Bitcoin Miners Shift Power to AI Data Centers as Costs Rise

Bitcoin (BTC) miners are redirecting power, capital and facilities toward artificial-intelligence and high-performance computing data centers as rising costs and limited grid access weaken the economics of mining.

Listed miners’ weighted average pretax cash cost reached about $75,500 per Bitcoin in the second quarter of 2026. June’s average hash price fell to $27.70 per petahash per second per day, its lowest level on record.

The pressure is pushing companies toward business models that combine mining with data-center operations or replace mining altogether. IREN plans to substantially complete its transition away from Bitcoin mining by Dec. 31, 2026. As of June 30, the company had about 23.2 exahashes per second of installed mining capacity using roughly 380 megawatts of data-center capacity.

“We aim to substantially complete the transition by December 31, 2026,” IREN said.

Riot Platforms is pursuing a hybrid infrastructure strategy through a 20-year lease covering 191 megawatts of critical information-technology capacity at its Rockdale facility. The agreement is expected to produce about $9.1 billion in base rent over the initial term, with full deployment anticipated by June 2028.

TeraWulf’s second-quarter revenue totaled $44.8 million, including $31.9 million from high-performance computing leases. Those leases accounted for about 71% of the company’s quarterly revenue.