Riot and Hut 8 Offload Billions in Bitcoin for AI and Share Repurchases

The third-quarter reports from two major publicly traded bitcoin miners came out on Wednesday. Each used the filing to verify that they have been offloading the digital currency they were created to amass.

Riot Platforms has disposed of 20,264 BTC this year, generating roughly $1.5 billion. Hut 8 has offloaded 3,102 BTC since July to backstop $250 million in stock buybacks.

The two companies are using the proceeds for distinct purposes. Riot is funding data center builds, while Hut 8 is repurchasing its shares. At the end of September, Riot held 2,418 BTC, valued at roughly $202 million using that quarter's closing price of $83,554. The firm began the year with 18,005 BTC.

Hut 8 disclosed that the combined holdings of the parent company and its majority-owned American Bitcoin entity totaled 16,787 BTC on Sept. 30, with a market value of $1.4 billion. Hut 8's direct share of this was $697.4 million, a figure reduced by sales in October.

Riot's Treasury Funds Construction

Riot has maintained a consistent pace of sales throughout the year. It sold 3,778 bitcoin in Q1, roughly 2.5 times its output, followed by 4,300 in Q2 and an additional 12,186 in Q3. The capital from these sales paid for data center operations and settled a $200 million Coinbase credit line in full, freeing up all coins that had been used as collateral. No equity was raised in 2026.

The catalyst for the heavy selling became clear with the quarterly release. Riot agreed to a 15-year triple-net lease with an unnamed tenant, the "Frontier AI Lab," covering the entirety of its Corsicana, Texas facility. This campus has 910 MW of critical IT capacity, and the lease is valued at approximately $28 billion over the term, with average yearly rent of $1.8 billion.

Including its agreement with AMD and the prior Rockdale lease with the same tenant, Riot has now secured leases for 1,151 MW, representing a total value of around $38 billion. According to the firm's statement, CEO Jason Les estimated net operating income would surpass $2 billion annually once fully deployed.

The arrangement minimizes Riot's financial commitment. The capital expense per MW is roughly $6 million, half the cost of a standard Tier 3 facility. Riot contributes $2 million of this for site preparation and power infrastructure, with the tenant covering the remainder, which will be repaid via non-recourse project debt upon completion of each phase. Deliveries are scheduled from September 2027 to July 2028.

Bitcoin mining remains an operational sideline. Riot mined 1,637 BTC over the quarter at an average pre-depreciation cost of $39,265. However, mining revenue dropped 28% to $116 million, driven by a decline in the average price from $114,361 a year ago to $70,855.

Overall revenue came in at $181.4 million, unchanged from a year earlier, as income from its data center and engineering divisions made up for the shortfall in mining revenue.

Hut 8 Swaps Bitcoin for Shares

Hut 8's bitcoin disposals were directed at rewarding shareholders rather than paying contractors. During the quarter, it sold roughly 954 bitcoin ($74.8 million), followed by another 2,148 BTC ($175.4 million) in October. This allowed the company to retire 3.3 million shares, totaling $250 million in repurchases.

The board increased the buyback authorization to $1 billion on Nov. 2. CEO Asher Genoot noted that shareholders "now own a larger share of a growing platform following share repurchases funded with Bitcoin from our balance sheet."

Hut 8 maintains that its data center projects will not require the use of its bitcoin reserves. The firm secured a $1.2 billion senior secured revolving credit facility, which remained untouched at the quarter's close. It intends for the River Bend and Beacon Point projects to be financed at the project level, avoiding the need for parent company equity or recourse debt.

The tenant at Beacon Point doubled its commitment by signing a second 352 MW lease. This pushed the total contracted value for the campus to roughly $19.6 billion and across Hut 8's entire portfolio to $26.6 billion.

Additionally, Hut 8 agreed to acquire two energized sites in West Texas, offering up to 230 MW, from a Chapter 11 proceeding for a maximum of $180 million.

Hut 8's quarterly net income of $189.5 million was supported by $413.8 million in digital asset gains, largely unrealized. Revenue dropped to $71.1 million from $83.5 million, a result of the divestiture of its legacy cloud operation and the migration of its mining activities to American Bitcoin, a venture backed by the Trump family in which Hut 8 owns a majority interest. Adjusted EBITDA, calculated without bitcoin mark-to-market adjustments, stood at $33 million.

On the day of the reports, Hut 8's stock fell 17% while Riot's stock rose roughly 13%.