Bitcoin Miners Pivot to AI and High-Performance Computing

Major U.S. bitcoin miners are reporting rising AI and data-center revenue and signing long-term compute contracts while retaining exposure to bitcoin. The companies are leasing power and site capacity to hyperscalers or building GPU clusters for AI workloads as an alternative use for the same electricity, land and grid connections they use for mining.

From Aug. 17 through Aug. 21 bitcoin rose about 21.5%, yet six of seven large U.S.-listed miners underperformed the coin. Marathon Digital Holdings rose 16.1% over that stretch. Cipher Digital fell 14.8%, TeraWulf lost 11.2%, Hut 8 dropped 8.1%, IREN declined 6.8%, CleanSpark fell 3.4% and Riot Platforms was modestly lower. Over the same sessions the Nasdaq-100 proxy fell about 2.3%.

The companies are selling power and site capacity to customers under long-term contracts or converting facilities to run GPU clusters rather than ASICs used solely for bitcoin. Public markets price mining exposure differently from contracted computing revenue: mining ties results to bitcoin price and network difficulty, while contracts introduce tenant credit, construction schedules and project financing as valuation inputs.

Company filings show the businesses are at different stages of that shift. TeraWulf reported about $31.9 million of $44.8 million in second-quarter revenue from high-performance-computing leases and $12.8 million from digital-asset activities. IREN’s June quarter included $70.5 million of AI cloud revenue and $66.7 million of bitcoin-mining revenue; the company reported $1 billion of operating annual recurring revenue as of Aug. 26 and $4 billion of contracted ARR tied to 2026 capacity, subject to commissioning and customer acceptance, and recorded a $450.4 million impairment tied to decommissioned mining hardware. Hut 8’s Beacon Point leases cover 949 megawatts of contracted IT capacity and carry $26.6 billion of base-term contract value, subject to future delivery and tenant performance.

Cipher has contracted 700 megawatts of high-performance-computing capacity across three sites and began delivering capacity at its Black Pearl facility in August. Riot reported $113.7 million of mining revenue, $23.2 million from data centers and $37.3 million from engineering for the quarter, and holds 241 megawatts of contracted AI capacity that the company estimates could represent roughly $9.8 billion of long-term revenue; Riot reported 11,380 bitcoin on its balance sheet at June 30. CleanSpark signed a 20-year, $6.6 billion data-center lease on Aug. 6. Marathon remains the most mining-dependent of the group while exploring adjacent energy and computing opportunities.

A two-year analysis of daily equity and bitcoin returns found bitcoin sensitivity declined for most miners as data-center contracts gained weight. Rolling 90-day correlations and univariate betas show bitcoin beta dropped from a comparable window a year earlier for six of the seven companies. Correlations with the Nasdaq-100 proxy now exceed bitcoin correlations for all seven miners, and Marathon retains the highest bitcoin correlation and beta. Hut 8, TeraWulf and Cipher show lower bitcoin correlation as contracted computing revenue accounts for a larger share of investor valuation.

A three-factor regression using daily bitcoin returns, Nasdaq-100 moves and the 10-year Treasury yield explained about 28% to 45% of daily return variation across the miners. The estimated daily effect of a 10-basis-point rise in yields varied by company, with one firm’s coefficient implying a 0.52% decline and another implying a 0.79% gain. The results show mixed interest-rate sensitivity across the group.

Contracts add layers of risk and cash-flow sources to the companies’ profiles. Investors now have exposure to bitcoin production, tenant credit, construction delivery, power‑delivery risk and project finance in different proportions. All seven firms retain a positive bitcoin beta and continue to use mining cash flow to support or fund several AI and data-center projects.