The Frankfurt-based company Northern Data Group, primarily a bitcoin (BTC) mining company that is expanding into specialized high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, has successfully secured a financial agreement with Tether Group.
This €575 million injection of funds is aimed at enhancing Northern Data’s investment in cutting-edge hardware, which plays a crucial role in advancing the next generation of generative AI.
The company highlighted that Tether’s investment, as the largest issuer of stablecoins in the cryptocurrency domain, bolsters Northern Data’s position in the expanding HPC landscape. It empowers Northern Data to expand its offerings as a provider of generative AI cloud services. The growing interest in generative AI has strained data centers, resulting in a shortage of space and escalating infrastructure costs.
Northern Data views this move as pivotal, given the rising demand for computational power. Tether’s entry into the HPC sector through this funding aligns with its broader strategy of supporting infrastructure crucial to AI and blockchain technologies. Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s CEO, expressed a similar sentiment, saying:
Tether Group is pleased to back Northern Data Group in its capability to offer customers access to flexible, energy-efficient high-performance computing infrastructure.
Through its subsidiary, Taiga Cloud, a provider of generative AI cloud services, Northern Data Group delivers energy-efficient computing power to businesses and research institutions, using the latest NVIDIA technology. This news follows Tether’s substantial investment of $420 million in Nvidia‘s H100 GPUs, marking a significant foray into the AI hardware market.
This development is consistent with Tether’s recent acquisition of a 20 percent stake in Northern Data, which followed its venture into bitcoin mining and the addition of BTC to the company’s balance sheet, among other endeavors. The company also released its assurance opinion report, which was reviewed by BDO, earlier this week.