Jaime Leverton takes the CEO seat at Zcash miner Fortitude before its Nasdaq debut

Fortitude Mining has named the former CEO of Hut 8, Jaime Leverton, as its new CEO, effective September 21. 

The company is bringing in an executive who has already run a listed crypto miner to take over the job of steering the Zcash-focused company through a planned Nasdaq listing.

An operator who has done the public-company version of this before

Leverton confirmed the move on X, writing, “Thrilled to join @FortitudeCrypto as CEO.” She also praised the company’s “owned power, owned sites, and a production track record.” 

She takes over from Andrea Childs, who is moving into the role of chief operating officer and will concentrate on mining operations, fleet decisions, and infrastructure.

Leverton’s hiring is coming at a time when Fortitude is trying to become a publicly traded company, a terrain that she has navigated in the past.

She ran Hut 8 (Nasdaq: HUT) through its combination with US Bitcoin Corp, a deal that turned a Canadian-listed miner into a US-domiciled one with both bitcoin mining and high-performance computing. 

She left her role as CEO at Hut 8 in 2024 after the board decided to take a different strategic direction.

Leverton most recently led digital asset manager ReserveOne. In his own post on X, Barry Silbert, whose Digital Currency Group (DCG) owns Fortitude, called her a leader with “an exceptional track record of building and scaling companies in mining and infrastructure.”

The HeartSciences deal that carries a $400 million tag

Fortitude’s route to the market runs through HeartSciences (Nasdaq: HSCS), a medical-technology firm building AI tools for electrocardiograms. 

The two companies agreed to an all-stock merger, which was announced on June 23. The combined business is expected to keep the Fortitude name and trade under the ticker “TUDE,” subject to Nasdaq approval. 

The implied valuation is estimated to be at least $400 million, based on HeartSciences’ share price and the stock going to DCG and HeartSciences preferred holders. 

In the June announcement, it was said that DCG would hold around 95% of the merged company on a fully diluted basis.

The transaction is slated to close in the fourth quarter, pending a HeartSciences shareholder vote and standard conditions. Andrew Simpson, HeartSciences’ CEO, is set to continue running the healthcare unit, which will keep advancing its MyoVista ECG technology after the deal.

The production and the losses behind the story

Fortitude was carved out of Foundry’s self-mining operation by DCG in January 2025 and points most of its capacity at Zcash. 

The company mined 72,696 ZEC in the first six months of 2026, which is about 28% of everything the network produced over that period. 

The company runs more than 60 megawatts across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, and New York. It agreed to buy 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines in July, and the delivery is expected in the fourth quarter.

Fortitude’s second-quarter revenue came to $20.9 million against a net loss of $9.5 million, a figure that included a $10.3 million writedown on mining gear. Adjusted EBITDA was $8.5 million.

Is ZEC’s rally behind the Fortitude’s latest moves? 

Zcash has been on a bullish run this year, especially after Grayscale filed for an ETF for the token. 

The token has crossed $1,440 over the past 24 hours, which is the highest it has hit in years. It has risen by over 2752% over the past year and year-to-date and now trades in four figures for the first time since its 2017 debut. 

The token now has a market capitalization of over $24.7 billion, with open interest exceeding $2.18 billion.

Miners are also benefiting from the run with more investing in Zcash mining. Cryptopolitan recently reported that the top Zcash rig has been earning about four times more per megawatt-hour than the best Bitcoin machine.

Fortitude, which is one of the biggest miners of Zcash, will be seeing the effects in its balance sheet, and that setup gives Leverton a rising asset to sell to public-market investors.

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