Top Banks Back Bitcoin Miners Pivoting to AI Data Center Infrastructure
Key Takeaways
- •AI data centers can cost 10 to 15 times more per megawatt to build than Bitcoin mining infrastructure.
- •MARA CEO Fred Thiel said AI data centers can produce significantly higher revenue per unit of power than Bitcoin mining sites.
- •Banks may view AI data center projects more favorably because customer contracts can provide clearer long-term revenue visibility.
- •Core Scientific, Hut 8, Iris Energy, and Applied Digital have also announced AI or high-performance computing hosting initiatives.
- •Mining companies are using existing power, substation, and cooling infrastructure as demand for dense AI computing capacity grows.
AI data centers can cost 10 to 15 times more per megawatt to build than Bitcoin mining infrastructure, but some Bitcoin mining companies are still shifting toward AI data center projects because of the higher revenue potential tied to power usage. The pivot comes amid surging demand for high-performance computing driven by enterprise adoption of generative AI and large language model workloads, which require dense, always-on compute capacity that traditional data centers were not designed to handle.
MARA CEO Fred Thiel said the economics help explain why miners are looking beyond traditional Bitcoin mining sites. According to Thiel, AI data centers can generate far more revenue per unit of power than Bitcoin mining operations, even though the upfront infrastructure costs are significantly higher.
“It’s about $1 million a megawatt all-in, between infrastructure and compute, to build a Bitcoin mining site. The AI site, just the infrastructure without compute, is $10 to $15 million a megawatt,” Thiel said.
The cost gap is also shaping how banks view project financing. Because AI data center developments are priced much higher than Bitcoin mining sites and are associated with stronger earning potential per megawatt, banks consider them more attractive to finance. Access to multi-year contracts with cloud and enterprise customers also gives lenders more predictable revenue visibility compared with Bitcoin mining returns, which fluctuate with hash price and network difficulty.
The shift reflects a broader move by some publicly traded Bitcoin miners, including MARA, to evaluate or develop infrastructure that can serve AI workloads and high-performance computing demand. Other mining firms such as Core Scientific, Hut 8, Iris Energy, and Applied Digital have also announced AI or HPC hosting initiatives, drawing on existing grid connections, substations, and cooling infrastructure originally built for digital asset mining. These projects rely on large-scale power access, an area where mining companies already have operational experience, and where new data center construction faces multi-year permitting and interconnection timelines in major markets.
