Bitcoin opened 2026 near $88,700 and has since drifted lower, trading between $76,000 and $78,000 by late April, marking a decline of roughly 12% year-to-date. In stark contrast, the stock prices of the top ten publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies have soared between 25% and 73% during the same period. This divergence is not a story about mining; it is a story about artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
Public Miners Outperform Bitcoin Across the Board
Terawulf (WULF) leads the pack with a 73.58% YTD gain, followed by Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) at 67.75%, Riot Platforms (RIOT) at 47.04%, and Applied Digital (APLD) and Core Scientific (CORZ) both up over 40%. These gains represent equity returns four to six times larger than Bitcoin's move, but in the opposite direction. The reason is AI.
The sector has undergone a fundamental repositioning in early 2026. Miners possess assets hyperscalers covet: low-cost electricity, industrial-scale sites, and grid expertise. Companies that moved quickly to convert these assets into AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers have been rewarded. Those that did not are falling behind.
Terawulf Leads with $12.8 Billion in HPC Contracts
Terawulf has secured over $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue through long-term leases with Google-backed Fluidstack and Core42, across sites in Hawesville, Kentucky, and Morgantown, Maryland, scaling to 1 GW of available power. HPC now accounts for more than half of its annual revenue, and its stock price reflects that.
Hut 8 followed a similar path, securing a $7 billion, 15-year lease at its River Bend campus with Anthropic and Fluidstack, while building an 8.5 GW development pipeline.
Core Scientific has locked in approximately $10-12 billion in contracted revenue through its Coreweave partnership, covering 590 MW of critical IT load across six sites, including a $1.2 billion expansion in Denton, Texas. Analysts estimate HPC will represent about 70% of its 2026 revenue.
Applied Digital signed multiple 15-year leases with Coreweave for 400 MW of critical IT load at its North Dakota campus, generating roughly $11 billion in contracted revenue and HPC hosting margins above 25%.
IREN Limited, the top miner by market cap at $16.71 billion, holds a multi-billion dollar AI cloud partnership with Microsoft and a 4.5 GW power pipeline, with HPC revenue projected to reach 71% of total by year-end.
Cipher Digital (formerly Cipher Mining) has fully rebranded, halting most Bitcoin operations in favor of a $9.3 billion HPC contracted backlog supported by a 300 MW AWS deal and a Google-backed Fluidstack agreement.
Slower Movers Are Catching Up
Not all miners are at the same stage. MARA Holdings (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) posted YTD returns of 29.56% and 47.04%, respectively — solid numbers but below group leaders. Riot has 1.7 GW of electrical capacity in Texas and has begun construction of 112 MW of AI-ready core-and-shell capacity in Corsicana as part of a 600 MW expansion plan. MARA is taking an international approach through its majority stake in Exaion, an EDF subsidiary bringing European AI and HPC expertise.
Bitdeer (BTDR) sits at the bottom of the YTD table with a mere 7.62% gain, still down 6.40% over the last five trading days. The company is building what it describes as Norway's largest AI data center — a 180 MW facility in Tydal targeting Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs — and converting sites in Ohio and Washington State, but its pipeline has yet to generate contracted revenue at the scale investors are rewarding elsewhere.
Cleanspark (CLSK), up 25.88% YTD, is ahead of Bitdeer with over 1.8 GW of contracted power and ongoing talks with hyperscale tenants, but initial AI deployment is not targeted until 2026-2027.
Conclusion: Contracts and Partner Quality Matter
The story from January to April 2026 is clear. The miners that will outperform in 2026 are those that signed deals with hyperscale tenants first. Power capacity alone is not enough — the market values contracted backlog, delivery timelines, and partner quality. Terawulf, Hut 8, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, IREN, and Cipher Digital have all demonstrated this. Others are playing catch-up. Bitcoin's future price direction will have an impact, but for the leading names in this group, it is increasingly becoming a secondary consideration.