Former Bitcoin Miners Shift to AI, Stocks Reach New Highs

Former bitcoin miners that converted capacity for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing pushed several stocks to fresh highs on Wednesday. IREN, Cipher Digital and Hut 8 led gains after companies disclosed large vendor deals, leases and financings.

IREN climbed more than 13% after announcing a package of transactions over the past month. The company raised $3 billion in convertible notes, agreed to a partnership with Nvidia tied to a planned 5-gigawatt AI data center, and completed a $625 million acquisition of software services provider Mirantis. IREN also disclosed a $1.6 billion agreement with Dell to supply Blackwell AI systems connected to a previously announced $3.4 billion cloud contract.

Cipher Digital shares rose about 9.5% to roughly $25, a record high. The company is shifting from bitcoin mining to AI and high-performance computing infrastructure. Over the past year Cipher has signed multiple hyperscaler leases, including a 15-year arrangement linked to Amazon Web Services, and has secured financing to build new data centers for AI workloads.

Hut 8 advanced nearly 5% to about $118, also reaching a record level. The company has a $9.8 billion AI data center lease with Nvidia; the total potential value of the arrangement could exceed $25 billion if contracts are renewed. Hut 8 describes itself as an energy and infrastructure platform that can allocate capacity between AI workloads and crypto mining based on returns. Year-over-year, Hut 8 shares are up nearly 600%.

Other former miners posted gains as well. TeraWulf rose more than 6% after acquiring a Kentucky site expected to support over 1 gigawatt of power for AI and high-performance computing. The company reported that its HPC segment generated more revenue than its bitcoin mining operations for the first time in a recent quarter. Riot Platforms gained about 3.3% and traded near $27, a level not seen since late 2021. Riot reported $33 million in first-quarter data center revenue tied mainly to an AMD partnership that expanded contracted capacity to 50 megawatts. The company has sold portions of its bitcoin holdings this year to fund AI and hyperscaler buildouts and still holds nearly $1.2 billion in bitcoin.

Several listed miners have announced large-capacity leases, vendor agreements, financings and asset transactions to expand data-center and AI hosting operations. Companies have repurposed or expanded facilities to provide the power, cooling and computing density needed by hyperscale cloud providers and large AI models.

Background: Bitcoin miners traditionally use specialized rigs to validate transactions and earn cryptocurrency rewards. Growing demand for large-scale AI models and hyperscale computing has increased demand for data centers that provide high-density power and cooling, prompting some miners to redeploy capital and infrastructure into AI hosting and related services.