Everyone is looking to cash in on the GPU and AI craze, even a cannabis company.
Last month, the Colorado based American Cannabis Company agreed to acquire HyperScale Nexus Holding Corp., and has created a business around Nvidia’s H100 GPUs, that are currently in big demand for AI computing.
American Cannabis is a consulting firm that helps companies mainstream cannabis operations, such as cultivation and navigating the regulated market. The publicly listed company closed Oct. 24 at $0.024 in over-the-counter markets.
HyperScale Nexus, based in Nevada and formed in July 2023, describes itself as a holding company interested in the AI and HPC markets.
The company has a business model inspired by Rackspace to deliver “unparalleled cloud services, managed hosting, and professional services, all powered by the cutting-edge potential of Nvidia H100 GPU chipsets,” according to a filing with the SEC.
The motivation for a cannabis company to acquire a GPU-related company was not immediately clear, as there is very little documentation to connect the dots. Executives from both companies did not return answers to questions sent by email.
The SEC filing dated Sept. 21 points out securities lawyer Ted Mailander as a common link between American Cannabis and HyperScale Nexus. He is on the board of directors for both companies.
In a phone call, Mailander referred HPCwire to SEC filings for more details about the acquisition. The SEC filings detailed multiple HyperScale Nexus deals to deploy H100 GPUs.
One such deal is with xFusion Digital Technologies, Co. Ltd., which is based in Singapore and sells products that include GPU servers.
HyperScale is leasing 30,000 Nvidia H100 chipsets for eighteen months from xFusion and its distributor, a deal that ends in February 2025. HyperScale Nexus provides 128 Nvidia H100 GPUs to Silicon Tech Park, which builds data centers in Thailand.
American Cannabis said it will let HyperScale Nexus operate independently. The deal may close next month, but many questions remain about the intent of the deal. HPCwire will update this story as we receive answers from company executives.
The Cannabis industry has not been directly linked to GPUs, though datacenter design blueprints are used to establish cannabis growth farms.
Datacenter company Equinix has established a greenhouse farm in Paris to grow fruit and vegetables utilizing heat recovered from its data center. Greenhouse farms are being widely used to grow cannabis.
Nvidia’s GPUs are emerging as the centerpiece of business plans. GPU computing company CoreWeave — which pivoted to AI computing from cryptocurrency mining — took on $2.3 billion in debt with Nvidia GPUs as collateral.