Hive Blockchain Changes Its Name To Hive Digital Technologies And Focuses On Artificial Intelligence

JAKARTA - The crypto mining company Hive Blockchain has changed its brand to Hive Digital Technologies to highlight its exploration of artificial intelligence (AI).

In a statement on July 12, the Vancouver, Canada-based mining company, stated that it had removed the word "blockchain" from its name to better represent the company's "developed focus" on revenue opportunities in graphics processing units (GPUs) and cloud computing, as well as their "mission to drive progress in AI" and support "new Web3 ecosystems."

"When we expand our GPU Cloud business, we need a strategy that better reflects both sides of our business. We are building infrastructure for digital technology that is developing, not just for blockchain, and we plan to use our large fleet of GPUs to develop a cloud hosting business," Hive CEO Aydin Kilic said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on July 12, quoted by Cointelegraph.

In addition, Hive stated that they will use their 38,000 Nvidia GPU units to provide more efficient alternatives for small and medium enterprises compared to major cloud service providers.

"We believe that AI and machine learning will lead to significant demand for future GPU computing," Kilic added.

While most crypto mining companies are currently focused on proof-of-work-based crypto mining like Bitcoin, Hive is one of several companies that leverage GPUs to mine Ether, the original cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, on a large scale.

Following completion of Ethereum (Ethereum Merge) changes in September 2022 - which saw blockchain switch to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, eliminating miners' needs - the GPU previously used to mine ETH became far less profitable.

Hive is not the first mining company to remove the word "blockchain" from its name. On January 3, Bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain changed its brand to Riot Platforms in an attempt to reflect "the increasingly diverse business operations."