Bitcoin Miners' AI Deals Top $100bn, Filling Void Left by Mining Revenue

A Sandmark review of regulatory filings and company announcements found that from June 2024 through the beginning of July 2026, miners including TeraWulf, Hut 8, Core Scientific, IREN, Cipher Mining, HIVE Digital and Applied Digital, have announced multiyear agreements carrying more than $114bn in value across AI and HPC infrastructure. 

The figure represents potential revenue over the life of the contracts rather than sales already recognized, with agreements typically running for five to 25 years and infrastructure often requiring significant construction before coming online. 

Still, the scale of the commitments shows how rapidly a business once dominated by competition for Bitcoin has broadened into supplying the computing infrastructure behind the AI boom. 

TeraWulf alone has announced agreements worth roughly $32bn, including a $19bn infrastructure lease with Anthropic announced on 6 Jul. Hut 8 has disclosed about $16.8bn across two long-term hyperscale AI leases, while Core Scientific has said its agreements with CoreWeave could generate more than $10bn in cumulative revenue over their initial terms. 

IREN signed a five-year agreement worth about $9.7bn with Microsoft, while Cipher Mining has announced agreements carrying about $9.3bn in combined value with cloud infrastructure companies AWS and Fluidstack. HIVE Digital added a three-year, $220mn GPU cloud contract in June. 

The analysis excludes companies that have announced AI strategies, available power capacity or non-binding plans without a disclosed customer contract, meaning the broader value of the sector's AI pipeline is likely higher. 

Mining margins tighten 

The rush into AI comes as the economics of producing Bitcoin remain under pressure. 

Bitcoin miners generated about $1.12bn in May, down 26% from a year earlier, according to asset manager VanEck, which said daily miner revenue remained in the lower part of its recent historical range, while balances held by miners had gradually declined. 

"The combination of slowly bleeding balances and revenue stuck in the lower third of its recent range underlines why miners are leaning on BTC sales and AI/HPC diversification to support cash flow,” VanEck said in an 18 Jun report. 

TeraWulf described the shift in similar terms during its latest quarterly earnings call in May, saying the period reflected "a business in transition from volatile Bitcoin mining revenue to stable contracted HPC revenue." 

"You can see the transition of the business model clearly in our financials. In the quarter, digital asset revenue was about $13 million, while HPC leasing contributed $21 million," TeraWulf Chairman and CEO Paul Prager said.  

Power finds a buyer 

The AI pivot is not simply a move from one computing workload to another. 

Bitcoin miners spent years securing access to large quantities of electricity, land, grid connections and data-centre sites – assets that have become increasingly valuable as AI companies race to deploy power-intensive computing infrastructure. 

McKinsey estimates that data centres will require $6.7tn of investment globally by 2030 to keep pace with demand for computing power, including $5.2tn for facilities equipped to handle AI workloads. 

That expansion has created an alternative use for sites that might otherwise generate volatile mining revenue tied to Bitcoin prices, network difficulty, transaction fees and block rewards. 

Bitcoin (BTC) traded at $63,630 at 20:45UTC, down 0.6% on the day and 27% year to date.