Publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies have signed AI and high-performance computing contracts worth more than $100 billion, but only a sliver of that figure is showing up as actual cash flow. According to a Q2 2026 report published September 16 by research firm CoinShares, those contracts are currently generating just $1.1 billion in annualized revenue, a gap wide enough that some miners are shutting down Bitcoin operations entirely to chase the AI opportunity.
The mismatch between paper commitments and billable capacity is stark. Miners have contracted more than 4 gigawatts of AI and HPC capacity, yet only 550 megawatts of it is currently generating revenue. That means roughly 87% of contracted capacity sits idle or unbuilt, waiting on construction, retrofitting, or tenant move-in before it can start billing.
Why Wall Street Is Paying Up Anyway
Investors don’t seem to mind the gap. CoinShares found that miners with signed AI/HPC contracts trade at an average 12.9x multiple of enterprise value to projected next-twelve-month sales, versus just 3.7x for miners without such deals. Ten of the twelve miners CoinShares tracks gained between 70% and 195% in the second quarter. Keel Infrastructure, the company formerly known as Bitfarms, saw its stock jump 194.4% in the same period — despite shutting down its Bitcoin mining operations on June 29, 2026.
The logic behind those valuations rests on economics that favor AI hosting over Bitcoin mining by a wide margin. CoinShares estimates AI infrastructure can generate roughly $1.5 million in annualized profit per megawatt, compared to about $500,000 per megawatt from Bitcoin mining. Retrofitting a site for AI use costs between $8 million and $15 million per megawatt, far more than the $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt needed to build out mining infrastructure — but the payoff, if a lease materializes, can be large enough to justify the spend.
Real estate values in the sector reflect that split. Three leased AI data centers in Northern Virginia were valued at $27 million per megawatt, while some energized but unleased mining capacity elsewhere trades for under $3 million per megawatt. The difference between a signed AI tenant and an empty shed with power hookups is, in effect, most of the valuation.
Power, Not Chips, Is the Bottleneck
What’s driving this dynamic is a US grid and permitting system that can’t keep up with demand. The national interconnection queue holds roughly 2,600 gigawatts of proposed projects, and the median wait time for grid projects completed in 2025 exceeded five years. On top of that, CoinShares recorded 225 data-center development moratoriums or restrictions across 30 states, with 151 still active. Against that backdrop, miners’ existing energized sites — built years ago for Bitcoin mining — have become one of the few sources of grid-connected power available on a workable timeline for AI operators.
That scarcity explains why some of the largest names in the industry are pivoting hard. Core Scientific paid $41.9 million to terminate a mining equipment agreement covering roughly 15 exahash per second of hashrate, a move consistent with its self-mining gross margin sitting at negative 56%. The company is now billing 437 megawatts toward AI and HPC customers. IREN, meanwhile, reported AI cloud revenue of $70.5 million against $66.7 million from Bitcoin mining in its latest quarter — the first time AI revenue has topped mining revenue at the company — and is targeting $4 billion in annual recurring revenue by December. TeraWulf now derives 71% of quarterly revenue from HPC leases and is winding down roughly 145 megawatts of remaining mining capacity.
The economics of mining itself help explain the exodus. CoinShares put the weighted average cash cost to produce one Bitcoin at roughly $75,500 in the second quarter, at a time when Bitcoin closed June near $58,400 — a period where mining below cost made the AI pivot look more urgent. Bitcoin has since traded around $77,000, with hash price near $38 per petahash per second per day. CoinShares projects that 35 exahash per second of hashrate will exit publicly listed miners altogether, about 4.7% of the Bitcoin network’s total 750 EH/s. For scale, IREN alone runs 23.2 EH/s of installed capacity, and Cipher’s Odessa site accounts for 11.6 EH/s.
What to Watch
The central question for the sector is whether contracted capacity converts into billing capacity on anything like the timelines miners have promised. CoinShares expects industry-wide AI/HPC revenue run rate to more than double by its next report, a benchmark that will test whether current valuations are tracking real progress or getting ahead of it. Investors will also be watching how much additional hashrate exits the network as more miners follow Core Scientific, IREN, TeraWulf, Cipher Digital and Keel toward AI hosting, and whether grid and permitting constraints — evidenced by the hundreds of active moratoriums and the multi-year interconnection queue — ease enough to let new supply come online. Regulatory developments matter too: lawmakers have separately been shaping crypto-specific tax rules, including a tax bill that dropped relief provisions for miners and stakers, even as a separate House panel advanced the first federal crypto tax framework — both signals of a policy environment that could shape miners’ economics alongside their AI pivot.
Source: CryptoSlate
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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