Miners Want AI Billions, VanEck Hands Them a $50B Reality Check 💸

Bitcoin miners chasing artificial intelligence revenue face a near-term funding gap of roughly $50 billion and as much as $221 billion in long-term capital needs, according to a new report from VanEck. The asset manager said investors are shifting focus from contract announcements to execution risk, with only about 25% of leased AI and high-performance computing (HPC) capacity currently delivered. "Execution, not signing, becomes the next premium," said VanEck investment analyst Griffin MacMaster and head of digital asset research Matthew Sigel, adding that companies missing construction milestones could face "structural de-ratings."

The funding gap is not evenly distributed. IREN faces the largest shortfall at an estimated $21.1 billion, followed by Riot Platforms (RIOT) at $7.2 billion and HIVE Digital at $4.6 billion, according to data from VanEck highlighted in Blocksbridge Consulting's Miner Weekly newsletter. Bernstein recently projected IREN could reach a $3.7 billion annualized revenue run rate once its AI operations are fully built out and flagged the company as the public miner most likely to abandon Bitcoin ($BTC) mining for AI cloud infrastructure. Core Scientific (CORZ), TeraWulf (WULF), Hut 8 (HUT) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) have also announced plans to lease power and data center capacity to AI and HPC customers, while Marathon Digital (MARA) and CleanSpark (CLSK) are pursuing hybrid strategies that retain $BTC mining operations alongside expansion plans.

VanEck said valuations will hinge on energized power and tenant quality, favoring miners with investment-grade hyperscaler clients. The report framed AI and HPC facilities as fundamentally more capital-intensive than traditional mining sites, noting that "a Bitcoin mine can run with relatively simple buildings, modular infrastructure and ASIC fleets that tolerate fast curtailment. AI and HPC facilities require higher standards for uptime, cooling, electrical redundancy, networking and customer support."

The pivot follows a sharp deterioration in mining economics after the 2024 halving. Hashprice, the measure of daily revenue per unit of computing power, fell from roughly $35 per petahash per second (PH/s) in the fourth quarter of last year, which TheEnergyMag described as the "harshest margin environment of all time" for public miners, to around $28 per PH/s in the first quarter, according to CoinShares. At those levels, as many as 20% of miners were operating at a loss, particularly those using older-generation machines or facing higher electricity costs.

Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped 10.09% to 124.93 trillion on June 14 after an estimated 100 exahashes per second (EH/s) of computing power went offline, one of the largest percentage declines on record. Miner Weekly attributed the drop to weaker mining economics and seasonal power curtailments, and said the shift toward AI infrastructure could reshape future hashrate growth as miners allocate more energy capacity to data centers instead of $BTC production.