When Core Scientific signed a $3.5 billion deal to host synthetic intelligence (AI) knowledge facilities earlier this 12 months, it wasn’t chasing the following crypto token — it was chasing a steadier paycheck. As soon as identified for its huge fleets of bitcoin mining rigs, the corporate is now a part of a rising development: changing energy-intensive mining operations into high-performance AI amenities.
Bitcoin miners like Core, Hut 8 (HUT) and TeraWulf (WULF) are swapping ASIC machines — the devoted bitcoin mining laptop — for GPU clusters, pushed by the lure of AI’s explosive progress and the cruel economics of crypto mining.
Energy play
It is no secret that bitcoin mining requires an intensive quantity of vitality, which is the largest price of minting a brand new digital asset.
Again within the 2021 bull run, when the Bitcoin community’s hashrate and issue had been low, miners had been making out like bandits with margins as a lot as 90%. Then got here the brutal crypto winter and the halving occasion, which slashed the mining reward in half. In 2025, with surging hashrate and vitality costs, miners at the moment are struggling to outlive with razor-thin margins.
Nevertheless, the necessity for energy—the largest enter price—grew to become a blessing in disguise for these miners, who wanted a distinct technique to diversify their income sources.
On account of rising competitors for mining, the miners continued to obtain extra machines to remain afloat, and with it got here the necessity for extra megawatts of electrical energy at a less expensive value. Miners invested closely in securing these low-cost vitality sources, akin to hydroelectric or stranded pure fuel websites, and developed experience in managing high-density cooling and electrical techniques—abilities honed in the course of the crypto growth of the early 2020s.
That is what captured the eye of AI and cloud computing corporations. Whereas bitcoin depends on specialised ASICs, AI thrives on versatile GPUs like Nvidia’s H100 collection, which require related high-power environments however for parallel processing duties in machine studying. As a substitute of constructing out knowledge facilities from scratch, taking up mining infrastructure, which already has energy prepared, grew to become a quicker method to develop an growing urge for food for AI-related infrastructure.
Primarily, these miners aren’t simply pivoting—they’re retrofitting.
The cooling techniques, low-cost vitality contracts, and power-dense infrastructure they constructed in the course of the crypto growth now serve a brand new objective: feeding the AI fashions of firms like OpenAI and Google.
Companies like Crusoe Vitality offered off mining property to focus solely on AI, deploying GPU clusters in distant, energy-rich places that mirror the decentralized ethos of crypto however now gasoline centralized AI hyperscalers.
Terraforming AI
Bitcoin mining has successfully “terraformed” the terrain for AI compute by constructing out scalable, power-efficient infrastructure that AI desperately wants.
As Nicholas Gregory, Board Director at Aromatic Prosperity, famous, “It may be argued bitcoin paved the best way for digital greenback funds as could be seen with USDT/Tether. It additionally appears like bitcoin terraformed knowledge centres for AI/GPU compute.”
This pre-existing “terraforming” permits miners to retrofit amenities shortly, typically in below a 12 months, in comparison with the multi-year timelines for conventional knowledge middle builds. Companies like Crusoe Vitality offered off mining property to focus solely on AI, deploying GPU clusters in distant, energy-rich places that mirror the decentralized ethos of crypto however now gasoline centralized AI hyperscalers.
Larger returns
In follow, it means miners can flip a facility in lower than a 12 months—far quicker than the multi-year timeline of a brand new knowledge middle.
However AI isn’t an affordable improve.
Bitcoin mining setups are comparatively modest, with prices starting from $300,000 to $800,000 per megawatt (MW) excluding ASICs, permitting for fast scalability in response to market cycles. In the meantime, AI infrastructure calls for considerably larger capex as a result of want for superior liquid cooling, redundant energy techniques, and the GPUs themselves, which might price tens of hundreds per unit and face world provide shortages. Regardless of the steeper upfront prices, AI provides miners as much as 25 instances extra income per kilowatt-hour than bitcoin mining, making the pivot economically compelling amid rising vitality costs and declining crypto profitability.
A distinct segment trade price billions
As AI continues to surge and crypto income tighten, bitcoin mining might grow to be a distinct segment recreation—one reserved for energy-rich areas or extremely environment friendly gamers, particularly as the following in 2028 might render many operations unprofitable with out breakthroughs in effectivity or vitality prices.
Whereas projections present the worldwide crypto mining market rising to $3.3 billion by 2030, at a modest 6.9% CAGR, the billions could be overshadowed by AI’s exponential enlargement. In keeping with KBV Analysis, the worldwide AI in mining market is projected to achieve $435.94 billion by 2032, increasing at a compound annual progress charge (CAGR) of 40.6%.
With traders already seeing greenback indicators on this shift, the broader development suggests the long run is both a hybrid or a full conversion to AI, the place steady contracts with hyperscalers promise longevity over crypto’s boom-bust cycles.
This evolution not solely repurposes idle property but in addition underscores how yesterday’s crypto frontiers are forging tomorrow’s AI empires.
