A surge in AI demand for power-hungry data centers has led publicly traded Bitcoin miners to embark on strategic infrastructure plays, with Bernstein flagging nearly $90 billion in announced AI partnerships that could reshape the sector’s economic landscape.
Bernstein’s latest research argues that the construction of AI data centers is in direct conflict with the constrained US power grid, elevating Bitcoin (BTC) miners from “speculative hash factories” to critical gatekeepers of large-scale computing. In the report, obtained by The Block, analysts say miners are “surprising winners of the AI infrastructure boom” because they already control huge, energy-filled sites in power-rich regions. Bernstein tallies more than $90 billion in AI infrastructure collaboration announced by hyperscale cloud providers, AI clouds, and chipmakers, including approximately 3.7 GW of capacity, and concludes that “chasing gigawatts” has now become the organizing principle for building AI.
The report singles out IREN, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific as the biggest beneficiaries, giving each an “outperform” rating. For IREN, Bernstein has set a price target of $100, implying an upside of about 98% from recent levels, while CleanSpark has been given a price target of $24, about 78% above the current price. The logic is straightforward: “Power beats Bitcoin,” and Wall Street is increasingly valuing miners for contracted megawatts and AI hosting deals rather than mined coins. According to Bernstein, Bitcoin miners with active AI contracts are trading at about $6 million per megawatt of planned capacity, double the roughly $3 million per megawatt expected for pure Bitcoin miners without AI.
27 GW advantage for miners in the power-starved AI race
Bernstein estimates that Bitcoin miners currently control more than 27GW of planned power capacity worldwide and are in a structurally advantageous position compared to newly built AI campuses that must overcome multi-year interconnection queues. The report notes that while parts of the United States could take as long as 50 months to secure and power 1 GW of new grid connections, many mining sites already have gigawatt-scale substations and transmission lines in place. Because of this reality, miners are increasingly being recast as “warm power shells” for AI and high-performance computing – providers of GPU-enabled industrial-scale land, power, and data center-grade buildings.
IREN is at the center of this story after pivoting from pure Bitcoin mining to AI computing and entering into a comprehensive partnership with NVIDIA to deploy up to 5 GW of AI infrastructure built on the chipmaker’s DSX AI Factory architecture. Under the agreement, IREN will deploy NVIDIA accelerated computing across its global data center portfolio, starting with a 2 GW campus in Sweetwater, Texas. Meanwhile, NVIDIA receives a five-year option to purchase up to 30 million shares of IREN stock at $70 per share and commits to approximately $3.4 billion in GPU cloud spending over five years. At the same time, Riot signed a 10-year, $311 million lease with AMD. The lease agreement starts with 25 MW of data center capacity and is expandable to 200 MW at the Rockdale, Texas site with 700 MW connectivity, enhancing the miner’s AI and high-performance computing profile.
Upside, Risk, and Bitcoin Cycle Tradeoffs
Bernstein’s calculations suggest that the market is still discounting this power optionality. Despite being an “integral part of the AI value chain,” Bitcoin miners are trading at an overall valuation discount of around 90% to established AI data center operators by some metrics. In one example, the brokerage values the 1GW Corsicana site alone at $3 billion out of Riot’s planned $9 billion total goal, even though the facility has yet to generate meaningful revenue, highlighting how the future of AI hosting is driving this story. For Core Scientific, Bernstein estimates that 86% of the company’s targeted value will come from the AI business, with only 14% related to traditional Bitcoin mining. This reflects the rapid shift in investor attention to computing infrastructure.
This report does not ignore risks. Bernstein warned that new AI campuses remain hostage to environmental reviews, grid capacity bottlenecks, and local permitting battles that could derail or delay megaprojects. It also warns that if miners lean too far away from hashrate and towards AI hosting, they risk sacrificing upside in a future Bitcoin bull market, just as the rewards from a halving event or potential demand shock could cause a revaluation of pure mining economics. Still, Bernstein’s message is clear, as demand for AI data centers is growing faster than utilities and regulators can add new gigawatts. Miners sitting on cheap switchable electricity are the “power players” in the AI arms race, and the market is only just beginning to price it in.
