Hut 8, IREN and the Great Bitcoin Miner Glow-Up Into AI's Power Brokers ⚡

Bernstein said it remains overweight on the Bitcoin mining sector, pointing to a steady cadence of partnerships between miners and artificial intelligence data center operators that it described as necessary to address AI's power constraints. In a Thursday research note shared with Cointelegraph, analysts at the investment firm said its Bitcoin mining industry deal tracker logged a new AI-related deal every week in July, with combined deals exceeding 7.5 gigawatts, equivalent to $150 billion in multi-year contracts.

The analysts said third-party computing capacity from Bitcoin miners will remain highly valuable as access to power, not chips, remains the AI industry's real bottleneck amid growing political pushback against new US data centers. Bitcoin mining stocks posted double-digit gains on Monday after Hut 8 and IREN announced major AI infrastructure deals. Hut 8 disclosed a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease for an AI data center campus, while IREN reported $2.8 billion in cloud services contracts with AI developers. "IREN is beginning to convert that infrastructure advantage into contracted and more predictable revenue," Seeking Alpha contributor The Curious Analyst said on Thursday. "The biggest risk to my thesis is execution," they added, rating IREN a strong buy.

Other publicly traded miners have expanded into AI this month. Earlier in July, MARA Holdings announced plans to acquire a Texas site with up to 2 gigawatts of capacity for its AI and digital infrastructure business. Days earlier, TeraWulf signed a 20-year data center lease with AI startup Anthropic, a deal the company said could generate roughly $19 billion in contract revenue. Bitcoin mining infrastructure company Bitdeer has also expanded into AI cloud services and high-performance computing. Most miner stocks were poised for gains on Thursday based on premarket activity, with HUT 8 up 5.23%, IREN up 1.89%, TeraWulf up 1.49% and the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI) up 1.47% ahead of the Nasdaq open. Bernstein carries an outperform rating on Hut 8, IREN and TeraWulf, and a market perform rating on MARA.

Bernstein's note said miners and third-party computing providers will stay important to AI companies as new data center construction faces bipartisan resistance. On Wednesday, Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico reportedly circulated a proposal for stronger local approval processes and to repeal tax breaks for AI data centers. In April, US Senator Ron Wyden raised concerns that AI data centers in his home state of Oregon could worsen water scarcity during persistent droughts, noting that large data centers can consume substantial amounts of water.