Alcoa is reportedly close to selling its long-idle Massena East aluminum smelter in upstate New York to Bitcoin mining firm New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG). CEO Bill Oplinger told Bloomberg the company is in advanced talks and expects the transaction to close “in the middle part of this year.” The Massena East plant, on the St. Lawrence River, has been inactive since Alcoa idled it in 2014 amid rising energy costs and global competition.
Aluminum smelters are attractive targets for digital infrastructure reuse because they were built for continuous, energy-intensive industrial use and already include high-capacity substations, transmission lines and grid connections. That existing electrical infrastructure can significantly shorten permitting and buildout timelines for Bitcoin miners and data-center operators. The Massena East site’s access to hydropower from the New York Power Authority is an additional draw for energy-heavy computing operations seeking lower-cost, lower-carbon electricity.
The potential sale is part of a broader U.S. trend of repurposing retired industrial plants into crypto mining and high-performance computing facilities. Earlier this year, Century Aluminum sold its Hawesville, Kentucky smelter to TeraWulf for $200 million with plans to convert the site into an AI and high-performance computing campus.
NYDIG has been expanding its footprint in mining infrastructure. The Stone Ridge-owned firm holds a stake in Coinmint, which operates at the same campus under a long-term lease, and last year agreed to acquire Crusoe Energy’s Bitcoin mining business, including its flare-mitigation operations. Those moves come as many miners diversify into cloud and AI services to offset narrowing mining margins: MARA Holdings bought a 64% stake in French infrastructure firm Exaion to move into AI services, while companies such as Hive, Hut 8, TeraWulf and Iren are converting mining sites into data centers. Some firms, like CoreWeave, have pivoted entirely toward AI-focused infrastructure.
If completed, the Massena East sale would be another example of how legacy industrial sites are being repurposed to meet demand for large-scale, power-hungry computing. Cointelegraph produced this report under its editorial policy and encourages readers to independently verify the details.