Galaxy Digital (Nasdaq: GLXY), which completed its Toronto Stock Exchange delisting during Q1 2026 and now trades solely on Nasdaq, reported a $216 million net loss for the first quarter of 2026 on April 28, driven by a sharp decline in crypto asset prices. The company also delivered its first data hall to AI cloud provider CoreWeave just as results were released, a milestone the company says marks the start of a fundamental shift in how it makes money.

The loss, equivalent to $0.49 per diluted share, came in narrower than the $0.59 per share analysts had projected. GLXY shares climbed more than 3% following the announcement. The stock had closed at $25.05 on April 27, the trading day before results were released, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly $4.96 billion. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $188 million, while adjusted gross loss came in at $88 million.

The headline figures reflect conditions across the broader crypto market rather than a breakdown in Galaxy's core operations. The global crypto market lost approximately 20% of its total value during Q1 2026. Bitcoin fell roughly 22% from its late-2025 peak above $126,000. Global institutional flows into digital assets came in at just $11 billion for the quarter, about one-third of Q1 2025 levels, according to JPMorgan data reported by BitKE. The bulk of Galaxy's quarterly loss was concentrated in its Treasury and Corporate segment, which recorded a $140 million adjusted gross loss tied to unrealised markdowns on the firm's own digital asset holdings.

Despite the macro pressure, Galaxy's trading desk held its ground. The Digital Assets segment posted $49 million in adjusted gross profit, including $31 million from Global Markets trading and $18 million from asset management and infrastructure. The company noted that its trading volumes remained flat even as industry-wide crypto trading volumes fell 25%. The firm ended March 31 with $2.6 billion in cash and stablecoins, total equity of $2.8 billion (up 46% year-over-year), and total assets of $9.99 billion. Assets under management stood at $5.0 billion. Galaxy also repurchased 3.2 million shares for $65 million during the quarter, a notable capital allocation signal given the headline loss.

The Helios Inflection Point

The strategic story at Galaxy now centres on Helios, a former Bitcoin mining campus in Dickens County, West Texas that the company has been converting into a large-scale AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data center park. HPC refers to computing infrastructure capable of running the intensive workloads required for training and running artificial intelligence models, among other computationally intensive tasks such as climate modelling, drug discovery, and financial simulation. In 2025, Galaxy raised $460 million in a dedicated equity raise to begin the site conversion and separately closed a $1.4 billion project financing facility. The primary tenant is CoreWeave, an Nvidia-backed GPU cloud provider. CoreWeave has committed to leasing up to 800 megawatts of Helios capacity across multiple phases, paying $720 million per year under a triple-net lease, a structure in which CoreWeave is responsible for taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs in addition to base rent, with a 3% annual escalator. Galaxy estimates the arrangement will generate roughly 90% EBITDA margins at the lease level.

Phase I covers 133 MW, with delivery targeted by the end of Q2 2026. Phase II adds another 260 MW, with deliveries beginning in the first half of 2027. The first data hall was handed over to CoreWeave in April 2026, which triggers formal revenue recognition. The Data Centers segment contributed only $3.1 million in adjusted gross profit during Q1, a figure expected to rise sharply once Phase I is fully online. The company projected roughly $90 million in adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2026. During Q1, Galaxy also secured ERCOT (Texas grid authority) approval for an additional 830 MW at Helios, bringing total approved capacity to over 1.6 gigawatts, with another 1.8 GW currently under study.

CEO Mike Novogratz acknowledged the quarter directly: "The headline numbers weren't what I want." On execution, he was more positive: "Are we delivering on time and on cost? That's not an easy feat. But so far, our team is doing an awesome job." Novogratz also offered a view on Bitcoin's near-term trajectory during the call: "I think you're going to have some wood to chop through 80, 85. Once you get through that, the next stop is 100." The company's formal results statement described the underlying performance in measured terms: "Adjusted gross profit remained broadly stable, reflecting a shift in the business mix."

What This Means Outside the US

For crypto participants in South Asia and Africa, the most immediate relevance is not the data center buildout itself but the regulatory framework Galaxy is lobbying for. Novogratz has pushed publicly for the CLARITY Act, a US bill that passed the House in July 2025 with bipartisan support (294-134) and now awaits Senate action. The bill would establish CFTC oversight of digital commodity spot markets and clarify when the SEC holds jurisdiction. Novogratz has said the legislation could unlock US financial market access for an estimated 5.5 billion people globally, specifically through tokenised equities and stablecoins accessible via crypto wallets. Galaxy's own research head, Alex Thorn, puts the odds of passage in 2026 at around 50%, with mid-May the key window.

India's retail crypto volume came in at $46.2 billion in Q1 2026, down only 6% year-over-year. By comparison, global retail crypto volumes fell roughly 11% over the same period, according to TRM Labs data, meaning India's decline was approximately half the global rate. That relative resilience reflects structural demand for USDT-based settlement and remittance activity rather than speculative trading. For builders on Solana or Tron in those markets, Galaxy's stated pivot toward stablecoins and tokenised assets as the "real use case" of crypto is a signal worth tracking.

The Helios economic model, converting large-scale energy infrastructure into contracted AI compute revenue, is a thesis that multiple regional players are now exploring. Africa's emerging data center markets, including hubs in Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, are running at or near capacity. Operators in those markets are examining how models like Helios might inform strategies for building new compute infrastructure. The underlying challenge differs from Galaxy's starting point: Galaxy leveraged surplus power from a former mining site in West Texas, while the primary constraint across African markets is the need to develop new power infrastructure to meet growing demand.

Galaxy Digital will report Q2 2026 results later this year. The Senate Banking Committee is expected to mark up the CLARITY Act in late April or May 2026.