Everything in Observer
Infrastructure
Business Description
Digital Shovel, founded in 2018 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, designs and manufactures modular datacenters and Bitcoin mining infrastructure for operators from small-scale miners to hyperscale deployments. Products have been installed across North America, Europe, Australia, and Africa, and the company holds membership in the Canada Blockchain Consortium.
The product portfolio centers on the MiniPOD family. The M300 MiniPOD, a 300 kW air-cooled container, accommodates up to 90 Whatsminer units, 70 new-generation Bitmain ASICs, 140 legacy ASICs, or 40 GPU rigs. The i300 MiniPOD is an immersion-cooled version for liquid-cooled deployments. The NanoPOD targets small-to-medium miners at an entry price of approximately $40,000, $50,000 inclusive of new-generation machines, in a footprint compact enough to pass through a standard 7-foot door and occupy two standard skid spaces on a tractor trailer. The S300 MiniPOD, announced in October 2023 via PR Newswire, introduced a flat-pack shipping format that Digital Shovel says cuts logistics costs by 60%, enables on-site assembly by two workers in under four hours, and delivers 88,000 cubic feet per minute of airflow, a 32% improvement over prior models. The MiniPOD platform scales from 300 kW per unit to aggregate deployments exceeding 100 MW, with single-site installations documented at more than 100 units.
Beyond enclosures, Digital Shovel supplies Smart Power Distribution Units (SPDUs), switchgear, and busway systems for high-density data center construction. Smart PDUs are priced at approximately 35% below comparable competitor products, with remote monitoring and management of electrical systems delivered through an integrated interface.
Digital Shovel's largest disclosed engagement closed in August 2025: the company completed delivery of 493 MW of busway systems to IREN (Iris Energy), an ASX-listed operator of renewable-energy-powered data centers configured for Bitcoin mining and AI cloud computing. The partnership, established via a signed agreement in February 2024, covered infrastructure support across 26 IREN sites and was delivered ahead of the contracted schedule.
Digital Shovel has since moved into modular AI datacenters, with current offerings featuring full 2N-level redundancy in both air-cooled and Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) configurations, which extends beyond the air-only design of the original MiniPODs. Founder and CEO Scot Johnson has described Digital Shovel as a vertically integrated manufacturer spanning enclosures, power distribution, and busway. All products are designed and built in North America, as Digital Shovel targets AI and HPC data center operators as a growth segment alongside its established Bitcoin mining customer base.
