Ionic Digital, a company built out of the wreckage of Bitcoin mining assets, began trading on Nasdaq on July 28, 2026 under the ticker IOND. The stock rose 25% on its first day, putting the company’s market value at roughly $2.4 billion.
Only weeks before the listing, Ionic raised $400 million in a private placement. Attestor, Oaktree Capital and Sachem Head co-led the round, with Citadel participating. The financing valued the company at $2 billion before the new money.
The company’s current pitch is straightforward: turn low-cost power and land in Texas into AI data centers, then lease them to cloud providers and AI companies. On listing day, CEO Prusak said, “The market is rewarding us for converting Bitcoin mines into AI data centers.”
Ionic’s order book has drawn particular attention because much of the revenue was contracted before the facilities were fully built. The company traces its origins to the 2022 bankruptcy of Celsius Network and has since repositioned itself as an AI infrastructure player.
Long-term contracts were signed before the full build-out
Ionic’s operating model differs from many AI infrastructure companies in one key way: it signs long-term leases first, then builds out the data center capacity.
In October 2025, the company signed a 10.5-year lease with global cloud services provider Nscale. Ionic’s flagship data center in Ward County, Texas, with 234 megawatts of total capacity, was fully leased to Nscale under an agreement worth about $1.95 billion.
In February 2026, the two sides expanded the agreement. Nscale committed to lease another 89 megawatts on the same terms. If that expansion is delivered in the second half of 2027, the total contract value would rise to about $2.6 billion.
Put simply, a 234-megawatt data center that is still under construction has already secured at least about $2 billion of revenue over the coming decade. The article said the structure is a triple-net lease, meaning the tenant is responsible for taxes, insurance and maintenance, while Ionic primarily collects rent.
The shift is already visible in the company’s financials. Ionic reported $51.4 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2026. Of that, $44 million came from data center leasing and $7.4 million came from Bitcoin mining. A year earlier, the company’s entire revenue base still came from mining, with first-quarter 2025 revenue at $41.1 million.
The company expects full-year 2026 revenue to reach between $190 million and $195 million. It remains loss-making, which the article attributed mainly to one-time upfront spending tied to data center construction, but it said the cash-flow profile is becoming easier to see.
Ionic did not go public through a traditional IPO. Instead, it chose a direct listing, meaning it issued no new shares and raised no fresh capital in the market, with existing shareholders selling stock directly. Because the company had already raised $400 million in June, the article said it had no immediate need for more cash. JPMorgan, Jefferies and BTIG acted as advisors on the listing.
The company also gave second-quarter 2026 guidance, calling for revenue of $48 million to $51 million and adjusted EBITDA of $10 million to $12 million.
Its edge is power access, not GPU supply
The AI infrastructure and compute-rental market is already crowded with large operators.
- CoreWeave, a GPU cloud provider built for high-performance computing, supports large-scale AI and machine learning workloads and has signed multi-year agreements with Core Scientific to expand infrastructure across Texas, Nebraska and Ohio, for a total of 1.3 gigawatts.
- Lambda Labs offers AI compute cloud services, with H100 GPU pricing at $2.99 per hour and API pricing at $0.3 per million tokens.
- Vast Data focuses on AI data center infrastructure and works with both CoreWeave and Lambda on storage and data management.
- Core Scientific is Ionic’s closest direct comparison. It also moved from Bitcoin mining into AI data centers. On July 27, 2026, Core Scientific signed a 15-year, 529-megawatt infrastructure agreement with AMD that is expected to generate more than $14 billion in base contract revenue.
What sets Ionic apart in this group is its starting point. The company is centered on power access rather than compute hardware.
Building data centers itself makes the business more capital-intensive and slows the pace of cash generation, but it gives the company tighter control over costs. In a business where electricity prices shape margins, low-cost power is a real moat. The article pointed to the Ward County project’s 234 megawatts of power capacity as one of the company’s strongest advantages.
Ionic is still expanding. It plans to increase Ward County capacity from 234 megawatts to 700 megawatts, with another $40 million in spending expected in the first half of 2027. The article said that money could come from cash on hand or from selling part of its Bitcoin holdings.
After the listing, CEO Prusak said, “We are already one of the largest powered data center campuses in Texas, and we are actively exploring partnerships to advance multi-gigawatt expansion in Ward County.”
Mining is shrinking, but Bitcoin remains on the balance sheet
As of March 31, 2026, Ionic held about 120,600 mining machines, but only about 23,200 were operating. Its total hashrate had fallen to 2.0 EH/s, mainly because older machines had become less efficient and higher power prices changed the economics.
In the first quarter of 2026, the company mined 95.7 BTC and sold none of it. It ended the quarter holding 2,861 BTC. Based on market prices at the time, the article put the value of those holdings at about $250 million.
Still, the mining business is shrinking quickly. First-quarter 2026 Bitcoin mining revenue fell 82% year over year and accounted for less than 15% of total company revenue. Ionic continues to operate mining at four sites in the Midland area of Texas, with a combined 112 megawatts of power capacity, but its business center has clearly shifted to AI data center leasing.
The company has also added industry experience at the board level. Former Core Scientific CEO Mike Levitt joined the Ionic Digital board in April 2026 and serves on the audit and compensation committees.
Capital is moving toward power-backed AI infrastructure
The article argues that Ionic’s financing and public listing reflect a broader shift in investor preference, from backing AI model builders to backing the power and facilities that support AI workloads. Compared with model developers, data center leasing offers a simpler revenue model and more visible cash flow when it is tied to long-term contracts.
Ionic’s lease with Nscale illustrates that point. A 10.5-year contract secures about $2 billion in revenue visibility. The article said that level of predictability is rare in the AI sector and helps explain why more traditional investors such as Oaktree Capital were willing to back the company.
But the risks are also explicit. Ionic depends heavily on Nscale, which accounts for nearly all of its contracted data center leasing revenue. The company identified tenant default risk as its most important risk factor in its prospectus, warning that any tenant credit event could materially hurt its financial condition.
Construction timing is another issue. The Ward County facility is still being expanded, and any delay in construction, cost overrun or equipment delivery issue could affect when revenue can be recognized.
Even so, Ionic has tied its future firmly to AI compute infrastructure for the next decade. As Prusak put it, “Now is the best time to capitalize on the incredible tailwinds in artificial intelligence, and we are excited to execute our growth plan through our innovative business model.”