Major Bitcoin mining firm pivoting to AI

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.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.