Miners Stop Digging for Dollars — Their AI Tenants Are Now Paying the Rent 📈

Analysts at Compass Point said several bitcoin miners that have pivoted into hosting AI data centers are trading below the value of their already-signed customer contracts, arguing that equity markets are still pricing the companies as crypto miners rather than as landlords with long-term lease income. The framework, developed by analysts Michael Donovan and Ed Engel, separates the discounted value of contracted rental income from the remaining cost of building each facility and compares that figure against each company's enterprise value to derive implied equity value for projects that have not yet been leased.

Compass Point identified Applied Digital (APLD), TeraWulf (WULF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) as offering the widest gap between contracted business and current valuation. In each case, the firm wrote, the market is assigning little to no credit to AI capacity that has yet to be leased, even though those projects could generate material rental income once they reach completion. Core Scientific (CORZ) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) were characterized differently: Compass Point said Core Scientific's existing contracts appear largely reflected in its current valuation, leaving further upside dependent on signing additional customers, while Riot's valuation leans more on future potential, including its Corsicana campus and broader AI development pipeline, than on contracted income today.

The report frames the next two years as a transition period in which the cohort moves from announcing AI infrastructure deals to delivering them. Compass Point said project completions and rent commencements are expected to become the primary drivers of stock performance as tenants take occupancy of the converted mining sites. Under the firm's model, valuing these companies on contracted rental income rather than on bitcoin mining economics implies additional value that the share prices of APLD, WULF and CIFR do not currently capture.

The analysis arrives as the broader bitcoin mining sector continues to repurpose power and real estate assets for higher-margin AI and high-performance computing workloads, a shift that has drawn sustained interest from infrastructure investors and hyperscale cloud customers seeking capacity. Compass Point's rental-based approach mirrors the way data center landlords and net-lease real estate investment trusts have traditionally been valued, a comparison the firm said more accurately reflects the cash flow profile of companies whose sites have already been leased.

The original article was published on Jul 9, 2026, at 5:53 p.m. and updated at 7:58 p.m., reporting by Helane Braun and edited by Stephen Alpher.