As if the continued declines in the price of bitcoin were not enough, shares of bitcoin miners that have changed their business plan to focus on artificial intelligence infrastructure mostly fell sharply on Monday following Nvidia’s $2 billion investment in CoreWeave.
While the investment underscores the growing demand for high-performance computing as AI applications expand, it also highlights the challenges for independent miners trying to reposition themselves as infrastructure providers in the space.
Cipher Mining (CIFR), CleanSpark (CLSK), IREN (IREN) and TeraWulf (WULF) were among the names down 5% to 9% after the news.
The drop reflects investor concerns that CoreWeave’s growing leadership in the AI infrastructure market could limit upside for other players.
“The declines in the AI and HPC segment tied to bitcoin miners today indicate a compromise between NVIDIA and CoreWeave, with GPU allocation increasingly prioritized toward that partnership,” said James Van Straten, senior bitcoin analyst at CoinDesk. “This could potentially diminish funding prospects for independent miners looking to move into AI infrastructure. The $2 billion capital injection will materially expand AI computing capacity for CoreWeave, intensifying competition and reducing both margins and market share for smaller players.”
Van Straten also noted that CoreWeave’s $53 billion market capitalization is already half the peak valuation of the entire bitcoin-AI mining sector in October.
“As with any maturing industry, consolidation now seems increasingly inevitable,” he said.
Additionally, Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets at VanEck, says CLSK fell about 9% as markets priced in the perceived disruption risk tied to its exposure to Tennessee following state-level energy headlines, despite its sites being in green grid zones. The decline was compounded by a proxy filing that quantified a roughly $45 million pay package to CEOs by 2025, raising governance concerns as the company pivots toward AI, according to Sigel.
The only name that showed a considerable gain on Monday is Core Scientific (CORZ). Although CoreWeave tried and failed to acquire CORZ in 2025, the two continue to have a multi-year data center agreement. Shares were up just 2% in late morning trading.
It also outperforms Hut 8 (HUT), another miner that has diversified into AI hosting and high-performance computing. Together with Core Scientific, HUT also offers infrastructure tailored to large-scale AI applications, giving it a competitive advantage as computing demand increases. HUT shares rose 0.2%.
The shift towards AI is not new. Bitcoin miners, once focused exclusively on validating blockchain transactions, have been repurposing their data centers for more profitable workloads, particularly as mining rewards shrink and energy costs rise.
Nvidia’s latest move, however, suggests that those resources may increasingly flow to larger, more tightly integrated players like CoreWeave, forcing smaller companies to adapt or consolidate.
