6th Mar 2026 12:41
(Alliance News) - Quantum Blockchain Technologies PLC on Friday said it has taken delivery of its first third-party bitcoin mining rig as it moves to port its Method C AI Oracle software onto commercial hardware.
The London-based, blockchain sector-focused investor said the rig has been shipped by one of three ASIC manufacturers with which it is seeking to partner.
Shares in QBT were up 11% to 0.47 pence in London on Friday afternoon.
Initial testing of the rig's nominal specifications has been completed by QBT's US-based consultants, and delivery to the company's laboratory at Milan University is expected within the next week. The ASIC manufacturer has provided QBT with the relevant source code and technical documentation.
QBT's research and development team has begun analysing the mining rig's software code and ASIC architecture in preparation for porting the software version of its Method C AI Oracle onto the rig's operating system.
The company said the software version of the AI Oracle has advantages over the hardware version, as it can operate on the rig's control board rather than being embedded directly into the ASIC chip. This avoids what QBT described as more than a year of collaborative hardware integration work.
The software AI Oracle is designed to assess the entire "job" received by a mining pool, including its allowed variants or "meta-header", rather than analysing individual bits within the header. This enables it to run on the control board rather than directly on the ASIC.
To accelerate development, the manufacturer has provided QBT with a mining development kit, or MDK, which allows the hashing board to be controlled via a computer server rather than directly on the mining rig. QBT said this provides greater flexibility during the initial porting and testing phase.
Chief Executive Francesco Gardin said: "Although it has taken a long time to reach this point, we are delighted that we have received the first bitcoin mining rig and MDK with which to prove the enhanced mining efficiency of our AI Oracle software."
He added that the company is focusing on testing one manufacturer's rigs at a time to speed up the commercialisation phase.
"A successful outcome in our Milan lab will, we believe, be the pre-condition to entering into contractual discussions with the ASIC manufacturer," Gardin said.
By Eva Castanedo, Alliance News reporter
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