Odaily News Riot Platforms, one of the leading publicly traded bitcoin miners, is launching a formal process to evaluate the feasibility of using approximately 600 megawatts (MW) of remaining power capacity at its Corsicana, Texas, mine for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing purposes.
Bitcoin miners are increasingly diversifying their operations from pure crypto mining to hosting AI and HPC infrastructure, a trend that is set to accelerate after Bitcoin’s fourth halving event in April 2024.
Riot has been in preliminary discussions with potential AI/HPC counterparties for several months and is now expanding and accelerating outreach to potential partners in this space in parallel with this analysis. The company currently utilizes 400 MW of capacity for Bitcoin mining in Corsicana and has up to 1 GW of total capacity at sites approved by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
During this process, Riot has paused its previously announced 600 MW Phase 2 Bitcoin mining expansion at its Corsicana facility. As a result, the company is reducing its previously announced 2025 total mining capacity growth and related capital expenditures and will provide additional updates as the review process progresses.
Riot previously expected total computing capacity to reach 46.7 EH/s by the end of 2025, but now expects the target to drop to 38.4 EH/s by the end of the year. Capital expenditures at the Corsicana facility are expected to be reduced by $245 million this year.
Analysts at JPMorgan and Bernstein said the move was "encouraging" and could mark the beginning of a "re-rating journey" for Rio Platforms. Bernstein believes that RIOT's stock is trading at an "extremely cheap" price ($1.2 million/MW of total capacity) and has the potential to re-rate given AI's power capacity allocation. The firm has an "outperform" rating on the stock and a $22 price target. (The Block)