From the Bitcoin mine to the AI machine room. This is how Cipher Mining switched megawatts to the future
Cipher Mining started as a classic bitcoin miner. The company went public in 2021 through a merger with SPAC Good Works Acquisition and built large-scale farms in Texas, where the most valuable assets are megawatts and grid connections. Today, it describes itself not only as a BTC mine, but also as an operator of data centers for Bitcoin and high-performance workloads (HPC/AI) – the direction is given by specific contracts with the largest cloud players.
To understand this change, it is worth going back to April 2024, when the halving occurred – that's when the reward for miners was cut in half (from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC per block). For companies with energy costs down to the cent, this meant clear squeeze of margins. At the same time, the demand for computing power for AI has exploded in the US, a queues for new connections to the network and cooling are counted in years, not months. It is therefore harder to make money on BTC mining, but on “renting” power for AI – it is getting better and better.
An advantage that Cipher Mining took advantage of
In this world, miners have an advantage that cannot be bought overnight. This access to huge amounts of energy and ready-made data center infrastructure. According to Bernstein's report, the mining industry has consolidated more than 14 GW of power capacity — often in locations with surplus renewable energy. These are hundreds of megawatts in halls with cooling and switchboards, which can be quickly “repainted” from ASIC (bitcoin) miners to GPU (AI) clusters. For hyperscalers who are racing for every megawatt for AI models, this shortens the investment launch time by up to several dozen percent.
Special offer
Geopolitics is superimposed on this map. The US is tightening export controls on advanced AI chips from 2022, and in recent days the White House has clearly signaled that the latest Nvidia Blackwell family chips will not go to China. In practice, this strengthens the attractiveness of secure, domestic power and equipment supply chains — and therefore infrastructure partners such as American bitcoin miners.
In this context, it can be seen why Cipher Mining is turning the switch towards AI. The company has just announced a 15-year agreement with Amazon Web Services worth $5.5 billion. to provide 300 MW of infrastructure for AI workloads, with rental payments starting in August 2026. This is not the sale of bitcoin miners, but a long-term lease of power and space – exactly what hyperscalers lack the most today.
In the package, Cipher also revealed the acquisition of approximately 95 percent. shares in a joint venture developing a 1-gigawatt site in West Texas, which de facto builds its “bank of land and megawatts” for subsequent contracts. The stock price responded with a double-digit gain on the day of the announcement.
Others also decide to make such a move
A day earlier, IREN (formerly Iris Energy) signed a five-year contract with Microsoft worth USD 9.7 billion. — directly to access to Nvidia GB300 systems installed at the Childress campus in Texas, with equipment financing under a separate agreement with Dell ($5.8 billion).
These transactions show how quickly the market is converting mining megawatts to AI needs.
Cipher had been preparing for this pivot earlier, and in addition to expanding capacity in Texas, it entered into a 10-year HPC hosting deal with Fluidstack (with an Alphabet-linked stock option), and earlier this year attracted capital from SoftBank for data center development. The pattern is the same: less dependence on BTC market cycles, more revenues based on long-term lease agreements with customers such as Microsoft or Amazon.
How does all this translate into ratings? In 2025, Cipher Mining shares are one of the stars of the trading floor. The company provided approximately 390 percent. year-to-date (YTD) returns.
