According to Wu, the Bloomberg article introduced Igor Runets, a 38-year-old Russian cryptocurrency mining tycoon worth $230 million. He received an MBA from Stanford in 2017 and then built a mining farm in Siberia.

His Stanford classmates were among BitRiver’s first customers. BitRiver has grown to 15 data centers with 533 megawatts of capacity. BitRiver’s revenue grew nearly 60 percent last year.

However, his company, BitRiver, was sanctioned by the United States in 2022 on the grounds that it could help Russia monetize its natural resources.