RIOT
The market’s new favorite plot twist
Riot Platforms spent years being a Bitcoin miner, which is a little like owning a gold mine and then discovering your real money-maker is the parking lot. Bernstein thinks Riot’s AI infrastructure business is now the bigger story, and it juiced its price target to $35 from $30 while keeping an Outperform rating.
Why analysts are getting more excited
The catalyst is Riot’s massive data-center agreement with a “leading frontier AI lab,” reportedly Anthropic. The 20-year colocation deal is expected to bring in about $457 million in annual recurring revenue, which is the kind of long-duration cash flow Wall Street loves to squint at and say, “Okay, now we’re talking.”
Bernstein estimates the project could generate annual net operating income of roughly $365 million to $411 million, but there’s a catch: Riot still needs to fund a pretty chunky buildout, with capital spending projected around $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion. The firm also flagged another $3.7 billion in secured financing as likely needed to fully support the expansion. In other words, the runway is clearer — but it’s still a long runway.
Bitcoin is becoming the side quest
Riot isn’t quitting Bitcoin, but the balance of power is shifting. The company held 11,380 BTC as of June 30, and it’s been selling some production and reserves to help bankroll the data-center push. That’s a big philosophical pivot: power assets that once existed to chase crypto rewards are now looking more like infrastructure for the AI boom.
Peers like MARA Holdings and CleanSpark are making similar moves into high-performance computing, which tells you this isn’t just a Riot thing — it’s a full-on miner identity crisis. Big picture: if AI demand keeps eating the world, Riot may not be valued like a Bitcoin miner for much longer.