America’s Biggest Bitcoin Miners Are Pivoting to AI

One afternoon in June 2024, I stood up against the fence of a sprawling industrial facility a few miles outside of Corsicana, Texas. Over a metal gate, I watched a bright yellow excavator claw at the dirt and flatbed trucks shuttle to and fro. A hangar-like structure with a gleaming white roof stretched hundreds of meters along the opposite perimeter. The company that owned the plot, Riot Platforms, was busily constructing the world’s largest bitcoin mine.

A year and a half later, a projected two-thirds of the facility is being repurposed to accommodate AI and high-performance computing (HPC) tasks. Less a temple to bitcoin, the facility is poised to become an AI megafactory.

Across the US, an identical pattern is playing out at bitcoin mining facilities owned by a variety of operators. In the last 18 months, at least eight other publicly traded bitcoin mining companies—Bitfarms, Core Scientific ...