Bitcoin Miners Are Cashing In on AI

PLUS miner news and June production updates

Author

Kim Sandin
July 11, 2025

🍒 Bitcoin Miners' AI Gamble Pays Off

Ahead of the 2024 halving, many miners made a strategic gamble by diversifying into AI and HPC, a move that has largely paid off. This pivot has provided a crucial lifeline for some, generating much-needed revenue as traditional BTC earnings declined, while for others, it acts as a safety net against future market shocks.

For companies like Core Scientific, the AI pivot has been transformative. After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022, the company re-emerged in early 2024 and shifted its focus from pure Bitcoin mining to becoming a colocation service provider for AI firms. This strategic reorientation culminated in a significant 12-year, $3.5b deal with CoreWeave to host HPC operations. Despite an initial Q1 2025 revenue dip from the halving and operational changes, a surge in BTC helped offset losses, culminating in Core Scientific's $9b acquisition by CoreWeave.

Hut 8 also embraced AI, launching its GPU-as-a-Service offering through a new subsidiary, Highrise AI, in September 2024. This involved deploying over 1,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to provide cloud-based AI compute services under a 5-year fixed-payment and revenue-share deal.

Although Hut 8 reported a quarterly net loss in Q1 2025 and saw its BTC production decline year-over-year, its CEO emphasized that deliberate investments led to a significant increase in its hashrate. AI remains a smaller, though growing, part of Hut 8's overall business model as the company continues to expand its core Bitcoin mining operations, recently raising $220m to purchase new equipment.

Some miners, notably IREN and HIVE, are seeing their AI ventures contribute increasingly meaningful revenue. IREN began acquiring GPUs in early 2024, deploying around 4,300 by mid-2025, and reported a 33% climb in AI cloud revenue in Q3 fiscal year 2025. Similarly, HIVE Digital, which rebranded in mid-2023 to focus on Nvidia-powered compute clusters, invested $30m in GPU rollouts and saw its AI and HPC hosting revenue triple to $10.1m in its 2025 fiscal year, now accounting for nearly 9% of its total revenue. Both companies are actively building new data centers tailored for AI workloads.

Even industry giants like Riot Platforms and MARA Holdings, which boast some of the largest BTC treasuries among public companies, are laying the groundwork for a future less reliant solely on Bitcoin mining.

Riot began formally evaluating the conversion of up to 600 MW at its Corsicana, Texas facility into high-performance infrastructure for AI and HPC in early 2025, pausing further Bitcoin mining buildout there. While Riot hasn't secured major AI contracts yet, its substantial power capacity positions it well for future hyperscaler clients.

MARA has rebranded its broader strategy as an "edge computing" play, showcasing its MARA 2PIC700 immersion cooling system for dense compute workloads. While these pivots haven't yet resulted in significant cash flows from AI, their robust BTC holdings provide substantial financial flexibility.

🗞️ Mainstream Media's Bitcoin Blackout

A recent report from market intelligence firm Perception reveals that despite Bitcoin reaching an all-time high in Q2, mainstream media coverage remained surprisingly sparse and polarized.

Out of 1,116 articles published by 18 major mass media outlets, a "deeply polarized narrative landscape" emerged, with 31% positive, 41% neutral, and 28% negative sentiment towards digital assets.

Notably, "elite financial publications" like The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and The New York Times provided minimal coverage, collectively accounting for a mere 2% of all Bitcoin and crypto articles.

Perception identified three distinct approaches to Bitcoin coverage: "enthusiastic adoption" (e.g., Forbes, CNBC), "willful blindness" (e.g., WSJ, FT), and "persistent skepticism" (traditional media focusing on crime and controversy). This disparity creates "information asymmetry," leaving investors who rely on these top financial outlets "systematically underinformed" about Bitcoin as a transformative asset class.

🗞️ In the News

📰 Miner June Update

🐝 HIVE 

  • Reported an 18% increase in BTC production MoM, mining 164 BTC (5.5 BTC/day average), driven by early success at its newly energized 100 MW Phase 1 in Paraguay.

  • Achieved an average hashrate of 11.0 EH/s in June, peaking at 11.4 EH/s, nearly doubling its hashrate since the end of March.

  • Officially launched Phase 2 (second 100 MW) at its hydro-powered Yguazú facility in Paraguay, with 0.4 EH/s of new machines already hashing, aiming for 6.5 EH/s from next-generation Bitmain S21+ Hydro miners from this phase.

  • Is on track for a total operational hashrate of 18 EH/s by late August and 25 EH/s by American Thanksgiving 2025, targeting a 12 BTC per day production run rate by year-end and an industry-leading fleet efficiency of ~18.5 J/TH.

  • Achieved a $250m annualized run rate revenue in July, with expectations of $400m at 18 EH/s, boasting a current mining margin of approximately 55%.

  • Its high-performance computing subsidiary, BUZZ HPC, acquired a 7.2 MW Tier 3 data center campus in Toronto, Canada, which will support up to 5,000 next-gen GPUs for sovereign Canadian AI compute.

  • Strengthened its capital position by issuing shares for $70.0m in gross proceeds from an at-the-market offering in Q2 2025 to fuel further infrastructure growth.

👁️ IREN

  • Achieved record monthly revenue of $65.5m and hardware profit of $51.3m in June. Mined 620 BTC, a slight decrease from 627 in May.

  • Reached its mid-year target of 50 EH/s self-mining hashrate (average operating hashrate was 41.1 EH/s), up from 38.4 EH/s in May, with further expansion now paused to prioritize AI verticals.

  • Significantly expanded its AI Cloud business, procuring ~2.4k next-generation NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs (1.3k B200s & 1.1k B300s) for installation, which will lift its total NVIDIA GPU fleet to 4.3k units.

  • Successfully completed a $550m oversubscribed convertible notes offering and transitioned to U.S. domestic issuer status.

  • Progressed customer and financing workstreams across AI verticals, with AI Cloud Services revenue reaching $2.2m and 98% hardware profit margin.

  • Achieved key project milestones, including completing Childress Phase 5 (150MW) and progressing Childress Horizon 1 (50MW IT load) for Q4 2025 delivery.

🫧 CleanSpark

  • Achieved its mid-year target of 50 EH/s operational hashrate in June, becoming the first Bitcoin miner to do so entirely through fully self-operated infrastructure, representing a 9.6% month-over-month increase.

  • Mined 685 BTC in June, up from 445 in June 2024, with a total of 3,968 BTC produced year-to-date in CY2025.

  • Improved its fleet's energy efficiency to 16.15 J/Th and secured 179 megawatts of additional power capacity, sufficient to support over 10 EH/s of incremental hashrate for future expansion.

  • Holds a substantial BTC treasury of 12,608 BTC, all self-mined, ranking seventh among all publicly traded companies worldwide.

  • Successfully initiated Digital Asset Management efforts, which included selling 578.51 BTC in June at an average price of $105,860, a premium of $446 above the Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP).

🥜 BitFuFu

  • Mined 445 BTC in June, an 11.3% MoM increase, marking its most productive month of 2025.

  • 387 BTC came from cloud mining and 58 from self-mining.

  • Hashrate increased 6.2% MoM to 36.2 EH/s, and power capacity rose 11.8% to 728 MW.