A listed European investment group has taken control of a bitcoin miner once backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, not for its mining business but for its grid connections. It is now raising money to turn those sites into AI data centers.
On October 12 SWI Group, which controls Genesis Digital Assets, raised €800 million from institutional investors at a €6.1 billion valuation. The proceeds are intended to expand data center and AI computing projects in Europe and the United States. SWI is selling Genesis Digital’s remaining mining sites in Kazakhstan and plans to use the US and Swedish facilities for AI workloads instead. Chief executive Max-Hervé George has said he has “zero interest” in bitcoin mining.
The transaction follows the same logic seen in other recent deals: in the current AI build-out, power is the scarce asset.
SWI’s $500m Stake and Path to Control of Genesis Digital
On June 15 SWI paid $500 million for about 38.3% of Genesis Digital’s shares, including roughly 77.2% of the $1.124 billion liquidation preference on its preferred stock. The liquidation preference is the amount preferred shareholders are paid first in a sale or wind-down. SWI therefore acquired most of the senior claim on the company while taking a minority of the equity.
It then moved to majority control. In July SWI agreed to buy a further 4.4% from funds managed by Stone Ridge Asset Management, taking its holding above 70%. Completion was confirmed in August, and the company was renamed SWI Digital. Morgan Stanley acted as buy-side adviser.
SWI acquired more than 1.3 GW of energised capacity across 15 facilities, primarily in the United States and Sweden, including multiple sites in Texas.
Alameda’s Stake and the Dropped FTX Lawsuit
Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, invested more than $1 billion in Genesis Digital from 2021 and owned about 20% of the miner. After FTX collapsed, the estate’s administrators sued Genesis Digital to recover the money, describing it as “one of Bankman-Fried’s most reckless investments” and calling its Kazakh assets “virtually worthless.”
FTX dropped that suit on June 15, the same day SWI closed its $500 million purchase. George has said the Alameda-era shareholder disputes are settled.
Who Is SWI Group and Why It Wants Power Capacity
SWI was formed from the merger of Icona Capital and Stoneweg, with combined assets of more than €10 billion. Its parent, SWI Capital Holding, direct listed on Euronext Amsterdam in February at €3.76 a share, implying a market capitalisation of about €1.6 billion. George, born in 1989, co-founded Ultima Capital in 2012 and took it public in 2019.
Digital infrastructure now accounts for more than 80% of SWI’s capital allocation, with a target above 90%. Its European platform, AiOnX, is developing five hyperscale projects across Ireland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Spain and Italy, totaling 2.3 GW.
€6.1bn Valuation, Conversion Costs and Open Questions
The October raise valued SWI at €6.1 billion, against the €1.6 billion implied at listing in February, and left the free float at roughly 20% of share capital.
Mining sites have power but do not necessarily have the redundancy, cooling and fibre connections that AI customers require. No public announcements have yet confirmed that any hyperscaler has signed for capacity at the former Genesis Digital sites, and the cost of conversion has not been disclosed.
In February SWI agreed to take a majority stake in Polarise, a German AI infrastructure provider. In August it said it would not complete the equity transaction and would instead provide financing so the Polarise founders could reorganise; the two companies would remain separate. The reasons for the change have not been set out.
Can Converted Mining Sites Justify the AI Data Center Pivot?
George said the October raise was about keeping pace with the compute and data center markets. On the August completion he pointed to the listed structure as giving SWI the balance-sheet capacity and flexibility to pursue the trends it expects to define the next decade.
Whether any hyperscaler has signed for capacity at the converted sites, and whether the €6.1 billion valuation holds if conversion takes longer than expected, remain open.
Author: Tejas Bansal
See Also:
Why Riot Platforms is Focusing on Data Centers, and not just Bitcoin | Disruption Banking
