Crypto miner Hive Digital dropped the ‘blockchain’ from its name amidst a pivot to AI

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

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

“As we expanded our GPU Cloud business, we needed a strategy that better reflected both sides of our business. We are building the infrastructure for new digital technologies, not just blockchain, and we intend to leverage our large fleet of GPUs to grow our cloud hosting business,” said Hive CEO Aydin Kilic on July 12 filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

We are happy to announce that today we are officially changing our name to .

The name further reflects our growing focus on cloud computing technologies, AI and the Web3 ecosystem.

Read the press release: https://t.co/yczuLivGq6 pic.twitter.com/5jijZFqdeI

— HIVE Digital Technology (@HIVEDigitalTech) July 12, 2023

In addition, Hive said it will deploy Nvidia’s 38,000-strong GPU fleet to provide small and medium businesses with more efficient alternatives to mainstream cloud service providers.

“We believe AI and machine learning will drive significant demand for GPU computing going forward,” added Kilic.

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While most crypto mining companies today focus on mining Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies like Bitocin (BTC), Hive is among a handful of companies leveraging 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 Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism without miners — the GPUs that were once used to mine ETH became drastically less profitable.

Hive is not the first mining company to drop “blockchain” from its name. On January 3, Bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain renamed to Riot Platforms in an effort to reflect its “increasingly diversified business operations”.

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