clean sparkbased in Las Vegas Bitcoin Miners are moving towards artificial intelligence and have started developing AI data centers in parallel with their crypto mining operations. The company’s CEO detailed the recently announced strategy on CNBC’s “Crypto World” this week and why it is likely to become a core part of the business model of more crypto mining companies.
In one key example of why Bitcoin miners can win in the fast-growing data center market, CleanSpark recently won a 100-megawatt site in Cheyenne, Wyoming, beating tech giant Microsoft in the deal, according to the company’s CEO.
How did a company with a market capitalization of less than $6 billion beat a $4 trillion company?
Speed to market.
“We were able to scale up and deploy a 100 megawatt Bitcoin mining facility in about six months, but building a proper AI data center will take three to six years,” CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz said on CNBC. “Certainly Cheyenne didn’t choose CleanSpark because we had a stronger balance sheet than Microsoft,” he added.
This transition comes at a time of increasing power competition and, in a sense, brings CleanSpark full circle. Schultz noted that CleanSpark started as an energy company and transitioned into Bitcoin mining five years ago, making it one of the largest mining operations.
CleanSpark operates approximately 1.03 gigawatts of power capacity and has an additional 1.7 gigawatts in its development pipeline. Schultz said the plan is to use Bitcoin mining to quickly build and scale infrastructure, or what he called “megawatt monetization,” and then, in places where data centers are already established, identify areas where it makes more sense to transform them into high-performance computing and AI. Atlanta is one of the regions he cited as a prime example of an AI data center hotspot, second only to Northern Virginia on the East Coast.
“Bitcoin miners are in a unique position in that they can build and activate data centers very quickly,” Schultz said. “What we are seeing are constraints on access to power,” he added.
An array of Bitcoin mining units inside a container at the CleanSpark facility in College Park, Georgia, on April 22, 2022.
Ilya Nouberge | Bloomberg | Getty Images
CleanSpark on Tuesday announced a partnership with data center design and construction firm Submer to develop AI-focused campuses across North America. The aim is to combine CleanSpark’s energy and land portfolio with Submer’s water-cooled high-density infrastructure systems.
“We are positioned to deliver gigawatt-scale AI capabilities faster, cleaner, and more efficiently than traditional approaches,” Schultz said in a press release announcing the deal. “This relationship is perfectly aligned with our vision to transform CleanSpark’s infrastructure platform into the backbone of the next era of intelligent computing,” he said.
Training and running AI models requires huge amounts of power. like a hyperscaler Amazon, googleand microsoft It is spending record amounts on new data centers, building new nuclear reactors and rapidly signing contracts with power companies to restart older reactors, but their connection to the grid faces years of delays.
“Hyperscalers are spending 60% of their free cash flow on capital expenditures and trying to keep up with AI,” Schultz said on CNBC. “Bitcoin miners already own the things that are most difficult to obtain, such as land, substations, and direct access to electricity,” he added.
Cleanspark’s stock price has risen more than 100% this year, but the pivot has also helped offset shrinking crypto margins. Due to the Bitcoin halving in April, block rewards were cut in half, making profitability difficult.
Bitcoin mining company Cleanspark’s performance over the past year.
According to the US government, total annual electricity consumption will reach a record high in 2024, and data centers are expected to put further pressure on their usage trends if the market continues to grow despite concerns of a bubble in the AI sector.
“As we analyzed the opportunity, it quickly became clear that Pivot’s cash flow and profitability, a dual-pronged strategy that not only maximizes the value of its Bitcoin mining operations, but also leverages access to land and power to provide AI data center services, is what really makes it most attractive to our shareholders,” Schultz told CNBC.
In the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, Bitcoin miners brought in approximately $198.6 million in revenue, an increase of almost 91% year over year. Meanwhile, the company holds 12,703 Bitcoins in its corporate treasury.
Schultz said AI enhancements will not replace cryptocurrencies. “It (Bitcoin mining) is a great part of our business,” he said.
CleanSpark also benefits from a flexible power model. Stress on the power grid could halt mining operations and force power back into the system. This is something an AI center cannot easily do.
“Combining a Bitcoin mining facility with an AI data center provides utilities with much-needed ‘interruption’ functionality, or load flexibility,” Schultz said.
When demand on the grid increases, Cleanspark receives signals from the power company and can reduce the load and quickly return power to the grid. AI data centers are the “other end of the spectrum” to that approach, with many contracts requiring 99.99999% uptime, Schultz said.
That flexibility proved valuable in Georgia when Hurricane Helen damaged a local electrical substation. CleanSpark powered down the rig and transferred energy to the grid. “The lights at the hospital were back on within an hour while we restored infrastructure in the community,” Schultz said.
