Bitcoin miners have found a new obsession, and it isn’t Bitcoin. Across the industry, companies built to hash blocks are pouring money into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC), racing to reinvent themselves as landlords for the AI boom. The catch, drawn from two separate strands of Cointelegraph’s reporting, is that the spending is running far ahead of the payoff — for now.
A capex surge that dwarfs last year
The numbers are startling. Citing BlocksBridge Consulting’s Miner Weekly newsletter, Cointelegraph reports that a group of 15 Bitcoin miners and AI data-center companies spent a combined $30.7 billion on capital assets in their latest 2026 reporting periods — already 42.6% more than the $21.53 billion they spent across all of 2025.
Zoom in on the miners specifically and the imbalance is stark. Nine comparable miners spent $5.11 billion on capital assets in the first half of 2026 while generating just $341.2 million in directly reported AI and HPC revenue — a roughly 15-to-1 capex-to-revenue ratio. In plain terms, these firms are spending fifteen dollars building the future for every dollar it currently pays back.
The revenue is small but accelerating
That gap comes with a silver lining. The same nine miners generated $205.8 million from their AI and HPC businesses in the second quarter, up 52% quarter-on-quarter, with Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and Bitdeer among those reporting gains. The base is modest, but the growth rate is the kind that justifies a building spree — if it holds.
Bitdeer’s blueprint for the transition
Bitdeer offers a concrete look at how the pivot plays out deal by deal. Its AI division signed a five-year contract covering about 50% of the capacity at its A102 Malaysia facility, before the site is even energized, with an undisclosed customer of “high credit quality.” Cointelegraph reports the agreement is expected to bring roughly $400 million in total revenue, with revenue and costs beginning in the first quarter of 2027. Bitdeer AI is targeting 350 megawatts of AI cloud data-center capacity by the first quarter of 2028.
It isn’t Bitdeer’s only move. Earlier in August, the company signed a 16-year lease valued at $4.7 billion for 121 megawatts of AI computing capacity in Norway. The market liked it: Bitdeer’s stock rose 7% on the Malaysia announcement. And Bitdeer is far from alone — Cointelegraph lists MARA Holdings, TeraWulf, Hut 8, and IREN among the miners expanding into AI infrastructure.
What it means
Put the two datasets side by side and a strategy comes into focus. Miners are front-loading enormous fixed costs — power, land, chips, buildings — on a bet that AI compute demand will grow into the capacity they’re pouring concrete for today. The 15-to-1 ratio is not evidence of failure so much as the signature of a heavy build-out phase, where the invoices arrive years before the recurring revenue does. Whether that bet looks visionary or reckless depends entirely on how full those data centers are by 2028.
Written for Red Robot with AI assistance and human editing. Based on reporting by Cointelegraph.
