HeartSciences reads heart signals. Fortitude Mining mines Zcash, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, and is wholly owned by Digital Currency Group. If HeartSciences shareholders vote yes, those two things become one company — and the AI cardiac device business effectively disappears into a crypto miner.
Shares closed 19.48% higher at $2.5450 after HeartSciences filed two 8-Ks disclosing the latest step in that transformation, on dollar volume of about $559,000 across 2,002 trades.
For anyone holding the stock, the question is simple: is this still the company they bought? The merger agreement was signed on June 23, 2026. A preliminary proxy statement went to the SEC on July 27. The vote has not yet been scheduled, and the deal is expected to close in the second half of the current calendar year, the company said in its August 19 press release.
The filings disclosed that Fortitude bought about $1 million of HeartSciences shares on August 12, paying $2.43 per share — a 22% premium to the closing price that day — in a private placement. That brought in 411,522 new shares, and Fortitude now holds about 9.4% of HeartSciences' outstanding common stock ahead of the merger closing. HeartSciences said it will use the proceeds for operating expenses before the deal closes. The purchase price was set at the 30-day volume-weighted average price through August 11, according to the subscription agreement filed with the SEC.
The investment is structured so it does not change the merger exchange ratio — Fortitude gets no extra consideration at closing in respect of the shares it bought. But those shares are voting shares, and Fortitude now holds nearly a tenth of the company going into the shareholder vote it needs to win.
One detail buried in the subscription agreement warrants attention. The filing discloses that Nasdaq sent HeartSciences a deficiency letter on August 4, 2026 — fifteen days before the August 19 filings. The filing does not say what the deficiency relates to, and the company has not explained it further in the source material reviewed here.
If the merger closes, shareholders in an AI cardiac device company will hold shares in a Zcash mining operation run by Digital Currency Group. What the combined entity does with the ECG business is not addressed in either filing.