Technology companies pursuing bitcoin miners’ energy assets

Those data centres are driving the fastest US power demand growth since the start of the millennium, outpacing grid expansions and leaving technology companies to search for vast amounts of electricity

US technology companies are pursuing energy assets held by bitcoin miners as they race to secure a shrinking supply of electricity for their rapidly expanding AI and cloud computing data centres.

Those data centres are driving the fastest US power demand growth since the start of the millennium, outpacing grid expansions and leaving technology companies, like Amazon and Microsoft, to search for vast amounts of electricity.

The electricity scramble is jolting the energy-intensive crypto currency mining industry. Some miners are making huge profits leasing or selling their power-connected infrastructure and sites to tech, while others are losing access to the electricity needed to stay in business.

The AI battle for dominance is a battle being had by the biggest and best capitalised firms in the world and they care like their lives depend on it that they win, according to Greg Beard, CEO of Stronghold Digital Mining, a publicly-traded bitcoin mining firm. Do they care about what they pay for power? Probably not.

Data centres could use up to 9% of total electricity generated in the US by the end of the decade, more than doubling their current consumption, as technology firms pour funds into expanding their computing hubs, the Electric Power Research Institute said in May.

Currently, data centres account for around 1%-1.3% of global electricity consumption, versus crypto mining’s nearly 0.4%, as per the International Energy Agency (IEA). That disparity is expected to grow.

Analysts expect 20% of bitcoin miner power capacity to pivot to artificial intelligence by the end of 2027. Over the past year, bitcoin miners and AI data centre owners have increasingly contested for the same power assets and contracts, executives from over half-dozen publicly traded US crypto mining firms told Reuters.