Bitcoin Mining and AI Infrastructure Stocks Surge as Short Positions Unwind

Compute Infrastructure Providers Lead Broad Rally

Shares of companies spanning bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence infrastructure soared on Thursday, with Keel Infrastructure Corp. — formerly known as Bitfarms — leading the pack. The stock climbed 29.13%, trading at $4.10 per share, up $0.92 by 2 p.m. EDT.

Nebius Group N.V. followed closely with a 28.52% gain to $190.50, while Cipher Digital Inc. advanced 28.30% and IREN Limited rose 27.36% to $37.33.

The rally extended across a wide range of names. Whitefiber added 27.35%, SharonAI Holdings gained 26.86%, and Bloom Energy rose 26.04%. Sandisk Corporation surged $244.33 per share — a 24.05% increase that lifted the stock above $1,260.

Mining Stocks Post Widespread Gains

Among the bitcoin miners, Riot Platforms gained 23.46% to $22.52. Bitdeer Technologies rose 21.91%. Coreweave climbed 21.83% to $74.10. Core Scientific added 20.97%, and Hut 8 gained 20.69%, finishing at $106.43.

Cleanspark rose 20.23%, Terawulf added 19.44%, and Applied Digital gained 19.07%. Solaris Energy Infrastructure climbed 18.94%, while MARA Holdings and Cerebras Systems each advanced 18.60%.

EMCOR Group moved up 18.27%, and Babcock & Wilcox finished 18.02% higher. Micron Technology climbed 17.40%, HIVE Digital Technologies added 17.35%, and Galaxy Digital rounded out the session's gainers with a 17.27% rise. Many of these companies mine bitcoin (BTC) but also maintain ties to the AI, semiconductor, or high-performance computing (HPC) sectors.

Drivers Behind the Rally

Part of the move was attributed to a forced liquidation of public stock holdings by a hedge fund founded by a former OpenAI researcher. The fund had held substantial positions across several of the day's largest gainers. Citadel absorbed the bulk of that portfolio in a single large transaction, which market participants said eliminated a potential source of further selling pressure.

Bitcoin itself traded above $64,000 and approached $65,000 during Thursday's session, providing support for mining stocks that remain sensitive to the underlying asset's price — even as an increasing share of their revenue stems from AI computing contracts.

Microsoft's latest earnings report contributed to the upward momentum. The company's shares jumped after results indicated that its AI-related capital expenditure was beginning to yield returns, lifting sentiment across the Nasdaq and pulling AI infrastructure names higher. Microsoft is one of several hyperscalers — alongside Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta — that have committed to sustained multi-year AI infrastructure buildouts, creating downstream demand for third-party compute, power, and component suppliers.

Coreweave had a separate catalyst. The company announced a collaboration with Leidos to deliver AI cloud services for the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of War. Under the arrangement, Coreweave's computing platform would be deployed inside classified facilities, with Leidos managing security accreditation and mission integration. No contract value was disclosed, and the partnership remains contingent on definitive agreements.

A Structural Shift Underway

Thursday's gains reflect a longer-term transformation. As bitcoin mining profitability declined following successive halvings and rising network difficulty — most recently the April 2024 halving that cut per-block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC — publicly traded miners began repurposing their power-intensive sites into AI data centers. These firms already possess land, electrical substations, and power agreements that would take new data center developers years to establish. Securing new grid interconnection for a greenfield data center site routinely takes three to five years in major U.S. markets, a bottleneck that has made miners' existing power infrastructure increasingly valuable to AI tenants.

Several recent deals illustrate the accelerating pivot. Hut 8 signed a second 15-year lease valued at $9.8 billion at its Beacon Point campus in Texas. IREN disclosed $2.8 billion in new AI cloud contracts and raised its 2026 revenue target above $4 billion. Terawulf secured a long-term lease with Anthropic earlier this year.

Keel Infrastructure, the former Bitfarms, has redirected its strategy toward digital and energy infrastructure for AI workloads, including a recently approved data center project in Quebec. Nebius has repeatedly raised its power capacity guidance and secured investment from Nvidia.

Sandisk and Micron supply the memory components that AI computing clusters depend on — a segment where demand has consistently exceeded supply. Bloom Energy produces fuel cells increasingly deployed for data center power generation. Cerebras designs AI accelerator chips. EMCOR and Babcock & Wilcox benefit from the physical construction activity tied to the broader buildout.

Outlook

The same leverage that produced strong gains for AI infrastructure investors earlier in the year also contributed to steep losses in July before Thursday's rebound. Questions regarding capital costs, power availability, and the durability of long-term AI demand remain unresolved for many of these companies.

For now, the market appears to be treating bitcoin miners with grid-connected power assets as a distinct category within the wider AI investment theme. Whether Thursday's gains are sustained will hinge on how many of these firms succeed in converting contracted power capacity into recurring revenue over the coming quarters — and whether upcoming quarterly reports from the largest AI infrastructure spenders confirm that demand trajectory.

Source: CryptoNews.net