AI Infrastructure Market Pulse: GLXY Batch Zero, KEEL, SLNH, BTBT, HIVE, HUT & BTDR Stock News!

0:00Hey guys, welcome back to the channel, McNally Money, the official home of Power Analysis. Another action-packed episode in store for you today. As Anthony Power and I break down the latest in the AI infrastructure sector, a lot to discuss before we get into it. Take a second, smash a like button, guys. Big help to myself in the channel. Anthony loves it. If you're not already subscribed, McNally Money, feel free to join. Let us know in the comments section below what you thought of today's discussion and your current top pick in the space. With that being said, let's get into today's episode. Alright, guys, away we go. Another podcast coming at you. Wednesday afternoon. This is one you're not going to want to miss. We've got more updates on batch zero, specifically Galaxy and Focus today. We've got updates for many of the top miners in the sector, including Keel, BitDear and BitDigital, among many more. Anthony, let's get into it.

1:01Bitcoin, we've decided to do the year to date. We've seen some strength over the last month or so. However, if you look at 2026 as a whole, still down around 10%. Yeah, but you can see from the last sort of three or four weeks, we've started to establish a little position here between 78 and 81,000. You look at the over the course of the year to date when it's reached a sort of high, it's pulled off, but we're sort of having a bit of a stable period, maybe it's coming on the move, but I'd say quite happy with the position of the moment. Slow and steady works for me every day of the week. Yeah, and we were having a little bit before the conversation here today. Let us know in the comments section below. Do you think Bitcoin will break 100,000 US this year or not? I guess an overunder for you guys. Moving into the miners, EI infrastructure players. Yesterday, all green, today showing the volatility we talk about on a daily basis.

2:05Yeah, and it's a tale of two different days. I mean, there's nothing out there today suggesting why there's a pullback. We've had so many announcements from Eurocott and actually, to be honest, the companies that we talk about in a daily basis, extremely positive and we'll cover Galaxy today, but we've had Sloon as good fortune and iron and other companies in that Texas area, hotates as well. They made their announcement first ahead of everybody actually, and then you've seen a trickle of announcements, but there's been no real sort of unexpected news stories. And the stock price is in the red, but it's a volatile space. Still an industry that's fairly much in its infancy if you think about it. I mean, the miners, when they were doing that, the oldest miner was Hive and that's literally only nine years since they started mining, but this is a HPC very much the last

3:08few years, really. And so probably Mark is still trying to work out who's going to be able to deliver on the contracts, who's going to get a contract. And so there's maybe a little bit of uncertainty that way, but you know, I tried to zoom out on it on a daily basis. I mean, we've had a nice pick up if we go to the heat map, nice pick up over the last five days and the month. Today's obviously red, but the five day in the one month looking pretty good there, 12 and 15% up year to date, 35% up and the one year date, 51% up. So as I say, zoom out of the daily change there, look a bit further afield. We've had a nice pull pull back since we hit those lows after the June 22nd, moved down was there. That's really affected a lot of people in this community in a space of very short period of time. When it drops, it can drop really quickly. You've got a sense of like, have a stop loss in place, do I sell? Oh, the share is going to bounce back and you're in, you'd be twisting between sometimes.

4:13It's happened a few times and this time I sort of held the ground and I bought a few more shares as they were going down as well, just to sort of hopefully get the impact of that average when they do start to rise. But as I say, tomorrow might be a different day. Another piece of news comes out when we see a sea of green. So as I say, don't pay too much attention to one day, let the trend be a friend and the trend is looking okay on the other four time periods. Yeah, as they say, stocks take the stairs up, the elevator down and to your point, Anthony, about timing here. We actually highlight our trades in Patreon and on the channel membership and to your credit, I think you're north of 50% cash when we were hitting those highs. I think you're around 10 now. So really taking advantage of some of those swings. The other thing I wanted to pick up on that you said, I thought was interesting. We've seen a number of these companies come out and state whether or not they classified as batch zero, there are some companies that haven't said anything.

5:15So we'll leave that to you to interpret a little bit more on that later with Galaxy. But that's an interesting observation. They are not only who's talked about it, but who hasn't. Now moving into the main event here, Google. This one over in your neck of the woods, Anthony, we've really been highlighting Europe as a key market here. I think nearly three quarters of a billion people. And what's so interesting about Europe is these are established first world countries. So there's a lot of demand for compute and infrastructure. It appears Google's now taken notice. Yeah, Scandinavius becoming the hotbed for data sensors. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is the energy prices there are a lot lower. We've got a lot of hydro power, renewable energy in those three Scandinavian countries, Finland, Norway and Sweden. And secondly, the weather conditions mean that you don't necessarily need as much cooling systems in play because for those three countries, part of the countries are in the Arctic

6:18circle. So it does get relative cold a bit, so much your neck of the woods. The rest of Europe, the challenge there really is about energy prices. And I've highlighted it many times before that the UK industry price for energy is probably about maybe six times higher than the US price. So I've sat and talked to senior executives from some of the companies that have got some of these big contracts out there. And the power price is maybe between four and five cents a kilowatt hour. And I said, now that you're doing HPC, what's the sensitivity like in terms of if the price went up one or two cents a kilowatt hour, what would happen? And the response I got was, if the energy price doubled, he doubt the phone would ring actually. So suggesting that 10 cents is probably the next part in time where we may get a call saying, oh, we've noticed the power price rise.

7:20But when you're paying 30 cents a kilowatt hour, that's the challenge because that's anything into your profits. Now in these Scandinavian countries, we've seen energy prices as low as sort of four, five cents. And unlike Bitcoin mining where they didn't get the benefits of the discount, it looks like data centers at the moment have been receiving some of the discounts in terms of VAT. And so if they're able to get those discounts, it means that you're paying a reasonable price. I've been to Sweden myself. I've seen the biggest data center in Europe at the time, which was about two years ago. I flew over there. And that was the metadata center just outside Bowden where high digital have some of their building sets up there. And to look at 150 megawatts, it's extremely big. I mean, I've been to some of the big mining sites, but when you're looking at data centers of that size, it takes over a number of football pitches.

8:21It looks far bigger than Corsi Con and Corsi Con are 400 megawatts of mining, but these facilities for tier three data centers just look that bit more big and there's a bit more to them as well, like because they are like, you know, significantly different structure, significantly cost more, but was of 10, 12, 15 times more than a bit of mining facility. So you can see the impact. And that's not just in size, but in actual finish. And so you can see now that Google are following suit in terms of following this track across to Finland, just like we've seen in Texas with many miners looking to use their power in Texas for HPC, Scandinavia is getting a lot of impact. And this particular deal, $15 billion is a significant amount. Now, that's 13 billion euros. It's going to be deployed all the way through to 2028 into data centers. And it's going to support some of the energy projects out there as well.

9:23They've signed a 22 year PPA, purchasing power agreement with Fortram. And this live extension power deal sent the fortune shares up 11% on the news of this. Now, both companies will explore new business models for potential reactors at the low vissa site there. This is nuclear, you know, on the table effectively. And if we look at other companies that are operating or looking to operate and grow their sites in Scandinavia, you're starting to see what we call like a crowded field of operators out there. You've got pure DC. They've currently got 110 megawatts. That's going to potentially scale up to 550. You've got Arson, which again, could be up to 500 megawatts. And Nebius building out their finished capacity in recent months with some of their big deals with the hyperscalers. You know, Finland's actually getting this sort of like the Texas of Europe brand associated with it.

10:24Because, you know, it's got that land and power available. You can see now pulling weekly new market entry inquiries from all the hyperscalers. And if you go back a few years ago, Finland was a country that some of the the food was was talked about in terms of Bitcoin mining when they said that Bitcoin mining use more power than Finland. That might be turning on its head there if all these companies are now going to Finland and using up the power. They might be using a little bit more power than Bitcoin at the moment. You know what that means Anthony, we've done a Texas road trip. We might have to do a Finland road trip next. So I'll have to come over there. Now a couple of companies we know operating in the region. This is really why it matters to us on the channel. Google investing over there is obviously great for the macro. But we want to focus in here on a few of the key players we discuss. We know iron had that announcement moving into Spain. In terms of these Nordic companies, you just mentioned hive and BitDear operating in that same location.

11:26Yeah, absolutely. I've been fortunate to visit the hive site in Bowden there. And so those buildings are now being purchased. They run at least originally with I have now they've been purchased. And so now they're going to obviously utilize the power up there. They've moved away from mining. Mining was, you know, proving to be a challenge not in case in terms of the mining itself. In terms of the energy that Swedish authorities were not willing to give any of the discounts that may have been assumed a few years ago in hive. I know in their latest accounts. I've got sort of like a provision, a significant provision. Should they lose their Supreme Court decision based on the VAT discounts that they were expecting. And the last six years of what they've applied to their accounts could go one way or the other. But they've got that provision in the accounts. Everyone's clear and transparent. They're now focusing that power not on mining, but focusing on HPC.

12:27And they're looking to deliver a 25 megawatt IT load, $200 million of investment up there. But they're targeting 45 million and annualized revenue run rate there. So again, you can see the difference in two different strategies there. And the fact that they've got this building and they're going to spend about 200 million means they can probably get that conversion done maybe a little bit quicker than some of the companies were starting from scratch. And they're hopefully going to have this sort of in play by the second half of 2027. So not too far away, maybe a year away from now. But certainly it's all eyes on on Hive and this site in Boatin to deliver HPC. So that's Sweden. Now if we move over to Norway, or title Norway to be specific, bit dear, some big operations here. And to your earlier point Anthony, about why people are going to this location. If you look closely on the slide, you can see a PUE of 1.1.

13:29So this is case in point exactly why they're going to these colder climates where they don't have to use as much energy on the cooling and the auxiliary systems. Yeah, and the key points you mentioned is when we talk about PUE, you've got to look at the fact that in Texas, generally the PUE we were seeing out there is 1.5, which in simplistic terms means that for every megawatt of compute power, you need half a megawatt of an auxiliary power to help power the cooling systems to keep those GPUs at an optimal level in terms of temperature because they get extremely hot. And getting extremely hot in a hot state in North America is a challenge. So you've got to make sure you've got the necessary cooling systems in place. And so do that. You need to lose a lot of power. The difference in sort of like maybe the North, the further North in America and certainly in Scandinavia where, you know,

14:30for most of the year, it's relatively cool. You're not having to use as much auxiliary power to drive cooling because the natural environment will probably keep them cool. I went to Sweden in October and it's a bit like your neck or the wasp rise. You know, plenty of snow. I was on top of that building and there was probably like six to seven inches of snow on top of the building light. You know, so it was a pretty, pretty cold day. And that was only in October, you know, get to sort of like November, December, January and it's extremely cold. You know, I went there with it with it, sort of like a coat of such, but not nothing for like cold weather. And we were on the roof for a short period of time, just to sort of like have a look at the environment around there. But if you've got a 1.1 PUE, that means for every one megawattling your plan compute, you're only using 0.1 of a megawatt of auxiliary power. So effectively, if you've got, you know, a couple of hundred megawatts

15:33on a site and you're able to deliver most of that to compute, you're getting a great return on your power investment. And really, you know, a lot of the miners will say, you know, our compute power is 200 megawatts. And our return is, you know, two million dollars per megawatt. Well, you know, maybe they should be looking at what the return is on the total amount of power. That would be the compute power and the auxiliary power. And what that return is and then do some comparisons because some of these operators in countries where the PUE is relatively low is going to highlight, you know, a lot, a lot better return in terms of operating with, you know, a lower PUE. And so, you know, it's, it is important. It's not the end of the world, but it's, it's certainly important and bit, it looked like I'm going to say the advantage of it in Scandinavia itself. Yeah, it's a good point and bring up Anthony, specifically about the value per megawatt critical versus total.

16:36I guess we'll see how that plays out. Now back to the batch zero updates here. Earlier in the presentation, we mentioned we've heard from Hot. We've heard from iron riot. We actually asked Jason specifically about and saloon. Now to follow that up today, Galaxy, one of the largest players in the air-cott market, they've announced their batch zero results. And again, fairly strong when you look at their portfolio of sites. Absolutely. And so they've been given their verdict on four points who gigawatts of power that they have at their disposal. Now if we look at the Helios site first, you know, they've already signed a contract and handed over the first 133 megawatts of power. If you look at the end of the cylinder power, that's probably about 200 megawatts of the first 800 on that site. So 25% of Helios 1 has already been handed over to Corvieve. They've now received approval for the whole 1.63 gigawatts of base load at Helios.

17:40That's Helios 1 of 800 megawatts and Helios 2 of 830 megawatts. And they're not subject to any further capacity allocation. The remaining 2.6 gigawatts have been classified as study load price. And you can probably explain to the viewers what that really means. Yeah, and we've got a slide to break down these sites in more detail. But in terms of air-cott itself, they've basically come up with a three bucket system. So base load or batch zero status is obviously what you want here. That's the first group of companies or load to get into the system. Then there's a studied load category. So second out of the three, we'll talk about that a little more in a second. And then finally, the third bucket excluded or a future batch. So this would indicate furthest down the line in terms of actually getting those interconnection requests completed. Good point. So now that we know what the different batches are,

18:41this is where it gets a little bit interesting for Galaxy. Now they did have a second site, the Caspian site, there 700 megawatts, which they submitted for base load. And it's been put back by air-cott to studied load. So they're going to have to do some more work. Two of the sites, Selene, 900 megawatts. And the Helios III and IV have, we're already conditionally classified as study load still subject to capacity allocation. So a small amount of disappointment for Galaxy not getting the Caspian there. But remember, they've got another 1.43 gigawatts of power to, you know, to develop into data centers for core weave and for other potential clients at the Helios site there. And this is just a case of a process there. Caspian will go into the next batch and hopefully by that time, they meet all the requirements along with Selene and Helios III and IV,

19:45which will then effectively deliver, you know, this 5.7 gigawatts of pipeline across all four sites, including a new 500 megawatt Merlin campus in McGregor Texas as well. So it's not all doom and gloom. It's still very positive. They still have a lot of work to do. And believe you me, there'll be a lot of capital to get Helios I and II to where that needs to be to hand over only a small percentage. Maybe 12% of the power has actually been allocated. So another 8% over the next few years to be allocated and by that time, hopefully those are the sites come online. Yeah, I was going to say as you're talking about the sites, if you look at their multi gigawatt scale pipeline, these sites that are sitting currently in the study load, these are expected down the road anyways. And to your point, if we look at the Helios data center campus slide, there's a lot of work to keep the team busy here for years into the future. There is and you can see the color code and they've used there. So Helios I is already powered.

20:46And that was powered up when the previous occupiers are go blockchain and had the site there. The 830 Helios II that's now been approved through batch zero. The caspient there, which they submitted for base zero base load eligibility has been put back to study load. And then you've got Helios III, Selene, Helios IV and Merlin II. Taking up to that 5.73 really, gigawatts of power as their potential portfolio substantial amount of power. And that will certainly keep things occupied in there in Texas for galaxy over the next few years at least. Yeah, I think so. Hey, now to your credit Anthony yesterday, we were talking about keel. This is a fan favorite. You had said Moses Lake of the three deals or sites. This is probably still the first one to go. We know we've seen some aerial pictures. They've essentially flattened the mining operations today, taking a step further with a partnership by the likes of power secure.

21:47Yeah, now power secure are going to back the Moses Lake data center campus for keel. They're going to use modular integrated backup power system design for scalability as the campus grows itself. And this solution, the peak shaving solution also optimizes energy is during high system low periods, not just backup resiliency. Now remember keels got this 2.2 gigawatts of pipeline and the broader footprint spans. Not just Washington, but Pennsylvania and Quebec with green connections already in place. Power secure themselves. They've got a 2 gigawatt track record as you can see from the from the visual there. There are southern company subsidiary and they deployed over 2 gigawatts of microgrid capacity and $900 million in efficiency upgrades since they've been going. So a really good partnership for keel and you can see you know with these companies now progressing their power to HPC signing up these contracts to make sure they have the right level of partnerships in place to deliver.

22:57The expectancy to these clients that will be taking on these sites when they when they get the energization. Yeah, great development and we've heard a number of the CEOs talk about this peak shaving. We've heard terrible. Mara essentially power rates fluctuate based on demand. So we've heard the highest price power may only represent a few percentage points in terms of the total amount of time in a year. If you're able to use backup or battery power to offset those peak energy cycles, really some savings to the business. We saw that on Bitcoin mining and now obviously on AI as well. Now we talked about a conference on the west coast going on next week, the all in conference yesterday, iron, keel sponsoring that one simultaneously. We've got one in New York on the east coast going a couple of our companies represented there as well. Yeah, and I've got to say I'm looking back over the last sort of four or five years have been to many conferences. I'm going to say the HC Wainwright purely from the fact.

24:01If you look at the companies that we talk about on a daily basis was probably the best conference that we could have attended. You know, in all those years because we sat through I think maybe 16 17 presentations of which majority are the companies that we we talk about. You know, regularly we got to you know to discuss with the CEOs and with some of the senior teams there as well. Listen to something a big stage panel discussion groups as well. And also have the likes of Michael sailor give a sort of like an update on Bitcoin and rally the troops to effectively with one of his four two minutes speech as well. So not going to be there this year. Obviously, I'm still in the far east and I actually get back to the UK on the 15th of September this this takes place on the 14th and 15th certainly in my diary for next year. We are hoping to get to the cancer Fitzgerald conference later in the year if we can get access that I think you're going to get a similar number of companies going to that one as well there.

25:06But there's two key panels and going to be held at the HC Wayne right conference on the 14th and the 15th. The first one is powering the AI boom and Bitcoin network the digital infrastructure companies leading the charge. And we know that Santa bar for a bit digital and John Bellas air from Suluena are both going to be part of that panel there. And then there's a second day there's an investment case for digital asset treasury companies and it looks like Sam's going to be on that panel as well. So plenty worth the Santa bar. I've seen a speaker at number of conferences. He knows his stuff and he's one person that can articulate exactly where the company's moving to and you know great to see. Great to see him and John speaking on behalf of their companies at one of the best I say one of the best conference is I've ever been. And there's some big shot money managers here. It's a big catalyst for these companies. I remember last year Ben Gagnon went on stage immediately afterwards.

26:08He was surrounded by investment banks. So we'll try and get some clips and footage of that conference for you guys next week. So we're going to go on a positive note here Anthony the markets red today will do a feel good story. We've been talking a lot about the positives of data centers in communities. We've actually seen it firsthand in Texas. Not only the amount of workers on site, but every restaurant we went to every outing we did. There was hats, there was shirts, there was staff really embedded in these communities. And so we've been talking about the things that we've been talking about on Fox News and really summarizes it quite nicely. You know, there's a data center being built really close to my house and you cannot believe the hundreds and hundreds of pickup trucks that are in that employee parking lot. It has been an absolute boon to their jobs when you see all the electricians, all the welders, all the heavy equipment operators. It's thousands of people now and not into the future.

27:11Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the future because again, these aren't just one off jobs. You do the job. You build a facility. Then you're done. There's a lot of maintenance that needs to go on. So a lot of these blue collar jobs are going to be permanent dare I say. Yeah, this is a great update. And we can we know firsthand from our visits to the children's site. And last year in November where we literally said it's like a small town. Children's isn't a big town. I think the population is around about 6000. Well, there's over 2000 people now working on the site for iron, they're delivering horizon 1234 and getting ready for horizon five and six as we speak as well. So the amount of vehicles, electricians, welders, heavy lifting equipment operators, all managing to move around the site there. And it was just sort of like you just caught my attention, you know, on a site. How many people they're working. We got to meet quite a few people while we're there. Some of the workforce there. Mostly, most of the since the podcast they were coming up asking for photographs shaking hands and so it was a really good experience there.

28:18Coursey carner as well as when we were there. The first time we were there when they were building out building Z182 B1 B2, the 400 megawatts that they're currently using for Bitcoin mining using immersion, cooling technology. There's a significant amount of vehicles on that site, but at the children's site, I really think because they wanted to deliver this horizon 1234 in a very, very short space of time. They really ramped up and I think, currently the moment, and dam was saying just last week they've got 4000 employees working on sites around around North America at the moment. And that's a that's a significant amount, but it's great to see because what it does is it brings these sites bringing lots of work and they might be temporary for some people in terms of the construction. But when the site is built, you've got to have people there to then sort of maintain a science, carry out the life cycling of the science, you know, if anything goes wrong, they fix it.

29:18And so these create a lot of jobs and you're going to want people in the local area delivering that, you know, you don't want people traveling 50 60 miles to get to to work. If you've got the skill sets and local area, this is great for local areas money going into that local area as well. And revenue is going in there much needed revenues helping the tax situation, helping the budget situation. So that may be the impact is positive to residents. It may may may help their pockets as well if there's big industries in the area that are paying significant tax revenues. And that will help maybe in terms of what's required from the remaining residents to get to the budget levels there. And we've seen in some areas where people have been against data sensors, against mining companies going in there. And when they voted them out, they're actual bills when talking in one case, I think they doubled. And they said, why is our bills done? So well, the reason is the data center we're going to pick up half the bill.

30:21And that's what you've done. You've, you know, you vote with your pockets because these days, since we'll find an alternative site. And that's why a lot of them do a lot on due diligence first. So go into these sites. And they're going to the areas and they'll speak to locals and get a feel. We've seen that from a number of companies that, you know, they really want to work together with the local communities, invest in local communities in terms of education in terms of like, you know, powering up homes, powering up schools. There's more to it than just putting a site there and watching the revenues come through the, through the Tills. There's a lot more to it. Yeah, and we heard from Ben in relation to Keel. They were actually involved in the community before they even had a site or the site purchase. So another point you brought up, I think going to be critically important. Iron, 4,000 workers. There's a lot to actually executing on these L.O.I.s in contracts. It's one thing to get power, get an L.O.I. But are you going to be able to find 4,000 people in Texas right now to build a data center? I'm not sure.

31:25But we know a lot of the companies we cover already have that workforce in place. Now, case in point, final story of the day, HUD 8 to your point, Anthony, investing in the community this time in terms of the school board and teachers. This is a significant impact to their average pay. Absolutely. There's a project now in West Philly, Shiana Parish, L.A. and it's structured a pilot payment in lieu of taxes, which will provide 7,000 of stipends, 7,000 dollars of stipends to all school employees for two years. Now, effectively, this is going to lift the starting teacher pay by around about 10%. So again, companies going into these locations, finding where there's the issues and coming out with solutions to some of the issues to help, you know, obviously, put in their company in sort of like a better frame. A lot of people carry what I would say is like a bit of unconscious bias towards day since they may have read something in the newspaper and article online to say it was all doing and gluing.

32:33But these companies are trying their best to help deliver things in the community. This is a perfect example of that there, especially for new teachers starting. San Luis, don't great and lots of going in there and said, not on our watch, we're going to help you out with the first couple of years. Yeah, awesome news in Louisiana and congrats. That's great to hear from the team at heart. That wraps it up for today, folks. A lot of good topics and discussion. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, specifically on Galaxy and their batch zero outcome. We'll be back here tomorrow with our regular podcasts and remember guys newsletter out this Friday. We've got a number of great features in there this week. A hive and iron to name a few. A lot of great data points and information again, free to everyone comes out each and every Friday. Sign up on the power analysis website. Thanks so much. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

33:34Bye.