When the 2024 Bitcoin halving sliced block rewards in half, it triggered the kind of margin shock that usually ends business models, not rebuilds them. For years, miners had operated on a simple equation: Bitcoin’s price would reliably outpace their energy costs. By mid-2024, that equation was broken. Profitability evaporated, and several publicly listed miners looked alarmingly close to obsolescence.
Yet just months later, these same companies were among the most aggressively bid-up names in the U.S. market, logging returns in the high triple digits and, in a few cases, creeping into four-digit territory. It wasn’t crypto euphoria that rescued them. It was artificial intelligence. And as 2025 unfolded, it became clear that miners had inadvertently built the very infrastructure the AI boom was starved for.
When Crisis Reveals Opportunity
The halving forced miners to confront a stark choice: idle their machines or reinvent their purpose. What emerged from that reckoning was a recognition that the mining industry had been quietly accumulating assets far more valuable than the Bitcoin it produced.
Mining sites already possessed the core ingredients of modern AI infrastructure: vast tracts of inexpensive land, high-density power connections, industrial-scale cooling systems, and the ability to deploy compute hardware at speed. Swap out ASIC rigs for GPUs and, almost overnight, the same facilities that once validated Bitcoin transactions could train neural networks.
This structural advantage arrived just as AI demand was accelerating at a pace that traditional data-center developers couldn’t keep up with. Hyperscalers needed new capacity measured in months, not years. Miners long accustomed to rapid buildouts and round-the-clock power management fit the bill. The market quickly recognised that these formerly distressed operators were, unexpectedly, sitting on some of the most valuable real estate in technology.
Companies Leading the Rally
The industry’s turning point came in 2024 when IREN signed a USD 9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft to develop AI-focused data-center infrastructure. The deal effectively rewired the company’s future, propelling its stock more than 500% YTD and establishing a template the rest of the sector would follow.
Cipher Mining soon delivered one of the year’s biggest surprises: a USD 5.5 billion capacity agreement with Amazon, confirming that hyperscalers saw miners as credible partners in their AI expansion. Investors responded decisively, sending Cipher’s shares up more than 370%.
TeraWulf secured a USD 3.7 billion hosting partnership with Fluidstack, backed by Alphabet. Its stock rallied roughly 190% YTD, underpinned by its positioning as a clean-energy-aligned infrastructure provider.
Even smaller players like Bitfarms managed to pivot meaningfully toward GPU hosting, an evolution that helped push the stock over 150% YTD.
Collectively, these companies erased the idea that miners were merely leveraged bets on Bitcoin. They had become, almost by accident, some of the fastest-scaling suppliers of AI-ready power in North America.
What This Means for Indian Investors
For Indian investors, this shift offers something rare: early access to a U.S. growth story that isn’t already crowded or fully priced into mega-cap tech valuations. The miners-turned-AI-infrastructure operators sit at the intersection of two powerful forces: America’s expanding power grid for compute, and Silicon Valley’s insatiable demand for AI capacity.
And unlike earlier cycles, entry barriers are low. Through platforms like Appreciate, investors can access these U.S. stocks via fractional investing starting at just ₹1, making it possible to build exposure to emerging AI-infrastructure themes without committing large capital.
For portfolios already heavy on software and consumer-tech names, these companies offer a differentiated way to participate in the AI boom through the power, land, and energy infrastructure that makes the technology possible.
The Real Story
What began as a scramble for survival has turned crypto miners into unlikely pillars of America’s AI buildout. The deeper lesson is clear: the most consequential value creation often occurs in the foundations of technological revolutions, not the glossy products they produce.
In this case, that foundation is power, who controls it, who can scale it, and who can deploy it fastest. The miners that once depended on Bitcoin’s volatility now find themselves powering the compute clusters training the next era of artificial intelligence.
For investors looking beyond the obvious AI winners, the message is unmistakable. The story has moved far beyond Bitcoin.
This time, it’s about power and those who already command it at scale.
Disclaimer: Investments in securities markets are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing.
