HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: HIVE) announced that its BUZZ AI Cloud platform in Asunción, Paraguay is operational with GPU compute nodes serving workloads for a Columbia University research team from New York.

The Asunción deployment represents the first GPU cluster under HIVE's strategy to add AI and high-performance computing infrastructure to its existing renewable energy operations in Paraguay. The cluster operates within a Tier-III data center run by Paraguay's largest telecommunications provider.

The Columbia University team is conducting research on large language model pre-training using BUZZ Cloud GPU infrastructure. The research engagement is non-commercial and intended to generate performance data for HIVE's roadmap to scale commercial HPC capacity in Paraguay. The team focuses on optimization algorithms to improve model quality while reducing computational costs, working with models ranging from 0.2 billion to 8 billion parameters.

HIVE operates 300 megawatts of renewable hydroelectric power in Paraguay, with an additional 100 megawatts in development. The company plans to use performance data from the Columbia University workloads to guide expansion of its Tier-III data center capacity in Paraguay, with initial deployment targets through 2027.

"This deployment marks our first live GPU compute workload in Asuncion and provides the real-world performance data we need to guide our Tier-III expansion roadmap," said Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE.

The company operates data centers across Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay, serving both Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing clients. HIVE was founded in 2017 and describes itself as the first publicly listed company to mine digital assets using green energy.

Information is based on a company press release.