Bitcoin Miners' AI Pivot Drives 21% YTD Gain
The Bitcoin mining sector is undergoing a significant transformation as companies pivot towards artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure. Miners that have transitioned away from purely Bitcoin-focused operations are outperforming their peers, with a cohort of AI-integrated miners up roughly 21% year-to-date.
Core Scientific's quarterly revenue reports demonstrate the shift in focus: in Q2 2026, the company generated $136.7 million in colocation revenue, primarily from hosting AI workloads, compared to just $27.5 million from Bitcoin mining. This is not a company with an AI side hustle, but rather one that mines Bitcoin on the side.
Other notable performers include TeraWulf and RIOT, which have posted approximately 73-74% and 94% gains year-to-date, respectively. Meanwhile, the realized hashrate across public miners fell about 13.4% from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026 as companies redirected power capacity away from mining rigs and towards GPU-dense AI clusters.
The valuation gap between traditional Bitcoin miners and those with meaningful AI exposure is substantial: the latter are trading at over 12 times expected forward sales, while the former are valued at 2-6 times forward sales. The economics support this disparity, as AI cloud services generate an estimated median of $940 per megawatt-hour compared to $113-$179 per megawatt-hour for Bitcoin mining.