Welcome back! This is Canaan's weekly newsletter on Bitcoin mining, energy, and compute infrastructure.
 

Europe ended 2025 with about 12 GW of data center capacity. The United States had 39 GW, after adding 8 GW in a single year. Europe added one. Those are IEA estimates, and they describe Europe as the world's third-largest market, falling further behind the first.
 

The usual explanation for the gap is price. Electricity in the EU can cost two to three times what it does in the US. And when looking deeper, one realizes that Europe's surplus power sits at its edges, while its data centers sit in the middle, near major cities.
 

Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin (often referred to as FLAPD) were chosen for proximity to banks and people, and their grids are now congested. The wait for a new connection in those hubs can reach ten years.

datacentermap.com

Meanwhile, in 2025, power prices went negative (meaning generators have to pay the wholesale market to accept their power) for 681 hours in northern Sweden's SE2 zone and 556 hours in Spain. Germany, the usual reference for surplus renewables, logged 576.

Therefore, capacity is now following the power, with 63% of the 685 MW delivered across Europe in the second quarter being delivered outside FLAPD.
 

The Nordics offer access to relatively low-cost, low-carbon electricity. AI cloud providers contracted 420 MW in Europe in the first half, up from 89 MW a year earlier, and two-thirds of it is in the Nordics. Nebius is building up to 310 MW in Lappeenranta, Finland. Nvidia-backed Volta is taking 121 MW of IT capacity in Tydal, Norway, reportedly for Anthropic.
 

The south's surplus is mostly from solar. Spain had 439 MW installed at the end of 2025 against an industry forecast of about 2,500 MW by 2030. The commitments there are hyperscale, led by Amazon's €33.7 billion centered on Aragón.
 

The European Union is now putting money behind the move. In June, the Commission proposed tripling EU data center capacity within five to seven years. In July it opened a call for up to seven AI gigafactories, backed by up to €10 billion in public funding.

https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2093407272986640688

The money comes with conditions. Germany sets heat-reuse requirements for new data centers starting at 10% for facilities opening from July 2026, rising to 20% for those opening from July 2028, subject to transition periods and exceptions. The Commission's proposals would give lower-footprint sites priority grid connections, and they expect operators to offer demand-side flexibility and design in heat reuse.
 

Bitcoin mining offers an existing example of flexible computing paired with useful heat recovery. Canaan's hydro-cooled Avalon units already supply 80°C water to a Nordic district heating network in an 8 MW project sized for about 2,800 homes. Canaan recently participated in BTCHEL in Helsinki on September 25–26, with Vice President Johnny Yao delivering a main-stage keynote on how Bitcoin mining can support energy infrastructure through heat reuse.
 

Europe does not need to match the US in scale to play a significant role in the data center buildout. Its opportunity lies in connecting rising computing demand with public investment, surplus power, and productive uses for waste heat.it

In the News

• TeraWulf doubles Muskie contracted power to 1 GW, advances second phase to 2029

• Amazon Pledges $1B to Data Center Communities, Ends Government NDAs

• Applied Digital Activates 75 MW of AI Infrastructure at North Dakota Campus

• Constellation and Amazon Sign 20-Year PPA for 190 MW of Nuclear Power at Calvert Cliffs

• Poolin Auction Reopens as Hut 8 Deal Ties $80 Million to Data Center Milestones

• Biggest US Grid's Data-Center Plan Accepted With 5-Month Pause

• SpaceX reportedly in talks with TSMC for Terafab semiconductor foundry

• Bitcoin Miners Bank Strong September as Difficulty Barely Budges

Network at a Glance

• BTC price (USD): ~$83,408

• Network hashrate: 989.2 EH/s

• Difficulty: 132.7T

• Hashprice: ~$39.48 / PH / day

Project Spotlight

Most mining machines treat heat as something to get rid of. The Avalon A1566HA treats it as a second product.
 

The A1566HA is the hydro-cooled member of the A15 family: a 2U rack unit rated at up to 480 TH/s on about 8 kW, or 16.8 J/TH. Heat exits the machine in a water loop instead of as exhaust air, with the water hot enough to use as a heat source.
 

Two deployments show the range. In Canaan's 3 MW greenhouse proof of concept in Manitoba, 360 units are designed to deliver water above 75°C and pass around 90% of their electricity on as heat.

The less obvious feature is control. The units can be overclocked or underclocked on demand, so a heating operator can raise or lower output as the weather changes, the way it would with a boiler. That makes the A1566HA a dispatchable heat source that also mines Bitcoin, and it is why the machine fits the rules Europe is now writing.

Events and Media

• NG Zhang, Canaan's chairman and CEO, published an op-ed in TheEnergyMag, "AI Infrastructure Starts at Home," on why always-on AI agents are turning the home computer into infrastructure, and what home mining has already solved for it.

• Analyst coverage of Canaan widened. JonesTrading initiated coverage with a Buy rating, and B. Riley Securities reiterated its Buy.

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Disclaimer: This newsletter shares industry commentary and third-party news for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by third-party sources are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Canaan Inc.  For official news, please refer to Canaan’s press releases and SEC filings at https://investor.canaan-creative.com/.