Former Hut 8 CEO To Lead Crypto Miner Fortitude

Former Hut 8 CEO To Lead Crypto Miner Fortitude

Thu, September 17, 2026 at 9:14 PM GMT+3 1 min read

Former Hut 8 (NASDAQ: $HUT) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jaime Leverton has been appointed to lead cryptocurrency miner Fortitude.

Fortitude is focused on mining Zcash (CRYPTO: $ZEC) and is preparing to go public via a combination with HeartSciences (NASDAQ: $HSCS).

Leverton will take the helm of Fortitude on Sept. 21 of this year, succeeding Andrea Childs, who will become the company's chief operating officer (COO).

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Leverton will remain CEO after Fortitude goes public. The combined company will adopt the Fortitude name and trade on Nasdaq (NASDAQ: $NDAQ) under the ticker symbol "TUDE."

Fortitude is expected to be publicly traded by year's end. The combined company will have an estimated value of about $400 million U.S.

Leverton most recently led institutional digital-asset manager ReserveOne. She served as CEO of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: $BTC) miner Hut 8 from 2020 to 2024.

At Hut 8, Leverton oversaw the company's merger with U.S. Bitcoin Corp. and its transition from a Canadian-listed miner to a U.S.-domiciled company.

She also helped Hut 8 pivot from Bitcoin mining to high-performance computing and data centre operations.

Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC during the six months through June 30, about 28% of the network's production during that period. The company reported second-quarter revenue of $20.9 million U.S.

Fortitude currently operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites located in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, and New York State.

HUT stock has risen 159% over the last 12 months to trade at $97.75 U.S. per share.