It Acquired a Bitcoin Miner, but Its CEO Has “Zero Interest”: $894 Million for AI
SWI Group, which took control of Genesis Digital Assets, raised 800 million euros to expand data center projects as part of a plan to redirect its Bitcoin mining facilities toward AI businesses.
According to a company statement reported by CoinDesk, the financing, equivalent to approximately $894 million, came from institutional investors. The capital increase values SWI Group, which is listed on Euronext Amsterdam, at 6.1 billion euros.
What makes the development notable is that the investment group is redirecting a Bitcoin miner it recently took control of into a different field. SWI CEO Max-Hervé George told the Wall Street Journal that he has “zero interest” in Bitcoin mining.
Plans to sell and convert mining facilities
SWI is selling Genesis Digital Assets’ sites in Kazakhstan, while aiming to use its facilities in the U.S. and Sweden for AI computing. The funds raised will go toward expanding data center and AI projects in Europe and the U.S.
In June, the company announced plans to acquire approximately 40% of Genesis Digital for $500 million. The deal, completed in August, gave it 70% of the voting rights, and it renamed the unit SWI Digital.
AI demand for miners’ energy infrastructure
The transformation centers not only on mining machines but also on the facilities’ power connections and data center capacity. Allocating this infrastructure to AI customers offers an alternative business model to mining revenue.
The report says that contracts signed by Bitcoin miners in AI and high-performance computing have totaled more than $70 billion. TeraWulf and Core Scientific are also among the companies putting their energy access and data center capacity to use in this area.
Genesis Digital’s Alameda history
According to the Wall Street Journal, Alameda Research, owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, invested more than $1 billion in Genesis Digital Assets starting in 2021 and owned approximately 20% of the mining company. The investment was among the assets examined after FTX’s bankruptcy in November 2022.