Over the past two weeks, bitcoin miners have received an influx of investor interest in response to the announcement that Core Scientific will host GPUs for artificial intelligence cloud provider CoreWeave, a JP Morgan report published Monday said.

JP Morgan analysts Reginald L. Smith and Charles Pearce said the aggregate market cap of the 14 bitcoin miners they track has increased by 22%, or $4 billion, since the Core Scientific announcement. At the beginning of June, North American bitcoin mining and hosting services provider Core Scientific announced it signed a series of 12-year contracts with AI Hyperscaler CoreWeave.

The increase in bitcoin miners' aggregate market cap is due to their facilities being increasingly recognized for their potential dual use as AI GPU hosting centers, according to the JP Morgan analysts. They added that June's Core Scientific announcement "validates and will accelerate miners diversifying into High Performance Computing (HPC) programs."

Bitcoin miners already have necessary data centre facilities in place

The analysts suggested that bitcoin miners might be well-positioned to capitalize on the emerging opportunity for HPC hosting centers to support AI developments, as they already have much of the necessary infrastructure in place.

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"The scramble for power puts a premium on companies with access to cheap power today and additional interconnection agreements and power authorizations. We note the 14 U.S.- listed miners we follow manage more than 5 GW of power today, with access to another 4.5 GW," the report said.

In contrast, the report said, it can take more than five years to construct a data center from scratch today. "Accelerating access to power by 3-4 years could be worth between $105 million to $140 million per MW for a hyperscaler," the analysts added.

IREN best positioned for AI opportunities

The JP Morgan report noted that Iris Energy (IREN), which operates facilities powered entirely by renewable energy for bitcoin mining and AI cloud computing services, is well-positioned to capitalize on the increasing demand for AI-focused data centers.

"In short, we believe IREN is best positioned to take advantage of the HPC/AI opportunity, as the company has excess power capacity and isn’t wedded to bitcoin mining," the analysts said.

The report expressed surprise that bitcoin miner Riot Platforms has not embraced the opportunities presented by the growing demand for AI-related data centers. It noted that RIOT "remains fully committed to bitcoin mining and shows little interest in HPC, despite having an abundance of power capacity."