The Bitcoin mining industry has a new favorite hobby: pretending it’s actually an AI company. Public miners have signed contracts worth over $70 billion to host AI and high-performance computing workloads, and analysts expect the sector to pull roughly 70% of its revenue from AI by the end of 2026. That’s up from around 30% earlier this year.
But not everyone’s buying the narrative. Some miners are pushing back against the rush to convert their facilities into AI data centers, arguing that the economics don’t always pencil out the way the market assumes they do.
The great AI gold rush
Bitcoin miners already have something every AI company desperately needs: pre-secured power capacity. Miners can potentially deploy AI-ready facilities up to 75% faster than new builds, according to industry estimates.
The deals reflect that urgency. TeraWulf locked in a 20-year lease with Anthropic for approximately 401 megawatts of capacity, set to come online in 2027. Cipher Mining signed a 15-year agreement with AWS valued at $5.5 billion.
