Public bitcoin miners are shifting power to AI and high-performance computing. Revenue from those deals is rising. The mining hardware left behind is not free.
Power shifts, hardware stays
A previous Miner Weekly estimate found miners lost 75 EH/s of realized hashrate while HPC and AI revenue rose 52% quarter over quarter. Much of that retreat came from redirecting power to AI. At $20 per TH/s, 75 EH/s equals about $1.5 billion of mining machines. That excludes buildings, electrical gear, cooling, and installation. Investors had already financed that capacity. At some sites, equipment was marked down within months of starting production.
Write-downs show the cost
A review by TheEnergyMag of 12 tracked companies found roughly $1.1 billion in asset impairments and held-for-sale markdowns in the first half of 2026. IREN and Core Scientific accounted for almost 89%. The two billion-dollar figures may look coincidental. One estimates hardware investment tied to lost mining output. The other measures accounting charges across different assets. Both point to the same issue: how much value remains in the mining buildout.
The spending surge was recent. A March 2025 Miner Weekly issue reported nearly $5 billion in equipment and infrastructure spending. Companies that disclosed mining-hardware purchases accounted for more than $3 billion in 2024 alone. That expansion helped push Bitcoin’s network into zetahash territory in 2025.
Cipher’s Black Pearl facility began mining in mid-2025. By year-end, after an agreement to convert the site to high-performance computing, Cipher recorded a $96.1 million markdown on its mining machines. Those machines generated $57.9 million in revenue during 2025. The markdown exceeded the site’s revenue from its first several months. IREN reached 50 EH/s in June 2025, then recorded about $695 million in impairments and held-for-sale markdowns from January to June 2026. Not every charge is an AI conversion cost. Core Scientific blamed its major mining impairment on deteriorating mining economics. The evidence supports a costly reassessment, not a claim that every dollar was sacrificed for AI.
Funding and power risks
Write-downs are noncash when recognized. Construction and interest payments still consume cash while replacement facilities are completed. TeraWulf generated $53 million in HPC leasing revenue in the first half while paying $131 million in cash interest. That shows the gap between revenue ramp and financing cost. Lenders are becoming more selective about data center financing, according to The Information. That adds a constraint for miners midway through conversions. Retiring mining capacity cuts old revenue, while completing its replacement still needs capital.
Political pressure is rising. New York paused state permits for new hyperscale projects. Massachusetts added approval requirements. Chicago’s mayor proposed a moratorium. Oracle’s Project Jupiter shows energy delivery risk, after New Mexico’s land commissioner rejected a pipeline route in July for a gas-dependent fuel-cell system.
The Federal Reserve raised rates to 3.75% to 4%, making new financing less forgiving. AI may prove the better use of these sites, but the return also depends on value recovered from mining equipment, rebuilding costs, and how long lenders must be paid before new capacity earns.
