Former Bitcoin Miners Repurpose Sites as AI Infrastructure Boom Takes Hold

Former Bitcoin miners are repurposing their power-advantaged sites into leased AI infrastructure for hyperscalers and frontier labs. Three U.S.-listed mid-cap stocks, Applied Digital (APLD), IREN (IREN), and TeraWulf (WULF), have leaned into this shift by leasing capacity to these tech giants.

The bottleneck in the AI infrastructure market is secured megawatts, permitted land, and utility interconnects that take years to originate. This has driven demand for power-advantaged sites, which can be repurposed quickly to meet the needs of hyperscalers and frontier labs.

Applied Digital's management framed the demand backdrop by citing hyperscaler annual CapEx rising from $400 billion to $700 billion. The company has converted North Dakota power access into purpose-built AI factory campuses that it leases to hyperscalers, housing the racks, cooling, and electrical plant. CoreWeave is its anchor tenant.

IREN has taken a different approach by combining pre-permitted power, investment-grade tenants, and a financing flywheel that included $6.5 billion of GPU financing in the past three months. Its data centers are being used for AI Cloud Services, which delivered 8x growth to $128.8 million in full-year revenue.