Bitcoin mining firms such as IREN and Cipher Mining recorded an increase in stock following the release of Nvidia’s Q3 earnings. These mining companies are shifting their focus towards AI and data center operations to capitalize on GPU demand, rather than relying entirely on cryptocurrency mining.
IREN shifted part of its operations from traditional Bitcoin mining towards providing a data center for AI workloads. The firm recently signed a $9.7 billion multi-year deal with Microsoft to deliver Nvidia-based GPU compute from its North American facilities. The deal established Microsoft as IREN’s largest customer. IREN acquires Nvidia equipment from Dell Technologies to support the deployment of high-performing GPU clusters.
IREN and Cipher Mining stock jumps over 10% after hours
IREN stock rallied to $50.45 after hours following the announcement of better-than-expected Nvidia’s Q3 earnings as the firm expands its cloud-AI infrastructure backed by an extensive secured power portfolio. The stock price represented a 10.08% jump before today’s drawdown, reaching $45.83, which represents a $6.18% drop.
IREN stock has grown over ten times its starting price at the beginning of 2025, with a 366.7% year-to-date growth, reflecting a growing investor conviction that miners are repositioning themselves as AI compute providers.
Cipher Mining, which signed a 10-year AI hosting deal with Fluidstack, a Google-based firm, to use its data centers for AI purposes, also experienced a stock rally after hours. So far, Cipher Mining is upgrading some of its facilities to support Nvidia’s H100 and Blackwell GPUs. The firm’s stock rallied to $16.51, representing a 12.93% gain after hours.
The CIFR stock has so far experienced a drawdown to $14.62, representing a 0.27% gain on the daily chart. Just like IREN, Cipher stock has experienced more than ten times growth this year with a 215.09% gain year to date, underscoring the conviction among investors that miners are repositioning their computing capacity to provide AI workload services.
Nvidia’s Q3 earnings validated the current trend, driven by its data center GPUs’ support for the ongoing demand for AI compute. Miners are positioning themselves to benefit by offering that capacity. According to Nvidia’s press release, the firm recorded $57 billion in Q3 revenue, up 22% from Q2 and 62% growth year over year. The data center business generated $ 51.2 billion, representing a 25% increase from Q2 and a 66% year-over-year increase. Earnings per share were $1.3, and the GAAP gross margin was 73.4%.
Nvidia projects a $65 billion revenue in Q4
Based on Nvidia’s projections, Q4 is expected to generate approximately $65 billion in revenue, with a non-GAAP gross margin of roughly 75%. Jensen Huang, the company CEO, revealed that the demand for its Blackwell chips and cloud GPUs fueled the results as AI compute demand continues to increase.
IREN, on the other hand, has so far recorded $501 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025, with its AI cloud business growing rapidly. The firm has also secured a 2,910 MW power capacity to host more GPUs and scale its AI workload operations in its data center in British Columbia and Texas.
The halving process of the Bitcoin network triggered the shift towards AI workloads among Bitcoin miners. According to a Cryptopolitan report, after the 2024 Bitcoin halving, which reduced block rewards to 3.125 BTC, miners experienced squeezed revenues, which added to rising network difficulty and slow transaction volumes, drying up profits.
Despite Bitcoin reaching new highs of $126,000 per Bitcoin, unit economics could not work as previously. Power costs have dramatically increased, squeezing returns and prompting miners to diversify their energy usage towards AI workloads to continue generating profits. For miners like IREN and Cipher, the shift represents leveraging the existing power, space, and cooling infrastructure to capitalize on high-demand computing services.
Get $50 free to trade crypto when you sign up to Bybit now
