Bernstein bets Bitcoin miners could become AI Infra giants

Research firm Bernstein turned bullish on a group of publicly traded Bitcoin miners. The firm suggests that the companies with large power footprints could benefit from a surge in demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The firm assigned Outperform ratings to four miners, shows a public report citing Bernstein research. The list holds the names of IREN Limited, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific. The brokerage’s note is not publicly available. However, reports mention that Bernstein views access to power and existing infrastructure as increasingly valuable. It enables the tech companies to expand investments in AI computing. This comes in after a surge in demand for data centers.

Training and operating AI systems need a large amount of electricity, land, and cooling capacity. This has already created pressure on the already stretched power infrastructure in the United States. Core Scientific offers the strongest public example of this.

Can AI revive Bitcoin miners?

Of the four miners, Core Scientific has moved furthest into AI-related hosting through agreements with cloud computing company CoreWeave. Back in June 2024, the company said that it would provide roughly 200 megawatts (MW) of infrastructure to support CoreWeave’s high-performance computing operations.

The company said at the time of agreement, it was expected to generate more than $3.5 billion in cumulative revenue over a 12-year term. However, Core Scientific later disclosed some additional expansions in the deal.

Several Bitcoin miners have reportedly begun introducing themselves less as pure crypto operators. They are trying to present it more as owners of power-intensive computing infrastructure.

IREN had stated that the company’s strategy spans both Bitcoin mining and AI cloud services. On the other side, Riot Platforms executives were reportedly discussing the opportunities in high-performance computing and AI. They look at it as a potential area for growth.

Four miners highlighted by Bernstein

Company	Publicly disclosed infrastructure position	AI/HPC activity publicly disclosed	Bernstein view*
IREN	Large-scale data center operations in North America	AI cloud strategy discussed in company materials	Outperform
Riot Platforms	Major U.S. mining footprint and energy access	Exploring AI and high-performance computing opportunities	Outperform
CleanSpark	Expanding bitcoin mining operations	No large AI hosting contract publicly disclosed	Outperform
Core Scientific	Established data center infrastructure	Signed multi-year CoreWeave agreements	Outperform

*Based on public reporting summarizing Bernstein research. The original note is not publicly available.

This comes in when Bitcoin price is taking a hit. BTC price dropped by around 6% in the last 7 days. BTC is trading at $76,370 at the press time. It is running down by more than 12% on a YTD basis.

Turning mining facilities into AI-ready data centers is not as easy as it might sound. GPU-based computing typically requires different cooling systems, networking equipment and power configurations. This is quite different than Bitcoin mining operations.

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