JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have committed to back the construction loan for the first tranche of Hut 8’s River Bend data center campus, a flagship development in Louisiana targeting the needs of frontier AI model developers.

The loan, which aims to finance up to 85% of construction costs, is being structured with target pricing at SOFR plus 225 basis points — a competitive rate reflective of the project’s investment-grade counterparty guarantees.

The River Bend project is anchored by a 15-year triple-net lease with Fluidstack, operating on behalf of AI lab Anthropic, and comes with a financial backstop from Google. That backstop covers not only the USD 7bn in lease obligations but also an additional USD 2bn in pass-throughs like energy bills, insurance, and maintenance — bringing the total value of the guarantee to approximately USD 9bn, CEO Asher Genoot detailed on an investor call Wednesday (December 17).

The 245 MW (IT) data center comes with an estimated construction cost of USD 9m to USD 11m per MW. At the midpoint, this puts total project costs at USD 2.45bn, with roughly USD 2.08bn financed through debt. Hut 8 expects to contribute between USD 300 million and USD 400m in equity, which Genoot says the company is well-positioned to fund internally.

“Our balance sheet today kind of far outweighs the equity that’s needed for the project,” Genoot said. “There is no contingency or there’s no need for financing in order to develop this data center.”

For the initial 15-year term, the lease is expected to generate USD 454m in average annual Net Operating Income (NOI), or roughly USD 1.85m per MW per year. Should all three five-year renewal options be exercised, total NOI over a 30-year horizon would rise to USD 17.5bn, or USD 580m annually.

Hut 8 chose project finance over issuing high-yield bonds, a decision driven by both cost and capital efficiency. CFO Sean Glennan outlined a hypothetical scenario in which a USD 2.5bn high-yield market transaction at 7% would result in USD 175m of annual interest payments from day one, versus a 5.5% target for a delayed-draw structure for the project financing. “So we only use the debt when we need it,” he said. “So if we have to make a big payment, we work with the bank operations folks and we draw that capital down as and when it’s needed.”

Bitcoin mining peers Terawulf, Cipher Mining, and Applied Digital all raised financing for construction in the high-yield market at over 7%.

For Hut 8, additional upside exists through a Right of First Offer (ROFO) for Anthropic on up to 1,000 MW of future capacity on the River Bend site, which avoids the marketability constraints of a Right of First Refusal, the company said.

Hut 8 and Anthropic may also develop up to 1.05 GW of capacity across Hut 8’s development pipeline beyond River Bend.

Construction is expected to begin in earnest following early site prep already underway, with first data hall delivery slated for Q2 2027. The long lead equipment has been secured in advance to mitigate supply chain risks. Jacobs will lead the EPCM efforts, while Vertiv supplies infrastructure components.