infrastructure
SWI Group raises €800M to convert ex-FTX miner Genesis Digital's Texas and Sweden sites to AI
Euronext Amsterdam-listed SWI, now at a €6.1B valuation, will repurpose Genesis Digital's 1.3GW mining fleet for AI/HPC and sell its Kazakhstan sites.
SWI Group (Euronext Amsterdam: SWICH) announced on October 12 that it has closed a €800M institutional capital raise, per CoinDesk, at a €6.1B valuation. CoinDesk puts the raise at $894M. Cryptoast confirms the same deal and adds that SWI's cumulative equity raised since March 2026 now exceeds €1B. The money is earmarked for converting Genesis Digital Assets — the former FTX-linked bitcoin miner SWI took control of in June — into an AI and HPC infrastructure operator.
The deal, in numbers
- Raise: €800M (≈ $894M).
- Valuation: €6.1B post-money.
- Equity since March: > €1B.
- Fleet acquired: > 1.3 GW across 15 Genesis Digital sites, mainly Texas, North and South Carolina, Sweden.
- Combined power: 3.6 GW once the European AiOnX platform (2.3 GW) is added.
- Investors: Undisclosed institutional.
Max-Hervé George, SWI founder and CEO, told the WSJ he had "zero interest" in bitcoin mining. On the raise itself: "Cette opération vise à suivre le rythme des marchés de la puissance de calcul et des centres de données." On what the asset actually is: "Le raccordement au réseau électrique est la ressource la plus précieuse de l'infrastructure numérique aujourd'hui" — grid interconnection is now the thing being bought.
The Genesis Digital path to this point
Genesis Digital Assets was one of the biggest casualties of the FTX collapse that nobody successfully wound down:
- 2021: Alameda Research invested roughly $1.15B, taking about 20% of Genesis Digital's equity.
- November 2022: FTX files for bankruptcy; the Genesis Digital stake is scrutinised by the estate.
- June 2026: The FTX Recovery Trust drops its suit against Genesis Digital. The same day, SWI buys about 38.3% of Genesis Digital for $500M and increases its stake to above 50% to take control, per Cryptoast. CoinDesk puts the initial purchase closer to 40% in June.
- August 2026: Acquisition closes; SWI secures 70% of voting rights and renames the unit SWI Digital.
The arithmetic: Alameda invested $1.15B for 20% in 2021; SWI bought a controlling stake for $500M in 2026. That is the Alameda bitcoin-mining chapter being closed at roughly 70 cents on the dollar before the chairs are moved.
What converts, what gets sold
CoinDesk and Cryptoast agree on the direction but differ on specifics.
CoinDesk's version (the English wire):
- U.S. and Swedish Genesis Digital facilities convert to AI workloads.
- Kazakhstan sites sold off.
- No specific conversion timeline.
Cryptoast's version names the Genesis portfolio as 1.3 GW across Texas, the Carolinas and Sweden and highlights grid interconnection as the strategic asset, without naming specific sites for sale.
The reconciled read: the Kazakhstan footprint — low-cost, high-regulatory-friction, lightly interconnected — doesn't fit a GPU workload, which needs tier-III power, closer latency to hyperscaler fibre, and OECD-grade compliance for enterprise AI contracts. The Texas and Sweden sites do.
Pattern
Six months of consolidation in the "bitcoin miner → AI/HPC" trade now have a shape:
- Core Scientific, Hut 8, Riot have each announced AI conversions of various scales.
- SWI's play is the clean-balance-sheet version: raise >€1B in six months, buy a cheap, pre-FTX asset at a distressed clearing price, and spend the capital on the grid-interconnect premium.
The thesis the raise is a bet on: the gating constraint for AI data-centre capacity in 2027–28 is grid interconnect queues, and the easiest way to buy a position in that queue is to acquire a bitcoin miner who got in line in 2019.
What to watch
- Which specific Genesis Digital sites get GPU customers signed first, and whether any disclose hyperscaler counterparties.
- SWI's hashrate footprint pre- and post-conversion — the pace at which bitcoin production rolls off the balance sheet.
- The Kazakhstan sale process and the buyer: whether the fleet goes to a regional miner or is retired entirely.
- The AiOnX platform's integration milestones, since the 3.6 GW combined figure is contingent on it.