Bitcoin miners have only nine months to sign contracts with hyperscalers and AI companies, according to analyst firm JPMorgan, as reported by Data Center Dynamics. According to JPMorgan analysts, now is the right time for miners to expand their scope of activity, since traditional data centers still struggle with finding capacity, grid connections and scaling.
«We believe that select miners have about nine months to sign lucrative deals with a few well-funded AI startups and hyperscalers, while [the remaining] data centers remain in limbo, awaiting approval and/or connection to the grid,” they said. analysts Reginald L. Smith and Charles Pearce in a report first published by The Block. They also noted that US-registered Bitcoin miners have access to more than 5 GW of electricity, with another 6 GW in various stages of development.
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JPMorgan estimates more than 12 GW of data center capacity on order but not yet sold, which could take up to six years to get approved and built. In August, US investment management firm VanEck said Bitcoin miners could earn an additional $13.9 billion per year through partnerships with AI companies.
A number of crypto miners switched to AI servicing in time. Thus, CoreWeave has completely switched to supporting AI/HPC tasks. The company also signed a 12-year contract with mining firm Core Scientific, which will see the latter expand capacity to meet CoreWeave’s AI computing needs. According to Core Scientific, the deal will bring it $8.6 billion over 12 years. Another player in the mining market, Crusoe Energy, will build and lease a large AI data center to Oracle. Oracle will host AI clusters there and lease them to Microsoft for the benefit of OpenAI. Hive Digital Technologies, Northern Data, Applied Digital, Iris Energy and other miners are now also increasingly focusing on HPC/AI along with the crypto business.