Investors sent shares of bitcoin miners higher on Tuesday after Nebius Group announced a five-year agreement to supply Microsoft with graphic processing units worth $17.4 billion. The deal, aimed at bolstering Microsoft’s AI infrastructure, lifted appetite for companies that run large-scale computing and energy operations—assets miners increasingly can repurpose beyond hashing bitcoin.
The market reaction was notable even as bitcoin’s price retreated. Bitfarms climbed about 22%, Cipher Mining rose roughly 20%, and names including IREN, Hut 8, Riot Platforms and TeraWulf also jumped in the mid-teens. By contrast, MARA— which has positioned itself more like a corporate treasury holder of bitcoin than a high-performance computing operator—was up only about 4%. Bitcoin itself slipped about 1% to roughly $111,100 over 24 hours.
Analysts say the moves reflect a broader industry shift. Where miner profitability once tracked bitcoin’s four-year halving cadence, new pressures—rising power costs, relentless hardware output and fierce competition from ASIC makers—have changed incentives. At the same time, demand for GPUs from hyperscalers building AI models has made advanced compute capacity more valuable, prompting some miners to explore leasing racks, converting sites into data centers, or partnering with cloud buyers.
For investors, the episode underscores both opportunity and risk: companies with scalable GPU-capable infrastructure may unlock new revenue streams, but execution, energy prices and hardware supply remain material risks. Short-term stock moves can outpace fundamentals, and cryptocurrency prices may not follow corporate valuations.
Source: CoinDesk. Read the original coverage for full details.
