Public bitcoin miners lose about $19K per BTC, pivoting to AI and HPC infrastructure

Publicly traded bitcoin mining firms are losing roughly $19,000 for every bitcoin they mine, accelerating a pivot toward AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, CoinDesk reported. CoinShares estimates the public mining sector has announced more than $70 billion in AI and HPC-related contracts. The expanded CoreWeave–Core Scientific partnership alone totals $10.2 billion over 12 years. TeraWulf's HPC contracts are expected to generate $12.8 billion in revenue, while Hut 8 has signed a 15-year, $7 billion lease to support AI infrastructure at its River Bend campus. Cipher Digital has also struck a multibillion-dollar agreement with Google-backed Fluidstack. By end-2026, AI could contribute up to 70% of revenue for publicly listed mining companies, rising from about 30% today. Core Scientific already derives 39% of revenue from AI hosting, compared with 27% for TeraWulf and 9% for IREN.