Bitcoin Miners' AI Pivot Losing Wall Street's Wow Factor
Bitcoin mining companies are securing larger and more valuable AI hosting deals, but investors are no longer reacting to these announcements with the same excitement as before. A recent report by Blocksbridge Consulting, as published in TheEnergyMag’s Miner Weekly, analyzed 25 AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure deals spanning from June 2024 to August 2026, revealing a clear trend: the market's enthusiasm for these contracts has cooled.
In the earliest transactions of this period, the average stock price jump on announcement day was around 24%. However, by mid-2026, this figure had nearly halved to just 10%. The median gains also dropped significantly during that time, despite the increasing size and financial value of the contracts.
Previously, when companies like Core Scientific, Applied Digital, and TeraWulf revealed new hosting agreements with partners such as CoreWeave or Fluidstack, their stock prices often skyrocketed by 40–60%. That kind of market response is now virtually non-existent.
For example, TeraWulf's 401-megawatt contract with Anthropic, one of the most significant in the industry, only managed to push its stock price up by 5%. CleanSpark's $6.6 billion AI hosting deal resulted in a 9% gain, while Bitdeer's partnership with Tydal caused a brief 12% rise before the gains quickly disappeared by market close.
Although revenue per contracted megawatt has steadily increased, showing that AI hosting arrangements are becoming more profitable, the market is no longer swayed by contract values alone. With AI hosting deals becoming the norm, investors are shifting focus to execution, financial backing, and long-term profitability rather than just the size of the announcements.
The TEM AI Infrastructure Growth Index, which monitors companies developing AI data centers and digital infrastructure, has fallen by 28.5% from its peak in June 2026. This indicates that investors are growing more cautious, despite the continued strength of demand for AI infrastructure.
The index is still significantly higher than it was a year ago, but its growth has notably slowed. In parallel, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has dropped nearly 17% from its July high, indicating a wider decline in investor interest in AI-related stocks. The market no longer views every new AI infrastructure contract as an automatic win. Instead, investors now seek concrete evidence of success before committing their money.