Another Bitcoin Miner Just Ditched Crypto for AI — Here’s What It Means for You
TeraWulf's $19B Anthropic deal sent its stock up 7% — and it's another sign miners are quietly leaving Bitcoin behind for AI.
TeraWulf, a company that built its name mining Bitcoin, just signed a 20-year lease worth roughly $19 billion with AI firm Anthropic — and investors loved it. Shares of TeraWulf (WULF) jumped more than 7% on the news, according to Blockonomi, before easing back later in the trading session. But the bigger story for crypto holders isn’t the stock pop. It’s what this deal says about where former Bitcoin miners are putting their money now.
What actually happened
The agreement gives Anthropic access to 401 megawatts of computing capacity at TeraWulf’s “Justified Data” facility in Hawesville, Kentucky. The first phase is expected to go live in the second half of 2027, with the whole site fully built out by early 2028, Blockonomi reports.
Based on the deal’s structure, TeraWulf could collect around $950 million a year in lease payments, or roughly $2.37 million per megawatt annually, over the life of the contract. That deal alone nearly doubles TeraWulf’s total contracted capacity, taking it from 522 megawatts to about 839 megawatts.
Analysts noticed. Compass Point raised its price target on WULF from $28 to $40 while keeping a Buy rating, according to Blockonomi. BofA Securities started coverage with a Buy rating, and Bernstein began coverage at Outperform, pointing to TeraWulf’s roughly $24 billion order backlog. TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager said the Anthropic partnership “confirms our strategic direction and creates a sustained revenue foundation with a premier global AI enterprise.”
Why a bitcoin miner is chasing AI money
Here’s the part that matters if you hold Bitcoin: TeraWulf isn’t just adding an AI side hustle. It’s actively reshuffling its business away from crypto mining. Alongside the Anthropic news, the company said it’s selling its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy Joint Venture to a group led by Fluidstack, unlocking about $450 million in capital, per Blockonomi.
TeraWulf says it plans to plow those proceeds into infrastructure it fully controls itself — infrastructure built for AI computing, not Bitcoin mining rigs. That follows a $3.2 billion high-yield bond offering the company issued earlier, which was backed by Google.
This matters because the buildings, power contracts, and cooling systems that made TeraWulf good at mining Bitcoin turn out to be just as valuable — arguably more valuable right now — for hosting AI workloads. Big tech companies like Anthropic need massive amounts of reliable, cheap electricity and data-center space, and former crypto miners already have both sitting in places like rural Kentucky.
Why it matters for your wallet
If you hold Bitcoin, this isn’t a reason to panic, but it is worth watching. Every miner that shifts its megawatts toward AI hosting instead of Bitcoin mining is one less major player competing for block rewards — which can shift hashrate dynamics across the network over time.
It’s also a reminder that a company’s stock ticker doesn’t always tell you what it actually does. TeraWulf’s stock has returned around 303% over the past twelve months, per Blockonomi, even after slipping 17% in the week before this announcement — but that performance is now being driven by AI contracts, not Bitcoin’s price. If you bought WULF thinking you were betting on crypto mining, you’re increasingly betting on the AI data-center boom instead.
Read more: A Bitcoin Miner Just Left Crypto for AI — And Landed $900M From Nvidia
