According to Bernstein research, Bitcoin miners are emerging as surprise winners in the AI infrastructure boom as their power-hungry operations align perfectly with surging demand for data centers. The investment bank estimates that Bitcoin miners control more than 27 GW of planned power capacity globally, significantly outpacing the 3.7 GW of capacity tied to announced AI deals. This structural advantage positions miners as critical gatekeepers in the AI arms race, with Bernstein arguing that 'Follow the Gigawatts' is now the organizing principle of the AI build-out.
As reported by Bernstein, Bitcoin miners with active AI contracts trade around $6 million per planned megawatt of capacity, double the roughly $3 million per MW implied for pure-play Bitcoin miners without AI exposure. The investment bank has assigned 'outperform' ratings to IREN, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific, with specific target prices including $100 for IREN (98% upside potential) and $24 for CleanSpark (78% upside). According to the report, Wall Street is increasingly valuing miners on their contracted megawatts and AI hosting deals rather than coins mined.
According to Bernstein's analysis, IREN has signed a sweeping partnership with NVIDIA to deploy up to 5 GW of AI infrastructure built on the chipmaker's DSX AI Factory architecture. Under this deal, IREN will roll out NVIDIA-accelerated compute across a global data center portfolio, beginning at a 2 GW campus in Sweetwater, Texas, while NVIDIA receives a five-year option to buy up to 30 million IREN shares at $70 each and commits to about $3.4 billion in GPU cloud spend over five years. Additionally, Riot has agreed a 10-year, $311 million lease with AMD that starts with 25 MW of data center capacity and can scale to 200 MW at its 700 MW-connected Rockdale, Texas site.
As reported by Bernstein, Bitcoin miners overall trade at a roughly 90% valuation discount to established AI data-center operators on some metrics, despite being integral parts of the AI value chain. The brokerage attributes $3 billion of enterprise value to Riot's planned 1 GW Corsicana site alone out of a $9 billion total target, even though the facility has yet to generate meaningful revenue. For Core Scientific, 86% of target enterprise value stems from its AI business, with only 14% tied to legacy Bitcoin mining, reflecting how quickly investor focus has shifted toward compute infrastructure.
The positive regulatory environment is strengthening Bitcoin's institutional adoption, with Minnesota's governor signing legislation allowing banks and credit unions to offer Bitcoin custody services to their customers. Under the new law, financial institutions will be able to legally store, manage, and protect Bitcoin private keys on behalf of clients, with regulations requiring secure and auditable operations and comprehensive risk management policies. However, Bernstein cautions that new AI campuses remain hostage to environmental reviews, grid-capacity bottlenecks, and local permitting fights that can derail megaprojects. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest weekly outflows since January with $1 billion in withdrawals, ending a six-week streak that attracted $3.4 billion in total inflows, as macro pressures and profit-taking triggered a sharp reversal in investor sentiment.
