The Round Rock, Texas company sold 1,400 BTC at an average of approximately $62,200 per coin. That figure sits far below the average price the company paid for its stack: more than $117,000 per Bitcoin. Empery has now sold roughly 1,770 BTC in 2026 and retains about 1,514 BTC, worth around $90 to $94 million at current spot prices.

After the sale, the company holds approximately $74 million in cash. Ten million dollars from the proceeds went toward settling existing debt.

From Electric Powersports Vehicles to Bitcoin to AI

Empery Digital was not always a crypto company. It was previously known as Volcon, Inc., an electric powersports vehicle manufacturer that rebranded and launched a Bitcoin treasury strategy in July 2025. The pivot was backed by Ryan Lane, a founder and principal at Empery Asset Management, a firm established in 2008 and focused on direct investment in public companies.

At its peak, Empery held more than 4,000 BTC, backed by a capital raise of more than $500 million launched specifically to fund the Bitcoin strategy. Its shares have fallen roughly 82% since that strategy launched.

The pressure to pivot again intensified when activist shareholder Tice P. Brown, holding about 10% of shares, publicly demanded Lane's resignation and a full liquidation of the Bitcoin position. The company announced the AI data center deal on June 29, and shares climbed as much as 4.2% intraday before closing up 1.58% on the day. The stock remains down about 18% year to date.

The AI Deal: $65 Million for a 25% Slice

Empery's capital will buy a 25% equity stake in a joint venture acquiring a Midwest facility that has operated as a power-intensive industrial site for three years. The majority partner, holding 75%, is TexStack Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Cardinal Power affiliated with the Texas-based Hunt and Crow families, both among the wealthiest in the United States, with established interests spanning oil, energy, and real estate.

The site carries 150 megawatts of immediately available power under an existing utility agreement, with expansion potential to around 300 MW. The full acquisition is valued at approximately $230 million. A non-binding letter of intent for a triple-net lease structure could generate up to $1 billion in lease payments, with an option to double that figure if power capacity is expanded. Empery has already contributed $2.9 million; the remaining $62.1 million is due at closing, targeted for the third quarter of 2026. A due diligence deadline falls on July 29.

Co-CEO Ryan Lane framed the move as a template for future deals. "Going forward, we plan to continue to allocate capital to similar hyperscaler-anchored opportunities," he said in a statement accompanying the announcement. The company has also discontinued publishing its Bitcoin treasury tracker. A company statement noted that the tracker "no longer fully reflects the total NAV of the Company."

A Sector Under Pressure

Empery is not alone in unwinding its Bitcoin treasury position. Bitcoin started 2026 above $93,000 and fell to around $60,000 by the end of June, a fresh 21-month low. That slide has put enormous pressure on companies that bought in late. As of early July 2026, approximately 198 public companies collectively hold 1.268 million BTC worth roughly $77.5 billion, but their combined market capitalisation has dropped about $62 billion from its peak.

Even Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, posted an $8.31 billion unrealised loss on its BTC holdings for the second quarter of 2026.

Several smaller treasury firms have already exited entirely. K Wave Media, a South Korean media firm, sold all 88 of its BTC and redirected up to $485 million in financing capacity toward AI infrastructure. Genius Group liquidated its final 84 BTC in Q1 2026 to repay $8.5 million in debt. Bitdeer reduced its holdings to 31 BTC and is shifting toward AI cloud services. Across the sector, companies including MARA Holdings, Riot Platforms, TeraWulf, Hut 8, and CoreWeave (an AI cloud infrastructure firm) have collectively signed more than $70 billion in AI and high-performance computing contracts.

Who Captures the Value?

The Empery deal structure raises a question that extends well beyond Texas. As crypto-derived capital rotates into AI infrastructure, the ownership of that infrastructure is becoming concentrated in established oil, energy, and real estate dynasties.

Empery, despite providing $65 million in funding, holds only a 25% minority stake. The majority goes to a firm tied to billionaire Texas families with deep roots in oil, energy, and property.

That dynamic has direct relevance for emerging markets. Africa currently accounts for less than 1% of global data center capacity despite hosting roughly 18% of the world's population. The continent's data center market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 15.9%, reaching an estimated $3.06 billion by 2030, which makes the question of who owns that infrastructure increasingly urgent rather than theoretical.

South Asian investors, particularly in India where crypto adoption has ranked first globally on the Chainalysis index for a third consecutive year, risk having absorbed steep losses on Bitcoin treasury stocks purchased through US brokerage platforms, with many names down 50% to 82% from peak.

Analysts including Priyal Singh of Signal Risk and Sanusha Naidu of the Institute for Global Dialogue have argued that the central risk is this: high-adoption regions may remain consumption zones rather than ownership zones in the infrastructure layer being built to power the next decade of computing.

Whether the Empery deal marks a successful pivot or a second costly miscalculation will likely be visible in the quarterly numbers by year-end.