Five years ago, nobody mentioned Ethiopia in mining conversations. Today it hosts some of the most competitive facilities in the world — and it's where we deployed Batch 1. Here's the thinking behind that decision.
Ethiopia generates the overwhelming majority of its electricity from hydropower, anchored by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) — Africa's largest hydroelectric project. The result is abundant, renewable, low-cost energy, with industrial rates that allow facilities to offer hosting from $0.055/kWh while remaining sustainable businesses.
No frontier market is risk-free. Currency controls, regulatory evolution, and infrastructure variability are real considerations. We mitigate them by working with established facility partners, keeping contractual recourse in UAE jurisdiction, and maintaining geographic diversification — our capacity spans Ethiopia, the USA, Oman and the UAE precisely so no single country defines our risk.
The 50 ElphaPex DG1+ units in Batch 1 are deployed at our Addis Ababa partner facility. The low power rate directly improves shareholder economics: every cent saved per kWh flows into monthly distributions. It's the same reason hyperscale data centers chase cheap power — we just share the upside in $100 increments.