Sphere 3D to Buy 60K NuMiner Machines for $1.7B

Sphere 3D (ANY), the data management firm that is merging with bitcoin miner Gryphon Digital Mining in a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) transaction, has agreed to purchase 60,000 of NuMiner Technologies' high-end NM440 machines for $1.7 billion.

Sphere 3D will fund the deal with about $400 million of capital stock, $29 million in cash, up to $1.1 billion in vendor purchase financing and up to $185 million in additional milestone payments, according to a statement.

Shares of Sphere 3D were rising 25% in post-market trading on Thursday after the announcement of the deal.

NuMiner said that its NM440 mining computers have 440 terahash per second (TH/s) of mining power and power efficiency of 20.2 joules per terahash (J/TH), according to a separate statement. That makes the mining rigs the most powerful and efficient mining machines on the market. In comparison, Bitmain’s most recent offering, the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd., has a hashrate of 198 TH/s and efficiency of 27.5 (J/TH).

“The NM440 boasts a 440 TH/s processing hash rate, more than 8x the average bitcoin miner, with ~75% less energy usage, as substantiated by leading third-party testing company TÜV Nord’s certified lab BTL,” said Anthony Melman, chairman of NuMiner’s global board of directors. Melman was also appointed to Sphere 3D’s board, effective March.

Sphere 3D is paying about $28,000 for each machine. The miners are being produced in coordination with technology suppliers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Foxconn and Xilinx, according to NuMiner’s statement. Deliveries will start in the second quarter.

Sphere 3D said that the deal puts it on pace to be one of the “largest carbon neutral bitcoin miners,” as contracted deliveries of all the miners would represent a total hashrate of 32.4 exahash per second (EH/s) if fully deployed today. The Bitcoin network’s total hashrate was about 202 EH/s as of Wednesday, according to data analytics firm Glassnode.

By comparison, Marathon Digital, one of the world's largest publicly traded miners, said on Jan. 3 that its computing hashrate was 3.5 EH/s and that it planned to increase that figure to 23.3 EH/s by early 2023.

UPDATE (Feb. 3, 23:28 UTC): Added details of Sphere's stock rise.