BitFury will invest $100m in building a 100MW bitcoin mining data centre in Georgia, according to a new report by local news source Agenda.
To be built in the country’s capital city of Tbilisi, the data centre will be the bitcoin transaction processor’s second in the Eurasian nation, complementing a 20MW data centre based in Gori.
The data centre was first announced in July, following the news BitFury had raised $20m in venture capital to both build the facility and complete a roll out of its 28nm bitcoin mining ASIC. While construction of the facility began in early August, the company did not specify whether the $100m would be invested wholly in construction or if this figure would also include operational costs.
The data centre will be built on 185,000 square metres of land set aside by the Georgian National Agency of State Property to create a “special technology zone” with the goal of attracting international technology firms, the news source said.
In statements, BitFury’s official representative in Georgia, Eprem Urumashvili, expanded on the benefits he believes the data centre will provide as part of this effort.
Urumashvili said:
“Georgia will have three main benefits – a $100m USD investment, to bring modern information technologies into the country and to be added to the innovative technologies world map.”
According to the report, the data centre will house bitcoin miners containing BitFury’s 28nm and soon-to-be-released 16nm ASIC chips. BitFury announced in September that it had completed the tape-out for the 16nm chips, which achieve energy efficiency of 0.06 joules per gigahash.
BitFury had previously suggested its 16nm chips could be deployed in a new data centre in North America, though it is not clear if this announcement will impact this potential plan.
However, the move may not be surprising as the company has local ties to Georgia.
Notably, CEO Valery Vavilov has indicated that the head of BitFury’s data centre construction department owns his own firm in Georgia. Further, the Georgian Co-Investment Fund, an investment firm dedicated to strategic funding in the region, has also participated in all three of BitFury’s $20m venture rounds.
BitFury did not immediately respond to requests for further information.
Fiber-optic cables image via Shutterstock