Macquarie gives MARA, Riot and other Bitcoin mining stocks "outperform" ratings due to AI transformation trend

Odaily News Macquarie has given “outperform” ratings to several bitcoin mining stocks, including MARA, Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark and Cipher Mining, citing the companies’ growing shift away from crypto-specific businesses toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) models. In recent years, bitcoin miners have increasingly diversified their businesses away from pure crypto mining toward hosting infrastructure for AI and HPC. Macquarie analysts Paul Golding and Emma Liang said the trend accelerated after bitcoin’s fourth halving event in April. “Some miners see their unprecedented access to power… as an opportunity to move into non-crypto related hosting,” the analysts wrote in a note late Tuesday. “Others see it as a distraction from accumulating bitcoin on their balance sheet… But in most cases, the growth in mining capacity, and/or land/GPU acquisitions for HPC/AI, has been achieved through the issuance of dilutive equity.” Macquarie believes that several miners will benefit greatly in the long term as the shift toward HPC accelerates. Analysts also noted that while it is still early days for AI cloud products to be operated at Bitcoin miners’ facilities, these companies have the potential to play a significant role in the AI computing market. (The Block)