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

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily Wenser

In the past decade, Bitcoin mining companies have been the most stable foundation of PoW networks and the cost anchor of the BTC "0-level market." However, this group of industry cornerstones is now collectively turning around, either actively or passively aligning with AI.

On the surface, the direct incentive for mining companies to transform is the continuous rise in mining difficulty and the profit margins being compressed by a sluggish market; but the deeper driving force is the extreme pursuit of AI narratives by the capital market—and mining companies happen to possess a batch of real assets that are easiest to transform: electricity, land, cooling systems, data centers, and ready-made data infrastructure, which can be exchanged for AI computing power orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Against the backdrop of a multi-model race, 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 steady and cautious, while others are forced to turn around and go all in, but what is certain is that the wind has risen: this is a structural migration from the crypto market to the AI world.

A Hard Battle That Must Be Fought, and a Cake That Is Hard to Refuse

Entering 2026, the real pressure on mining companies has never come solely from price fluctuations, but from structural squeezes: continuously rising difficulty, declining unit revenue, and increasing operational costs.

In the Cold Winter: Selling Coins to Survive and Bankruptcy Liquidation

On February 20, Bitcoin mining difficulty surged by 15% to 144.4T, marking the largest increase since 2021. During the same period, network computing power rebounded from 826EH/s to 1ZH/s, but the hash price fell to a multi-year low of about $23.9/PH/s. Under the profit compression brought by the 2024 halving, mining companies were forced into cash flow defense mode.

The most symbolic event came from Bitdeer. On February 20, it disclosed that its BTC holdings had dropped to 0, with production and sales perfectly balanced that week. Although founder Wu Jihan later explained that "current 0 does not mean future 0," the market still viewed it as a reflection of the pressure on mining companies.

The predicament is not unique to one company. In early February, NFN8 Group applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas, planning to sell all its assets. Documents showed that a fire at its core mining site, the leasing burden from a sale-leaseback model, and the cliff-like drop in hash price after the halving directly crushed cash flow. Despite owning multiple mining sites, NFN8's 5,000 mining machines were valued at less than $50,000, with liabilities reaching the million-dollar range.

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

A Second Spring: Amazing Profits Behind Huge AI/HPC Orders

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

Since last year, mining companies have seen a concentrated explosion of orders. According to publicly available data, as of the time of writing, six mining companies, including IREN, CIFR, and HUT, have accumulated AI/HPC orders totaling approximately $38.5 billion, with contracts worth $12.8 billion signed between TeraWulf and Fluidstack, and a five-year $9.7 billion contract signed between IREN and Microsoft, which have also become important support for the stock prices of both companies. From financial reports, several mining companies have seen their AI/HPC revenue share rise from less than 15% to 40%-60%.

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

Financial Report Consensus: AI Becomes the Keyword

The Q1 2026 financial report season almost unanimously signals that mining companies are undergoing a systematic transformation.

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

Mining company TeraWulf reported a total revenue of $168.5 million for the full year of 2025, a year-on-year increase of 20.3%, of which $16.9 million came from the newly launched high-performance computing (HPC) leasing business.

TeraWulf currently holds over $12.8 billion in HPC contracts, with 522MW capacity already signed and has received $6.5 billion in financing support for data center expansion.

"AI Mining Company Small Giant" IREN: Holding a $9.7 Billion Order from Microsoft

Thanks to previous large orders and rapid transformation, IREN has quietly become a new generation of "AI mining company small giant."

According to the mining company IrisEnergy (IREN) financial report, as of January 31, 2026, it held cash and cash equivalents of $2.8 billion, and has raised over $9.2 billion this fiscal year through customer prepayments, convertible bonds, GPU leasing, and GPU financing. The company plans to add 140,000 GPUs, expecting to achieve $3.4 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026.

"Trump's Family's" HUT: Holding a $7 Billion Order

Mining company Hut8 generated $9.6 million in revenue through hosting services in the 2025 fiscal year, holding approximately $1.4 billion in cash and Bitcoin reserves.

Additionally, Hut8's spun-off mining subsidiary AmericanBitcoin (ABTC) reported a total revenue of $185.2 million for the full year of 2025, deploying computing power of approximately 25EH/s and owning about 78,000 ASIC mining machines, with BTC reserves exceeding 6,000 coins.

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

"Brand Transformation Completed" CIFR: Holding a $5.5 Billion Order

Mining company CipherDigital disclosed in its 2025 fiscal year performance report that it has officially changed its name from "CipherMining" to "CipherDigital" to complete its brand transformation.

In November last year, CIFR reached a leasing agreement worth up to $5.5 billion with Amazon Web Services; additionally, it exchanged 5.4% equity for Google's consent to guarantee the $1.4 billion contract signed with Fluidstack.

"Selling Coins to Buy Land to Build Data Centers" RIOT: Reached Leasing Cooperation with AMD

Mining company RiotPlatforms announced its 2025 annual performance, achieving revenue of $647.4 million for the year, a significant increase from $376.7 million in 2024; its Bitcoin holdings exceed 18,000 coins.

In January this year, RIOT sold 1,080 Bitcoins and used the proceeds (approximately $96 million) to purchase land in Rockdale for the development of a data center project. Additionally, the company signed a data center leasing and service agreement with AMD, which will deploy 25 megawatts of critical IT load capacity in the Rockdale park. The aggressive investment firm StarboardValue stated that Riot's potential valuation for its transition to AI and HPC could reach $21 billion.

"BTC Staunch Faction" MARA: Partnering with Capital Institutions to Lay Out AI Data Centers

MARA's financial report data indicated that due to a roughly 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%. At the end of February, MARA announced a partnership with investment firm Starwood Capital Group to build a large data center aimed at AI and cloud computing clients based on existing mining sites in the U.S. Following the announcement, its stock price rose by about 17% in after-hours trading.

It is worth mentioning that, unlike other mining companies firmly transitioning to AI, MARA's management emphasized that despite short-term price uncertainties, their long-term confidence in the Bitcoin asset class remains unchanged, Bitcoin will still be the long-term strategic core.

"Data Center Revenue Soars" CORZ: Holding CoreWeave Orders Exceeding $10 Billion

CoreScientific (CORZ) announced its Q4 2025 financial report, with total revenue of $79.8 million in Q4 2025, a decrease from $94.9 million in the same period last year. Among them, revenue from Bitcoin mining dropped to $42.2 million; revenue from data center hosting services surged 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 the same period of 2024.

CoreScientific CEO Adam Sullivan stated that the company's current construction projects are more than halfway completed, and they are expanding the hosting platform to a 1.5GW leaseable capacity pipeline. Last October, AI company CoreWeave planned to acquire CoreScientific for about $9 billion, but ultimately abandoned the plan due to lack of shareholder approval; in January this year, CoreScientific sold 1,900 BTC (approximately $175 million) for business transformation.

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

Other Mining Company Representatives: Bitfarms Rebrands, BitDigital Shifts to ETH Camp

In February, Bitfarms (BITF) announced it would relocate its headquarters from Canada to the U.S. and plans to rebrand as KeelInfrastructure (pending shareholder, exchange, and court approval) to accelerate its transition to infrastructure. Previously, the company had converted $300 million in debt financing into project financing for data center construction in Pennsylvania and officially exited the Latin American market by selling the PasoPe mining site for $30 million in January this year.

On the other hand, BitDigital's shift is more thorough. As early as last July, when the DAT (Odaily Note: Digital Asset Treasury) craze emerged, it was the first to announce a shift from BTC to ETH treasury for its listed company; in January this year, it further clarified that it would completely cease Bitcoin mining and instead focus on Ethereum infrastructure, staking, and HPC/AI strategies, marking the official completion of its camp switch after five years in mining. Currently, its AI subsidiary WhiteFiber has completed its IPO, and BitDigital holds about 27 million shares, valued at over $457 million at current market value.

In addition to the above two companies, Galaxy, Bitdeer, Cleanspark, and Cango are still in the process of advancing their AI transformation, with revenue contributions yet to increase. Among them, Cango completed a $10.5 million equity financing in February this year and received an additional $65 million investment commitment, which may accelerate its layout in the AI/HPC data center business.

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

Capital Attitude: Choosing Winners, Not Narratives

The market is not fully accepting the "AI transformation," but is rapidly differentiating.

In early February, JPMorgan pointed out in a report that Bitcoin mining companies performed strongly at the beginning of the year, mainly driven by a temporary easing of network competition and the warming of the HPC narrative. At that time, the total market capitalization of the 14 U.S.-listed mining companies and data center operators tracked by them rose to about $60 billion at the end of January, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 23%, far exceeding the approximately 1% increase in the S&P 500 during the same period.

However, soon after, with a new round of AI models being intensively released and OpenClaw impacting the valuation system of software stocks, market sentiment quickly shifted, and capital began to worry about the structural disruption brought by AI, leading to a pullback in the stock prices of mining companies related to AI infrastructure, with CIFR, IREN, and Hut8 experiencing intraday declines of over 10%.

On February 10, Morgan Stanley released a research report, upgrading CIFR and WULF to "overweight," while downgrading MARA to "underweight."

By the end of February, with order fulfillment and stock price recovery, the market sentiment reversed again. Some analysts believe that against the backdrop of high short positions by hedge funds, coupled with mining companies locking in long-term low-cost electricity contracts, their strategic value is no longer limited to traditional mining but is closer to that of AI infrastructure suppliers.

As orders are fulfilled and stock prices recover, the market logic gradually becomes clear: capital only bets on structural winners.

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

Execution Capability: Whether they can quickly complete the transition of computing power forms;

Resource Endowment: Whether they have scale advantages in electricity and land;

Narrative Ability: Whether they can embed themselves in the upstream supply chain of AI.

In fact, the decision to transform a company is not as important as the capital selection process.

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