Legacy bitcoin miners that have since pivoted to artificial intelligence, hyperscale computing and data center infrastructure continue to be rewarded on Wednesday.
A slew of related equities rallied by double-digit percentages, with some even carving out new all-time highs.
It is a continuation of a months-long rally that has seen former pure-play bitcoin miners switch off their rigs and divert their resources and capital to AI power and compute infrastructure — businesses many investors now see as more attractive than traditional mining operations.
IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) led the sector higher on Wednesday, climbing more than 13% and getting closer to a fresh all-time high as investors keep piling into the company's expanding AI infrastructure business.
It follows a string of major announcements over the past month, including a $3 billion convertible notes raise, a partnership with Nvidia tied to an in-the-works 5-gigawatt AI data center and a $625 million acquisition of software services provider Mirantis.
On Tuesday, IREN said it struck a $1.6 billion deal with Dell to supply Blackwell AI systems for its previously announced $3.4 billion cloud contract.
Cipher Digital (NASDAQ: CIFR) and Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) also continued their runs, with CIFR jumping roughly 9.5% to around $25 and HUT climbing nearly 5% to about $118 — both fresh all-time highs.
Like most of its peers, Cipher is repositioning itself as an AI and high-performance computing infrastructure developer. It has signed multiple hyperscaler leases over the past year, including a 15-year deal tied to Amazon Web Services. The company has also lined up financing to support new data center buildouts as it moves deeper into AI hosting.
Hut 8, meanwhile, is climbing higher on the heels of a $9.8 billion AI data center lease deal tied to Nvidia, with the potential value rising above $25 billion if contracts are renewed.
The company has increasingly framed itself less as a bitcoin miner and more as an energy and infrastructure platform that is capable of shifting capacity between AI workloads and crypto mining, depending on where returns are the strongest.
HUT shares are now up nearly 600% year-over-year.
TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) also continued higher on Wednesday, with WULF rising more than 6%, extending gains of roughly 800% over the past year, while RIOT added another 3.3% to trade near $27, levels not seen since late 2021.
TeraWulf has been pumping after acquiring a Kentucky site earlier this week that is expected to support more than 1 gigawatt of power for AI and high-performance computing workloads.
The company's HPC segment also surpassed its bitcoin mining business in quarterly revenue for the first time.
Riot also reported $33 million in first-quarter data center revenue, mostly tied to its AMD partnership, which has already expanded contracted capacity to 50 megawatts.
The company has also sold portions of its bitcoin holdings this year to help fund its AI and hyperscaler buildouts, though Riot still holds nearly $1.2 billion worth of BTC.
RIOT stock is now up over 100% year-to-date, compared to bitcoin's 13% drop to $75,000.
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