Bitcoin (BTC) opened 2026 around $88,700 and has since drifted to the low $78,000s, a decline of roughly 12% year-to-date. Yet the top ten publicly listed Bitcoin mining stocks have posted stunning gains of 25% to 73% — a stark divergence that has little to do with mining itself and everything to do with artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
Terawulf Leads the Pack with $12.8B in AI Contracts
Terawulf (Nasdaq: WULF) tops the list with a 73.58% YTD gain. The company secured over $12.8 billion in committed high-performance computing (HPC) revenues through long-term leases with Google-backed Fluidstack and Core42 across sites in Kentucky and Maryland, totaling more than 1 GW of available power. HPC now accounts for over half of Terawulf’s annual revenue, and its stock price reflects this transformation.
Hut 8 and Core Scientific Also Post Strong Gains
Hut 8 (Nasdaq: HUT) rose 67.75% after securing a $7 billion, 15-year lease at its River Bend campus with Anthropic and Fluidstack, and building an 8.5 GW development pipeline.Core Scientific (Nasdaq: CORZ) gained over 40%, locking in approximately $10–12 billion in contracted revenues via its Coreweave partnership covering 590 MW of critical IT load across six sites, including a $1.2 billion expansion in Denton, Texas. Analysts expect HPC to contribute 70% of Core Scientific’s 2026 revenue.
Applied Digital (Nasdaq: APLD) and IREN Limited also surged. Applied Digital signed multiple 15-year leases with Coreweave for 400 MW in North Dakota, generating roughly $11 billion in contracted revenue. IREN, now the largest miner by market cap at $16.71 billion, has a multi-billion-dollar AI cloud partnership with Microsoft and a 4.5 GW power pipeline. Cipher Digital (Nasdaq: CIFR) fully rebranded from Cipher Mining and divested most Bitcoin operations, replacing them with a $9.3 billion HPC backlog backed by a 300 MW AWS deal and a Google-supported Fluidstack agreement.
Divergence: Some Miners Are Accelerating, Others Catching Up
Riot Platforms (Nasdaq: RIOT) rose 47.04%, with 1.7 GW of power capacity and a 112 MW AI-ready core-and-shell build underway at its Corsicana, Texas site.MARA Holdings (MARA) gained 29.56%, taking a different path by expanding international exposure through majority ownership of Exaion, an EDF subsidiary with European AI/HPC expertise.
On the lower end, Bitdeer (Nasdaq: BTDR) rose only 7.62% and remains the worst performer, with its Norwegian AI data center (180 MW) still under construction.Cleanspark (Nasdaq: CLSK) gained 25.88%, with over 1.8 GW of contracted power but early AI deployment not targeted until 2026–2027.
Conclusion: AI Contracts, Not Bitcoin, Are Driving Mining Stocks
The message from January to April is clear: the miners that will outperform in 2026 are those that first signed deals with hyperscalers. Terawulf, Hut 8, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, IREN, and Cipher Digital have all demonstrated this. Others are scrambling to catch up. While Bitcoin’s price direction still matters, for the leaders in this group, it has become a secondary consideration. The market is now valuing these companies as data center operators, not pure-play miners.