Zcash miner Fortitude taps former Hut 8 CEO to lead ahead of public listing
Former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton will take the helm at Fortitude as the Zcash-focused miner expands its operations and moves toward a planned public listing.
Jaime Leverton is set to become the new CEO of Fortitude Mining, a Zcash-focused miner, as the company prepares for a public listing following a proposed merger with HeartSciences. Leverton, who previously led Hut 8, will assume the role on September 21, with the current CEO, Andrea Childs, stepping down to take on the position of Chief Operating Officer.
Fortitude mined 72,696 Zcash coins in the first half of 2026, making up approximately 28% of the network's total production. The miner operates with over 60 megawatts of power capacity across sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, and New York. In July, Fortitude agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which will increase its hashrate by 7.56 GSol/s.
These machines are expected to be shipped in the fourth quarter. The company, wholly owned by Digital Currency Group, has been mining Zcash since 2019 and was launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025. The merger with HeartSciences, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, will make Fortitude a publicly traded company on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE.
Written by urgent.news from Cointelegraph's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
