How crypto’s leftover power, talent and capital are being redirected into AI
A long list of companies and founders now tied to AI can trace part of their edge back to the last crypto cycle. In PANews’ account, the connection is not that mining rigs somehow became AI servers. The real handoff happened through three assets crypto had already accumulated before AI demand exploded: access to power, land and grid permits; engineers and operators trained in distributed systems and global internet products; and capital built during the last bull market. The piece starts with Crusoe, once known for using stranded natural gas at oil fields to mine Bitcoin and now involved in OpenAI’s Stargate buildout in Abilene, Texas. It then moves through mining companies signing multibillion-dollar AI and high-performance computing deals, former crypto builders launching AI infrastructure businesses such as OpenRouter and Fal.ai, and crypto fortunes backing GPU fleets, model companies and decentralized training experiments. Examples in the article range from Jed McCaleb’s Voltage Park to FTX-era investments in Anthropic and Anysphere, and from Paradigm-backed Nous Research to OpenAI’s own early internal discussion of a token-based funding structure. The article’s central point is narrow but clear: crypto did not simply turn into AI. It transferred resources from one cycle into the next industry that needed them more urgently.
