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Campaign finance reports show donations from Hut 8 data center CEO, subsidiary to Gov. campaign
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BATON ROUGE — Construction at Hut 8's multi-billion-dollar River Bend data center in West Feliciana Parish is underway and anticipated to be completed by the end of 2027.
In August of 2025, campaign finance reports show CEO of Hut 8, Asher Genoot, made two payments of $12,000 to Governor Jeff Landry's 2027 reelection campaign.
The data center project was officially announced in December of 2025.
On June 24 of this year, US Data Mining Group Inc. — the company that merged with Hut 8 in 2023 — donated $25,000 to Cajun PAC II, a political action committee tied to the governor.
"These campaign contributions, I mean, $25,000 seems like a large campaign contribution, but a lot of these PACs take in huge amounts of money, and so it's a drop in the bucket there," LSU Political Science Professor Robert Hogan said.
Hogan says it is not uncommon for a business entity to make political campaign contributions when they need the assistance of the state government.
"It makes perfect sense that a business would want to support governors and other elected officials who are supportive of their business model, and so I think this could be viewed as a reward. It could also be viewed as a way of trying to get the attention of elected leaders," Hogan said.
Records show that several major companies that have recently announced investments in Louisiana have donated to either Landry's campaign or his PAC, including META, Venture Global LNG, and Commonwealth LNG.
Hogan believes it could possibly raise some ethical issues.
"This raises concerns. Is it the case that this business does it get the same sort of benefit that average individual citizens get? Do you need to make a campaign contribution to get in order to get something from state government?" Hogan said.
We reached out to Governor Landry's office for comment. We have not heard back.
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