As if the continued decline in Bitcoin’s price wasn’t enough, shares of Bitcoin miners who have shifted their business plan to focus on AI infrastructure were mostly sharply lower on Monday following Nvidia’s $2 billion investment in CoreWeave.
While this investment highlights the growing demand for high-performance computing as AI applications expand, it also highlights the challenges faced by independent miners trying to reposition themselves as infrastructure providers in this area.
Cipher Mining (CIFR), CleanSpark (CLSK), IREN (IREN) and TeraWulf (WULF) were among the names down 5-9% after the news.
The drop reflects investors’ fears that CoreWeave’s growing lead in the AI infrastructure market could limit upside for other players.
“The decline in the AI and HPC segments linked to Bitcoin miners today demonstrates a commitment between NVIDIA and CoreWeave, with GPU allocation increasingly prioritized in favor of this partnership,” said James Van Straten, senior Bitcoin analyst at CoinDesk. “This could potentially diminish the funding prospects for independent miners looking to pivot into AI infrastructure. The $2 billion capital injection is expected to significantly increase AI computing capacity for CoreWeave, which would intensify competition and reduce both margins and market share for smaller players.”
Van Straten also noted that CoreWeave’s $53 billion market cap already represents half of the peak valuation of the entire Bitcoin-AI mining sector as of October.
“As with any maturing industry, consolidation now seems increasingly inevitable,” he said.
Additionally, Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets at VanEck, said CLSK fell about 9% as markets factored in perceived outage risk from its exposure in Tennessee after state-level power headlines, although its sites are in green areas of the grid. That decline was compounded by a proxy filing that quantified CEO compensation of around $45 million for 2025, raising governance concerns as the company moves toward AI, according to Sigel.
The only name showing a significant gain on Monday is Core Scientific (CORZ). Although CoreWeave unsuccessfully attempted to acquire CORZ in 2025, the two continue to enter into a multi-year data center agreement. Shares are up just under 2% in late morning trading.
Hut 8 (HUT), another miner that has diversified into AI hosting and high-performance computing, is also outperforming. In addition to Core Scientific, HUT also offers infrastructure suitable for large-scale AI applications, giving it a competitive advantage as computing demand increases. HUT shares are up 0.2%.
The move to AI is not new. Bitcoin miners, once focused solely on validating blockchain transactions, have repurposed their data centers for more profitable workloads, particularly as mining rewards decline and electricity costs rise.
Nvidia’s latest move, however, suggests that these resources could increasingly be shifted to larger, more tightly integrated players like CoreWeave, forcing smaller companies to adapt or consolidate.
