Bernstein stamps several bitcoin miners with “outperform” ratings: “An integral part of the AI value chain”

Bitcoin miners, many of whom have pivoted to AI amid bitcoin’s lackluster performance, still have one thing going for them: they are now an “integral part of the AI value chain, delivering compute capacity for major hyperscalers,” according to Bernstein analysts.

They placed “outperform” ratings on IREN, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific, as well as a “market perform” rating on MARA Holdings, and updated their price targets:

• IREN’s price target is $100, an over 100% upside from today’s price;

• They put Riot’s price target at $25, a modest gain from where the stock is trading today;

• CleanSpark’s price target is $24 (versus $14 as of 11:30 a.m. ET);

• and Core Scientific was also put at $24, a small rise from current prices.

Despite the vote of confidence, shares of all of them other than CleanSpark were down on Tuesday morning.

In a Tuesday note, the analysts said that bitcoin miners have partnered with hyperscalers, neoclouds, and chip providers in AI deals totaling more than $90 billion across 3.7 gigawatts.

“The biggest constraint in building AI cloud remains power, where we believe, bitcoin miners with over 27GW of planned power remain well positioned in a power-constrained environment,” the analysts, led by Gautam Chhugani, said.

Chhugani said miners’ core value “remains ready grid-connected power in data center hubs such as Texas,” as the waiting time to secure 1 gigawatt of power has a median of 50 months across the country, including “politically friendly” Texas.

According to Chhugani, one-third of the deals have been with hyperscalers and the remaining are with neoclouds, one of those being IREN’s strategic deal with Nvidia on May 7 for 5 gigawatts of compute using Nvidia’s AI factory architecture.

While there are several risks, including legal and regulatory challenges and increasing public scrutiny of data centers, Chhugani said miners “still have an edge.”

For instance, in Texas, miners’ advantages compared to new entrants include “pre-approved sites and long-term understanding of the power market,” as well as “legacy power contracts and experience managing large loads,” he said.

Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, told Sherwood News that while there’s definitely a real opportunity for bitcoin miners to make their existing infrastructure satisfy the insatiable need for AI compute, “I’d be careful in assuming every bitcoin miner pivoting to AI is automatically a winner.”

“It’ll work for those that have access to stable low-cost energy, flexible power agreements, and existing cooling infrastructure — and the capital to finance the transition. It won’t work if it’s just a PR campaign designed to survive the bitcoin downturn,” Puckrin said.

Cango, a bitcoin miner that sold 4,451 bitcoin in February to partially repay a BTC-collateralized loan and fund its expansion into AI compute infrastructure, told Sherwood that mining “remains a core part of our operations.”

Yet Juliet Ye, head of investor relations at Cango, said the company believes its real opportunity lies in what it does with its infrastructure beyond mining.

“The AI era continues to face a significant power gap — a disconnect between rising compute demand and existing grid capacity — and our globally distributed, grid-connected energy footprint positions us directly within that opportunity,” Ye said, adding that the company established EcoHash, an HPC and AI inference subsidiary, which entered commercial operations in April 2026.

Analysts at TheEnergyMag pointed out how this down cycle differs from previous ones for miners.

While previously “miners typically unplugged rigs because falling bitcoin prices or rising energy costs rendered operations uneconomic,” in 2026, “miners are increasingly shutting down fleets because AI infrastructure offers more stable long-duration cash flows, stronger financing conditions, and higher expected returns on power capacity,” they said.

They added that now, the miners are repurposing everything for AI deployment, “instead of merely idling rigs during periods of weak economics.”

“Once infrastructure is converted for GPU workloads, it is unlikely to quickly return to bitcoin mining,” they said.

Wolfie Zhao, head of content at TheEnergyMag, told Sherwood that while Bernstein’s broad premise is “directionally correct,” the market may still be underestimating how difficult the transition actually is.

Zhao said that generating bitcoin mining revenue is a relatively straightforward operationally, but HPC colocation and the AI cloud are fundamentally different businesses.

“Success depends not only on power and infrastructure, but also on enterprise-grade uptime, customer acquisition, long-term contracting, networking architecture, software orchestration, and the ability to consistently deliver capacity on time,” Zhao said.

In many ways, he said, this pivot is significantly more complex than bitcoin mining’s geographic migration from China to the US after 2021, as that earlier shift was primarily about relocating mining infrastructure.

“The AI/HPC transition requires miners to evolve into full-scale data center developers and service providers competing in a much more demanding enterprise environment,” he said.

Zhao said the miners that succeed will likely be the ones that can combine several things simultaneously: secured and connected power, rapid infrastructure delivery, high operational reliability, access to capital, and credible go-to-market execution with hyperscalers or AI customers.

“And even then, part of the outcome remains tied to the success and durability of AI demand itself. Unlike bitcoin mining, where miners interact directly with the network, AI infrastructure providers are increasingly dependent on the long-term economics and expansion plans of their tenants and customers,” he said.

Finally, Benchmark Managing Director Mark Palmer reiterated a “buy” rating on Bitdeer Tuesday, saying the company’s “strategic direction has become clearer.”

The company announced it had sold all of its bitcoin in February to fund an AI pivot.

Palmer said in the note that the company is looking to sign a colocation lease in Norway, which would likely represent “a major catalyst for BTDR shares, as it is likely to reshape how investors value the company’s sprawling power portfolio and infrastructure platform.”