Bitcoin Miners Emerge as Unlikely Power Brokers in AI Infrastructure Race, Says Bernstein

In brief Power availability is the central bottleneck in AI infrastructure buildout, says Bernstein, following a reported Google/Blackstone AI cloud alliance. Bitcoin miners collectively control over 27GW of planned power capacity and have signed more than $90 billion in AI contracts, positioning them as critical suppliers for the AI boom. Individual miners are locking in major partnerships, often involving equity commitments that align both sides on scaling up capacity. As Google and Blackstone move to establish a new AI cloud venture, an unexpected group of players stands to benefit: Bitcoin miners.The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that Google and Blackstone are planning to create a joint AI cloud company that would deploy Google's custom chip technology, with Blackstone committing $5 billion in equity and retaining a majority stake. The announcement sent analysts scrambling to identify who holds the real leverage in an AI buildout increasingly constrained not by capital or computing chips, but by electricity.The answer, according to a research note published Tuesday by investment bank Bernstein, may be the sprawling network of Bitcoin mining companies that have quietly accumulated more than 27 gigawatts of planned power capacity across the United States.That figure has become something of a golden ticket in Silicon Valley's race to build the next generation of AI data centers. Securing a single gigawatt of grid-connected power can take more than four years in most states—a bottleneck that has forced hyperscalers and emerging cloud operators alike to look beyond traditional data center developers.Bitcoin miners have responded by aggressively repositioning themselves as AI infrastructure providers. The industry has announced more than $90 billion in AI-related contracts covering 3.7 gigawatts of capacity, according to Bernstein's analysis, with roughly one-third of those deals struck directly with major hyperscalers and the rest with so-called neoclouds—the independent AI computing providers that companies like Google and Blackstone are now seeking to either partner with or replicate.Among the most prominent examples is IREN, which recently struck a deal with Nvidia valued at $3.4 billion, including a $2.1 billion equity commitment from the chipmaker tied to GPU deployment. Riot Platforms separately secured an AI colocation agreement with AMD. Core Scientific and HUT 8 have deals of their own with major cloud customers.The dynamic places miners in a strategically resilient position. Whether established hyperscalers build their own neocloud operations or continue contracting with independent providers, the underlying need for grid-connected, shovel-ready power remains—and miners, for now, hold much of it.Bernstein currently has outperform ratings on four of those Bitcoin mining firms—IREN ($100 price target), Riot Platforms ($25 PT), CleanSpark ($24 PT), and Core Scientific ($24 PT)—while putting a market-perform rating on MARA Holdings ($23 PT).Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.