Bitcoin mining companies shift to AI with $128 billion in orders

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)

For over a decade, Bitcoin mining companies served as the most stable foundation of PoW networks and the cost anchor for BTC’s “zero-level market.” But now, these industry pillars are collectively turning toward AI—whether proactively or reactively.

On the surface, the immediate catalyst for mining companies to transition is the continuous rise in mining difficulty and shrinking profit margins due to a sluggish market; however, the deeper driving force is the capital market's extreme pursuit of AI narratives—mining companies happen to possess some of the most readily convertible real assets: electricity, land, cooling systems, data centers, and existing data infrastructure, which can be exchanged for AI computing orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Amid the noise of multi-model competition, mining companies at the intersection of energy, electricity, computing power, and crypto assets are undergoing an unprecedented yet almost inevitable industry shift.

Some are playing it safe and standing still, while others are forced to turn around and bet everything—but one thing is certain: a strong wind has begun, driving a structural shift from the crypto market into the AI world.

Entering 2026, the real pressure on mining companies has never come solely from price volatility, but from structural squeeze: continuously rising difficulty, continuously declining revenue per unit, and continuously rising operational costs.

In the winter: Selling crypto to survive and bankruptcy liquidation

On February 20, Bitcoin mining difficulty rose by 15% to 144.4T, marking the largest increase since 2021. During the same period, network hash rate rebounded from 826 EH/s to 1 ZH/s, but hashprice dropped to a multi-year low of approximately $23.9/PH/s. Amid continued profit compression following the 2024 halving, mining companies have been forced into cash flow defense mode.

The most symbolic event came from Bitdeer. On February 20, it disclosed that its self-held BTC position had dropped to zero, with its weekly production fully offset by sales. Although founder Wu Jihann later explained that "zero now does not mean zero in the future," the market still viewed it as a reflection of mining company pressure.

It’s not just one company in trouble. In early February, NFN8 Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas, USA, planning to sell all its assets. Documents show that a fire at its core mining facility, the lease obligations from a sale-and-leaseback model, and a sharp drop in hashprice after the halving collectively crushed its cash flow. Despite owning multiple mining sites, NFN8’s own fleet of 5,000 miners is valued at less than $50,000, while its liabilities reach the millions.

As the environment continues to deteriorate, mining companies respond in an unusually consistent way—toward AI.

Second Spring: The Surprising Profits Behind Massive AI/HPC Orders

For AI giants, computing power data centers are always scarce: traditional construction cycles can take 3–5 years, with high costs for land, electricity, and cooling. Meanwhile, mining companies already possess power contracts, infrastructure, and operational expertise, making them the most practical partners for AI expansion.

Since last year, mining companies have experienced a surge in orders. According to publicly available data, as of the time of writing, six mining companies including IREN, CIFR, and HUT have collectively secured AI/HPC orders totaling approximately $38.5 billion. Notably, TeraWulf’s $12.8 billion contract with Fluidstack and IREN’s five-year, $9.7 billion contract with Microsoft have been particularly striking, serving as key drivers for their stock price strength. Financial reports show that AI/HPC revenue as a percentage of total revenue for multiple mining companies has risen from under 15% to between 40% and 60%.

If mining is a cyclical business, AI is like a long-term cash flow pipeline.

The Q1 2026 earnings season delivered nearly uniform signals that mining companies are undergoing a systemic transformation.

HPC contract大户 WULF: Holds contracts exceeding $12.8 billion

Miner TeraWulf reported annual revenue of $168.5 million for 2025, a 20.3% year-over-year increase, including $16.9 million from its newly launched high-performance computing (HPC) leasing business.

TeraWulf currently holds over $12.8 billion in HPC contracts, with 522 MW of capacity already contracted and $6.5 billion in financing secured to support data center expansion.

AI mining company minor giant IREN: holds a $9.7 billion order from Microsoft

Thanks to its previous large orders and rapid transformation, IREN has quietly become a new-generation "mini-giant" in AI mining.

According to IrisEnergy (IREN)'s financial report, as of January 31, 2026, the company held $2.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents. To date this fiscal year, it has raised over $9.2 billion through customer prepayments, convertible bonds, GPU leasing, and GPU financing. The company plans to add 140,000 additional GPUs and expects to achieve $3.4 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026.

Trump's "HUT": Holds $7 billion in orders

Mining company Hut8 generated $9.6 million in revenue from托管 services in its 2025 fiscal year, with approximately $1.4 billion in cash and bitcoin reserves.

In addition, Hut8’s mining subsidiary AmericanBitcoin (ABTC) achieved $185.2 million in full-year 2025 revenue, deployed approximately 25 EH/s of hash rate, operates around 78,000 ASIC miners, and has surpassed 6,000 BTC in reserves.

The company is also a major cryptocurrency mining enterprise supported by the Trump family, and has therefore attracted significant market attention.

Brand transformation complete. CIFR: $5.5 billion in orders secured.

The mining company CipherDigital disclosed in its 2025 Fiscal Year Performance Report that it has officially rebranded from "CipherMining" to "CipherDigital" to complete its brand transformation.

In November last year, CIFR entered into a lease agreement worth up to $5.5 billion with Amazon Web Services; additionally, it secured Google’s consent to guarantee $1.4 billion in contracts between Fluidstack and CIFR in exchange for a 5.4% equity stake.

“Sell coins, buy land, build data centers”: RIOT enters into a leasing partnership with AMD

Miner Riot Platforms announced full-year 2025 results, reporting total revenue of $647.4 million, a significant increase from $376.7 million in 2024; its Bitcoin holdings exceed 18,000 BTC.

In January of this year, Riot sold 1,080 bitcoins and used the proceeds (approximately $96 million) to purchase the Rockdale property for the development of a data center project. Additionally, the company signed a data center leasing and services agreement with AMD, which will deploy 25 megawatts of critical IT load capacity at the Rockdale campus. Activist investment firm Starboard Value stated that Riot’s potential valuation in its transition toward AI and HPC could reach up to $21 billion.

“BTC Bullish” MARA: Partnering with capital institutions to build AI data centers

MARA's financial report shows that, due to a roughly 14% decline in the average mining cost of Bitcoin, MARA's Q4 2025 revenue amounted to $202.3 million, a year-over-year decrease of approximately 6%. At the end of February, MARA announced a partnership with investment firm Starwood Capital Group to build a large-scale data center in the U.S., targeting AI and cloud computing customers, expanding on its existing mining facilities. Following the announcement, its stock price rose by approximately 17% in after-hours trading.

Notably, unlike other mining companies firmly transitioning into the AI sector, MARA’s management emphasized that, despite short-term price uncertainty, their long-term confidence in Bitcoin as an asset class remains unchanged, and Bitcoin will continue to be the core of their long-term strategy.

Data center revenue surges: CORZ holds over $10 billion in orders from CoreWeave

CoreScientific (CORZ) announced its Q4 2025 earnings, reporting total revenue of $79.8 million for Q4 2025, a decrease from $94.9 million in the same period last year. Bitcoin mining revenue fell to $42.2 million, while data center hosting revenue surged to $31.3 million, up from $8.5 million in 2024. Q4 gross profit increased to $20.8 million, compared to $4.8 million in the same period of 2024.

CoreScientific CEO Adam Sullivan stated that the company’s current construction projects are more than halfway complete, and it is expanding its hosting platform to a 1.5-gigawatt pipeline of leaseable capacity. In October last year, AI company CoreWeave planned to acquire CoreScientific at a valuation of approximately $9 billion, but the deal was ultimately abandoned due to lack of shareholder approval; in January this year, CoreScientific sold 1,900 BTC (approximately $175 million) to fund its business transformation.

The company estimates that its AI business will drive a 60.9% CAGR in revenue from 2026 to 2028, reaching $1.5 billion by 2028.

Other mining company representatives: Bitfarms rebrands, BitDigital switches to the ETH camp

In February, Bitfarms (BITF) announced it would relocate its headquarters from Canada to the United States and plans to rename itself KeelInfrastructure (subject to approval by shareholders, exchanges, and courts), accelerating its transition toward infrastructure. Previously, the company converted $300 million in debt financing into project financing for the construction of a data center in Pennsylvania in October last year, and sold its PasoPe mine for $30 million in January this year, officially exiting the Latin American market.

On the other hand, BitDigital’s shift has been even more comprehensive. As early as July last year, during the surge of DAT (Odaily note: digital asset treasury companies), it was the first to announce its transition from a BTC to an ETH treasury company; in January this year, it further clarified that it would completely halt Bitcoin mining and instead intensify its focus on Ethereum infrastructure, staking, and HPC/AI strategies—marking the formal transition of this five-year mining veteran to a new camp. Currently, its AI subsidiary, WhiteFiber, has completed its IPO, with BitDigital holding approximately 27 million shares, valued at over $457 million based on current market valuation.

In addition to the two mentioned above, Galaxy, Bitdeer, Cleanspark, and Cango are still in the process of advancing their AI transformation, with their revenue contribution yet to increase significantly. Notably, Cango completed a $10.5 million equity financing in February and received an additional $65 million in committed investment, which may accelerate its deployment in AI/HPC data center businesses.

The following is a brief comparison based on publicly available information for your reference.

The market is not fully accepting the "AI transformation," but rapidly diverging.

In early February, JPMorgan noted in a report that Bitcoin mining companies had a strong start to the year, primarily driven by temporary relief in network competition and rising interest in the HPC narrative. At that time, the total market capitalization of the 14 U.S.-listed mining companies and data center operators it tracked rose to approximately $60 billion by end-January, a 23% month-over-month increase, far outpacing the S&P 500’s roughly 1% gain during the same period.

But soon, as a new wave of AI models was released en masse and OpenClaw disrupted the valuation framework for software stocks, market sentiment shifted rapidly, with investors growing concerned about the structural disruption posed by AI. Consequently, stock prices of mining companies tied to AI infrastructure retraced, with CIFR, IREN, and Hut8 all falling more than 10% intraday.

On February 10, Morgan Stanley released a research report upgrading CIFR and WULF to overweight and downgrading MARA to underweight.

By the end of February, as orders were fulfilled and stock prices rebounded, market sentiment reversed once again. Some analysts believe that, against the backdrop of hedge funds maintaining high short positions and mining companies securing long-term, low-cost power contracts, their strategic value now extends beyond traditional mining and more closely resembles that of AI infrastructure providers.

As orders are fulfilled and stock prices rebound, the market logic becomes clearer: capital only bets on structural winners.

Therefore, the future of mining companies largely depends on three things:

Execution capability: Ability to quickly complete the migration of computing power formats;

Resource endowment: Do electricity and land offer economies of scale?

Narrative capability: Can it be integrated into the AI upstream supply chain?

Actually, the decision to transform a business is not as important as capital selection.

The tide has arrived; mining companies have only two choices: either adapt and move with it, or become history.