Crypto miner Hive Digital drops ‘blockchain’ from name amid pivot to AI

Crypto mining firm Hive Blockchain is now calling itself Hive Digital Technologies — after enacting a branding pivot that seeks to highlight its foray into artificial intelligence.

The Vancour-based mining company said in a July 12 statement it has dropped “blockchain” from its name to better represent the company’s “evolving focus” on revenue opportunities in graphics processing units (GPUs) and cloud computing as well as “its mission to drive advancements in AI” and support the “new Web3 ecosystem.”

“As we expand our GPU Cloud business, we require a strategy that better reflects both sides of our business. We build infrastructure for emerging digital tech, not just blockchain, and we intend to utilize our large fleet of GPUs to grow a cloud hosting business,” said Hive’s CEO Aydin Kilic in a July 12 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Additionally, Hive said that it will use its 38,000-strong fleet of Nvidia GPUs to provide small and medium-sized businesses with a more efficient alternative to major cloud service providers.

“We believe AI and machine learning are going to drive significant demand for GPU compute going forward,” Kilic added.

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While the bulk of the crypto mining companies today focus on mining Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies such as Bitocin (BTC), Hive was among a handful of firms that leveraged GPUs to mine Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network at scale.

Following the completion of the Ethereum Merge in September last year — which saw the blockchain transition to a miner-less Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism — the GPUs once used to mine ETH were rendered drastically less profitable.

Hive isn’t the first mining company to drop “blockchain” from its namesake. On Jan. 3 Bitcoin mining firm Riot Blockchain rebranded to Riot Platforms in a bid to reflect its “increasingly diversified business operations.”

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