Bitcoin miners are sparking an AI craze! What other companies have hidden potential?
With the drive of AI, computing power has become the "oil" of the new era.
Overnight, "NVIDIA's favorite child" $CoreWeave (CRWV.US)$ issued a statement announcing an acquisition worth approximately 9 billion dollarsin an all-stock transaction $Core Scientific (CORZ.US)$ The goal is to expand its own data center capabilities.
According to the document, CoreWeave will acquire shares at a ratio of 0.1235 shares of CoreWeave Class A common stock for each share of Core Scientific.Based on the closing price of CoreWeave on July 7, Core Scientific is valued at approximately $19.72 per share, which represents a premium of 33% over the current stock price.
This transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025, subject to regulatory approval. Once the transaction is completed, Core Scientific's shareholders will hold less than 10% of the merged company's shares.
The market has reacted somewhat negatively to this acquisition mainly because it is an all-stock transaction. An all-stock acquisition is a method of merging companies through equity exchange, where the acquirer exchanges its own shares for control of the target company, with the target company's shareholders becoming shareholders of the new merged entity. Its core advantage lies in avoiding cash expenditure and possible tax benefits.However, the cost is that the equity of the original shareholders of the acquiring party is diluted, and the transaction value is greatly affected by stock price volatility.
However, CoreWeave's CEO Michael Intrator stated:This acquisition accelerates the strategy for large-scale deployment of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.
In fact, as Bitcoin "halving" leads to a decrease in mining rewards, more and more mining companies are seeking new ways to survive. AI has become the direction for mining companies' transformation.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence and the surge in demand for data centers make it difficult for traditional facilities to meet high-density computing needs.Bitcoin miners possess large-scale power infrastructure and specialized operational experience, capable of meeting the enormous energy demands of AI data centers.
So, apart from Core Scientific, which other companies in the U.S. stock market are worth paying attention to?
Futubull sorted out some Bitcoin miners for investors' reference:
Specifically, these miners have embraced AI one after another.
The cryptocurrency mining and AI infrastructure company IREN, according to the latest monthly update, has achieved its mid-year goal of 50 EH/s for Bitcoin mining capacity, while also expanding its AI cloud business with approximately 2,400 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.
In June, the revenue of the company's AI cloud service department continued to grow, reaching $2.2 million, with hardware profits of $2.1 million and a profit margin of 98%.
The company emphasizes that the Blackwell architecture brings significant improvements in performance and efficiency.Make IREN one of the first cloud service providers to offer next-generation computing power in the constrained supply market.
In addition, IREN previously pointed out that its Prince George facility has a dedicated power capacity of 50MW, ultimately accommodating more than 20,000 Blackwell GPUs, providing a clear path for phased growth. The company is also evaluating various financing options to support the growth of its AI cloud services business.
Applied Digital is a company that everyone is familiar with, as it is one of the holdings of NVIDIA.Applied Digital is one of the first miners to transition to building HPC data centers.
APLD initially focused on cryptocurrency mining infrastructure, but since 2022, it has shifted its direction to the AI and high-performance computing (HPC) fields, mainly building large data centers to provide computing power support for AI and cloud computing companies.
Previously, APLD announced that it had signed two contracts with CoreWeave worth up to $7 billion, with a lease term of up to 15 years. This is the largest transaction in APLD's history and a rare large long-term contract in the entire AI data center industry.
At the beginning of this year, the CEO of Cipher Mining outlined the company's strategic transformation from Bitcoin mining to data center development.
It is worth noting that Cipher Mining has received a $50 million investment from SoftBank, which will purchase about 10.4 million shares of common stock of the Bitcoin miner. This financing has adopted a public equity investment method.The funds will be used to support the construction of high-performance computing (HPC) and AI data center infrastructure for Cipher.
In 2023,Bit Digital announced the launch of Bit Digital AI.Bit Digital AI is a new business line that will provide specialized infrastructure to support generative artificial intelligence (AI) workflows.
According to the latest news,Bit Digital plans to abandon Bitcoin mining and transform into a company focused on 'pure Ethereum staking and reserve operations.'
The HPC business under Bit Digital mainly operates under the WhiteFiber brand, which engages in GPU cloud services and data centers like the Enovum platform.
It is worth noting that,In June, Bit Digital announced that WhiteFiber had secretly submitted an IPO application to the SEC.Recently, WhiteFiber's trades have also highlighted its momentum:
It signed a five-year, 5MW hosting agreement with AI infrastructure leader Cerebras Systems, which went into operation in July (with estimated development costs of 40 million USD).
It announced a strategic partnership with leading multi-cloud GPU market Shafeform to provide on-demand NVIDIA B200 GPUs to clients starting in April.
New contracts have been signed with Boosteroid (annualized 2.1 million USD) and DNA Fund (annualized 20.9 million USD).
These agreements highlight WhiteFiber's position as a provider of infrastructure for AI computing-intensive workloads. Bit Digital's cloud service revenue grew 84% year-on-year in the first quarter, while Bitcoin mining revenue significantly declined.
Riot began exploring AI and high-performance computing (HPC) business at the beginning of 2025,officially launching an assessment to transform its capacity of up to 600 megawatts located in Corsicana, Texas into high-performance infrastructure. This strategic transformation has also led to the suspension of further expansion plans for the Bitcoin mining facility in that area. Although Riot has not signed any significant AI contracts yet, its Corsicana facility covers 355 acres and can support up to 1 gigawatt of electricity in the future, having the potential to attract hyperscale customers.
CEO Jason Les stated, "We will continue to expand land reserves to ensure that the Corsicana facility meets the demand for AI data centers."
Notably, at the beginning of June, the company announced the appointment of Jonathan Gibbs as its Chief Data Center Officer. Jonathan Gibbs has over 15 years of experience in the design and construction of large data centers, with a past portfolio that includes over one thousand megawatts of capacity in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Hut 8's AI strategy will enter a substantive phase in September 2024, with the company officially launching its GPU-as-a-Service business through the newly established subsidiary Highrise AI.
After the transformation, Hut 8 deployed over 1000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs—these specialized chips are widely used for AI model training and inference, supporting its cloud AI computing services. This project is accompanied by a five-year agreement that includes fixed payments and revenue sharing.
In March 2024, MARA released the MARA 2PIC700.This is an immersion cooling system designed for high-density computing, including AI and crypto mining.By mid-2024, the company will reorient its overall strategy towards an "edge computing" layout.
In early 2025,MARA has launched two high-performance computing pilot sites,Each site employs a 2PIC700 cooling system, with a single site power of approximately 30 megawatts.
In 2024, Bitcoin miner and digital infrastructure provider Terawulf signed an agreement to provide over 70 megawatts of data center infrastructure to Core42, a subsidiary under G42 specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services.
This collaboration marks Terawulf's strategic entry into the AI-driven high-performance computing (HPC) hosting sector while continuing to focus on profitable Bitcoin (BTC) mining. By primarily utilizing zero-carbon energy, Terawulf aims to integrate sustainability into its expanding digital infrastructure portfolio.
Galaxy Digital signed a 15-year lease agreement with cloud computing company CoreWeave, providing 133 megawatts of power for its Helios data center located in Texas, with projected revenues of approximately $4.5 billion from this lease agreement. This move not only demonstrates Galaxy Digital's strong capabilities in the digital assets field but also lays a solid foundation for its future market expansion.
Analysis indicates that Galaxy's acquisition of the Helios data center was initially an emergency move during the crypto winter, but following the surge in AI demand, this asset has become a key growth engine. Rittenhouse anticipates that Helios will generate $1.7 billion in EBITDA and $32 billion in equity value, far exceeding the volatility and high investment of the mining business.
Since mid-2023, Hive has officially transformed its focus to AI by rebranding from Hive Blockchain and concentrating on NVIDIA compute clusters.
After early small-scale pilots, Hive invested $30 million in December 2024 to deploy GPUs in Quebec, Canada. By mid-2025, over 5,000 devices have been deployed.
In the fiscal year 2025, Hive achieved total revenue of $0.1153 billion, of which the AI and high-performance computing (HPC) hosting business contributed $10.1 million—three times that of the same period last year, and currently accounts for nearly 9% of total revenue.Hive aims to achieve $0.1 billion in AI revenue by 2026.
Recently, HIVE announced the acquisition of a 7.2 megawatt data center located in Toronto, Canada. HIVE plans to transform it into a Tier 3 data center for its subsidiary BUZZ HPC, capable of accommodating up to 5,000 next-generation liquid-cooled GPUs.This move is clearly aimed at meeting the demands for AI model training and inference.
BUZZ HPC President Craig Tavares emphasized the strategic importance of establishing a 'sovereign AI data center' to ensure data residency and security in Canada. This aligns with the global trend of countries competing to build domestic AI infrastructure.
For HIVE, which started as a crypto mining enterprise, this represents an important step in its evolution towards diversified AI and cloud service provision, creating a new narrative for investors that is less dependent on daily fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices.
At the beginning of the year, Bitfarms announced the establishment of a strategic partnership with Appleby Strategy Group (ASG) and World Wide Technology (WWT). According to GlobeNewswire, this collaboration aims to conduct a comprehensive feasibility analysis of Bitfarms' high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications in North America.
On November 10, 2023, Bitdeer reached a partnership agreement with American chip giant NVIDIA, becoming the first Cloud Service Provider (CSP) in Asia to offer DGX H100 SuperPOD cloud services.
Bit Digital will enjoy preferential supply rights from NVIDIA, providing GPU cloud services for the development and training of AI models. This announcement was made at a press conference in NVIDIA's Singapore office, highlighting Bit Digital's emphasis on the title of "NVIDIA Partner."
Bit Digital's AI development roadmap includes infrastructure construction, cloud platforms, software support, and application APIs. Through cooperation with NVIDIA, Bit Digital will continuously invest in infrastructure development such as GPUs, DGX, and SuperPods, and launch services including cloud computing platforms, AI training and inference platforms, AI software tools, and application interfaces, providing comprehensive support for AI development.
Summary
Overall, Bitcoin mining sites usually possess a large amount of power infrastructure, whichcan be repurposed to support the operation of data centers, especially in energy-intensive AI and big data processing fields.
With the development of AI technology, the demand for power has surged sharply, and the energy infrastructure originally used for Bitcoin mining can be transformed into valuable assets supporting AI data centers. This conversion can not only improve the economic benefits of these sites but also reduce the time and costs required to build new data centers.
Risk Disclaimer: The above content only represents the author's view. It does not represent any position or investment advice of Futu. Futu makes no representation or warranty.Read more
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