Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has invested $50 million in Cipher Mining, a Bitcoin mining company diversifying into AI data center infrastructure. The investment, structured as a private investment in public equity, will support Cipher's high-performance computing (HPC) and AI data center business.
The investment is seen as a sign of growing interest in AI data center hosting by Bitcoin miners, as they seek to reduce volatility associated with Bitcoin's market cycles. Cipher, the tenth largest public Bitcoin miner, has a pipeline of sites totaling 2.6 GW, including the 300 MW Barber Lake site in Texas, which is particularly attractive to hyperscalers due to its power agreement and substation.
Analysts at JPMorgan believe the investment could be a "sign of things to come" for the Bitcoin mining industry subset looking to diversify into AI. They note that shares of Bitcoin miners with HPC exposure declined as much as 30% earlier this week due to the broader sell-off in AI-related stocks.
SoftBank has been aggressively expanding its AI and cloud computing investments, recently backing the Stargate Project, a four-year, $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative in collaboration with OpenAI, Oracle, and Emirati investment firm MGX, with the U.S. government playing a supportive role.