Riot Platforms to buy 66,560 ASIC miners from MicroBT for $290 million

The American mining company Riot Platforms has activated an option with MicroBT to purchase 66,560 Bitcoin mining rigs, aggregating a total hash rate of 18 EH/s.

$Riot Exercises Purchase Option on 18 EH/s of Latest Generation Immersion Miners from MicroBT, and Secures Additional Purchase Options Providing a Path to Exceed 100 EH/s.

— Riot places order for 18 EH/s of latest generation MicroBT Bitcoin miners, primarily consisting of the… pic.twitter.com/tEEudV6Z8n

— Riot Platforms, Inc. (@RiotPlatforms) December 4, 2023

The deal is worth $290.5 million (excluding fees, taxes, and potential adjustments).

The company leveraged the manufacturer’s agreement included in the previous contract for the supply of 33,280 miners. The financial terms of the equipment purchase remained unchanged.

The new order, predominantly (48,058 units), will consist of the recently introduced WhatsMiner M66S model with immersion cooling and an energy efficiency of 18.5 J/TH.

Riot stressed that the equipment will be produced in the United States. The devices are expected to cost the firm, on average, around $16 per TH/s.

Deliveries and deployment of the new batch are planned for the second quarter of 2024.

Riot and MicroBT also agreed on a potential purchase of up to 265,000 additional miners in the future. This could boost the company’s hash rate by a further 75 EH/s, potentially to 100 EH/s.

“The price of these future purchase options will not exceed our current order, which will enable Riot to plan future capital needs more efficiently and provide protection against possible increases in market prices,” said the company’s CEO, Jason Les.

Earlier in the quarter, Riot trimmed losses for the period to $27.7 million from $353.6 million a year earlier.

In September, the company said that in August earned $31.6 million from miner outages in Texas.