Bitcoin Miners Outperform BTC on AI Infrastructure Deals

A basket of publicly traded Bitcoin miners has risen 56% year-to-date while Bitcoin’s price is down about 17% for the period, according to sector research. Last week five mining and AI-infrastructure names accounted for much of the gains as companies announced deals, campus acquisitions and coverage changes tied to GPU-based systems and high-performance computing.

KEEL Infrastructure climbed roughly 30% after an analyst firm initiated coverage with a Buy rating. The company, formerly known as Bitfarms, is repositioning a roughly 2.2-gigawatt power pipeline in Pennsylvania, Washington and Quebec to host AI and high-performance computing workloads. Market commentary pointed to that repositioning as a driver of investor interest.

Cipher Mining gained about 29% amid reports of new institutional backing and progress leasing hyperscale capacity. Analysts highlighted Cipher’s Texas power footprint and balance-sheet capacity as factors supporting expectations for future announcements of AI data center deals.

IREN rose near 29% after signing a $1.6 billion purchase agreement with Dell on May 26 for Blackwell GPU systems. The systems are intended to support a five-year, $3.4 billion managed AI cloud contract. IREN aims to commission the equipment at its Childress, Texas campus in early 2027 and expects the arrangement to increase annualized run-rate revenue to about $4.4 billion from roughly $3.7 billion.

TeraWulf added about 24% after buying a 285-acre Muskie Data Campus in Eastern Kentucky on May 26. The site could support up to 1 gigawatt of capacity, with an initial 500-megawatt delivery targeted for late 2028, extending the company’s AI and HPC footprint beyond its existing sites.

Hut 8 rose roughly 22% after signing a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease for its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas. The 352-megawatt facility follows NVIDIA’s DSX reference architecture and raises Hut 8’s contracted AI capacity to about 597 megawatts.

A 10x Research note described Hut 8’s lease and other large campus transactions as evidence the industry is shifting some capacity from hash-rate-driven Bitcoin mining to hosting GPU-based AI systems and managed cloud contracts.

Bitcoin traded around $73,367 on Thursday and fell nearly 5% for the week. Investors have moved capital into equities that can lock in multi-year contracts with hyperscalers, and passive Bitcoin products have shown net outflows over multiple days. U.S. 10-year Treasury yields were near 4.47% to 4.50% ahead of an upcoming personal consumption expenditures inflation release and the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting on June 16-17.

Since late 2025 and through 2026, several publicly traded miners have pursued assets and partnerships to supply GPU-based AI systems and host hyperscalers, in some cases converting power contracts and data-center capacity previously used for Bitcoin mining. The performance gap between miners that have secured AI or managed cloud contracts and those focused mainly on hash-rate revenue appears reflected in the tracked basket’s 56% gain versus Bitcoin’s roughly 17% decline.