Research firm Bernstein has taken a bullish stance on publicly traded Bitcoin miner groups. The company suggests that companies with large power consumption could benefit from the surge in demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The company has assigned outperform ratings to four miners, a public report citing Bernstein research shows. The list includes the names of IREN Limited, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific. The brokerage memo has not been made public. But Bernstein reportedly believes access to power and existing infrastructure is increasingly valuable. This will allow tech companies to expand their investments in AI computing. This comes in response to a surge in demand for data centers.
Training and operating AI systems requires large amounts of power, land, and cooling capacity. This is putting pressure on America’s already strained power infrastructure. Core Scientific provides the strongest public example of this.
Can AI bring back Bitcoin miners?
Of the four miners, Core Scientific has made the most inroads into AI-related hosting through an agreement with cloud computing company CoreWeave. Back in June 2024, the company announced it would provide approximately 200 megawatts (MW) of infrastructure to support CoreWeave’s high-performance computing operations.
At the time of the deal, the company said it was expected to generate more than $3.5 billion in cumulative revenue over 12 years. However, Core Scientific has since revealed several additional enhancements to the agreement.
Several Bitcoin miners have reportedly started calling themselves more than pure cryptocurrency operators. They try to portray it as owners of power-hungry computing infrastructure.
IREN said its strategy spans both Bitcoin mining and AI cloud services. Meanwhile, Riot Platforms executives were reportedly discussing opportunities in high-performance computing and AI. They see it as a potential growth area.
Four miners that Bernstein focuses on
*Based on a published report summarizing Bernstein’s research. The original memo has not been published.
This comes at a time when the price of Bitcoin is taking a hit. $BTC Prices have fallen about 6% in the past seven days. $BTC At the time of writing, it is trading at $76,370. Year-to-date, it has fallen more than 12%.
Converting a mining facility into an AI-enabled data center is not as easy as it seems. GPU-based computing typically requires different cooling systems, networking equipment, and power configurations. This is completely different from a Bitcoin mining operation.
