Wall Street bank JPMorgan is sharpening its sights on US-listed bitcoin miners as a wave of high-performance computing (HPC) deals reshape business models and add long-term revenue certainty.
The bank upgraded Cipher Mining (CIFR) to overweight from neutral and raised its price target on the stock to $18 from $12. Shares were 4.2% higher in early trading, at $14.74.
CleanSpark (CLSK) was also raised to overweight from neutral. The stock rose 4.6% in premarket trading to $10.18.
IREN’s price target was raised to $39 from $28. The bank maintained its underweight rating on the bitcoin miner. Shares were 2.2% higher at $43.20.
Overweight MARA Holdings (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) both saw their price targets cut due to the lower bitcoin price. MARA’s were trimmed to $13 from $20, Riot to $17 from $19. MARA was up 2.8% to $10.35, RIOT was up 1.8% to $12.94 at press time.
The bank pointed to the more than $19 billion in contracted revenue across 600 megawatts (MW) of critical IT capacity signed by IREN and Cipher since late September, evidence, it says, of miners’ accelerating pivot from bitcoin-only exposure to hybrid HPC operators.
JPMorgan now expects about 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of critical IT capacity across its coverage by the end of 2026, led by IREN and Cipher.
Cipher’s 45% pullback from recent highs offers a compelling entry, the report argued, given its roughly 600 MW of contracted capacity with major tenants such as AWS and Fluidstack. CleanSpark’s upgrade reflects about 200 MW of potential HPC capacity at its new Texas site.
The bank’s analysts now assign a higher equity value per megawatts, $8M to $17M for colocation and up to $19M for integrated cloud, driven by lower discount rates and stronger cash flow visibility.
Riot and CleanSpark show the greatest advantage during a full HPC conversion, although Cipher maintains the greatest long-term option when including unapproved future capacity.
Read more: Bernstein hikes Bitcoin Miner targets as AI infrastructure plays continue to gain momentum
