Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY) and TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF), two Bitcoin mining firms that have pivoted toward AI data center operations, reported contrasting second-quarter 2026 results on August 5. Both companies released their earnings before markets opened on Wednesday, with their emerging AI data center segments carrying much of the financial load. The divergence in their results underscores how quickly the economics of cryptocurrency mining have shifted since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving cut block rewards by 50%, pushing an industry that had already invested heavily in power-hungry infrastructure to repurpose those assets for a more lucrative tenant: artificial intelligence workloads.

TeraWulf's profitability positioned the stock for pre-market gains, while Galaxy's quarterly loss triggered a decline of nearly 7%.

Galaxy Digital Posts $85 Million Q2 Loss

Galaxy Digital closed the quarter ending June 30 with an $85 million net loss, a significant improvement from the $216 million loss reported in the first quarter but still disappointing to investors. Diluted and adjusted earnings came in at negative $0.09 per share.

According to Google Finance, Galaxy shares traded at $20.99 in pre-market activity, down approximately 6.55% at the time of reporting.

The company attributed the weak second-quarter performance to underperformance in its digital asset portfolio. However, Galaxy's Data Centers segment helped offset the shortfall. The segment reported adjusted gross profit of $20 million, a $3 million improvement over the first quarter, with adjusted EBITDA of $11 million.

As Cryptopolitan reported earlier in the quarter, Galaxy confirmed it had delivered all 133 megawatts of critical IT load under the first phase of the CoreWeave lease at its Helios campus in West Texas. That arrangement is expected to generate approximately $80 million in quarterly lease revenue beginning with the Q3 report — a figure that would surpass the revenue contribution of its legacy asset management and trading operations, illustrating why former mining sites with grid-connected power have become prized assets for AI cloud providers racing to secure capacity.

TeraWulf Leverages HPC Leasing, Exceeding 70% of Revenue

TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) saw its shares rise 1.64% to $19.19 in pre-market trading, per Google Finance.

High-performance computing leases contributed $31.9 million of the $44.8 million in total revenue TeraWulf reported for the quarter. That approximately 71% contribution from the HPC segment marks a significant escalation of the company's AI compute strategy, which generated roughly $34 million in the first quarter. The shift reflects a broader pattern across the mining sector: companies including Core Scientific, Hut 8, Iris Energy, and Applied Digital have all signed multi-year leases with AI tenants, collectively redirecting gigawatts of formerly mining-dedicated power toward GPU computing.

TeraWulf reported $3 billion in cash and restricted cash. Executives project a stronger third quarter, citing 102 MW of revenue-generating critical IT capacity at its Lake Mariner site in New York that came online in early July. An additional 336 MW is expected to be delivered in due course.

Chief Financial Officer Patrick Fleury stated that the CB-3 delivery unlocked $600 million in credit support from Google, which backs tenant Fluidstack's lease obligations.

Power Infrastructure Emerges as the Growth Narrative

Both companies used the quarter to substantially expand their development pipelines beyond current capacity.

TeraWulf disclosed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for approximately 401 MW at its Justified campus in Hawesville, Kentucky — a deal valued at roughly $19 billion in contracted revenue, or as much as $33 billion if Anthropic exercises two five-year extensions. The company also agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy joint venture for approximately $530 million and secured FERC authorization to acquire the Morgantown generating station in Maryland.

Galaxy reported that it expanded its power pipeline beyond 5.7 GW following the acquisition of three Texas development sites after quarter-end. The company closed a $3.5 billion senior secured notes offering on July 28 to fund the next phase of Helios. Galaxy also announced a multi-year agreement with BNY, the custody bank overseeing more than $60 trillion in assets, to support staking on BNY's digital asset platform.

The common thread across both companies' strategies is electricity. As Cryptopolitan reported when TeraWulf secured its Muskie site in May, access to power, transmission infrastructure, and utility approvals has become the binding constraint on AI data center buildouts. The International Energy Agency projects that data center electricity consumption will nearly double to approximately 945 terawatt-hours by 2030. With utility interconnection queues in major markets stretching years, the advantage of owning pre-permitted, grid-connected sites that miners spent the last cycle building has become a central differentiator — and one that investors watching future quarterly reports from both companies should weigh alongside traditional mining metrics like hash rate and Bitcoin production.