Meet ‘Captain Keel,’ the 37-year-old steering a Bitcoin miner into the AI data center gold rush

In late 2023, Ben Gagnon, a 34-year-old chief mining officer at Bitcoin miner Bitfarms, decided that the company's mining operations were not the most lucrative venture. He suggested that Bitfarms should abandon mining and repurpose the vast power supplies for supporting AI data centers. This revelation hit home in March 2024 when Core Scientific and CoreWeave announced plans to convert a mining facility in Austin, Texas, into an AI data center, and rent the power and buildings to the neocloud. This idea was the catalyst Gagnon had been looking for.

Bitfarms was already facing turmoil, with a new CEO appointed in May 2024, while the former CEO filed a $27 million lawsuit for wrongful termination and breach of contract. Riot Platforms followed suit with a hostile $930 million takeover bid for Bitfarms, offering $2.30 per share. Gagnon stepped in to mediate the situation and pursue his plan of transforming Bitfarms into an energy infrastructure play for AI and high-performance computing. He rebranded the company to Keel Infrastructure, symbolizing stability and forward motion.

In April 2026, Gagnon achieved his goal as Keel Infrastructure was officially born, changing its domicile from Canada to the U.S. The CEO, now 37, is pursuing a significant bet on a career that has taken him from mining Bitcoin in remote oil patches, rehabilitating oil sites for AI, to now leading a new enterprise focused on energy infrastructure.