HIVE Digital Technologies will expand its Yguazú, Paraguay site by 100 MW under a Phase 3 build, taking the hydroelectric campus to 400 MW by the third quarter of 2026, the company said.

The capacity would rank Yguazú, all of it sourced from the Itaipú Dam, as the largest hydro-powered Bitcoin mining campus in Paraguay. HIVE, which trades on the TSX Venture Exchange and Nasdaq under the ticker HIVE, is positioning the build as both a mining expansion and the foundation for a separate AI factory due online in the second half of 2027.

What does Phase 3 actually add?

Phase 1 went live in April 2025 at 200 MW. Phase 2 followed in September 2025, lifting capacity to 300 MW. At that scale, the campus currently produces roughly 8.5 BTC per day.

The 100 MW Phase 3 tranche follows HIVE's January 2025 acquisition of the Yguazú data center from Bitfarms. Since closing, the company has committed more than $400 million to its Paraguay operations, $130 million of which has gone to construction costs.

How does this fit the global hashrate target?

HIVE is targeting 35 exahashes per second (EH/s) of global Bitcoin mining capacity by the end of 2026, up from 22 EH/s in October 2025. Yguazú sits at the operational center of that push, and additional capacity there should support the upward trajectory once it is energized.

The current 8.5 BTC daily output gives investors a yardstick for measuring how much incremental production the new 100 MW of load actually delivers.

Where does the AI piece fit?

Bitcoin mining is only half of the Paraguay thesis. HIVE plans a dedicated AI factory, served by a new 100 MW substation, with operations targeted for H2 2027. The company has publicly committed to scaling its high-performance computing and AI capabilities fivefold.

Infrastructure partners, a capex split, and any tenant agreements were not disclosed in the company's announcement. The 2027 launch would convert HIVE from a pure-play Bitcoin miner into a hybrid HPC operator, contingent on securing compute workloads large enough to fill the new substation capacity.

Why Paraguay, and why hydro?

Energy cost is the decisive variable in mining economics, and electricity is typically the largest operating line on a miner's balance sheet. Paraguay offers low-cost hydroelectricity from the Itaipú Dam, the binational facility shared with Brazil. HIVE has tied its cost base to that single supply source, locking in competitive rates as long as Itaipú output holds.

The company participates in grid demand response, ramping power usage up or down when system operators signal a need. Gabriel Lamas, HIVE's country president in Paraguay, has framed the operation as a contributor to grid stability rather than a passive drain on it, attributing that role to HIVE's ability to modulate demand on the national grid.

What are the risks?

Concentration risk is the most obvious exposure. A large share of HIVE's growth hinges on a single country and a single dam. Any shift in Paraguayan energy policy, Itaipú allocation rules, or transmission constraints would hit Yguazú directly and propagate through the company's global mining economics.

Execution risk comes next. Two phases of the Yguazú build landed in 2025. Phase 3 must clear by Q3 2026 if the 35 EH/s end-of-year target is to remain credible to investors. Any slippage widens the gap between current hashrate and stated goals.

The HPC expansion introduces a third variable. The AI factory is forward-looking optionality rather than current revenue. Markets will look for capex updates, customer disclosures, and substation progress as the 2027 launch window approaches, with each data point recalibrating the value investors assign to the non-Bitcoin side of the thesis.