Australia crypto miner further bolsters US presence with a $110M fundraise

Australian firm Arkon Energy is expanding its US bitcoin mining footprint just six months after first entering North America — and has raised $110 million to help fuel the growth.

The Sydney-based company has agreed to purchase facilities from blockchain data center consultant Sabre56. The new sites are set to triple its capacity to 300 megawatts (MW).

Sabre56 is set to oversee operations across Arkon’s six US bitcoin mining facilities.

The agreement comes as Arkon has secured an additional $110 million in a funding round led by Bluesky Capital Management — of which $80 million will go toward the US expansion.

The other $30 million is earmarked for an artificial intelligence cloud service project at Arkon’s 30MW data center in Norway, the company said.

Founded in 2019, Arkon Energy closed a $28 million funding round in November 2022. The capital came as the firm acquired Norway data center Hydrokraft. Arkon then, in June, acquired a data center in Hannibal, OH with a “first-stage design capacity” of 100MW.

The company’s latest buy includes an operational facility in Hopedale, OH contracted to a hosting client. The acquisitions add an initial 50MW of initial capacity, as well as 150MW more across new sites in Texas and North Carolina — set to be completed by Aug. 24, the company told Blockworks Thursday.

Josh Payne, Arkon Energy’s founder and CEO, told Blockworks there is roughly 400MW of bitcoin mining machine capacity produced each month, noting the US has the most new hosting capacity demand.

“This creates…an excellent opportunity to build, own and operate the scarce resource which is the data center, the low-cost power connection and the optic fibre connection,” he added.

The deal comes after Sabre56 raised $35 million in February and made a deal with GEM mining in May to host 4,510 of the firm’s bitcoin miners at its new Wyoming data centers.

Sabre56 founder Phil Harvey previously told Blockworks the company was looking to build more hosting facilities and ultimately wind down its consulting business.  

(Source: Blockworks)