Luxor Technology Corporation, headquartered in Seattle, announced on Tuesday the completion of a round of strategic investment worth $16 million. Led by CMT Digital, the venture capital department of CMT Group based in Chicago, Canaan, MicroBT, Halo, Steelhead, as well as angel investors, also participated in this round of financing.
This round of financing includes both primary and secondary capital. Luxor indicates that each investor is a partner in the operational chain of computing power they serve, covering aspects such as hardware, capital, and electricity.
This financing follows closely on the launch of Luxor AI in September. Luxor AI is a new business segment of the company, which extends the energy, hardware, software, computing power trading, and data systems developed for Bitcoin mining into the fields of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.
Luxor indicates that its hardware brokerage business has traded bitcoin mining hardware worth $1 billion; the energy business covers a load of over 75 megawatts in ERCOT and SPP; as of September, its managed cloud platform has reached 1.8 million workloads this year.
The company plans to use the new funds in four areas: expanding its agency cloud platform, providing working capital for the AI hardware business, expanding the trading and market-making business of computing power derivatives, and hiring engineering and marketing staff.
The expansion of the hardware business is aimed at addressing the increasingly strained supply chain. The company's AI hardware business procures GPU and AI servers through a network of tiered partners. As a value-added distributor for major original equipment manufacturers, Luxor indicates its ability to access cancelled orders, special quotas, as well as resources from the second-hand market.
Calculation between Luxor and AI
CMT Digital has nearly three decades of experience in electronic trading and market structure. CMT Digital, a partner, stated that Sam Hallene understands the energy and infrastructure behind computing power, as well as the financial tools required for managing customer risks. He said that the team has accumulated eight years of relevant expertise in the field of digital assets and is applying it to the AI sector.
The over-the-counter trading department of Luxor has already provided cash-settled options, forward contracts, and underwriting products based on the computing power leasing index. The company stated that the support from CMT will help Luxor expand this business, as AI computing power is becoming a tradable market.
Canaan CEO Zhang Nangeng stated that the company is seeking long-term power resources in North America as part of its "computing power plus energy" strategy, and joining the shareholder list of Luxor aligns with these objectives. He referred to Luxor as an important partner in the Bitcoin mining and energy industries.
Luxor, the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, summarized this logic: 'The computing power market is converging: the same group of miners, power stations, and capital that were once used for digital mining are now providing the power for AI.'
Earlier this year, the company launched Commander, a fleet management platform designed to help Bitcoin mining companies monitor operations, manage energy usage, and optimize profitability within a single system.
The platform integrates with existing infrastructure to provide real-time fleet monitoring, remote machine control, and tools to help miners cope with changes in computing power and electricity prices.
According to the data from CoinShares, as of the end of March, listed Bitcoin mining companies have signed AI and high-performance computing contracts worth over $70 billion.
