AI power demand makes Bitcoin miners’ grid hookups valuable

Rising demand for electricity from artificial intelligence data centers has made energized sites, substations and long-term power contracts held by Bitcoin miners assets that can be leased to AI operators. Large commercial agreements include Iren’s five-year, $9.7 billion GPU arrangement served from a 750-megawatt campus in Childress, Texas, and Hut 8’s 15-year, $7 billion lease for 245 megawatts at its River Bend site in Louisiana.

Stanford University’s annual report estimated global AI data center power capacity reached about 29.6 gigawatts by the end of 2025. The report also noted that capacity dedicated to AI rose roughly 200-fold since 2022 and that some large model training runs have drawn on the order of 100 megawatts.

Bitcoin miners have built electrical infrastructure over the past decade that AI operators need: grid interconnections, substations, permitted sites and long-term power contracts. Mining ASICs are specialized for cryptocurrency validation and cannot be reused for model training, but the grid connections and site facilities can be adapted or leased to support dense racks of GPUs faster than creating new interconnections.

Several public miners have announced large computing and leasing contracts. Iren disclosed the Microsoft GPU arrangement for its Childress campus. Hut 8 arranged the River Bend lease with Fluidstack, with payments supported by Google. TeraWulf reported $12.8 billion in contracted high-performance computing revenue and said leasing income has surpassed mining revenue. Core Scientific expanded its agreement with CoreWeave to $10.2 billion over 12 years. CoinShares counted more than $70 billion in announced AI and high-performance computing contracts among listed miners, noting much of that value is scheduled over multiple years.

Investors have adjusted valuations for miners that secured HPC contracts. CoinShares reported miners with such contracts trading at about 12.3 times 12-month revenue, compared with 5.9 times for miners focused only on Bitcoin production.

Converting mining sites for AI workloads involves higher capital requirements. Industry estimates place traditional mining infrastructure costs near $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt. AI-grade, liquid-cooled facilities that meet hyperscaler power density and uptime standards are estimated at $8 million to $15 million per megawatt. Hyperscalers typically require higher redundancy, denser power delivery and stricter uptime guarantees than many mining sites were built to provide.

Miners are financing conversions with debt and new capital. Iren reported about $3.75 billion of convertible note debt at the end of March and later sold an additional $3 billion in convertible notes. Contract timelines for some projects extend several years; for example, River Bend is scheduled to begin commissioning in the second quarter of 2027.

Market and operational factors have contributed to the shift toward leasing power capacity. A financial estimate placed Bitcoin’s all-in production cost near $78,000 per coin at one point, above market prices around $53,400, and industry data indicated hashprice had fallen below breakeven for many miners. The United States, which hosts 5,427 data centers, offers locations with relatively low power costs in states such as Texas and along the Gulf Coast, but obtaining new interconnection approvals and building substations can take years while chips and accelerators can be delivered in months.

Contracts commonly run for a decade or more and may include backloaded payments or milestone conditions. If project schedules slip, if customers adjust demand, or if commissioning is delayed, miners that have removed ASICs to prepare sites may have limited alternative uses for those facilities.