Bitcoin miner Cango (CANG) completed the sale of 4,451 BTC over the weekend, raising approximately $305 million in USDT as it seeks to reduce leverage and reposition its business around artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The company said it raised $305 million from the sale, suggesting an average sale price of around $68,524 per coin, not far from multi-year low prices for bitcoin.
Shares were little changed in Monday trading but are down 83% on a year-over-year basis.
The company’s bitcoin sales were “based on a comprehensive assessment of current market conditions,” the company said, as it plans to move toward AI computing infrastructure. Cango plans to deploy modular GPU units across its global network of more than 40 locations to serve small and medium-sized businesses needing on-demand AI inference capability, it said.
The company used the proceeds from its BTC sale to repay a loan backed by Bitcoin, strengthening its balance sheet. The company still holds 3,645 BTC worth over $250 million, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.
“In response to recent market conditions, we have made a cash flow adjustment to strengthen the balance sheet and reduce financial leverage, allowing us to increase our ability to fund our strategic expansion into AI compute infrastructure,” the company wrote in a letter to shareholders.
Its entry into the AI sector comes as it faces what it sees as a gap between growing demand for computing and existing network capacity. Cango wrote that she was well positioned to take advantage of this gap.
Cango is not alone. A growing group of Bitcoin miners are reducing their exposure to pure mining and shifting capital and infrastructure toward AI data centers and high-performance computing.
Bitfarms (BITF) has announced plans to completely abandon crypto mining by around 2027, and said it is no longer a Bitcoin company as it shifts its focus to high-performance computing and AI workloads.
KBW analysts cautioned that the industry’s transition to AI workloads is compelling, but the path to monetization carries many execution risks. This led to a downgrade of not only Bitfarms but also Bitdeer (BTDR) and Hive Digital (HIVE).
