Christopher Abramo opened his keynote at Mining Disrupt Dallas with a confession that would have drawn odd looks at an AI conference: he is a former Bitcoin miner, and he started building modular facilities for Bitcoin in 2017. Today he is chief executive officer of Mod42, which builds data centers for AI and high-performance computing in a factory and ships them to the site. His pitch to a room of miners was that the modular habits they already know carry straight over to AI infrastructure.
The session was recorded at Mining Disrupt Dallas 2025, held November 12–14, 2025, and ran just under ten minutes. Abramo put the company's claims up front: compared with a traditional data center, Mod42 says its builds are 60 percent faster, up to 40 percent cheaper and take up to 50 percent less space. These are the company's own figures, presented on stage.
60% faster up to 40% cheaper and then also we are up to 50% less space
Christopher Abramo · 2:00
A Pitch Aimed at Miners
Abramo said that when he raises crypto or modular Bitcoin builds at AI events, the reaction is sometimes puzzled, and that it was good to speak where everyone knew the background. He pointed to earlier sessions that day, which had discussed sites running both Bitcoin mining and AI, and said he sees synergies between the two. For miners thinking about adding AI to their business, he offered Mod42's modular data centers as the way in.
on a site you have both and you're thinking about bringing AI into your Bitcoin mining business strategy
Christopher Abramo · 1:42
He said the designs are built to AI and HPC requirements, are code-compliant, and can be delivered with N+1 or N+2 redundancy, the level of redundancy that earlier panels had raised as a requirement for AI workloads. His summary of the business case was that faster deployment means faster revenue.
Why Faster: Building While the Site Is Prepared
Speed comes from running two jobs at once. In Abramo's description, the site work and the fabrication happen in parallel: while the site is being improved, the data center is being built in a factory, then shipped. Installation also gets quicker with repetition, he said, because contractors who have installed one, two, three, four, five modules get faster and more efficient at it.
while the site's being improved, we will be building your data center in a factory and we can ship it to the site
Christopher Abramo · 2:20
Mod42 also designed around equipment with shorter lead times. Abramo said the company started with modular in mind rather than breaking a traditional design into pieces, and asked its manufacturers and vendors which equipment it could get faster.
Why Cheaper: Medium Voltage and Site Work
On cost, Abramo named what he called the two biggest costs of building any site, whether for Bitcoin mining or AI and HPC: medium-voltage distribution and site improvement. Mod42's pitch is to need less of both through higher site density and more efficient use of space. The company also uses less material, he said, and avoids designing around giant buildings, so the money goes into usable infrastructure. Contractors who become highly proficient at repeat installs save money as well.
He added that because the design disturbs less land, uses less material and needs no makeup water, there is a green side to it.
Why Better: Factory Testing and Independent Modules
Abramo's quality argument is consistency. Every data hall comes out of the factory the same, he said, and a buyer can see it, touch it and run quality checks on it before it ships. Power, cooling and controls are integrated and tested at the factory.
Mod42 modularizes the mechanical and electrical rooms too, rather than building one large room for each, an approach Abramo described as decentralizing the utilities. Each module runs independently of the next, so the risk is spread: if one goes down, the whole site does not. Capacity grows by adding modules, and modules can be built on concurrent schedules.
3-Megawatt Data Halls, Starting Small
Each Mod42 data hall is rated at 3 megawatts, a size Abramo noted is a common building block in Bitcoin mining, with 2.2 megawatts of compute inside. The halls are designed around Nvidia's GB-series and B300 clusters, and Mod42 is partnered with Supermicro. Each module can be customized to the hardware a customer chooses, including earlier generations. Buyers can start at 3 megawatts and grow from there.
You can go up to 20 megawws or 100 megawws worth of AI load
Christopher Abramo · 4:06
In the walkthrough, visitors enter a hall through a secure vestibule, which Abramo flagged as a difference from Bitcoin mining sites. Rear-door heat exchangers on each side cool the hot air coming off the servers, and cooling and overhead power distribution run to the racks.
The Plano Thought Experiment
To compare modular with traditional construction, Mod42 picked an existing AI data center in Plano, Texas, and asked what it could fit on the site if the building were knocked down and replaced with modules. Abramo stressed that nothing is wrong with the existing facility. The answer, by Mod42's estimate, was 66 percent more compute capacity. Its modules stand 10 to 11 feet tall rather than a 20- to 30-foot structure, and use insulated, fully welded steel in place of heavy tilt-up construction.
Mod42 estimated its construction cost for that site at $7 million per megawatt, against $10 million to $12 million for the traditional build, with both figures counted per IT megawatt rather than total power. Abramo reminded the audience that AI infrastructure costs far more than the Bitcoin mining builds they are used to.
our construction cost would be estimated to be 7 million per megawatt total versus 12 to 10
Christopher Abramo · 6:30
A render of the hypothetical 72-megawatt site showed the layout: two power modules for every data hall, because AI and HPC need redundant power; a chiller field; generator sets; A and B transformers; and an admin building with loading docks, repair shops and offices.
Where This Leaves Miners
Abramo closed by inviting Bitcoin miners considering AI and HPC to Mod42's booth. The speed, cost and capacity figures in this session are Mod42's own estimates and a thought experiment, not results from a completed build; the session reported no deployed projects.
When the session was recorded in November 2025, Bitcoin traded at $104,994. On October 12, 2026, it was $83,455.