Bitcoin miners have just nine months to sign contracts with hyperscalers and AI businesses, JPMorgan estimates.
Analysts at the multinational finance company said that the time was right for miners while data center companies still struggle to find capacity, grid connections, and scale.
"We think select miners have around nine months to sign favorable deals with a handful of well-funded hyperscalers/AI startups, while data center applications remain in limbo, awaiting approval and or grid interconnections," analysts Reginald L. Smith and Charles Pearce said in the report, first reported by The Block.
The duo added: "US-listed Bitcoin miners have access to more than 5GWs of power, with another 6GWs in various stages of development."
JPMorgan estimates a backlog of more than 12GWs of data center capacity in planning and construction, which could take as much as six years to be approved and built.
In August, US investment management firm VanEck said that Bitcoin miners could earn an extra $13.9 billion a year through AI partnerships.
A number of cryptominers have pivoted to AI, most notably CoreWeave which has moved fully to supporting AI/HPC workloads. It then signed a 12-year contract with miner Core Scientific, which is expected to be worth $3.5 billion.
Crusoe Energy earlier this summer announced plans to build and lease a facility to Oracle, which will then lease it to Microsoft - to be used by OpenAI.
Hive Digital Technologies, Northern Data, Applied, Iris Energy, and others are also expanding HPC operations alongside their crypto businesses. This summer, Mawson Infrastructure signed its first non-crypto deal.
