Bitcoin miners turning into AI and HPC data centers

Why miners are pivoting

A bitcoin mine and an AI data center need the same scarce thing: a large, approved grid connection with substations, land and crews that run thousands of machines around the clock. AI developers need that power quickly. Grid queues are long, so a site that is already energized, or already approved, saves years. For context on how long new connections take, see our data center power guide.

Mining has become a thin business. Hashprice, the expected revenue from one petahash per second of hashrate for a day, was $39.87 on September 28, 2026, according to Hashrate Index, which said hashprice was at or near breakeven for many miners at about $40. CoinDesk, citing CoinShares, reported in March 2026 that hashprice had hit a post-halving low of roughly $28 to $30 per PH per day, that the weighted average cash cost to produce one bitcoin among public miners was about $79,995 in the fourth quarter of 2025, and that bitcoin was trading between $68,000 and $70,000. Track it live on Mining Disrupt's hashprice page.

Against that, AI tenants sign 10- to 20-year leases with fixed rent escalators. The same CoinDesk report counted more than $70 billion of cumulative AI and HPC contracts announced by public miners, and found that miners with secured HPC contracts traded at 12.3 times next-twelve-months sales against 5.9 times for pure-play miners.

How the pivot started

Two of the best-known AI infrastructure companies began in crypto. CoreWeave was founded in New Jersey in 2017 as Atlantic Crypto and mined Ethereum on GPUs. After the 2018 crypto crash it renamed itself CoreWeave in 2019 and began renting its GPUs as cloud computing. It listed on Nasdaq on March 28, 2025. CoreWeave is now a tenant at Core Scientific, Galaxy and Applied Digital sites. For how CoreWeave and other GPU clouds sell capacity, see our GPU cloud guide.

Crusoe was founded in 2018 to capture natural gas that oil producers would otherwise flare and use it to power bitcoin mining units placed at oil and gas sites. In March 2025 it agreed to sell its bitcoin mining business, including its Digital Flare Mitigation unit, to NYDIG. The sale covered about 270 MW of power generation in seven US states and Argentina. Crusoe said AI infrastructure had become the majority of its revenue, and it was expanding its AI campus in Abilene, Texas, to 1.2 GW.

Core Scientific signed early. By February 2025 it had contracted about 590 MW of critical IT load across six sites to CoreWeave, worth about $10.2 billion over 12-year terms. CoreWeave then agreed to buy Core Scientific, but Core Scientific's stockholders did not approve the merger, and the agreement was terminated on October 30, 2025. A wave of deals with hyperscalers and AI labs followed in late 2025 and 2026.

The major deals

The list below covers the largest contracts disclosed by public miners and former miners. Megawatts are critical IT load unless stated otherwise.

Core Scientific

About 590 MW to CoreWeave across six sites, about $10.2 billion over 12 years, including 260 MW at Denton, Texas. In July 2026 it signed 15-year agreements with AMD for about 530 MW at five sites (Pecos and Hunt County in Texas, Dalton in Georgia, Muskogee in Oklahoma and Auburn in Alabama), worth more than $14 billion in potential base revenue, with deliveries from 2027 and a framework that could reach 2.5 GW. Total leased customer capacity was about 1.1 GW, worth more than $24 billion in potential contracted revenue.

IREN

A five-year, $9.7 billion contract with Microsoft, disclosed November 3, 2025, for NVIDIA GB300 capacity at four 50 MW liquid-cooled Horizon data centers in Childress, Texas, a campus of 750 MW. IREN delivered Horizon 1 in August 2026. Unlike most miners, IREN sells GPU cloud services, not space: it bought the GPUs, under a $5.8 billion purchase agreement with Dell. In August 2026 it reported about $4 billion of contracted annual recurring revenue for 2026 capacity.

Cipher (now Cipher Digital)

A 10-year lease with Fluidstack for 168 MW at Barber Lake in Colorado City, Texas, worth about $3 billion, or about $7 billion with two five-year extensions, signed September 2025 with Google backstopping $1.4 billion. A 15-year lease with AWS for 300 MW, worth about $5.5 billion, signed November 2025.

TeraWulf

Two 10-year Fluidstack leases for 360 MW at Lake Mariner, New York, backed by Google, which took a 14% stake. A 168 MW Fluidstack joint venture at Abernathy, Texas, worth about $9.5 billion over 25 years, whose 50.1% stake TeraWulf agreed to sell to a Fluidstack-led group for about $530 million in August 2026. And a 20-year Anthropic lease for about 401 MW at Hawesville, Kentucky, worth about $19 billion, or about $33 billion with extensions.

Hut 8

A 15-year, triple-net lease with Fluidstack for 245 MW at River Bend, Louisiana, signed December 17, 2025: $7.0 billion base value, up to about $17.7 billion with three renewals, backstopped by Google for the base term. In 2026 it signed two 352 MW leases with an unnamed high-investment-grade tenant at Beacon Point, worth about $19.6 billion in base-term value.

Galaxy

Bought the Helios mining site in West Texas from Argo Blockchain for $65 million at the end of 2022. CoreWeave has contracted 526 MW across three phases, using all 800 MW of approved gross power, on 15-year leases expected to average more than $1 billion of revenue a year. Galaxy delivered the first 133 MW in July 2026.

Riot Platforms

A 10-year lease with AMD at Rockdale, Texas, announced January 2026, for 25 MW with options up to 200 MW, now 50 MW contracted. On August 10, 2026, a 20-year lease with an unnamed frontier AI lab for 191 MW at Rockdale, worth about $9.1 billion over the base term. Riot also signed a non-binding letter of intent with one tenant for all 756 MW of planned critical IT at Corsicana, Texas.

Applied Digital

Formerly Applied Blockchain, it hosted bitcoin miners at Jamestown and Ellendale, North Dakota. Its Polaris Forge 1 campus at Ellendale is fully leased to CoreWeave: 400 MW under roughly 15-year leases worth about $11 billion in anticipated revenue.

Bitfarms (Keel Infrastructure)

Said in March 2026 that it was making no new investments in bitcoin mining, would sell its roughly 2,500 BTC over time and was renaming itself Keel Infrastructure. It is targeting hyperscaler and neocloud leases at Panther Creek and other Pennsylvania sites, with first sites expected online in 2027.

For background on the first of these conversions, read Core Scientific and CoreWeave on physical AI infrastructure and why bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI infrastructure.

How the contracts work

Most deals are colocation leases. The miner builds or converts the building, supplies power, cooling and security, and rents it by the megawatt. The tenant owns the GPUs. IREN instead sells GPU cloud services and buys the chips itself.

Terms that recur

MW of critical IT

Leases are priced on the power available to the servers, not the site's gross power. At Barber Lake, 168 MW of critical IT is supported by up to 244 MW of gross capacity. At Helios, about 200 MW of gross power supports 133 MW of critical IT.

Long terms with options

Base terms run 10 years (Cipher and Fluidstack), 15 years (Hut 8, Galaxy, AWS, Applied Digital, Core Scientific and AMD), 20 years (Riot, TeraWulf and Anthropic) or 25 years (Abernathy), usually with five-year renewal options.

Triple-net

Hut 8's River Bend lease is triple-net: the tenant pays operating costs such as power on top of rent. That is why lease revenue per MW is not directly comparable with mining revenue, which has to cover the power bill.

Expansion rights

Fluidstack holds a right of first offer on up to 1,000 MW more at River Bend. AMD holds an option for 75 MW and a right of first refusal on 100 MW more at Rockdale.

Tenant-funded fit-out

At Denton, Core Scientific funded about $1.5 million per MW of capex for the 70 MW expansion and CoreWeave funded the rest.

Hyperscalers, neoclouds and the Google backstop

Tenants fall into two groups. Hyperscalers and large chip companies, such as Microsoft, AWS and AMD, bring investment-grade credit. Neoclouds, the GPU clouds such as CoreWeave and Fluidstack, grow fast but carry more risk. Lenders prefer the first kind, so many neocloud leases are wrapped in someone else's credit.

Google has played that role for Fluidstack. At Cipher's Barber Lake, Google backstops $1.4 billion of Fluidstack's lease obligations to support project debt. At TeraWulf's Abernathy joint venture, Google backs about $1.3 billion, and if Fluidstack becomes insolvent or defaults, Google can pay a termination fee or take over the lease as tenant at a discounted rate. At Hut 8's River Bend, Google covers lease payments and pass-through obligations for the 15-year base term. Bitfarms told investors in March 2026 that an investment-grade tenant, or a credit wrap that matches the lease, is now "table stakes."

The credit support makes the financing possible. Hut 8 raised $3.25 billion of senior secured notes for River Bend, which it described as the first investment-grade construction financing for a single-sponsor data center project, and $4.25 billion rated Baa2 for Beacon Point.

Lease economics versus hashprice

The simplest comparison is revenue per megawatt per year. These figures are our calculations from company disclosures:

Core Scientific (billing)

About $635 million of annualized colocation revenue on 437 MW billing in July 2026: about $1.45 million per MW per year.

Cipher and AWS

$5.5 billion over 15 years on 300 MW: about $1.2 million per MW per year.

Cipher and Fluidstack

$3 billion over 10 years on 168 MW: about $1.8 million per MW per year.

Hut 8 River Bend

Expected average net operating income of about $454 million a year on 245 MW: about $1.85 million of NOI per MW per year.

Galaxy Helios

More than $1 billion of average annual revenue on 526 MW: more than $1.9 million per MW per year.

Riot Rockdale

$9.1 billion over 20 years on 191 MW: about $2.4 million per MW per year. Riot expects $365 million to $411 million of average annual NOI.

TeraWulf and Anthropic

About $19 billion over 20 years on about 401 MW: about $2.4 million per MW per year.

Now mining. Take a fleet at 15 joules per terahash: 1 MW runs about 66.7 PH/s. At the September 28, 2026 hashprice of $39.87, that earns about $2,660 a day, or about $970,000 a year, before power. The same megawatt uses 24 MWh a day, so at an illustrative $40 per MWh, power costs about $350,000 a year, leaving about $620,000 before staff, maintenance, pool fees and machine replacement. This is an illustration, not a forecast, and it moves with the bitcoin price, network hashrate and fees.

So a megawatt leased to an AI tenant brings in roughly 1.2 to 2.5 times the gross revenue the same megawatt earns mining at today's hashprice, and the tenant usually pays for the power on top. The lease rent is contracted for a decade or more; the mining revenue changes every day. CoinDesk reported that AI infrastructure contracts offer margins above 85%.

GPU cloud is a different model. IREN said in August 2026 that its recent three-year contracts exceed $20 million of revenue per MW of IT, with discussions around $25 million. That revenue is much higher because IREN also buys and runs the GPUs, which carries far more capital and technology risk.

What it costs and how long it takes

A bitcoin mine is cheap to build. An AI data center is not. CoinDesk, citing CoinShares, put bitcoin mining infrastructure at about $700,000 to $1 million per MW and AI infrastructure at about $8 million to $15 million per MW. Company guidance sits inside that range:

• TeraWulf said its compute builds remain within guidance of $8 million to $10 million per MW of critical IT.
• Riot estimates $11 million to $12 million per MW, or $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion for its 191 MW Rockdale building, a Tier III built-to-suit facility.
• Riot's first AMD deployment, a retrofit of an existing building, cost $89.8 million for 25 MW.

The gap comes from redundancy, chilled-water or direct-to-chip liquid cooling, and Tier III electrical design that a mine never needed. See our liquid cooling guide for the cooling side and our AI data center guide for the full build.

At $10 million per MW and about $1.9 million of annual NOI per MW, simple payback is around five years, inside a 15- to 20-year lease. That is our rough arithmetic and ignores financing costs, which are large: CoinDesk reported $5.7 billion of total debt at TeraWulf and $3.7 billion of convertible notes at IREN, and Cipher reported long-term borrowings of about $5.4 billion at June 30, 2026.

Timelines from signing to rent

• Cipher and AWS: signed November 2025; rent scheduled from August 2026. Cipher said in August 2026 that its investment-grade hyperscale tenant at its Black Pearl site asked to accelerate, and delivery began two months early.
• Cipher and Fluidstack: signed September 2025; rent expected October 2026 at Barber Lake.
• IREN and Microsoft: disclosed November 2025; first 50 MW delivered August 2026; the remaining three targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026.
• Hut 8 River Bend: signed December 2025; first data hall targeted for the second quarter of 2027.
• Riot Rockdale (191 MW): signed August 2026; first 96 MW in December 2027 and all 191 MW by June 2028.
• TeraWulf and Anthropic: signed August 2026; first capacity in the second half of 2027 and full delivery in early 2028.

Retrofits of existing buildings move in months. New buildings on existing power reach first capacity about 11 to 18 months after signing in these examples. Both are far shorter than the wait for a new grid connection described in our power guide.

Risks

• Tenant concentration. Several miners depend on one or two tenants. Applied Digital's Polaris Forge 1 is leased entirely to CoreWeave, and Galaxy's contracted Helios capacity is all CoreWeave.
• Tenant credit. Neoclouds are young companies with large commitments. Backstops from Google, and investment-grade tenants such as Microsoft, AWS and AMD, reduce this risk but do not cover every lease.
• Leverage and dilution. Builds are financed with project debt, convertible notes and warrants. TeraWulf reported a net loss of $939.9 million in the second quarter of 2026, driven largely by a $755.7 million change in the fair value of warrants; Core Scientific reported a $1.16 billion net loss in the same quarter, mainly from warrants.
• Stranded mining assets. IREN recorded a $638.8 million impairment in fiscal 2026, mostly tied to decommissioning mining hardware.
• Letters of intent are not leases. Riot's Corsicana LOI is non-binding, and Riot's estimate of more than $1 billion of annual rent there is a management estimate, not contracted revenue.
• Grid rules. In Texas, new rules give ERCOT the right to curtail new large loads in emergencies, and a governor-ordered audit has slowed new interconnections. See below.

Analysts now price miners largely on their power. In November 2025, JPMorgan valued about 200 MW of potential critical IT at CleanSpark's new Texas site at about $13 million per MW and expected about 1.7 GW more of miner AI capacity to be announced by late 2026.

Texas and ERCOT

Many of these conversions are in Texas: IREN at Childress, Cipher at Barber Lake and its other West Texas sites, Galaxy at Helios in Dickens County, Riot at Rockdale and Corsicana, Core Scientific at Denton, Pecos and Hunt County, and TeraWulf's former Abernathy joint venture. Those approved ERCOT connections are now the asset.

The queue explains why. ERCOT told the Texas Senate in July 2026 that it was tracking about 474 GW of large loads seeking interconnection as of June, about 90% of them data centers. About 205 GW was preliminarily eligible for Batch Zero, ERCOT's first batch study, as of July 28, 2026. Utility Dive reported that ERCOT's queue is more than five times its record peak demand and that much of it may be speculative or duplicative.

Then the rules tightened. Texas Senate Bill 6, signed June 20, 2025, applies to new or expanded loads above 75 MW at a site. It requires a study fee of at least $100,000, disclosure of backup generation equal to at least half the load, and, for large loads connected after December 31, 2025, equipment that lets ERCOT curtail them in emergencies. On August 3, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott called for a moratorium on new data center interconnections until questions about energy, water and public funds are answered. ERCOT said it aims to file its audit by December 10 and will not finish the Batch Zero study by April 9, 2027.

This is where miners holding approved power have an edge. Riot's Corsicana site has 1 GW of approved utility power and a direct 345-kV connection and is not subject to the batch process, according to Blockspace's report on Riot's results. Galaxy has 1.63 GW approved at Helios, according to the company's July 2026 update. A miner with approved power can sign a lease today; a new entrant in the queue may wait years. New sites are a different matter: Cipher's 900 MW Apollo option near San Antonio was submitted into Batch Zero.

Mining experience with flexible load also carries over. Many ERCOT miners already cut load during price spikes and grid emergencies, and SB 6 makes curtailment a condition for new large loads. AI workloads are less flexible than mining, so a buyer or tenant should ask how often a converted site could be curtailed.

The people who own powered sites and the people who need them meet at Intelligence Disrupt 2027, March 22-24, 2027, at the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas in Dallas-Fort Worth, co-located with Mining Disrupt, the bitcoin mining expo. See passes or exhibit.

Questions

Why are bitcoin miners switching to AI?

Because their power is worth more to AI tenants than to bitcoin. Hashprice was about $40 per PH per day in September 2026, which Hashrate Index called at or near breakeven for many miners, while long AI leases signed in 2025 and 2026 pay roughly $1.2 million to $2.4 million per MW of critical IT a year, by our calculation from company disclosures.

Which bitcoin miners host AI?

Among public miners: Core Scientific (CoreWeave, AMD), IREN (Microsoft and others), Cipher (AWS, Fluidstack), TeraWulf (Fluidstack, Anthropic), Hut 8 (Fluidstack and an investment-grade tenant), Galaxy (CoreWeave), Riot (AMD and an AI lab) and Applied Digital (CoreWeave). Bitfarms is converting under the name Keel Infrastructure.

How much do AI data center leases pay per MW?

Calculated from company disclosures, about $1.2 million to $2.4 million of revenue per MW of critical IT per year. Core Scientific billed 437 MW in July 2026 for about $635 million of annualized colocation revenue, or about $1.45 million per MW.

How much does it cost to convert a bitcoin mine to an AI data center?

Far more than the mine cost. CoinDesk, citing CoinShares, put AI infrastructure at about $8 million to $15 million per MW, against $700,000 to $1 million for mining. TeraWulf guides to $8 million to $10 million per MW and Riot to $11 million to $12 million.

What is a Google backstop?

A guarantee from Google that covers a tenant's lease payments if the tenant fails. Google backstopped Fluidstack leases at Cipher ($1.4 billion), TeraWulf and Hut 8, which let miners finance projects on Google's credit rather than a younger tenant's.

How long does it take to turn a bitcoin mine into an AI data center?

Roughly 9 to 18 months from signing to first capacity in recent deals. Cipher signed AWS in November 2025 with rent from August 2026; Riot signed its 191 MW lease in August 2026 with first delivery in December 2027.

Are bitcoin miners still mining?

Many are, but less. IREN took a $638.8 million impairment in fiscal 2026, mostly from decommissioning mining hardware, and Bitfarms said in March 2026 it was making no new investment in bitcoin mining.

Why do so many of these deals involve Texas?

Miners built large ERCOT-connected sites before the AI rush. With about 474 GW of large loads in ERCOT's queue in June 2026, an approved interconnection is hard to replicate, which is what IREN at Childress, Riot at Rockdale and Corsicana, Galaxy at Helios and Cipher at Barber Lake are selling.

More guides

• AI data centers: power, cooling, sites and the build-out
• GPU cloud: providers, prices and the power behind them
• Liquid cooling for data centers
• Data center power: how much it takes and how to get it

Sources

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2. Hashrate Index Roundup, September 28, 2026 · 2026-09-28
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