Analysis
Amsterdam-listed SWI Group raised €800 million (about $900 million) from institutional investors at a €6.1 billion valuation, the company announced Monday, to expand data-center and AI-compute capacity built on the bones of a former bitcoin-mining operation. The capital converts Genesis Digital Assets -- once backed by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm Alameda Research -- into AI infrastructure sites across Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Sweden, according to Blockhead.
From FTX collateral to AI real estate
Alameda Research put roughly $1.15 billion into Genesis Digital starting in 2021, ending up with a 20% stake before FTX's 2022 collapse. SWI took majority ownership of Genesis Digital in June, after FTX's estate dropped a lawsuit over the stake, and founder and CEO Max-Herve George told the Wall Street Journal he has "zero interest" in bitcoin mining going forward. The plan instead is to market the sites directly to hyperscale cloud providers looking for power-ready land faster than they can permit and build it themselves.
“Until those leases show up, the €6.1 billion mark is a valuation on potential tenants, not contracted revenue.”
SWI's pivot puts it in the same lane as CoreWeave and IREN, both of which built AI-cloud businesses on top of crypto-mining-era power contracts and land, and Bitfarms, which has pursued a similar if smaller conversion. Unlike CoreWeave, which went public earlier this year, SWI is already listed on Euronext Amsterdam under the ticker SWICH, so this raise is a capital increase against an existing public float rather than a pre-IPO round.
A €6.1 billion valuation values SWI at roughly 7.6 times the new raise, a multiple that leans heavily on the assumption that Genesis Digital's power contracts and land entitlements -- not its mining hardware -- are what hyperscalers will pay to lease. That bet mirrors the broader AI-infrastructure financing wave sweeping the sector this month, from data-center lending activity to sovereign-backed campuses abroad.
What the valuation doesn't resolve is demand risk: SWI is betting hyperscalers would rather lease converted mining sites than wait for new builds, but it hasn't disclosed signed hyperscaler commitments for the Texas, Carolina or Sweden properties, only an intention to market them. Until those leases show up, the €6.1 billion mark is a valuation on potential tenants, not contracted revenue.
George's comment that he has zero interest in the business that built Genesis Digital in the first place is the clearest signal yet of how far crypto-mining economics have fallen relative to AI hosting.