A Thursday research note said third-party computing capacity from miners remains valuable as U.S. AI data center buildouts face power constraints and growing political resistance.
Bitcoin miners struck a new AI-related deal every week in July, according to a Thursday research note from Bernstein, with the firm's industry tracker logging more than 7.5 gigawatts of capacity tied to the contracted equivalent of $150 billion in multi-year agreements. Bernstein said it remains overweight on the Bitcoin mining sector, arguing that miners' third-party computing capacity will stay valuable because access to power remains the main bottleneck for AI data centers as political resistance to new U.S. projects grows. The note followed major AI infrastructure announcements from Hut 8, IREN, MARA Holdings, TeraWulf and Bitdeer. Hut 8 disclosed a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease for its AI data center campus, IREN announced $2.8 billion in cloud services contracts with AI developers, MARA said it plans to acquire a Texas site with up to 2 gigawatts of capacity, and TeraWulf said its 20-year lease with Anthropic could generate about $19 billion in revenue.