When Core Scientific signed a $3.5 billion deal to host artificial intelligence (AI) data centers earlier this year, it wasn’t chasing the next crypto token — it was chasing a steadier paycheck. Once known for its vast fleets of bitcoin mining rigs, the company is now part of a growing trend: converting energy-intensive mining operations into high-performance AI facilities.

Bitcoin miners like Core, Hut 8 (HUT) and TeraWulf (WULF) are swapping ASIC machines — the dedicated bitcoin mining computer — for GPU clusters, driven by the lure of AI’s explosive growth and the harsh economics of crypto mining.

Power play

It’s no secret that bitcoin mining requires an extensive amount of energy, which is the biggest cost of minting a new digital asset.

Back in the 2021 bull run, when the Bitcoin network’s hashrate and difficulty were low, miners were making out like bandits with margins as much as 90%. Then came the brutal crypto winter and the halving event, which slashed the mining reward in half. In 2025, with surging hashrate and energy prices, miners are now struggling to survive with razor-thin margins.

However, the need for power—the biggest input cost—became a blessing in disguise for these miners, who needed a different strategy to diversify their revenue sources.

Due to rising competition for mining, the miners continued to procure more machines to stay afloat, and with it came the need for more megawatts of electricity at a cheaper price. Miners invested heavily in securing these low-cost energy sources, such as hydroelectric or stranded natural gas sites, and developed expertise in managing high-density cooling and electrical systems—skills honed during the crypto boom of the early 2020s.

This is what captured the attention of AI and cloud computing firms. While bitcoin relies on specialized ASICs, AI thrives on versatile GPUs like Nvidia’s H100 series, which require similar high-power environments but for parallel processing tasks in machine learning. Instead of building out data centers from scratch, taking over mining infrastructure, which already has power ready, became a faster way to grow an increasing appetite for AI-related infrastructure.

Essentially, these miners aren’t just pivoting—they’re retrofitting.

The cooling systems, low-cost energy contracts, and power-dense infrastructure they built during the crypto boom now serve a new purpose: feeding the AI models of companies like OpenAI and Google.

Firms like Crusoe Energy sold off mining assets to focus solely on AI, deploying GPU clusters in remote, energy-rich locations that mirror the decentralized ethos of crypto but now fuel centralized AI hyperscalers.

Terraforming AI

Bitcoin mining has effectively “terraformed” the terrain for AI compute by building out scalable, power-efficient infrastructure that AI desperately needs.

As Nicholas Gregory, Board Director at Fragrant Prosperity, noted, “It can be argued bitcoin paved the way for digital dollar payments as can be seen with USDT/Tether. It also looks like bitcoin terraformed data centres for AI/GPU compute.”

This pre-existing “terraforming” allows miners to retrofit facilities quickly, often in under a year, compared to the multi-year timelines for traditional data center builds. Firms like Crusoe Energy sold off mining assets to focus solely on AI, deploying GPU clusters in remote, energy-rich locations that mirror the decentralized ethos of crypto but now fuel centralized AI hyperscalers.

Higher returns

In practice, it means miners can flip a facility in less than a year—far faster than the multi-year timeline of a new data center.

But AI isn’t a cheap upgrade.

Bitcoin mining setups are relatively modest, with costs ranging from $300,000 to $800,000 per megawatt (MW) excluding ASICs, allowing for quick scalability in response to market cycles. Meanwhile, AI infrastructure demands significantly higher capex due to the need for advanced liquid cooling, redundant power systems, and the GPUs themselves, which can cost tens of thousands per unit and face global supply shortages. Despite the steeper upfront costs, AI offers miners up to 25 times more revenue per kilowatt-hour than bitcoin mining, making the pivot economically compelling amid rising energy prices and declining crypto profitability.

A niche industry worth billions

As AI continues to surge and crypto profits tighten, bitcoin mining could become a niche game—one reserved for energy-rich regions or highly efficient players, especially as the next in 2028 could render many operations unprofitable without breakthroughs in efficiency or energy costs.

While projections show the global crypto mining market growing to $3.3 billion by 2030, at a modest 6.9% CAGR, the billions would be overshadowed by AI’s exponential expansion. According to KBV Research, the global AI in mining market is projected to reach $435.94 billion by 2032, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.6%.

With investors already seeing dollar signs in this shift, the broader trend suggests the future is either a hybrid or a full conversion to AI, where stable contracts with hyperscalers promise longevity over crypto’s boom-bust cycles.

This evolution not only repurposes idle assets but also underscores how yesterday’s crypto frontiers are forging tomorrow’s AI empires.