Strategic Partnerships in the Manufacturing Sector

Partnerships drive long-term success by aligning incentives and fostering innovation within the competitive mining industry.

### Building Strategic Partnerships in the Mining Industry: A Panel Discussion
* 🤝 The panel discussion features **Gaz from Riot**, **Wright from MicroBT**, and **Nick from Peak Mining**, moderated by **Tas Kulik, CEO of Syntech Digital**.
* 🎯 The primary objectives of strategic partnerships in the mining industry are to **align incentives**, **create supply chain stability**, and **foster long-term growth**.
* 🔍 When selecting partners, key characteristics include **understanding each other's needs**, **providing mutual benefits**, and **maintaining a long-term vision**.
* 🚀 Successful partnerships highlighted include Riot's collaboration with MicroBT for **hardware supply** and Peak Mining's strategic relationship with MicroBT for **reliable supply chain support**.
* 💡 Partnerships have led to innovation through feedback integration, such as **MicroBT's immersion cooling solutions** and **Riot's deployment of purpose-built immersion machines**.
* 🏆 Partnerships are seen as a **crucial competitive advantage**, enabling companies to adapt to industry changes, meet evolving customer needs, and drive **long-term growth**.
* 🔮 Future partnerships are being explored to enhance HPC, AI, and GPU capabilities, with a focus on **long-term relationships and technology innovation**.
* ⚔ "War stories" shared include challenges with unreliable partners, highlighting the importance of **trust, reliability, and long-term commitment** in partnerships.

all right good morning everybody. Thank you for attending. We're here with a great panel today to talk about manufacturing and partnerships. So, we've got Gaz from Riot, we've got Wright from MicroBT, and Nick from Peak Mining. My name is Tas Kulik. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Syntech Digital. We're a leading wholesaler of hardware infrastructure services and support for the data center ecosystem. So, I'll let the panel introduce themselves a little bit, and then we'll get into the questions. God, you want to kick us off? Hello. All right. You'll have to let me know if you can't hear me well. My name is Gaza Barman. I am head of mining with Riot Platforms. Right. Yeah, I'm Wright from MicroBT. So, if you have any questions for our miners, just to come to SA with us. Thank you. Thank you, Wright. My name is Nick. I'm the managing director for Peak Mining, part of Northern Data Group. Thanks, guys. So, first question: What are the primary objectives you aim to achieve through strategic partnerships?

Partnerships between manufacturers, supply chain, and clients. Nick, you want to kick us off? Yeah, for sure. Um, so in terms of Partnerships, I mean, we've been in the space for quite a few years. Um, and there's a few advantages from partnering up with players. And I think one of the main ones from our perspective, at least, is trying to align incentives. Um, uh, across the board. And it depends a bit on what kind of Partnerships we're speaking about. Uh, a great partner of ours is micro BT. Um, and so it's really about aligning incentives and creating some stability in your supply chain, for example. Um, that we, uh, that we use for these, uh, for these Partnerships. Yeah, so as you know, uh, micro BT is always a technical-oriented company. So we always like to help our customers, uh, to have win-win solutions. So it's much important for us to just know the real demands or real requirements for that. And, uh, just make the long relationship based on win-win.

Solutions, yeah. I would say similarly with Riot, we are looking for folks that understand our long-term vision. They will understand the difference between a transaction and a partnership. Amen. With the partnership, you're invested in understanding what happens not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, not the first delivery, but it's really looking down the line at what you're planning to build and how you can help achieve one another's mission, and you're kind of in it together. Ultimately, it's a win-win, and it's not about just one milestone. Yeah, so I'm hearing that long-term goals and vision is really what drives the majority of the partnerships you guys are looking at. Similar to what Syntech does, we're really in it for the long haul, not just transactional. Sometimes we'll fall on our sword if something screws up to make sure that we are there for the long term. So speaking of partners, what are some of the things you look for when you're doing partner selection for strategy, like long-term growth? What are some

of the characteristics you're looking for, guys. You want to kick us off, sure. So, I want to start by saying not every transaction or not every deal is necessarily a partnership, right? Agreed. And you don't need a partnership in every agreement either. I mean, you might need software, you might have typical corporate software. I don't need to get some creative partnership where I feel like they're building with me. I just need what I need. But in this space, we continue to innovate, we continue to grow. We want to work with people that are understanding what is our priority, where our sense of urgency is, and they continue to deliver on that. They take the time to understand who we are, what our mission is, what our critical path is, and they come back and they kind of integrate that with what they offer us. For us, if we want to just maybe try to establish the strategic partnership, it's most important we need to understand each other and bring

benefit for both sides, and we never just want to have exclusive relationships. So, we do not want to limit it by maybe other kinds of issues, but we want to just really bring benefits for both sides. So, this is the core philosophy from Michael BT, and we want to just set this as the criteria for maybe strategic partner selections for that. Yeah, to add to that, I think the point of the transaction is pretty interesting because, from our perspective, a partnership doesn't start right away, right? So, it takes a bit of time to get into it and get to know the players that you're dealing with. So, for us, it typically starts with a transaction, obviously due diligence to figure out whether it's the right player, but as the transaction happens and you're happy with the result, you start talking about, Okay, how can we do better business together? Trying into a longer-term vision or longer-term strategic planning, and that really depends on

the type of partner and how they've actually delivered um. And I think that's for us a very big criteria. We don't go out there and say, Hey, you're going to be our next partner, and we go all out right away. For us, it's really about testing the market. And we've had a lot of bad experiences as well with certain partners, or not even partners, but transactions. And we've chosen not to continue with that. And so, I think it's always a bit of a balance and a bit of testing the market before you go into that partnership. So, I'm hearing aligned values, aligned strategy, aligned vision as to how the sector evolves, and really integrating into existing operations, right? Um, are there any partnerships that you'd like to highlight today that you've worked on that has really been a game changer for your company, for your team? Uh, right, you want to kick this one off? Yeah, yeah, as you know, most of the time we want to focus on what we

just maybe good at that part, so it means that most of the times, mobt focused on the miners, and we still need to get help from all kinds of partners, from the customer side, from the solution provider side, for example. Yeah, when we just try to adopt the heating recycling solutions, we understand it's maybe far from our experience, so we want to focus on the primary side, and we want to ask for some partners' help to just develop the second side, maybe solutions and adopters for all kinds of applications. So, this is very important for us to work with maybe diverse partners and try to combine the advantages together and contribute to the mining industries. For that, Nick, you want to go? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, obviously, we're sitting here next to R, who I know for many years by now. And so, that's definitely a partnership that I do want to highlight. As a miner, we're self-miner at scale, and we're growing very

quickly, it's important to be close to your manufacturers in this case, um, but also to infrastructure providers. So, we have a variety of Partnerships. One of our most important ones is with Micro BT. I guess one of our early orders back in 2020, uh, kicked off that partnership, and we've been, uh, well, we've been in bed with each other since, uh, since then, um, and so that has, has great, it led to Great, uh, great results and outcomes because for us, it really meant uh, reliability and, and, and stability in terms of supply chain. As we all know, the market in, in Bitcoin mining goes up and down, uh, capital is not always available, uh, that applies mainly to the miners that need to raise that money at the right time, um, and so we've had periods where we couldn't order, uh, and periods where we were, were accelerating our orders, and Micro BT has always been really close to us that in that regard, uh, and we've relied on them as a partner for a long time. Guys, you're up, so obviously, yes.

We're here with Micro BT. Um, that is certainly the space that I get to focus on, and I get to build that relationship. We do have a really wonderful partnership with MicroBT. Now, how did that happen, or why is it? Why do we have a partnership? It is because they understand what we need, they listen to us, they accommodate, they have delivered what they have told us they would deliver, and they continue to support us as the customer because they want to continue growing with us. And on the other side, we want to be there to help them grow as well. We all benefit from that. It's like our own ecosystem. It is not just us benefiting. I believe Micro BT also benefits. Um, but this is not just about your hardware that you partner with them. I mean, we've partnered. I consider you a partner. I think as long as somebody is thinking long-term and you continue growing together, I think that's where it begins. So throughout the industry, you could find a number of partners, and the partnership only

grows stronger and stronger. I appreciate that, and obviously, we consider Ride a partner for Syntech as well. I love working with you and the team. So, Innovation through Partnerships. Are there any interesting examples you can share with the audience today that have led to innovation within your own team through the partnerships you've developed and cultivated? Nick, you want to take this one first? Yeah, so I'm trying to highlight a few points that I think have been instrumental to us, and I'm not going to say that they're highly innovative, but they've helped us to solve problems and issues that we saw. I think one of the main things is the supply chain. Back in the day, we were only mining, buying miners out of China. And so, as you know, there's always a bit of a transportation requirement before the miners land in the US. And so, I guess we're one of the first that worked at MicroBT to really support them.

in their US assembly line, uh, to get the miners directly from US soil, um, that really solved a lot of logistical issues for us because you don't want to have miners hanging around in customs. You don't want to pay for certain shipping of completed hardware and, and in terms also import duties. Uh, you can really save on that, uh, by having local production or local assembly. I'm must say it's not in that, not Innovative, but I think, uh, it's really been, has been instrumental for us to be able to, to get a hardware on site, uh, more reliable, um, and also for MicroBT. That has helped them grow and build out their assembly line in the US. Um, so for the Innovation, I think this is the most important things for, uh, TikTok Dre companies. So we need to responsibility for the Innovations, what we introdu to our customers. So let me just get back to the three years ago when we just try to introduce the immersion for customer. We start to pick up, yeah, different lator and start to

evaluate how which one is better for the maybe operations. L stable operations so that times so many partners helped us to just introduce a lot of different selections and uh we would just maybe uh take responsibilities to just make the final decisions which one would be the best for customer and we also need to take Serious for the Innovations in the Futures like Drang introduced we start to introduce the maybe panel or solar panel mining in the Futures so at Le times we also maybe try to just help the anyone have a clearly Solutions on that so this are some things I think very important for the manufacturers like us. That's great to hear getting feedback from clients and integrating into technology development. That's what we want to hear in this industry guys you're up so I think if you haven't been to the riot Booth you can you can see the innovation in our model. I suggest everyone go check it out you can see the change in every deployment every building that we've built um a lot of that comes from having our partners out

At our site, looking at what we're building, understanding where we operate, what we need. Um, years ago, just a few years ago, our staff was removing fans off of miners to put them in tanks, and we were the first to deploy at scale our immersion in Rockdale. Um, in Coracana, we don't have fans anymore; we have purpose-built immersion machines from Micro BT. We have the innovation that you see even building from building there. We have different systems. People are coming in and understanding what we need and building for us, and I think that's the greatest example is the hardware we're deploying now. And as you scale to pass a gigawatt of energy utilization, that's going to be critical for you guys, obviously. Um, so here's a question I personally love: How do you guys view partnerships to enhance competitive advantage, given this is a very competitive-driven industry? I mean, it's not necessarily dog-eat-dog, but it's very much bottom line, need to survive, and stay hungry, and stay growing.

how do you guys view competitive ADV advantages through Partnerships? Guys, you got this one. I think it's actually the biggest competitive advantage because for a company like Riot, I think if people understand that the growth that we intend to experience, huge, huge um, the fact that I wish I could do the the Trump huge, but um, huge, the opportunity that exists, thank you, the opportunity that exists for people in this space to grow, to experience that with us um, it just means that they will come more interested in what we need versus what they have today. So maybe you have you build X product right now to offer, but if you come in and and ask us what we need, what we're going to need next time, and maybe you don't get that deal the first time, but you you want to come back and understand what needs to change, then you will build that, you will we will have people that are invested in growing with us, in getting that partnership going to continue to build and experience the growth with us um, I

think if you don't have those partnerships, you're kind of at the risk of buying whatever is available and then building around that reactive versus proactive strategic thinking, knee-jerk reactions, just trying to pivot as things change, which I don't know if you guys know, but in the digital mining industry, things change all the time. Uh, Nick, you want to take this one? Yeah, sure. Um, no, I mean, in this regard, the innovation and the partnership with MicroBT has led, at least on our side, that we have also got closer on the technology side. So, in the end, um, we're buying miners, which is a technology product. Um, if you have the simple air mining, which basically what people were doing back in the day, um, um, things change over time, new technologies come up, as they were saying, they're having into immersion. We've made a choice to, uh, to go heavy in the, in the, um, the liquid cooling, uh, miners for Micro. So, we're basically counterpart there and have we really working closely.

with MicroBT to also figure out and find the challenges in those products to get those life uh the right way. And so, we've had engineers on-site, we've been relaying feedback back to MicroBT to make their products better as well, uh, and from the same time, uh, get our facilities to a higher standard, right? Yeah, we fully understand the mining currently is not a maybe consumer business, it's just a maybe 2B business. So, we need to understand the requirement from individual customers, and we need to just, uh, design, uh, maybe, uh, specific solutions based on what we learn from them. So, I think maybe for MicroBT, we do not want to just deliver a standard product fit-all kind of application scenarios. We want to just increase the flexibilities for them to just have more choice and, uh, just can choose the best solutions based on their requirement. So, this is what we do right now, and, uh, we only focused on maybe the miners, what we have experience on that, but we try to just release our spec.

release our information with third parties and help our customers and solutions can join this uh ecosystems and can try to find the best Solutions together so I think the more Solutions you can find the better you can get the competitive Advantage by this kind of relationship with Michel BT makes sense I mean we I think syntech really views Partnerships and relationships the same way I mean we work with Roso ersan who's here epic blockchain who's here we really look at bringing good technology to the market as much as possible obviously we've become a very big partner to bitmain uh we've done tons of deals in the past with micr BT as well always love doing deals with you guys um but yeah it's really long-term vision and strategy that helps with the partnership development and evolution um are there any future Partnerships you're working on uh for our company we're really looking to expand an additional HPC AI GPU uh wholesale business but also building up collocation capacity so we're working on Nvidia AMD super micro

Lenovo Partnerships that are our strategic pipeline of folks we want to work with. Are there groups you guys are looking to work with in the future that you're really working on and excited about, Gau, that you can share that's not MNPI? Um, yeah, so I don't, I probably don't have anything in specific to share. I am generally interested in building more partnerships. Um, I think it's something we've gotten really great results from. We have a number of really great partners right now. Um, but as we continue to grow, we look for more, right? Um, and when we grow to be the scale that we're at and continue, there's room for different partnerships even within one realm of things, right? Um, we get a ton of the O. The equipment we get does not have to be limited to one manufacturer. That goes not just from not even miners, but you talk about everything that goes into building a site. You have dry coolers or you have tanks, you have everything. There's enough business to

get that you don't have to go with anyone for everything, right? You just want to find the people that are, again, there to grow and scale and think long-term and are building the product that will work down the line. And that, yeah, that's as far as I can go right now. Anything else I can't, I probably can't speak to public companies, man. It's sometimes you want to say, but you can't appreciate it though, right? How about you? Any future partnership you guys are excited about? Yeah, yeah, actually, I think our team is a very stable team, so we always insist on our C philosophies and we never changed for our maybe selections for the long-term strategic partners. So, it means if anyone just maybe worked with us, we like to share our roadmap, share our maybe ideas for the futures, and we help anyone understand us maybe in advance before they make decisions. And also, as I believe, it's much important to hear the voice from our customers, so

any times we think we need to just do what we say, and we never make any overcommitment for that. This is much important for us in the future relationship. So, say what you do and do what you say, of course, every time, yeah, just as Dr. say, yeah. Even the performance is not good, we should just let every customer know about that. But way, yeah, maybe this is some the bottom line for us. We need to just improve and let anyone just get more from the bottom line. But for the Futures, I think as we have any maybe optimizations, we should just keep up with them and help them just grow up immediately for that. Make sense, Nick? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if I look at our business, I mean, we're scaling very quickly at the moment as well. So, if you look at everything that's needed to build a site, that goes from the hardware, the infrastructure, the miners, and particularly for the mining infrastructure for the liquid cooling business that we're in.

there's a lot of players out there that come up with new products, and for us, it's about testing, figuring out what works, and the partner that can deliver. Um, and it also knows our product and our vision of what we're building. We're building data centers; we're not building crypto mining farms, and that's a difference. Um, and so we're continuously looking for partners, but for us, it's really a test-and-play environment. Uh, we're not making very large decisions right away. Uh, we RFP things, uh, and then we figure out, okay, is this the partner we want to work with long-term? Um, and then we're going to build on that relationship. So, in particular, the length of a relationship for me is very important, uh, because you know how you can rely on your partner and the partner on you, uh, throughout different times makes sense. Um, how about War Stories? Any War stories that you can share with the audience about Partnerships? Uh, 'cause we've had lots of great Partnerships, and sometimes they've

broken down, and we've always tried to do right by our partners over the long term. A couple of situations where units have shown up, and they haven't been the best quality. We've sent a team in to clean them up. Anything on the operational side that you could share that kind of gets people into the weeds with you? Nothing too confidential, obviously, but any interesting stories that you can share with the audience. Nick, you want to start? Yeah, this is so interesting. I mean, the thing is, mining has back in the day pretty much been a wild west, right? Oh my God, yes. So there's certainly a ton of war stories, and we've been around for many years, and so over the years, you figure out what part is not to work with. The problem is sometimes you figure it out too late, so you're already in bed with them. You made significant investments, and you need to solve that over time. And the interesting part about that is that ultimately that also leads you to try to solve problems that come up through partners that

leads to innovation as well. We've experienced that across the board on the technology side, but also on the operational side. For example, so it's like relying on partners right away is a big risk. In the beginning, that was done because the market was super hot and people just wanted to get hashing and get miners live, and that is a risk that I think you should really consider next time. And I think as the industry is maturing, this is certainly getting better. But yeah, we've had, if I may drop out of the War Stories, we've had actually pretty bad actors trying to get in and then not delivering at all, but taking the money. And yeah, that's unacceptable, right? Any War Stories you can share? Not yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course, we have too much stories here, but I think I'd like to just pick one of the important stories. As you know, every maybe customer just tells the manufacturers they want to get the local

manufacturers even in the US, yeah, so this is the reasons, yeah. When I get such kind of feedback, I spent almost two years with our maybe partners to study how we can just import our materials to the US and build the maybe such kind of capabilities and maybe do the assembly in the US for the local customers. Even it's not maybe worse at the beginning. I think maybe when we go back to our Ser years, the marketing share in the US not quite maybe huge as today, but we still like to just solution maybe work for the customer and try to just invest what the customer likes, what we like to do. So this is something I think maybe everyone knows currently. We are the only one we have the US manufacturer, yes, set right now. So this is I think a story is coming in my mind. I'd like to share today for now, for now, guys. You're going to take this one. I've got a collection of War Stories, but I'm going to synthesize it by saying things are going to go wrong.

you could plan everything. You can plan it to the tea. The partner will be there when something goes wrong and help you resolve it. We have worked with many, and it's not just this industry, but it is definitely in this industry. Oh boy, things go wrong, and then you realize who is actually in it for the long haul with you and who is there for the transaction. I'll leave it at that. That's a good synthesis. I agree. I mean, you know who your real partners are when things go wrong. The ones that are not there will disappear just like your friends. If you think someone's your friend and they're not there in a time of need, they're not your friend. Same thing with partnerships. I'd like to thank you guys for joining this panel. I thought this was actually really engaging. Thank you. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed [Applause] [Music] [Applause]. Next year, we are bringing the Bitcoin conference to the American West, Las

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Strategic Bitcoin Mining Collaboration w/ Niek Beudeker, Wright Wang, Ghazaleh Barman & Taras Kulyk

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The panel discusses the importance of strategic partnerships in manufacturing, with a focus on aligning long-term goals and incentives.

Nick from Peak Mining emphasizes the need for stability in the supply chain, while Wright from MicroBT highlights the significance of win-win solutions.

Gaza from Riot Platforms stresses the importance of understanding each other's long-term vision and critical path for a successful partnership.

Strategic Partnerships and Their Importance

The core philosophy of the partnership approach is to bring mutual benefits and avoid exclusivity.

The partnership process typically starts with a transaction and due diligence, gradually evolving into a longer-term collaboration.

Key criteria for partnership selection include aligned values, strategy, and vision, as well as integrating into existing operations.

MicroBT and Syntech have a mutually beneficial partnership, with MicroBT understanding and accommodating Syntech's needs.

The collaboration has focused on local assembly of miners in the US, solving logistical issues and reducing import duties.

This partnership approach has been instrumental in driving growth for both companies and fostering innovation in the industry.

Enhancing Operations Through Partnerships and Innovation

The company is focusing on stable operations and leveraging partnerships to make informed decisions for customer satisfaction.

They are introducing innovative solutions, such as solar panel mining, to address future challenges.

The importance of partnerships is emphasized as a key competitive advantage, with a shared goal of mutual growth and understanding customer needs.

Partnerships are crucial in the digital mining industry to avoid reactive decision-making and to adapt to constant changes.

The collaboration with MicroBT has led to a closer technological alignment and the development of liquid cooling miners.

The focus is on providing flexible solutions for customers and expanding into HPC AI GPU wholesale business and colocation capacity.

Lenovo's Strategic Partnerships and Future Collaborations

Lenovo is focused on building more partnerships as they continue to grow, seeking diverse collaborations within the same industry.

The company emphasizes the importance of long-term relationships and shared goals with their partners.

Additionally, they prioritize open communication and transparency with customers, aiming to meet commitments and provide support for mutual growth.

Building Partnerships in the Data Center Industry

The company focuses on testing and finding the right partners to deliver their vision of building data centers, not crypto mining farms.

The importance of long-term relationships with partners is emphasized, and the company has experienced both successful and challenging partnerships.

War stories from the industry highlight the risks of relying on partners too soon and the presence of bad actors, but these experiences have also driven innovation and problem-solving.

The speaker spent two years studying how to import materials and establish assembly capabilities in the US for local customers.

Despite a slow start, the company has now become the only US manufacturer in its industry.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of true partnerships, stating that challenges reveal who is genuinely invested in the long-term success.