Why bitcoin miner CleanSpark beat Microsoft for Wyoming AI data center

CleanSpark, a Las Vegas based bitcoin miner, is moving into artificial intelligence, beginning to develop AI data centers alongside its crypto-mining business. The company’s CEO laid out details of the recently announced strategy on CNBC’s “Crypto World” this week, and why it’s likely to become core to the business models of more crypto mining companies.

One key example of why bitcoin miners can win in the booming data center market: CleanSpark recently won a 100-megawatt site in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and beat out the tech giant Microsoft for the contract, according to its CEO.

How did a company with a market cap under $6 billion best a $4 trillion company?

Speed to market.

“We were able to scale up and deploy 100 megawatt bitcoin mining facility in about six months, where to build a proper AI data center is going to take three to six years,” CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz said on CNBC. “Certainly, Cheyenne didn’t select CleanSpark because we had a stronger balance sheet than Microsoft,” he added.

The shift comes as competition for power intensifies, and in a sense, brings CleanSpark full circle, with Schultz noting that it started as an energy company before shifting to bitcoin mining five years ago and becoming one of the largest mining operations.

CleanSpark operates about 1.03 gigawatts of energized facilities and has another 1.7 gigawatts in its development pipeline. Schultz said the plan is to use bitcoin mining to rapidly build out and scale the infrastructure, or “monetizing megawatts” as he referred to it, and then where data centers are already established, identify areas where it makes more sense to convert those to high performance compute and AI. Atlanta is one area he cited as a a prime example of an AI data center hotspot, second only to Northern Virginia on the East Coast.

“Bitcoin miners are uniquely positioned in that we have the ability to build out and energize data centers very rapidly,” Schultz said. “Where we’re seeing constraints is on access to power,” he added.

On Tuesday, CleanSpark announced a partnership with Submer, a data center design and construction firm, to develop AI- focused campuses across North America. The aim is to combine CleanSpark’s energy and land portfolio with Submer’s liquid-cooled, high density infrastructure systems.

“We are positioned to deliver AI capacity at gigawatt scale, faster, cleaner, and more efficiently than traditional approaches,” Schultz said in a press release announcing the deal. “This relationship perfectly aligns with our vision of transforming CleanSpark’s infrastructure platform into the backbone of the next era of intelligent computing,” he said.

Training and running AI models requires enormous power. Hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are spending record sums on new data centers, and signing deals at a fast pace with utility companies to build new nuclear reactors and restart mothballed ones, but face years of delays in connecting to the grid.

“Hyperscalers are spending 60% of their free cash flow on capex to try and keep up with AI,” Schultz said on CNBC. “Bitcoin miners already own what’s hardest to get: land, substations, and direct access to electricity,” he added.

Shares of Cleanspark have gained more than 100% this year, but the pivot also helps offset shrinking crypto margins. April’s bitcoin halving cut block rewards in half, which tightened profitability.

According to the U.S. government, total annual electricity consumption reached a record high in 2024 — and data centers are expected to add pressure to that usage trend if the market continues to grow despite fears of a bubble in the AI sector.

“As we analyzed the opportunities, it was readily apparent that the cash flows and the profitability for a pivot, a strategy that is down dual tracks, maximizing the value of bitcoin mining operations but also using access to land and power to provide AI data center services, is really the most appealing for shareholders,” Schultz told CNBC.

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In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, the bitcoin miner brought in around $198.6 million in revenue, which was up almost 91% year over year. Meanwhile, it holds 12,703 bitcoin in its corporate treasury.

Schultz said the AI expansion won’t replace crypto. “It’s [bitcoin mining] a terrific part of our business,” he said.

CleanSpark also benefits from a flexible power model. Its mining operations can shut down during grid stress and push electricity back into the system. This is something AI centers cannot easily do.

“Blending a bitcoin mining facility with an AI data center gives you the ‘interrupt’ ability, the flexibility of those loads that the utility so desperately needs,” Schultz said.

When there is increased demand on the grid, Cleanspark receives signals from utilities and can curtail loads and push power back to the grid rapidly. AI data centers are “the opposite side” of that approach, Schultz said, with many of the agreements requiring uptime of 99.99999%.

That flexibility proved valuable in Georgia when hurricane Helene damaged a local substation. CleanSpark powered down its rigs and redirected energy to the grid. “The lights came back on at the hospital within an hour while they restored the community infrastructure,” Schultz said.