As fears grow that the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble has burst, deals on Wall Street are kept alive by one fundamental issue: bitcoin. Miners and data center developers still need large amounts of energy.
“The M&A work is still ongoing because people still need energy,” said Joe Nardini, head of investment banking at B. Riley Securities, in an interview with CoinDesk.
Nardini said power demand from bitcoin miners remains “huge,” but added that the pull of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) is “even greater,” with data centers and mining clients reporting sustained demand for GPU-ready facilities.
After the bitcoin halving cut rewards in half, miners faced a severe margin squeeze even with prices near or above $100,000 and increasingly turned toward hosting AI and high-performance computing (HPC) hardware in their existing data centers. This helped fuel strong gains in some BTC mining stocks this year as enthusiasm for AI spread through the market.
Read more: GPU Gold Rush: Why Bitcoin Miners Are Driving AI Expansion
In early 2025, growing concerns about artificial intelligence and lofty valuations erased significant market value from major tech names, including Nvidia (NVDA) and other AI beneficiaries, as investors took profits and reassessed whether prices had broken through fundamentals.
Shares of AI infrastructure specialist CoreWeave (CRWV) also retreated and are now more than 50% below their June peak.
Does this mean the AI trend is over? Nardini doesn’t think so, and behind this he has a simple logic that asks executives: Do customers Is the data center capacity you’ve built in demand? “Yeah.” Do you have tenants? “Yeah.” Are they good tenants? “Yeah.” Are they getting good rates? “Yeah.” Throughout multiple conversations, he said the message has been consistent: “So the demand is still there.”
In fact, Hut 8 shares rose as much as 20% last week after signing a 15-year, $7 billion lease with Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of IT capacity at its River Bend campus.
“Despite the recent sell-off, these companies have been well rewarded with higher valuation multiples and the ability to raise capital at attractive valuations and terms,” he said.
Inside the deal
This According to Nardini, demand continues to underpin valuations and, increasingly, M&A negotiations.
In competitive situations with high-quality power and viable locations, he said, dollars per megawatt (a financial metric of the value of each megawatt of electricity) can look “very attractive.” He said one process involved a valuation of more than $400,000 per megawatt, with the potential to reach $450,000 per megawatt, depending on the outcome of negotiations. In fact, it has seen previous deals with prices between $500,000 and $550,000 per megawatt.
However, demand for distressed or less desirable locations has not gone away and still attracts “lowball” bids, sometimes between $100,000 and $250,000 per megawatt, from buyers who like the power but discount market or site quality.
Who then are these buyers and sellers?
According to Nardini, buyers include hyperscalers (large technology companies that provide cloud computing infrastructures), artificial intelligence companies and bitcoin miners, while the universe of sellers is expanding beyond crypto-native players.
He has seen negotiation processes involving old industrial facilities, such as a 160-year-old facility, where the main attraction is power, even if the market is not very good. In another case, he said a private seller of a similar type asset attracted the interest of about 25 potential buyers seeking NDAs, including bitcoin. miners, hyperscalers and artificial intelligence companies.
That dynamic is creating an unusual strategic bifurcation for asset owners. Sell it to a hyperscaler or developer, or try becoming a developer yourself.
Nardini said he is seeing industrial companies with older, idle or near-idle facilities that have power considering selling into the AI/HPC and Bitcoin ecosystem.
He cited another example involving a private client repurposing older office blocks into modular energy capacity, “building 30-megawatt units at a pace” and now seeking additional financing to expand.
In at least one negotiation, he said, a tenant was even willing to pay rent up front before completion, which he believes illustrates how scarce desirable capacity remains.
No need to worry, yet
Looking ahead to 2026, Nardini said the setup still favors risk assets if rates fall, calling it a potential “risk environment,” which will be positive for trading in his industry.
He acknowledged that he may be “talking a little out of his book,” but said the operational reality he hears from executives keeps him constructive: The tenants are there, prices are still strong and if a customer doesn’t take a site, “someone else will.”
His warning to positive sentiment is simple: If developers can’t lease what they build, or can’t get the price they need, that would be the time to worry. For now, he says he doesn’t hear that. “The essence of the business remains intact,” he said.
He concluded with a blunt assessment of the sentiment.
“Demand for AI HPC data center power and capacity continues unabated. Developers with data center capacity have demand from creditworthy multi-tenants at good rates, so the core economics of the business remain intact.”
Nardini said buyers are still hungry for energy and sellers are seeing good valuations for their assets. This further solidifies his conviction.
“AI trading is still alive as of December 17, 2025,” he said.
Read more: Amazon enters AI arms race as fears rise over cryptocurrencies and risk assets
