Zcash miner Fortitude trades the pickaxe for a Nasdaq stethoscope 🩺

Fortitude Mining Holdings, a miner focused on Zcash, is set to go public through an all-stock merger with medical technology company HeartSciences, the companies announced Tuesday. The combined entity will operate under the Fortitude name and trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE upon regulatory approval, with HeartSciences shareholders retaining a minority stake. HeartSciences CEO Andrew Simpson framed the rationale as freeing the company from "the constant cycle of raising capital" while providing what he called the best path forward for shareholders.

The transaction is structured as a reverse merger, pairing Fortitude's digital-asset mining operations with HeartSciences' AI-enabled cardiac diagnostics business. The structure mirrors prior crypto listings: Bitcoin miner Core Scientific went public through a SPAC merger in 2022, and Cipher Mining followed via a SPAC transaction. Shares of HeartSciences, which continue to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker HSCS pending the deal's close, rose as much as 91% on Tuesday, according to Google Finance data.

HeartSciences has yet to generate meaningful commercial revenue. According to MarketScreener, the company reported minimal revenue in fiscal 2025 while its net loss widened to $8.77 million from $6.61 million a year earlier. The company did advance its product roadmap during the year, launching its MyoVista Insights software platform, designed to modernize existing ECG management systems.

Fortitude, privately held, has disclosed limited financial detail. The company said it had scaled annualized production to 157,000 Zcash (ZEC) as of May 31. ZEC was last trading at about $413 apiece, according to CoinMarketCap data at time of publication, giving the token a market cap of $6.92 billion. Despite the listing announcement, ZEC derivatives activity remained subdued: open interest fell 3% over the prior 24 hours to $550 million, while long liquidations reached approximately $1.9 million during the same period.