HIVE’s BUZZ HPC Closes USD $220 Million Sovereign AI GPU Contract with Bell AI Fabric for Cohere Inc.

Vancouver, BC, June 18, 2026 — HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (TSX: HIVE) (Nasdaq: HIVE) (FSE: YO0) (BVC: HIVECO) (the “Company” or “HIVE”), through its wholly owned subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing Inc. (“BUZZ HPC”), today announced a landmark sovereign AI infrastructure deal involving Bell Canada (TSX: BCE | NYSE: BCE) and Cohere Inc., marking a significant milestone in Canada’s AI infrastructure ecosystem.

The collaboration brings together Bell AI Fabric’s national data centre and connectivity platform, Cohere’s security-first enterprise-grade AI solutions and large language model capabilities, and BUZZ HPC’s NVIDIA-accelerated GPU cloud and AI factory expertise into a single, integrated Canadian AI stack. Together, the companies are delivering full-stack, production-grade sovereign AI infrastructure built in Canada, for Canadian enterprise and government customers.

BUZZ HPC has executed a three-year GPU cloud contract with a total contract value of approximately USD $220 million. Through BUZZ HPC, HIVE has procured NVIDIA AI infrastructure powered by 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs as a part of NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems interconnected with NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand scale-out networking, built to NVIDIA reference architecture standards and utilizing advanced liquid cooling.

BUZZ HPC will deploy its sovereign AI cloud and GPU cluster infrastructure at Bell’s purpose-built facility in Merritt, British Columbia. The deployment will provide the high-performance compute layer on which Cohere will operate its foundation models and enterprise AI solutions for government and corporate customers across Canada. BUZZ HPC’s AI factories are powered by renewable energy and designed for ultra-low power usage effectiveness (PUE), bringing industrial-scale GPU capacity to one of Canada’s most strategically important AI deployments.

Canada’s federal AI strategy has a clear mandate: invest in Canadian technology sovereignty and keep Canadian data secure under Canadian control. This partnership directly supports that mandate by combining Canadian connectivity, Canadian compute infrastructure, and Canadian AI models into a secure national platform.

HIVE is funding the purchase of the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell rack-scale systems using a portion of the proceeds from its recent USD $115 million convertible note financing completed in April 2026. Hypertec, a Canadian 42-year OEM veteran in high-performance computing is delivering a bespoke GPU server solution, from hardware procurement and system integration through to installation, commissioning, and OEM support.

The partnership further strengthens BUZZ’s position as a leading sovereign AI cloud provider in the Canadian market, alongside Bell AI Fabric’s role as the connective tissue of Canada’s sovereign AI ecosystem. Together, the platform integrates connectivity, data centres, compute, professional services, and cybersecurity into a unified national AI infrastructure platform. For enterprise and government customers, the combined stack provides enhanced control over compute sovereignty, model security, performance, and operational governance. The compute infrastructure will remain entirely within Canadian borders and operate under Canadian standards.

Executive Commentary

"Canada helped pioneer modern artificial intelligence. What we have lacked is not talent, it is industrial infrastructure to commercialize that talent at scale before others do it for us. This partnership with Bell and Cohere is a defining moment. BUZZ HPC is the GPU factory layer that transforms Canada's AI ambitions from political promises into productive national assets. Sophisticated investors understand that the companies building sovereign AI infrastructure today are positioning for a decade of asymmetric returns. HIVE is one of the very few companies in the world operating at the intersection of Tier-I data centers, AI compute, and sovereign infrastructure and this deal validates that thesis at the highest level of Canadian enterprise."

— Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman, HIVE Digital Technologies

"We are very pleased to announce that our contracted HPC revenue target has surpassed $100m. We expect this NVIDIA GB200 deployment to go live in late 2026 to early 2027, adding approximately contracted $70m ARR to our current realized $35m ARR. A technological revolution requires new infrastructure. The industrial revolution required factories. The internet required fibre networks and hyperscale data centres. Artificial intelligence requires AI Factories, Tier III data centers with AI optimized GPU compute clusters, that is what we are building.

This deployment brings together Canadian connectivity and compute, in Canadian data centres, running Canadian AI foundational models. The result is a unified platform capable of supporting some of the most demanding AI workloads in the world. Our objective is simple: convert clean energy into intelligence at scale and make Canada one of the most important sovereign AI jurisdictions on Earth. This partnership demonstrates that Canada is ready to lead.”

— Aydin Kilic, President & CEO, HIVE Digital Technologies

“AI starts with great models and software, but it becomes transformative when powered by the right infrastructure. At BUZZ, we see AI as energy transformed into intelligence delivered at scale through a sovereign Canadian platform with Bell and Cohere. For years, Canada led the world in AI research while importing much of the infrastructure required to scale it. That changes now.

This partnership brings together a combination of capabilities that do not exist anywhere else in Canada today: Bell’s national platform, Cohere’s world-class enterprise AI solutions, Hypertec’s Canadian-built GPU servers, and BUZZ’s AI factory and sovereign AI cloud powered by NVIDIA’s full-stack AI infrastructure.  What we have built together is more than a technology partnership. We have built an AI manufacturing platform for Canada. These AI Factories convert renewable energy into one of the most valuable products in the world: intelligence.

The significance of this goes beyond a single contract. Every industry will be rebuilt around AI over the next decade. The countries that own the infrastructure will capture the economic value. The countries that don’t will rent it. We chose to build. This deployment creates sovereign Canadian compute at industrial scale, capable of running, fine-tuning, and serving advanced AI systems entirely within Canadian borders. The future isn’t something that happens to us. The future is something we build. Today, Canada takes a major step toward building its own.”

— Craig Tavares, President & COO, BUZZ HPC

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