From crypto to AI

Karin Critchlow has many fond memories of summers spent on Seneca Lake. After all, her family has owned land next to the lake in the small village of Dresden for more than 70 years.

Over that time, they’ve improved the property, building two lake houses, enhancing the beach area, and expanding the dock. In recent years, they’ve had to install central air conditioning; something they thought would never be needed—in the past they’d just open the windows on hot summer nights.

“On a summer night (now), you wake up at two in the morning (because) the sound is so loud. It sounds like there was a truck coming down the back road,” Critchlow says.

The sound she describes comes from the Greenidge Generating Station, a cryptomining site about 500 yards from their lake house.

As noisy as Critchlow finds it at its current size, the power plant could grow in scope. The company that operates the generating station plans to convert its operation to a hyperscale AI data center. That pivot to AI and high-performance computing was signaled in March when the company released its fourth-quarter financial results and highlighted in July by its name change, from Greenidge Generation to Vulcan Infrastructure and Power.