Bitcoin miner Canaan reported a net loss of $88.7 million for the first quarter of 2026 as falling Bitcoin (BTC) prices squeezed profit margins and caused significant inventory write-downs.
The company’s total revenue for the quarter ended March 31 was $62.7 million, a significant decrease from $196.3 million in the previous quarter, according to a Tuesday press release.
Although sales were down 75% from the previous quarter, industrial mining equipment remained the company’s main revenue driver at $39.6 million. Self-mining contributed $19.1 million and the home mining sector brought in $2.7 million, with the category more than doubling year-over-year.
sauce: canaan
“While the average Bitcoin price and hash price declined significantly quarter-on-quarter, the decline in our Bitcoin production was relatively small, reflecting the resilience of our mining operations and continued hashrate evolution,” said Canaan Chief Financial Officer Jin (James) Chen.
A $25 million inventory write-down weighed on the quarter’s total loss of $23 million, resulting in an operating loss of $54.3 million.
Canaan’s self-mining hashrate jumps 66%
Canaan has expanded its self-mining footprint to 11 exahashes per second of installed computing power, an increase of 66% year over year. The company had 1,808 Bitcoins on its balance sheet as of March 31st, valued at approximately $121 million.
During the quarter, Canaan also completed the acquisition of Cipher Mining’s 49% stake in three joint venture projects in West Texas, with a total hashrate capacity of approximately 4.4 EH/s and 120 megawatts of power. The deal, which will be concluded through the issuance of stock rather than cash, will give Canaan access to electricity rates of less than 3 cents per kilowatt-hour on the ERCOT power grid.
Looking forward, Canaan’s second-quarter revenue was between $35 million and $45 million, then declined further.
Canaan stock closed 3.54% lower at $0.4827 on Monday, and was down another 7.71% at $0.4455 in pre-market trading, according to Yahoo Finance.
Major miners report losses in the first quarter
Across the sector, major miners such as Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, and TeraWulf all reported higher losses in the first quarter. MARA led the group with a net loss of $1.3 billion, approximately $1 billion of which was related to non-cash mark-to-market adjustments to its Bitcoin holdings.
As mining margins shrink, more miners are turning to AI and high-performance computing as alternative sources of revenue. On Monday, HIVE Digital Technologies announced plans to build a 320-megawatt AI data center campus near Toronto that will support more than 100,000 GPUs when fully built out.
