Public bitcoin miners are increasingly shifting toward AI and high-performance computing as bitcoin production costs rise above recent market prices.
According to CoinDesk, citing CoinShares’ Q1 2026 mining report, the weighted average cash cost for publicly listed miners to produce one bitcoin reached about $79,995 in Q4 2025. In the same period, bitcoin traded in the $68,000 to $70,000 range. CoinDesk also said a report from the prior week estimated losses of about $19,000 per bitcoin mined.
AI contracts are becoming central
The report says more than $70 billion in cumulative AI and high-performance computing contracts have been announced across the public mining sector. Examples listed in the source include CoreWeave’s expanded 12-year deal with Core Scientific, valued at $10.2 billion, TeraWulf’s $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue, Hut 8’s $7 billion 15-year AI infrastructure lease at River Bend, and Cipher Digital’s multi-billion-dollar agreement with Fluidstack.
How the revenue mix is changing
CoinDesk reports that listed miners could generate as much as 70% of their revenue from AI by the end of 2026, up from roughly 30% today. The source says Core Scientific already gets 39% of its revenue from AI colocation, TeraWulf gets 27%, and IREN gets 9% while building up to 200 megawatts of liquid-cooled GPU capacity.
The source frames this as a balance-sheet-driven transition, with miners increasingly operating as data center companies while still mining bitcoin. It also states that some are selling bitcoin holdings to help finance that shift.