Zcash miner Fortitude taps former Hut 8 CEO to lead ahead of public listing
Fortitude Mining appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as its new CEO, effective Sept. 21, with current CEO Andrea Childs moving to COO. The Zcash-focused miner is preparing to go public through a proposed merger with HeartSciences, expected to close in Q4 2026, with the combined company planned to trade on Nasdaq under ticker TUDE pending approval. Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, about 28% of the network’s total, and posted $20.9 million in Q2 revenue. It operates more than 60 MW across seven sites in four states and recently agreed to buy 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which should add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate. Wholly owned by Digital Currency Group, Fortitude has mined ZEC since 2019 and became a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025. Zcash also surged sharply, trading around $1,424 amid strong interest in privacy-focused crypto.
