Bitfarms Abandons Bitcoin Mining for AI Infrastructure in Major Industry Pivot

Major Bitcoin mining firm pivoting to AI, plans to fully abandon crypto mining by 2027 as miners convert to AI en masse -- Bitfarm to leverage 341 megawatt capacity for AI following $46 million Q3 loss

AI is now more lucrative than Bitcoin, especially if you have the infrastructure in place. Major Bitcoin mining firm Bitfarm has announced that it will pivot its business from cryptocurrency to AI data center services by 2027. Although it's not the largest crypto mining firm in the U.S., it still has a sizeable operation with 12 data centers dedicated to Bitcoin mining. According to Decrypt, the company's current energy capacity sits at 341 megawatts (MW), which it could take advantage of to deploy several thousand Nvidia GB300 NVL72 server racks. "We continue executing on our HPC/AI infrastructure development strategy with a fully funded supply chain and plan to convert our Washington site to support Nvidia GB300s with state-of-the-art liquid cooling," said Bitfarms CEO Ben Gagnon in a statement to Decrypt. "Despite being less than 1% of our total developable portfolio, we believe that the conversion of just our Washington site to GPU-as-a-service could potentially produce more net operating income than we have ever generated with Bitcoin mining." Bitfarm posted a $46 million net loss during its third-quarter earnings call, which is almost a 91% year-on-year increase in net losses from 3Q2024. Although Bitcoin reached an all-time high in early October, its volatility meant that the company could not consistently rely on it for its operating costs. Aside from this, its new T21 mining rigs did not perform as expected, leading to a 14% reduction in its hashrate guidance for 1H25. Alongside its plan to convert its Washington data center, the company also converted a Macquarie debt facility worth $300 million into financing for its Panther Creek, Pennsylvania, data center, with a potential capacity of at least 350 MW. This site, which adds to the company's 1.3-GW energy pipeline, could potentially make it one of the larger players in the AI data center industry. At the moment, Bitfarm has 341 MW of energized capacity, meaning it does not have to negotiate with power providers and local governments to acquire more power for its data centers. This would help them avoid the power bottleneck that other hyperscalers like Microsoft are experiencing, with its CEO, Satya Nadella, saying that the company has AI GPUs sitting idle in inventory because it does not have enough warm shells to plug into. This pivot would help Bitfarm capitalize on the massive demand for AI processing. However, it's also taking more risks, especially as many experts are saying that the AI industry is already in a bubble. With the investment to completely move from crypto mining to AI data centers expected to cost hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, a crash of the AI industry could potentially bring down the company and take the lending institution with it, alongside several other companies, and lead to trillions in losses.

Bitfarms to Wind Down Bitcoin Mining to Focus on AI Data Centers

Bitfarms Ltd., one of the largest cryptocurrency miners, said it plans to wind down those operations over the next two years and focus on providing infrastructure to generate computing power for artificial intelligence applications. The Toronto-based company is among a growing list of Bitcoin miners that are pivoting to high performance compute services as profit margins shrink due in part to the falling prices in the token. A Washington state site will be converted to support AI or high-performance computing workloads.

Bitfarms Will 'Wind Down' Bitcoin Mining and Pivot to AI After $46 Million Loss - Decrypt

Publicly traded Bitcoin miner Bitfarms will wind down its BTC operations and pivot to AI infrastructure, the firm announced on Thursday. The announcement comes alongside the firm's third-quarter earnings, in which it posted a net loss of $46 million, compared to a net loss of $24 million in Q3 2024 from its Bitcoin business. "We continue executing on our HPC/AI infrastructure development strategy with a fully funded supply chain and plan to convert our Washington site to support Nvidia GB300s with state-of-the-art liquid cooling," said Bitfarms CEO Ben Gagnon, in a statement. "Despite being less than 1% of our total developable portfolio, we believe that the conversion of just our Washington site to GPU-as-a-service could potentially produce more net operating income than we have ever generated with Bitcoin mining," he added. Gagnon added that the firm would look to "wind down" its Bitcoin mining business throughout 2026 and 2027. Bitfarms, which operates 12 data centers across North America with an energy capacity of 341 megawatts (MW), is confident in its ability to make the transition successfully. "With consistent inbound demand for our sites, we have high conviction in the value of our unique energy portfolio, the demand for our power, and our ability to develop next-generation HPC and AI infrastructure," said Gagnon on the firm's Q3 earnings call. The firm recently converted a $300 million debt facility in October for the financing of a site in Panther Creek, Pennsylvania, which it expects will allow it to capitalize on demand for AI infrastructure. Shares of BITF finished the trading day down about 18% on Thursday amid the news, changing hands at $2.60. The slip is part of an extended loss over the last month in which shares have fallen more than 51%. The soon-to-be former Bitcoin miner is not the only one looking to AI for its next play. Last week, Bitcoin miner MARA announced that alongside record high revenues it would be expanding its services to include a focus on AI compute. Many Bitcoin mining firms have embraced the growing AI opportunity in recent months, but Bitfirms is the first major player to say it plans to abandon its original business focus. A representative for Bitfarms did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment. Bitcoin has fallen nearly 3% in the last 24 hours and is now trading at $99,441 after falling to its lowest price in six months earlier Thursday.

Bitcoin miners retreat sharply as BTC pulls back from recent highs

Major mining stocks dropped 20%-50% this week, erasing billions in value as the sector continued to lag Bitcoin's latest pullback. Publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies had a tough week, with nearly every major miner posting double-digit declines as the sector sharply underperformed Bitcoin itself. Over the past five trading days, names like Cipher, Applied Digital, Core Scientific, CleanSpark and Bitdeer slid between 23% and 52%, while other operators such as Riot and Hut 8 saw mid-teens losses. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading about $94,400 at the time of writing, down about 9% over the past seven days. Zooming out, a Miner Mag report on Thursday showed public mining stocks have shed over $20 billion in market value in the past month, dropping about 25% since mid-October and sharply underperforming Bitcoin's decline. The decline came even as institutions such as Jane Street, Fidelity and Barclays have increased their positions across several major miners. Despite recent losses, some mining companies have outperformed Bitcoin on a year-to-date basis. IREN, the largest public Bitcoin miner by market capitalization, is up roughly 370% year-to-date, while Cipher Mining has gained about 210%. By comparison, Bitcoin itself is only up around 1.5% over the same period, according to TradingView. Related: Bitcoin price boom isn't guaranteed after US shutdown: Here's why Despite strong year-to-date gains for several Bitcoin mining stocks, mining remains an increasingly challenging business. With halvings cutting block rewards roughly every four years, several miners have adopted new strategies to diversify their income, while others are exiting altogether. The biggest shift has been toward AI and high-performance computing (HPC), as miners repurpose their power-heavy data centers for steadier, higher-margin workloads. With existing infrastructure already optimized for energy and cooling, many miners now see HPC integration as an essential part of their business On Friday, Bitfarms' stock dropped sharply after the company said it would wind down its Bitcoin mining operations over the next two years, starting with the closure of its 18-megawatt site in Washington, as it plans to convert its facilities into AI and HPC data centers. Other miners are opting for a hybrid approach rather than exiting Bitcoin mining entirely. In June, Core Scientific signed a $3.5 billion agreement with AI cloud provider CoreWeave to supply 200 megawatts of hosting capacity for HPC workloads. In October, CleanSpark's shares jumped roughly 13% in a single day after the miner announced its first move into AI, and in early November, IREN signed a five-year, $9.7 billion deal to provide Microsoft with access to Nvidia GPUs hosted in its data centers.

Bitfarms plunges 18% after plan to wind down Bitcoin mining ops

Bitfarms said it plans to shift its Bitcoin mining sites over the next two years and convert them to power AI, starting with its major site in Washington. Bitfarms' stock plunged on Thursday after the company announced it would be shuttering its Bitcoin mining operations over the next two years and converting them to artificial intelligence and high-compute data centers. The company said on Thursday that its 18-megawatt Bitcoin (BTC) mining site in the US state of Washington will be the first to be fully converted to support AI and high-performance computing, with completion expected in December 2026. "Despite being less than 1% of our total developable portfolio, we believe that the conversion of just our Washington site to GPU-as-a-Service could potentially produce more net operating income than we have ever generated with Bitcoin mining," said Bitfarms CEO Ben Gagnon. He added the conversion would help the company as it winds down its Bitcoin mining business over 2026 and 2027. Bitfarms' crypto mining rivals have also begun to shift some operations toward AI as the sector has boomed. Earlier in November, Bitcoin miner IREN signed a multi-year $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft to give the tech giant access to its AI compute. Gagnon told investors on an earnings call that Bitcoin miners are likely to "rotate out to lower and lower cost jurisdictions" as the difficulty and cost of mining the cryptocurrency rise. "One of the big dynamics that is taking place is that the public miners represented almost a third of the entire network, and they all seem very keen on moving over to the higher economics associated with HPC and AI," he added. Gagnon said that Bitcoin mining has started to see major growth in the Middle East, Africa and Russia and added that "the best opportunity for most miners in the United States really is this transition to HPC and AI." "The economics are really going to drive that forward because the US is the best market to invest in for HPC and AI, whereas Bitcoin mining is largely location-agnostic," he said. "It's happy to go to cheaper locations, higher-risk locations, more remote locations than HPC and AI is." Gagnon added that the opportunities for Bitfarms to move its Bitcoin mining elsewhere "are really few" and not "a great use of management's resources or time." "The best opportunity is to basically bring forward what should be estimated free cash flow for mining operations today into cash and reinvest those into HPC and AI," he said. It comes as Bitfarms reported a net loss of $46 million in Q3, compared to losses of $24 million a year ago, equating to a loss of 8 cents per share, which was below analyst expectation of a 2-cent per share loss. Related: Bitcoin miner hashprice nearing $40, miners back in 'survival mode': Report The company's revenue increased 156% year-over-year to $69 million, but missed analyst estimates by over 16%. Bitfarms said it earned 520 BTC at an average direct cost of $48,200 each and held 1,827 BTC as of Wednesday. Shares in Bitfarms (BITF) declined on Thursday following the results, closing the trading day down nearly 18% to $2.60, with losses extending into after-hours trading of almost 3.5% to $2.51.

Bitfarms Dumps Bitcoin To Go All-In on AI as Crypto Mining Profitability Drops

Bitcoin miners are abandoning BTC for AI, and Bitfarms just joined the list. | Credit: CCN. * Bitfarms will wind down Bitcoin mining over the next two years. * The announcement makes Bitfarms the newest member of a fast-growing group of miners pivoting to AI. * More than a dozen public BTC miners have already shifted large portions of their operations to AI infrastructure since 2024. Bitfarms Ltd., one of North America's long-standing Bitcoin (BTC) mining firms, is officially exiting the business that built it. The Toronto-based company announced it will wind down Bitcoin mining operations over the next two years and convert its facilities into infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). The exit positions Bitfarms as the latest major miner to abandon traditional BTC operations -- an accelerating trend as post-halving economics, rising energy costs, and record mining difficulty continue to squeeze profitability across the sector. Bitfarms' Shift: From Bitcoin Blocks to AI Compute Bitfarms detailed a phased plan to dismantle its crypto mining operations through 2026 and 2027 while building out a dedicated AI-HPC business. The company operates 12 data centers across North America with 341 MW of power capacity. Its 18-megawatt Washington State facility will be the first to be fully converted, with completion expected in December 2026. According to the company, that single site -- which accounts for less than 1% of its developable portfolio -- is expected to generate more net operating income than Bitfarms has ever produced through Bitcoin mining. Bitfarms plans to use its existing infrastructure to offer AI-focused services, including GPU-as-a-Service and high-density cloud colocation, aiming to create more stable revenue streams than those tied to volatile bitcoin prices. The Economics Behind the Bitcoin Mining Exodus Following the April 2024 halving, block rewards dropped to 3.125 BTC, effectively cutting miner revenue in half. At the same time, global hashrate and energy costs climbed sharply, pushing many firms into near-zero or negative margins. As a result, over a dozen large public crypto miners have accelerated shifts toward AI compute, where returns per megawatt are significantly higher and long-term contracts provide predictable cash flow. The Growing List of Bitcoin Miners Pivoting to AI Bitfarms joins a rapidly expanding roster of miners reinventing themselves as AI infrastructure companies: * Core Scientific (CORZ): Signed a 12-year, 200 MW deal with CoreWeave in 2024 and plans over 300 MW of AI capacity by 2026. * Cipher Mining (CIFR): Partnered with SoftBank to build AI-ready data centers in Texas. * TeraWulf (WULF): Repurposing nuclear-powered sites for GPU workloads and working with major AI backers. * Iris Energy (IREN): Secured a multibillion-dollar agreement with Microsoft for NVIDIA GB300 GPU supply. * Hut 8 (HUT): Invested $150 million into AI infrastructure and supports flexible GPU use between mining and HPC. * Marathon Digital (MARA): Developing GPU-as-a-Service alongside its core BTC operations. * CleanSpark (CLSK): Building a 100 MW AI data center in Wyoming, acquired from Microsoft. * HIVE Digital Technologies: Running AI-ready GPU cloud facilities powered by green hydropower. * Applied Digital (APLD): Transitioning away from mining to focus on dense AI data center hosting. * Northern Data (NB2): Converting European and U.S. sites into AI/HPC cloud campuses. Together, these firms reflect one of the most dramatic structural shifts the crypto mining industry has ever seen.