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Thursday’s here, and you can feel the pull of the weekend…

But first, we have some news to chew through. For today’s show, we cover Etched’s $300 million series C which values the daring AI ASIC company at $10.3 billion. For interviews, CleanSpark’s Harry Sudock joins us to talk about the company’s $6.6 billion Sandersville deal and its future AI plans, and Lygos Finance’s Jay Patel sits down to discuss Jack Maller’s departure from Twenty Capital and whether or not Strategy has quelled doubts about its capital stack.

Plus, Charlie goes gumshoeing to make sense of Fluidstack’s plans for a Okmulgee, OK data center as the project receives local pushback over water use.

Today, we we’re joined by CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) CBO Harry Sudock to break down their newest announcement: a $6.6 billion 20 year lease for its Sandersville’s bitcoin mine-turned AI data center.

Besides the big number — the total contracted revenue is nearly 3x CLSK’s marketcap — what sets it apart, in Sudock’s words, is that it’s “a true triple-net transaction… which means we expect near 100% NOI margin on that $6.6 billion.”

CleanSpark also disclosed 885 MW in Texas under an LOI with the same counterparty, and on the livestream, Colin flagged KBW’s Stephen Glagola arguing the Texas exclusivity may matter more than Sandersville itself, since it’s roughly triple the gross megawatts.

Sudock wouldn’t call anything bigger than “the name at the bottom of a definitive lease,” but agreed the read on scalability is right: “CleanSpark is not a project-based company; it’s a scalable platform.” All told he, pointed to CleanSpark’s 2.1 GW portfolio with ~1.15 GW already leased or under LOI.

For Sandersville, there are money matters to consider, specifically financing the $10-12 million per MW build. Sudock said that these AI campuses only pencil if you match the right capital to the right asset, and a true triple-net lease against investment-grade credit unlocks project-level debt collateralized by the data center, “without needing to scale the equity base.” For those in the data center cohort still funding AI pivots with dilutive equity and converts, his questions was, “Are you marrying the right source of capital to the right business activity?”

Disclosure: Blockspace currently works with CleanSpark ($CLSK) as our presenting advertisement partner.

Trump wants all the economic juice, even if its a bipartisan political issue. We’re talking about data centers, of course.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) reported second-quarter revenue of $16.1 billion on Thursday, up 25% from $12.9 billion a year earlier. The chipmaker posted a GAAP loss of $2.16 per diluted share, while non-GAAP earnings reached $0.42 per share. Operating performance improved even as Intel reported an $11 billion GAAP net loss attributable to shareholders.

Morgan Stanley initiated coverage of Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) with Overweight ratings Thursday, citing their ability to convert bitcoin mining infrastructure into AI data centers. The bank assigned Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) an Equal-weight rating. Morgan Stanley set a $263 target for Hut 8, implying 141% upside from its July 21 closing price of $108.98.

Rosenblatt Securities raised its 2028 estimates for Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) after the bitcoin miner turned AI infrastructure developer secured a second $9.8 billion lease at its Beacon Point campus in Texas. Analyst Chris Brendler reiterated a Buy rating and $124 price target in a July 21 report. The target represents about 23% upside from the report’s $100.93 reference price.

Investment bank Needham sees upsides for Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) following AMD and Anthropic’s newest announcement. The investment bank maintained its “Buy” rating and $28.50 price target, compared with Riot’s Wednesday closing price of $23.38. AMD announced on Wednesday a deal in which Anthropic is set to use as much as 2 gigawatts of its AI chips, with the first gigawatt due to start deployment in the first half of 2027.

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