Bitcoin miners sink millions into AI businesses, seeking billions in return
Summary
AUSTIN — For five years, bitcoin miner Core Scientific has quietly been diversifying out of mining and into artificial intelligence, a market that will require immense amounts of power to handle the training of AI models and the massive workloads that follow. "The best way to think about bitcoin mining facilities is that we are essentially power shells to the data center industry," Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan told CNBC. "Bitcoin miners, often stationed in energy-secure and energy-intensive data centers, find these facilities ideal for AI operations as well," said James Butterfill, head of research at digital asset firm CoinShares. Hut 8 said in its first-quarter earnings report that it had purchased its first batch of 1,000 Nvidia GPUs and secured a customer agreement with a venture-backed AI cloud platform as part of its expansion into new technologies offering higher returns. In the next one to two years, Needham analysts estimate that large publicly traded bitcoin miners are expected to more than double power capacity, including both their mining and HPC business expansion plans.