Bitcoin miners gambled on AI last year, and it paid off

Key Points

1. Core Scientific shifted from Bitcoin mining to AI, signing a $3.5-billion deal with CoreWeave, but saw Q1 revenue drop to $79.5 million due to the halving.

2. Hut 8 launched a GPU-as-a-Service subsidiary, deploying over 1,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, but its Bitcoin mining output fell to 167 BTC in Q1 2025.

3. Iren (formerly Iris Energy) expanded its AI business, deploying 4,300 GPUs and increasing AI cloud revenue by 33% to $3.6 million, alongside growing Bitcoin production.

4. Hive Blockchain rebranded and invested $30 million in GPU deployments, with AI revenue tripling to $10.1 million, making up nearly 9% of total revenue.

5. Riot explored AI and high-performance computing but remained financially strong in Bitcoin, mining 1,530 BTC in Q1 2025 and holding 19,225 BTC.

6. Canaan exited the AI chip market to focus solely on Bitcoin mining hardware, holding a 2.1% share of the global ASIC market.