Bernstein estimates 27 GW worth of bitcoin miners for AI infrastructure.
3.7 GW of capacity is already committed to computing agreements for artificial intelligence.
A report from the investment bank Bernstein noted on May 19, 2026, that bitcoin (BTC) mining companies are gaining relevance in the construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure, controlling more than 27 gigawatts (GW) of planned energy capacity in the United States and having signed more than $90 billion in contracts linked to this sector.
The analysis, sent to your customerscomes after the announcement of a “joint venture” between Google and Blackstone to develop a new artificial intelligence cloud platform based on tensor processing units (TPUs), with an initial investment of $5 billion and the goal of putting the first 500 megawatts of capacity into operation in 2027. This project seeks expand access to computing infrastructure in a context in which the demand for artificial intelligence grows faster than the expansion of available electrical capacity.
Bernstein indicated that bitcoin miners have committed around 3.7 GW of capacity in agreements related to artificial intelligence, mostly linked to high-performance computing services and provision of infrastructure for data centers. According to the report, the main bottleneck in the sector is no longer capital or chip availability, but access to grid-connected energy.
Among the notable cases, IREN signed an agreement with Nvidia valued at 3.4 billion dollars, which includes an investment of 2.1 billion for deployment of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Riot Platforms closed a co-location agreement with AMD for computing capacity. Additionally, Core Scientific and Hut 8 have expanded agreements with cloud and digital infrastructure services providers.
The report also highlights that building a single gigawatt of grid-connected capacity can take more than four years in several regions of the United States, which has led large technology companies to look for operators with energy infrastructure already available. In that context, bitcoin miners have an advantage by having energy-intensive data centers already deployed.
It is worth noting that the debate about the impact of artificial intelligence on software security is a common factor in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. As reported by CriptoNoticias, Vitalik Buterin has stated that AI-Assisted Formal Verification Can Strengthen Security by allowing the behavior of the code to be demonstrated mathematically, although it recognizes that it does not eliminate all risks if the system specifications are incomplete.
In contrast, figures from the cybersecurity sector such as Charles Guillemet have warned that artificial intelligence is lowering the barrier to entry for attackers and accelerating the exploitation of vulnerabilities.
Bernstein’s report adds that this convergence between energy infrastructure and computing is giving rise to hybrid agreements between miners and large technology companies, which combine electricity supply, infrastructure deployment and shareholding.
At the moment, the growing competition for energy capacity suggests a structural change in the digital infrastructure, where access to electricity is becoming the main advantage factor for the development of large-scale artificial intelligence, progressively displacing other variables such as access to hardware or financial capital.