Bitcoin miners shift power to AI and high-performance compute

Core Scientific, Cipher and IREN reduced portions of their Bitcoin mining operations in the first quarter of 2026 and redirected power and facility capacity to AI and high-performance computing colocation and cloud services.

Core Scientific accelerated conversions of data center space into high-density colocation to host racks for an AI customer. Cipher decommissioned mining rigs at sections of its Black Pearl campus after securing a long-term hyperscale AI lease. IREN scaled back parts of its mining fleet while signing multibillion-dollar processing and cloud service agreements and expanding AI cloud infrastructure offerings.

Mining revenue per unit of compute, known as hashprice, fell to historically low levels in recent months. Global Bitcoin network hashrate remained above 900 exahashes per second in early 2026, about four times the level from four years earlier and roughly 50% higher than immediately after the 2024 halving. At the same time, new-generation mining machines have improved energy efficiency by about ninefold compared with earlier models, increasing competition based on operational efficiency.

Operators with access to low-cost electricity, transmission capacity and industrial cooling are reallocating those assets to serve AI and high-performance computing workloads. Mining campuses already include grid connections, substations, long-term power contracts and campus-level transmission capacity-elements that AI and HPC operators require to run dense racks of GPUs and accelerators and to maintain fast interconnection between systems.

Companies report using modular designs to convert facilities incrementally. Power distribution and high-density rack layouts used for mining make it possible to keep proprietary mining on some racks while outfitting other areas with colocation pods or hyperscale cloud services. Firms describe the approach as mixed-use compute campuses that can host different workloads in parallel.

Public miners have increased use of structured debt, convertible notes and infrastructure financing to fund expansion and conversions. Converting existing campuses into mixed-use compute facilities preserves ongoing mining revenue in the near term while enabling sales of colocation, managed cloud and processing services over time.

Investors and customers are assessing miners on infrastructure control, long-term power access, cooling capacity and the ability to serve multiple compute workloads. Several large operators are pursuing vertical integration by acquiring generation assets, securing long-duration offtake agreements and offering colocation or managed cloud services alongside mining.

Bitcoin mining historically converted electricity into large-scale computation. The physical requirements-securing electricity at scale, deploying industrial cooling and building interconnected campuses-are the same technical challenges companies address when shifting facility capacity from mining to AI and high-performance computing.