Keel decommissions all four US Bitcoin mines in AI pivot

Keel Infrastructure, the company formerly known as Bitfarms, has decommissioned all four of its US Bitcoin mining sites. That retires the business model. The same quarter brought a $140.8 million operating loss. The shutdowns are detailed in Keel's second-quarter results, which Data Center Dynamics reported on August 20.

Mining stopped at Moses Lake in Washington on April 28. That site is rated at 18MW. The Panther Creek, Scrubgrass, and Sharon properties in Pennsylvania followed on June 29. Two of the Pennsylvania properties, Panther Creek and Scrubgrass, still sell electricity to the grid, so they keep producing revenue while the redevelopment works through permitting.

Second-quarter revenue came to $30.4 million. A year earlier it was $60.9 million. Management blamed weaker Bitcoin mining economics and the Moses Lake closure. The year-ago quarter produced income of $10.8 million. The latest quarter's operating loss includes $84.1 million of depreciation and amortization. Net loss widened to $65 million.

Mining economics made the decision for Keel. Revenue had already halved before the last US sites went dark. The bet now is that the same power contracts and substations that kept Bitcoin rigs running will command higher prices from AI tenants.

Keel has rebuilt its balance sheet to pay for that bet. It raised $458 million through a convertible note offering in the quarter. As of August 7 it held roughly $819 million in liquidity. Unrestricted cash accounted for $698 million of that. Bitcoin added $121 million. The company sold 1,085 Bitcoin between April 1 and August 7. The proceeds came to $75 million. The sale left 1,861 coins in reserve.

The mining fleet is being reworked into three US data center projects. Their combined gross capacity is 478MW. Moses Lake is expected to be the first to generate revenue, with money arriving in 2027. Zoning is approved there, the mining building has been demolished, and land development and environmental permits are still in progress.

In Pennsylvania, Keel is building a 110MW data center at Sharon. Keel is also planning a 350MW hyperscale campus at Panther Creek. The Panther Creek site spans 336 acres. It could eventually hold more than 500MW. Sharon has secured zoning and land development approvals, and transformers have already been delivered.

This month, Upper Merion Township in Pennsylvania denied a five-site data center plan. The scheme covered 4.6 million square feet. Approvals are becoming the bottleneck for the industry. Keel's existing zoning wins give it a position that newer proposals will have to fight for.

CEO Ben Gagnon said the three priority sites are nearing full permitting and that multiple prospective tenants are negotiating for capacity at each location. The company's report names none of them, and it does not disclose a signed offtake. For now, the revenue case depends on the assumption that AI demand will be there when construction finishes.

The conversion also reaches into Canada. Keel has secured local approval to consolidate the power allocated to three existing Canadian Bitcoin mining sites into a single campus in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The campus is planned at 96MW, and its use would switch to HPC and AI workloads, subject to provincial approval. The remaining Canadian mining sites keep operating during the shift. Latin America is fully wound down. The last Paraguayan facility was sold in April. The Argentinian operation was abandoned after it lost its power supply.

This is a familiar pitch to anyone underwriting digital infrastructure. Mining sites arrive with substations, interconnection rights, and committed power blocks, which are precisely the inputs a data center needs, and the market has started paying for conversions. Bitdeer, another mining convert, pre-sold half of its planned Malaysian AI data center before the building went live. The project is rated at 9.5MW. The contract runs for five years. It was worth $400 million. The deal shows offtake can be secured ahead of construction.

Keel's version is a larger test. The US pipeline spans three sites. It totals 478MW. A Canadian candidate adds another 96MW. Tenant names have not been produced. The balance sheet can carry Keel to 2027, when Moses Lake revenue is scheduled to begin. The latest quarter shows how quickly mining income evaporated. The first signed tenant contract, and the price per kilowatt attached to it, will be the next disclosure that matters. Tenants are what turn 478MW into an investment case.