A tightening of US power networks is running bitcoin Miners and AI developers for closer adaptation according to Wall Street broker Bernstein.
Rising demand from AI and digital workloads has made grid access to one of the biggest restrictions on growth in new data center, with interconnection time lines that extend to seven years in some regions, the broker said in a report Friday.
Miners, who secured large persistent effect contracts years ago, are now checking more than 14 Gigawatts (GW) capacity and offering AI providers a shortcut to scale, analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote.
Sites owned by Iren (Iren) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) can cut insertion time by up to 75% compared to Greenfield projects, the analysts wrote.
The sector runs wider momentum. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft expects data center shortages to continue through 2026, as Cloud and AI claims surpass its infrastructure development. The increase in demand for high performance computing is burning optimism that Bitcoin miner workers can benefit from expanding to AI and data center operations.
Because Bitcoin facilities are already running with high power densities and have advanced cooling systems, they can be retrofitted for high-performance AI workloads much faster and cheaper than new buildings, Bernstein said.
The broker called miners “strategic activates” of the AI structure and named Iren its top choice with a better classification and a price target of $ 75.
Iren was 5.7% higher in the early trade Friday, about $ 67.50.
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