AI’s surging demand for power-hungry data centers is turning listed Bitcoin miners into strategic infrastructure plays, with Bernstein flagging nearly $90 billion of announced AI partnerships that could redraw the sector’s economics.
Summary
- Bernstein says “Follow the Gigawatts” as miners pivot power capacity into AI data centers.
- Bitcoin miners control more than 27 GW of planned power capacity versus roughly 3.7 GW tied to announced AI deals.
- IREN, Riot, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific earn “outperform” ratings with triple‑digit upside projected for some names.
Bernstein’s latest research argues that the AI data center build‑out is colliding head‑on with a constrained U.S. power grid, elevating Bitcoin (BTC) miners from “speculative hash‑factories” to critical gatekeepers of large‑scale compute. In the report, seen by The Block, analysts say miners are “surprise winners in the AI infrastructure boom” because they already control huge, energised sites in power‑rich regions. Bernstein tallies over $90 billion in AI infrastructure collaborations announced by hyperscale cloud providers, AI clouds, and chipmakers, involving roughly 3.7 GW of capacity, and concludes that “Follow the Gigawatts” is now the organizing principle of the AI build‑out.
The report highlights IREN, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific as top beneficiaries, assigning each an “outperform” rating. For IREN, Bernstein sets a $100 target price, implying roughly 98% upside from recent levels, while CleanSpark is given a $24 target, about 78% above where the stock currently trades. The logic is blunt: “power beats Bitcoin,” with Wall Street increasingly valuing miners on their contracted megawatts and AI hosting deals rather than coins mined. According to Bernstein, Bitcoin miners with active AI contracts trade around $6 million per planned megawatt of capacity, double the roughly $3 million per MW implied for pure‑play Bitcoin miners without AI exposure.
Miners’ 27 GW edge in a power‑starved AI race
Bernstein estimates that Bitcoin miners now control more than 27 GW of planned power capacity globally, putting them in a structurally advantaged position versus new‑build AI campuses that must navigate multi‑year interconnection queues. In parts of the U.S., the report notes, securing and energising a new 1 GW grid connection can take as long as 50 months, whereas many mining sites already sit on gigawatt‑scale substations and transmission lines. That reality is why miners are increasingly recast as providers of “warm powered shells” for AI and high‑performance computing: industrial‑scale land, power, and data‑center‑grade buildings, ready for GPUs.
IREN is central to this narrative after pivoting from pure Bitcoin mining to AI compute and signing a sweeping partnership with NVIDIA to deploy up to 5 GW of AI infrastructure built on the chipmaker’s DSX AI Factory architecture. Under that deal, IREN will roll out NVIDIA‑accelerated compute across a global data center portfolio, beginning at a 2 GW campus in Sweetwater, Texas, while NVIDIA receives a five‑year option to buy up to 30 million IREN shares at $70 each and commits to about $3.4 billion in GPU cloud spend over five years. At the same time, Riot has agreed a 10‑year, $311 million lease with AMD that starts with 25 MW of data center capacity and can scale to 200 MW at its 700 MW‑connected Rockdale, Texas, site, deepening the miner’s AI and high‑performance computing profile.
Upside, risks, and the Bitcoin cycle trade‑off
Bernstein’s math suggests the market is still discounting this power optionality: Bitcoin miners overall trade at a roughly 90% valuation discount to established AI data‑center operators on some metrics, despite being “integral parts of the AI value chain.” In one example, the brokerage attributes $3 billion of enterprise value to Riot’s planned 1 GW Corsicana site alone out of a $9 billion total target, even though the facility has yet to generate meaningful revenue, underscoring how future AI hosting is driving the story. For Core Scientific, Bernstein estimates that 86% of target enterprise value stems from its AI business, with only 14% tied to legacy Bitcoin mining, reflecting how quickly investor focus has shifted toward compute infrastructure.
The report is not blind to risks. Bernstein warns that new AI campuses remain hostage to environmental reviews, grid‑capacity bottlenecks, and local permitting fights that can derail or delay megaprojects. It also cautions that if miners over‑tilt toward AI hosting and away from hash rate, they risk sacrificing upside in a future Bitcoin bull market just as rewards from halving events and potential demand shocks could re‑rate pure mining economics. Still, with AI data‑center demand rising faster than utilities and regulators can add new gigawatts, Bernstein’s message is stark: miners sitting on cheap, switchable power are “power players” in the AI arms race — and the market is only beginning to price it in.