Mining Companies' Great Migration: Some Already Hold $12.8 Billion in AI Orders

Original｜Odaily（@OdailyChina）

Author｜Wenser（@wenser 2010）

Over the past decade, Bitcoin mining companies have been the most stable foundation for PoW networks and the cost anchor for BTC's "Tier 0 market." However, these industry cornerstones are now collectively pivoting, either actively or passively, towards AI.

On the surface, the direct trigger for miners' transformation is the continuous rise in mining difficulty and shrinking profit margins compressed by a sluggish market. But the deeper driving force is the capital market's extreme pursuit of the AI narrative—and mining companies happen to possess the most readily convertible real-world assets: electricity, land, cooling systems, data centers, and ready-made data infrastructure, which can be exchanged for AI computing power orders worth tens of billions of dollars.

Amid the clamor of multi-model competition, mining companies standing at the intersection of energy, electricity, computing power, and crypto assets are undergoing an unprecedented yet almost inevitable industry migration.

Some are playing it safe and waiting, others are forced to pivot and go all-in, but one thing is certain: the wind has shifted. This is a structural migration blowing from the crypto market towards the AI world.

A Battle They Must Fight, and a Cake Too Tempting to Refuse

Entering 2026, for mining companies, the real pressure has never come solely from price volatility, but from structural compression: continuously rising difficulty, declining revenue per unit, and persistently increasing operational costs.

In the Winter: Selling Bitcoin to Survive and Bankruptcy Liquidations

On February 20th, Bitcoin mining difficulty surged by 15% to 144.4T, marking the largest increase since 2021. During the same period, network hash rate recovered from 826 EH/s to 1 ZH/s, but hashprice fell to multi-year lows, around just $23.9/PH/s. With the profit compression from the 2024 halving continuing, mining companies were forced into a cash flow defense mode.

The most symbolic event came from Bitdeer. On February 20th, it disclosed that its self-held BTC balance had dropped to zero, with weekly production and sales being exactly equal. Although founder Jihan Wu later explained that "zero now does not mean zero in the future," the market still viewed it as a microcosm of miner pressure.

The predicament isn't limited to one company. In early February, NFN8 Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas, USA, planning to sell all its assets. Documents revealed that a core mining facility fire, lease burdens from sale-leaseback models, and the cliff-like drop in hashprice post-halving directly crushed its cash flow. Despite owning multiple mining sites, NFN8's own 5,000 mining rig assets were valued at less than $50,000, while liabilities reached the million-dollar range.

As the environment continues to deteriorate, the reaction from mining companies has been remarkably consistent—marching towards AI.

A Second Spring: The Astonishing Profits Behind Massive AI/HPC Orders

For AI giants, computing power data centers are perpetually scarce: traditional construction cycles often take 3-5 years, with high costs for land, electricity, and cooling. Mining companies already possess power contracts, infrastructure, and operational experience, making them the most realistic partners for AI expansion cycles.

Since last year, mining companies have seen a concentrated explosion of orders. According to public data statistics, as of the time of writing, six mining companies including IREN, CIFR, and HUT have accumulated AI/HPC order volumes of approximately $38.5 billion. Among them, TeraWulf's $12.8 billion contract with Fluidstack and IREN's 5-year, $9.7 billion contract with Microsoft are staggering figures and have been key supports for their stock prices. From financial reports, the proportion of AI/HPC revenue for several miners has increased from less than 15% to 40%-60%.

If mining is a cyclical business, AI is like a long-term cash flow pipeline.

Earnings Report Consensus: AI Becomes the Keyword

The Q1 2026 earnings season has almost delivered a unanimous signal: mining companies are undergoing a systematic transformation.

"HPC Contract Giant" WULF: Holding Over $12.8 Billion in Contracts

Miner TeraWulf reported full-year 2025 revenue of $168.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 20.3%, with $16.9 million coming from its newly launched High-Performance Computing (HPC) leasing business.

TeraWulf currently holds over $12.8 billion in HPC contracts, with 522 MW of capacity already contracted, and has secured $6.5 billion in financing to support data center expansion.

"AI Miner Mini-Giant" IREN: Holding a $9.7 Billion Microsoft Order

Thanks to previous massive orders and rapid transformation, IREN has quietly become a new generation "AI miner mini-giant."

According to miner IrisEnergy (IREN)'s earnings report, as of January 31, 2026, it held cash and cash equivalents of $2.8 billion. This fiscal year to date, it has raised over $9.2 billion through customer prepayments, convertible bonds, GPU leasing, and GPU financing. Subsequent plans include adding 140,000 GPUs, with an expected annual recurring revenue of $3.4 billion by the end of 2026.

"The Trump Family's" HUT: Holding $7 Billion in Orders

Miner Hut8 generated $9.6 million in revenue from hosting services in fiscal year 2025, holding approximately $1.4 billion in cash and Bitcoin reserves.

Furthermore, Hut8's spun-off mining subsidiary, American Bitcoin (ABTC), reported full-year 2025 revenue of $185.2 million, deployed hash rate of approximately 25 EH/s, ownership of about 78,000 ASIC miners, and BTC reserves exceeding 6,000.

The company is also a major crypto miner supported by the Trump family, thus attracting significant market attention.

"Brand Transformation Complete" CIFR: Holding $5.5 Billion in Orders

Miner Cipher Digital disclosed in its FY2025 earnings report that it officially changed its name from "Cipher Mining" to "Cipher Digital" to complete its brand transformation.

Last November, CIFR entered into a leasing agreement worth up to $5.5 billion with Amazon Web Services. Additionally, it secured Google's agreement to guarantee $1.4 billion in the contract between Fluidstack and itself in exchange for a 5.4% equity stake.

"Selling Bitcoin to Buy Land and Build Data Centers" RIOT: Reaches Leasing Partnership with AMD

Miner Riot Platforms announced its full-year 2025 results, achieving annual revenue of $647.4 million, a significant increase from $376.7 million in 2024. Its Bitcoin holdings exceed 18,000 BTC.

In January of this year, RIOT sold 1,080 Bitcoin and used the proceeds (approximately $96 million) to purchase the Rockdale site for data center project development. Furthermore, the company signed a data center leasing and services agreement with AMD, which will deploy 25 megawatts of critical IT load capacity at the Rockdale campus. Activist investment firm Starboard Value stated that Riot's potential valuation from pivoting towards AI and HPC could be as high as $21 billion.

"BTC Stalwart" MARA: Partners with Capital Institutions to Develop AI Data Centers

MARA's earnings data shows that due to an approximately 14% decline in the average Bitcoin mining price, MARA's Q4 2025 revenue was $202.3 million, a year-on-year decrease of about 6%. In late February, MARA announced a partnership with investment firm Starwood Capital Group to build large-scale data centers for AI and cloud computing clients on top of its existing US mining facilities. Following the news, its stock price rose about 17% in after-hours trading.

It is worth noting that unlike other miners firmly pivoting to AI, MARA's management emphasized that despite short-term price uncertainty, its long-term confidence in Bitcoin as an asset class remains unchanged. Bitcoin will continue to be its long-term strategic core.

"Data Center Revenue Soars" CORZ: Holding Over $10 Billion in Orders from CoreWeave

Core Scientific (CORZ) released its Q4 2025 earnings report. Total Q4 2025 revenue was $79.8 million, down from $94.9 million in the same period last year. Bitcoin mining revenue decreased to $42.2 million; data center hosting service revenue significantly increased to $31.3 million, up from $8.5 million in 2024. Q4 gross profit rose to $20.8 million, higher than $4.8 million in Q4 2024.

Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan stated that the company's current construction projects are over halfway complete and it is expanding its hosting platform to a 1.5 gigawatt pipeline of leasable capacity. Last October, AI company CoreWeave planned to acquire CoreScientific for a valuation of approximately $9 billion, which ultimately fell through due to lack of shareholder approval. In January this year, CoreScientific sold 1,900 BTC (approximately $175 million) to fund its business transformation.

The company estimates that its AI business will drive a 60.9% compound annual growth rate in revenue from 2026 to 2028, reaching $1.5 billion by 2028.

Other Representative Mining Companies: Bitfarms Renames, BitDigital Switches to ETH Camp

In February, Bitfarms (BITF) announced it would relocate its headquarters from Canada to the US and plans to rename itself Keel Infrastructure (pending shareholder, exchange, and court approval), accelerating its shift towards infrastructure. Previously, the company had converted $300 million in debt financing into project financing in October last year for a Pennsylvania data center build-out and sold its Paso Pe mining facility for $30 million in January this year, officially exiting the Latin American market.

On the other hand, BitDigital's pivot is more thorough. As early as July last year when the DAT (Odaily Note: Digital Asset Treasury company) trend emerged, it was among the first to announce a shift from BTC to ETH treasury-listed companies. In January this year, it further clarified it would completely cease Bitcoin mining, instead doubling down on Ethereum infrastructure, staking, and HPC/AI strategies, marking the formal camp switch for this miner with five years of mining experience. Currently, its AI subsidiary, WhiteFiber, has completed an IPO. BitDigital holds approximately 27 million shares, valued at over $457 million at current market prices.

Apart from the above two, companies like Galaxy, Bitdeer, Cleanspark, and Cango are still in the AI transformation phase, with revenue contribution yet to significantly increase. Among them, Cango completed a $10.5 million equity financing round in February this year and secured an additional $65 million investment commitment, potentially accelerating its AI/HPC data center business layout.

The following is a brief comparison based on public information for reference.

Capital's Stance: Choosing Winners, Not Narratives

The market has not universally accepted the "AI transformation" narrative but has rapidly differentiated.

In early February, JPMorgan noted in a report that Bitcoin miners' strong start to the year was primarily driven by a temporary easing of network competition and the heating up of the HPC narrative. At that time, the total market capitalization of the 14 US-listed miners and data center operators it tracked rose to approximately $60 billion by the end of January, a 23% increase month-on-month, far exceeding the S&P 500's roughly 1% gain over the same period.

However, with the dense release of a new round of AI models and the impact of OpenClaw on software stock valuations, market sentiment quickly shifted. Capital began to worry about the structural disruption brought by AI, and stock prices of miners related to AI infrastructure subsequently corrected, with CIFR, IREN, and Hut8 experiencing intraday declines exceeding 10% at one point.

On February 10th, Morgan Stanley released a research report, giving CIFR and WULF an "Overweight" rating while downgrading MARA to "Underweight."

By the end of February, with order fulfillment and stock price recovery, market sentiment reversed again. Some analysts believe that against a backdrop of high short interest from hedge funds and miners locking in long-term, low-cost power contracts, their strategic value extends beyond traditional mining, closer to that of AI infrastructure suppliers.

As orders are fulfilled and stock prices recover, the market logic is becoming clearer: capital only bets on structural winners.

Therefore, the future of mining companies largely depends on three things:

Execution Capability: The ability to quickly complete the migration of computing power forms;

Resource Endowment: Whether electricity and land provide scale advantages;

Narrative Power: The ability to embed into the upstream AI supply chain.

In reality, a company's transformation decision is less important than capital's screening.

The tide has arrived. Mining companies are left with only two choices: either migrate with the trend or become history.