TL;DR · 30-second read
The Short Version
A company called Hut 8 is building a $10 billion computing center in rural Louisiana, expected to house work for the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic. Its chief executive said the project nearly fell apart because it could not get enough electricity, and he thanked Louisiana’s governor for fixing that.
About three months before the groundbreaking, a company Hut 8 owns gave $25,000 to the governor’s political fund. Hut 8 says donations are separate from its business deals. A political scientist called the gift legal and common.
The bigger question: who decides which giant projects get electricity, and who pays for it.
Hut 8 broke ground on Monday, October 5, on its River Bend data center in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, a project whose first phase Gov. Jeff Landry said will bring up to $10 billion in investment, about 1,000 construction jobs and 268 permanent jobs. Hut 8 has signed a 15-year, $7 billion lease with Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of capacity, and Anthropic confirmed it is the expected tenant. Landry and Donald Trump Jr. attended the event.
The Gulf States Newsroom reported that campaign finance records show US Data Mining Group Inc., a wholly owned Hut 8 subsidiary that does business as US Bitcoin Corp., gave $25,000 to Cajun PAC II, Landry’s political action committee, on June 24. Hut 8 confirmed the subsidiary relationship and said its political contributions are separate from its project negotiations and commercial decisions.
Executive Summary
Hut 8, a company that built its business in bitcoin mining, is developing River Bend as an AI computing campus anchored by a $7 billion, 15-year lease with Fluidstack. At the groundbreaking, CEO Asher Genoot said the company nearly lost the project because it did not yet have the power it needed, and credited Landry with making sure power was available when the project needed it.
That statement matters more for the industry than the size of the donation. Entergy, the local utility, says the power was committed through its standard interconnection process, but also that it coordinates closely with Louisiana Economic Development and the Governor’s Office on any large economic development project. For AI developers weighing Louisiana, that describes a power-allocation process in which state economic development officials are standing participants, not bystanders.
The $25,000 contribution, made just over three months before the groundbreaking, raises a fair question about political access. The public record does not show any link between the gift and the power commitment, and a political scientist interviewed about it called the contribution neither unusual nor illegal, while noting that such exchanges can erode public trust.
Power, Not Land or a Tenant, Was the Deal-Breaker
The most consequential line from the groundbreaking was not about politics. Genoot said Hut 8 nearly lost River Bend because it lacked the power it needed, and that “Gov. Landry changed that.” For a campus whose anchor lease covers 245 megawatts of capacity (megawatts measure how much electricity a site can draw at any moment), the grid connection is the asset. Land, buildings and a signed $7 billion lease are worth little if the electricity cannot be delivered on schedule.
Entergy describes the same outcome from a different angle: power was committed through its standard interconnection process, the procedure a utility uses to study and approve a new large connection to its grid, and for any large economic development project it coordinates closely with Louisiana Economic Development (LED) and the Governor’s Office. West Feliciana Parish President Kenny Havard put it more bluntly: “Entergy and LED together decide where the winners and losers are going to be.” Read together, these accounts are not contradictory. The formal mechanism is the utility’s process; by Entergy’s own description, state economic development officials take part in it for projects of this size.
The operational consequence for developers is that in Louisiana, securing power for a large AI campus is a state-coordination exercise as well as an engineering and tariff exercise. Relationships with LED and the governor’s office sit alongside load studies and substation design in site-selection diligence. Hut 8 also carried part of the hard cost itself: Havard said the company paid for the substation and the lines connecting the site to a nearby nuclear plant, infrastructure the utility would otherwise have had to plan and finance.
The $25,000 Question: Access Is Plausible, Exchange Is Unshown
The contribution came from US Data Mining Group, which merged with Hut 8 in 2023 and shares a Miami address with American Bitcoin Corp., the bitcoin mining venture Hut 8 launched in March 2025 with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Cajun PAC II raised $377,500 in June, so the $25,000 gift was one contribution among many that month. Hut 8 says it “engages in the political process on issues relevant to our business and the communities where we operate.”
LSU political scientist Robert Hogan said he would be surprised if a company building data centers did not give to funds controlled by receptive governors, and that a gift of this size is unlikely to change an official’s position, though it could help “around the edges” with access or getting calls returned. He also said such exchanges undermine public trust. Both points hold at once: the contribution is ordinary by industry standards, and ordinary practices can still carry a cost in public confidence.
Fair scrutiny cuts both ways. Nothing in the record ties the contribution to the power commitment, and Entergy characterises that commitment as standard process. Equally, Hut 8’s assurance that contributions are separate from commercial decisions is a statement the public cannot test without a timeline of when the power problem was resolved. The record also does not explain how Landry’s August remark that he didn’t “know about that one” fits with Genoot’s account of the governor personally clearing the power obstacle.
An Open Local Deal Inside a Confidential State Process
River Bend departs from other large Louisiana industrial projects in one notable way: parish officials never signed nondisclosure agreements. Havard said neither Hut 8 nor LED asked for one, and the parish negotiated its payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement, a negotiated payment that replaces some or all ordinary property taxes, in public meetings and posted the details online. Hut 8 said its local agreements went through established public processes.
The state layer is less visible. LED signed an NDA with Anthropic in September 2025. Hut 8 expects to use the state’s sales and use tax rebate for data center equipment, originally created to attract Meta’s Richland Parish data center, and the Quality Jobs program, subject to eligibility, approval and compliance. Neither incentive has been publicly valued for this project. The job figures also need reading closely: Landry cited 268 permanent jobs, while Hut 8 said its originally announced 265-job estimate included both direct and indirect employment.
What the $7 Billion Lease Secures, and Who Pays for the Grid
On a straight-line basis, a $7 billion lease over 15 years averages roughly $467 million a year in contracted revenue for 245 megawatts, which is the economic case for paying for a substation and transmission lines up front. Genoot called River Bend “the first” Hut 8 campus in Louisiana, signalling more power demand to come.
The tenant side carries its own exposures. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Fluidstack is in talks with the Pentagon for a $5 billion loan to finance AI infrastructure, without specifying a project. Anthropic, the expected occupant, has been in a legal dispute with the Trump administration since February, when the Defense Department designated it a national security supply-chain risk; the department says it has stopped using Anthropic’s products. Neither development has been tied to River Bend, but both bear on the counterparties behind the lease.
The unresolved public issue is cost allocation. Havard said Louisiana cannot keep building data centers “and then put it on the rate payers,” and suggested a separate rate class for data centers, meaning a distinct pricing category so their grid costs are not blended into household bills. Hut 8 funding its own substation addresses part of that concern; the terms of its ongoing power supply would address the rest, and those have not been disclosed.
Background
Hut 8 Corp. built its business in bitcoin mining and merged with US Data Mining Group, which does business as US Bitcoin Corp., in 2023. In March 2025 it launched American Bitcoin with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Like several companies that grew up in bitcoin mining, Hut 8 is now converting its experience with large power loads into AI data center development, and AI infrastructure provider Fluidstack has signed agreements with Hut 8 and other former miners.
Louisiana, under Gov. Jeff Landry, has positioned itself as open to large data center projects, including creating a sales and use tax rebate for data center equipment to win Meta’s Richland Parish campus. Entergy is the utility serving the River Bend site, and Louisiana Economic Development is the state agency that recruits and negotiates incentives for large industrial projects. Source: Hut 8 donated to Gov. Landry’s PAC months before Louisiana data center groundbreaking — Gulf States Newsroom reporting, via KRVS Radio Acadie, on Hut 8’s River Bend groundbreaking, its subsidiary’s contribution to Cajun PAC II, and how the project secured power.Sources