Cryptominer-turned-neocloud Bitdeer has acquired part of a former aluminum plant near its data center in Milam County, Texas.

The company has paid $100 million for the 200-acre land parcel that was formerly part of an aluminum smelting plant owned by Alcoa Corporation. It said the land will be used “to support the company’s strategy to develop AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure alongside its existing operations.”

It is adjacent to its existing Rockdale data center. Bitdeer says that, across the two sites, it has access to 563MW of interconnected grid capacity in Texas, with the potential to expand it to 742MW.

Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer told investors: “The land acquisition strengthens Bitdeer’s long-term operational control and allows the company to plan, finance and develop AI/HPC infrastructure at the sites.

“The company believes its Rockdale location is well positioned to receive further power allocations over the coming years, given its existing large-load interconnection and the established transmission and substation infrastructure serving the location.”

Michael G. Potter, Bitdeer’s CFO, added: “Securing outright ownership of land in Milam County reflects the disciplined approach we’re taking to expanding powered land under our control.

“Rockdale is one of the best-connected locations in our portfolio, and we believe it is well positioned to receive additional power over the coming years. Owning this land gives us greater long-term certainty over our development plans, eliminates the renewal risk associated with a lease, and provides flexibility to maintain our existing Bitcoin mining operations while we develop the newly acquired property.”

He added: “It’s a continuation of the progress we’ve been making across our platform to put Bitdeer in direct control of the sites that matter most to our growth.”

Bitdeer Technologies Group is a cryptocurrency firm with 175,000 Bitcoin mining machines under management. It runs its AI neocloud services through a subsidiary, Bitdeer AI.

The group currently has six sites in operation, including 13MW in Washington State, 37MW in Tennessee, 570MW in Ohio, and 175MW in Tydal, Norway. In February 2025, Bitdeer acquired a 101MW gas-fired power project in Canada in a $21.7 million deal for which it aimed to develop a 99MW Bitcoin mining site. In April, the firm acquired 40MW of liquid-cooled Bitcoin mining containers from Saiheat.

Bitdeer has previously said the Washington and Tennessee sites, originally operated as cryptomining facilities, are in the process of being converted into AI data centers. Work to convert the Norwegian site into an AI cloud facility began in April. The company also lists plans for HPC sites in Molde, Norway, due to go live by the end of 2028. It claims its power pipeline now totals 3GW of installed and potential capacity around the world.

The Alcoa Corp aluminum plant site is a vast plot of land spanning some 33,000 acres. Smelting at the site ended in 2008, with the plant shuttered completely in 2017.

Since then, various chunks of the land have been sold off to third parties. These would appear to include Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, which reportedly purchased 4,000 acres of Alcoa Corp land in June. It is not known if SoftBank intends to build a data center on the site, though its energy subsidiary SB Energy is building a data center elsewhere in Milam County, which will be leased by OpenAI as part of its Stargate network.

Texas is currently operating under a pause on new data center developments, after Governor Greg Abbott instructed the state’s utility provider to carry out an audit of interconnection requests currently in its queue.