$568 million of GPUs allegedly misused for crypto mining caught in tax evasion and money laundering probe — EU claims 10,000 Nvidia H100 units acquired by Northern Data may not have been used for AI

European authorities are investigating Northern Data AG over allegations of tax incentive fraud related to the purchase of $568 million worth of high-performance GPUs, according to Bloomberg. The criminal investigation aims to determine whether the company misrepresented its GPU usage and utilized the data center for cryptocurrency mining rather than performing AI-related computing. However, while it makes sense to procure 10,000 H100 GPUs at a discount, it does not make sense to use them for mining.

A €100 million VAT fraud?

In 2023, Northern Data reportedly purchased roughly 10,000 Nvidia H100 processors for €400 million to strengthen its presence in the AI compute market across Europe. Normally, the company should have paid around €100 million in value-added tax, but since Sweden encourages the development of AI companies, it got a rather massive tax break. But while these GPUs were reportedly designated for AI computing, prosecutors suspect they were used for crypto mining.

Historically, Northern Data was engaged in crypto mining and purchased hundreds of thousands of gaming GPUs for this activity, but since this activity is no longer eligible for tax benefits in Sweden after a policy reversal in 2023, it made a pivot.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) carried out coordinated enforcement actions in both Frankfurt and Boden. Four individuals were detained in connection with suspected VAT-related offenses totaling over €100 million. Additionally, a senior employee from Northern Data’s Swedish operations was questioned as part of the probe. Prosecutors confirmed that the case focuses on three company subsidiaries active between 2021 and 2024.

The charges being explored include tax evasion and money laundering. Investigators are reviewing the corporate and financial practices of Northern Data's Swedish units, assessing whether the company deliberately structured its operations to secure improper tax advantages. A spokesperson for the company declined to address the money laundering aspect when contacted for comment. Northern Data insists that its infrastructure is fully devoted to cloud computing, which implies usage by AI companies.

H100 and cryptocurrency?

The strangest aspect of the story is that it appears Northern Data is being accused of using dedicated AI GPUs for crypto mining, which would be a poor investment, to say the least. An H100 costs orders of magnitude more than gaming GPUs (and far more than ASICs), so its hashes per dollar are terrible even with cheap power.

H100's strengths — tensor cores, FP8/BF16, massive HBM3 bandwidth — do not help most proof-of-work (PoW) algorithms, which are integer/bitwise heavy and do not use tensor cores. Ethereum, where memory bandwidth mattered, hasn't required powerful chips for mining since 2022. For Bitcoin, only SHA‑256 ASICs are viable these days, so GPUs are non‑starters for mining. While there are still GPU-minable coins, higher-end consumer graphics cards like Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50-series make much more sense than the H100, both because of upfront costs and because of the far better hash per Watt.

While mining on H100 may make sense for extremely short‑term, opportunistic runs on a niche coin if one already owns idle H100 GPUs and has ultra‑cheap power, paying hundreds of thousands for H100 for such use cases is irrational.

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