The first four months of 2026 have produced a striking divergence between bitcoin and the public mining companies historically tied to it. Bitcoin opened the year near $88,700 and drifted lower for much of the period, trading around $76,000 to $78,000 as April approached its end. That left the asset down roughly 12% year to date. In contrast, many of the largest listed bitcoin miners posted gains ranging from 25% to more than 70%, signaling that investors are no longer valuing these companies solely as leveraged bitcoin proxies.
A Repricing Driven by AI and HPC, Not Just Mining
According to the source material, the explanation is not stronger mining economics. Instead, the market has begun to reward companies that can convert mining infrastructure into AI and high-performance computing (HPC) capacity. Bitcoin miners already control assets that hyperscalers and AI developers urgently need: access to large blocks of power, industrial-scale sites, permitting experience, transmission and substation development, heat management, and around-the-clock operational expertise.
Those capabilities are difficult to replicate quickly. Traditional developers and technology firms may have demand for AI data center space, but securing power and building utility-ready campuses can take years. Miners solved many of those bottlenecks when they built out their bitcoin operations. In 2026, the market appears to be assigning higher value to companies that can reuse those assets for long-term AI infrastructure contracts.
That shift has changed the framework for evaluating the sector. Investors are increasingly focused on contracted backlog, delivery schedules, tenant quality, and long-term revenue visibility, rather than only hashrate growth or bitcoin price sensitivity.
Terawulf Leads the Group With $12.8 Billion in Contracted HPC Revenue
Terawulf (NASDAQ: WULF) emerged as the strongest performer among the major public miners, gaining 73.58% year to date. The company’s stock response followed the announcement of more than $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue through long-term leases tied to Google-backed Fluidstack and Core42. The company’s sites in Hawesville, Kentucky, and Morgantown, Maryland are expected to scale to more than 1 gigawatt of available power.
The significance of those agreements goes beyond the headline number. The report notes that HPC now accounts for more than half of Terawulf’s annual revenue mix, underscoring how quickly its business model is evolving from bitcoin mining toward digital infrastructure. That transformation helps explain why equity investors have responded so aggressively despite weakness in BTC itself.
Hut 8, Core Scientific, and Applied Digital Also Secure Major AI Exposure
Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) ranked second in the group, rising 67.75%. It also had the highest share price among the top public miners cited in the report, trading at $77.06. Hut 8 secured a $7 billion, 15-year lease at its River Bend campus with Anthropic and Fluidstack as partners. The company is also building out a development pipeline totaling 8.5 GW across diligence, exclusivity, and active construction stages.
Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) posted gains of more than 40% and has reportedly locked in around $10 billion to $12 billion in contracted revenue through its partnership with Coreweave. Those agreements cover 590 MW of critical IT load across six locations, including a $1.2 billion expansion in Denton, Texas. Analysts cited in the source expect HPC to account for roughly 70% of Core Scientific’s 2026 revenue.
Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) also signed multiple 15-year leases with Coreweave covering 400 MW of critical IT load at its North Dakota campus. Those contracts are said to represent about $11 billion in revenue, with HPC hosting margins above 25%. This again highlights the trend: the biggest valuation catalysts are no longer tied to block rewards, but to long-duration infrastructure agreements with AI counterparties.
IREN and Cipher Digital Show the Market’s New Preferred Model
IREN Limited (IREN), which the report identifies as the largest among the top ten miners by market capitalization at $16.71 billion, has built a multi-billion-dollar AI cloud relationship with Microsoft and maintains a power pipeline of 4.5 GW. Its HPC revenue is projected to reach 71% of total revenue by year-end.
Cipher Digital (NASDAQ: CIFR), which has fully rebranded from Cipher Mining, provides another example of how far the pivot has gone. The company has pulled back from much of its bitcoin-focused operation and replaced that exposure with a contracted HPC backlog of about $9.3 billion. The report links that backlog to a 300 MW agreement with AWS and another deal involving Google-backed Fluidstack.
These cases suggest that the market is rewarding miners that can demonstrate tangible, committed AI infrastructure demand rather than merely announcing future ambition. Signed contracts matter more than theoretical capacity.
Some Miners Are Advancing More Slowly
Not every company is at the same stage of the transition. MARA Holdings (MARA) and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) gained 29.56% and 47.04%, respectively. Those are still strong returns by most standards, but they lag the best performers in the group.
Riot has 1.7 GW of power capacity across its Texas footprint, including Corsicana and Rockdale, and has started construction on 112 MW of AI-ready core-and-shell capacity in Corsicana as part of a broader 600 MW expansion plan. MARA, meanwhile, has pursued a somewhat different route by expanding internationally through its majority stake in Exaion, an EDF subsidiary that brings European AI cloud and HPC expertise into the portfolio.
Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) sat at the bottom of the year-to-date performance table, though it was still up 7.62%. The company is building what it describes as Norway’s largest AI data center, centered on a 180 MW facility in Tydal targeting Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs, while also converting sites in Ohio and Washington State. But the source notes that this pipeline has not yet translated into contracted revenue on a scale that investors are rewarding elsewhere.
Cleanspark (NASDAQ: CLSK), up 25.88% year to date, appears further along than Bitdeer. It has more than 1.8 GW of contracted power and is engaged in advanced discussions with hyperscale tenants, though initial AI deployment is only targeted for 2026 to 2027.
What the Market Is Really Pricing
The broader takeaway from January through April is that the leading bitcoin miners of 2026 are increasingly the ones that signed hyperscaler or AI tenant agreements first. Raw power capacity alone is no longer enough. Equity markets appear to be placing the highest value on miners that can demonstrate bankable counterparties, long-term leases, visible backlog, and credible delivery timelines.
That does not mean bitcoin has become irrelevant. BTC price direction will still influence mining economics, treasury values, and investor sentiment across the sector. But for the top names highlighted in the report, bitcoin is beginning to look like a secondary variable compared with the revenue visibility offered by AI infrastructure contracts.
In practical terms, the sector is being redefined. Companies once treated primarily as bitcoin extraction businesses are now being assessed as potential power-first digital infrastructure operators. If that trend continues, public miner valuations may depend less on the next move in BTC and more on who can secure the next multi-billion-dollar AI lease.