Bitcoin Miners’ $100B AI Bet: Who Is Getting Paid?

Key Takeaways

• Only about 550 MW of 4 GW billing.
• Core Scientific now bills roughly 485 MW.
• Hut 8’s first new data halls target 2027.
• IREN’s $4B contracted ARR is not booked revenue.

The figures come from CoinShares’ Q2 Bitcoin mining report, published September 15, which covers 12 listed miners.

A backlog that is mostly still under construction

CoinShares puts the sector’s disclosed AI backlog above $100 billion. At the end of June, that backlog was producing around $1.1 billion of annualized AI and high-performance computing revenue.

≈ 1 in 7

contracted megawatts was billing a tenant at the end of June

The rest is buildings still being finished, handed over and accepted. The push to finish them comes from the mining side of the business. Bitcoin closed the June quarter at $58,400, while the average cash cost to mine one coin across the listed group was about $75,500, according to CoinShares. The firm estimates AI hosting earns roughly $1.5 million of annual profit per megawatt, against about $0.5 million for mining. Conditions have eased since: CoinShares notes that hashprice recovered as Bitcoin climbed back to around $77,000.

The stock market has already priced in much of the switch. Miners with AI or HPC contracts trade at an average of 12.9 times forward sales, against 3.7 times for those without, CoinShares calculates. A large share of that premium rests on capacity that is not yet paying rent.

Four terms used below

Colocation Renting power, space and cooling to a tenant who brings its own servers. Critical IT capacity Power available to the servers themselves, smaller than a site’s total draw. ARR Annualized run-rate revenue: a current snapshot multiplied out to a year, not revenue already booked. Billing The point at which a tenant starts paying rent under its contract.

Three stages, five miners

The five companies with the most disclosed progress sit at different points on the same path, from signed contract to paying tenant.

Stage 1 · Still building

Hut 8
949 MW contracted at new campuses; none billing yet

TeraWulf (Anthropic lease)
401 MW signed for delivery from late 2027

Stage 2 · First rent

Cipher Digital
First Black Pearl capacity paying since August

IREN
First 50 MW of Horizon delivered to Microsoft in August

TeraWulf (Lake Mariner)
102 MW critical IT earning rent by July

Stage 3 · Billing at scale

Core Scientific
About 485 MW billing by October 13, from about 1.1 GW leased; $136.7M colocation revenue in the June quarter

Core Scientific has the most capacity billing among the five. Its July results showed 395 MW billing at the end of June, and the company said on October 13 that it had reached about 485 MW after 48 MW came online in Dalton, Georgia. That update did not include a new revenue figure.

TeraWulf appears in two stages because it runs two timelines. Its Lake Mariner campus in New York earned $31.9 million in HPC lease revenue in the June quarter, while the Anthropic lease announced with its August results runs on a contractual schedule that starts in the second half of 2027. Until then, those megawatts are contracted, not late.

Cipher Digital’s Black Pearl rent began after its June quarter closed, according to its business update, so the September quarter is the first to include it. IREN, meanwhile, reported $70.5 million of AI cloud revenue for the June quarter, ahead of its Microsoft deployment.

Rent and cloud revenue are not the same thing

Four of the five mostly lease buildings and power to tenants who bring their own chips. IREN runs an AI cloud: it buys the GPUs and sells computing time. That model can earn more per megawatt, but it also carries the cost of the hardware, the need to replace it and the risk that it sits idle.

IREN’s numbers have to be read with that in mind. Its August filing reported $1 billion of operating ARR as of August 26 and $4 billion of contracted ARR for 2026 capacity, and its own notes say ARR is not GAAP revenue and recognized revenue may be materially lower while capacity is commissioned and accepted.

Lessors’ figures carry their own wrinkle. TeraWulf’s June-quarter filing shows its HPC lease revenue includes power passed through to tenants and some fit-out services, so it is larger than the underlying rent. And a tenant that has started paying has not necessarily filled its servers; billing confirms the contract is running, not how hard the hardware is working.

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Who still has to pay for the buildings

Construction money goes out well before rent comes in. CoinShares estimates turning a mining site into AI-grade space costs $8 million to $15 million per megawatt, against under $1 million to build for mining.

Hut 8’s August release paired 949 MW of contracted capacity with $7.5 billion of project financing, which works out to about $7.9 million per megawatt. IREN’s filing says Microsoft-related financing and customer prepayments cover about 96% of the GPU spending tied to that contract, which covers the chips rather than the wider platform. Cipher returned to the market in October with an $850 million zero-coupon convertible note, earmarking part of it for additional equity in its Barber Lake project. Coindoo has looked at these structures in its piece on miners’ AI funding arrangements.

When a company describes a project as funded, four questions sort out what that means:

• How much construction spending is left? Lenders often require reserves on top of it.
• Which credit lines are undrawn, and on what conditions? A facility that depends on milestones is not cash in hand.
• Do customer prepayments cover chips, buildings or both? IREN’s 96% applies to GPUs only.
• Does the figure cover one phase or the whole campus? Cipher’s October raise shows the answer can change.

What it means if you hold miners for Bitcoin

As sites become data centers, these companies’ results depend more on tenant credit, construction schedules and financing costs than on the Bitcoin price. The switch also brings write-downs: IREN booked a $450.4 million impairment on mining hardware in the June quarter, according to CoinShares.

Several miners have been selling Bitcoin from their treasuries to help fund construction, which Coindoo covered in its look at miners liquidating BTC for AI. Those sales raise cash once; they are not recurring income.

CoinShares expects the sector’s AI revenue run-rate to more than double by its next report. The company schedules below are where that expectation can be checked.

● September-quarter results

First quarter with Cipher’s Black Pearl rent and IREN’s Horizon deployment

● Through 2026

IREN’s commissioning of capacity behind its $4B contracted ARR

● Q2 2027

Hut 8’s first River Bend data hall

● Q3 2027 and H2 2027

Hut 8’s first Beacon Point hall; TeraWulf’s Anthropic lease begins delivery

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