a "robust portfolio of cutting-edge, energy-efficient data centers strategically located in key markets across the US."
President Trump announced in March that the US government would create a strategic reserve of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Under Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew investigations into several crypto companies and dropped a lawsuit against Coinbase.
