Bitcoin miners sign $70B in AI deals as power assets gain value

Bitcoin miners have signed more than $70 billion in AI data center contracts, turning power sites into the industry's most valuable asset.

Bitcoin miners have secured more than $70 billion in AI and high-performance computing contracts, CoinShares estimates, as grid-connected power sites become a scarce resource for hyperscalers racing to build data centers.

"The shift reflects a structural mismatch between AI demand and power supply," Matthew Kimmell, digital assets analyst at CoinShares, said. "Miners spent years securing energized sites with firm power contracts — that infrastructure is now worth more than the ASICs they originally installed."

Key deals include Iren's $9.7 billion, five-year GPU cloud contract with Microsoft signed in November 2025, served from a 750-megawatt campus in Childress, Texas. Hut 8 signed a 15-year, $7 billion lease with Fluidstack for 245 MW at its River Bend site in Louisiana, with payments backstopped by Google. Core Scientific expanded its CoreWeave agreement to $10.2 billion over 12 years, while TeraWulf reported $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue and now earns more from leasing than mining.

The conversion is not cheap. CoinShares estimates mining infrastructure costs $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt, while AI-grade, liquid-cooled facilities run $8 million to $15 million per MW. Iren raised $3 billion in convertible notes in May on top of $3.75 billion in existing debt to fund the transition. Miners with HPC contracts trade at 12.3 times revenue, CoinShares said, versus 5.9 times for pure-play miners — a premium that hinges on whether these multibillion-dollar agreements translate into actual earnings.

The Power Bottleneck

Stanford University's AI Index report, released in April, estimated AI data center power capacity reached 29.6 GW by the end of 2025, comparable to New York state at peak demand. The US hosts 5,427 data centers, more than 10 times any other country, according to Stanford. GPU computation costs have fallen more than 99% since 2006, but efficiency gains have not reduced total demand — they are poured into larger models instead, keeping pressure on the grid.

Chips can be ordered and delivered in months. Energizing a site, with its substation, interconnection approval and cooling, takes years. That timeline mismatch has turned Bitcoin miners — who spent the past decade building exactly that infrastructure — into attractive partners for AI companies.

Execution Risk Looms

The pivot is not without risk. Bitcoin's all-in production cost sits at about $78,000 per coin, JPMorgan estimates, well above BTC's market price of around $53,400 — down more than 34% year-to-date. Hashprice has fallen below breakeven for many miners, putting about 20% of the industry in unprofitable territory, Cointelegraph previously reported.

Yet the sector is leaning on a small group of hyperscalers and AI infrastructure buyers. If demand cools, customers renegotiate or projects slip, miners that have removed ASICs may have fewer options to fall back on. Hut 8's River Bend site, for example, is not due to start commissioning until the second quarter of 2027.

CoinShares projects listed miners could derive as much as 70% of revenue from AI by the end of 2026, up from roughly 30% in the first quarter. For now, the market is rewarding the shift. Whether the earnings follow is an open question.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.