Bitcoin miners find new ally in Google for AI transformation
The post Bitcoin miners find new ally in Google for AI transformation appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Search engine giant Google has emerged as a silent architect behind Bitcoin miners’ rapid pivot towards artificial intelligence (AI). Instead of acquiring mining firms, the Alphabet-owned company has provided at least $5 billion of disclosed credit support behind a handful of BTC miners’ AI projects. While markets often frame these announcements as technology partnerships, the underlying structure is closer to credit engineering. Google’s backing helps recast these previously unrated mining companies as counterparties that lenders can treat like infrastructure sponsors rather than pure commodity producers. The mechanism for these deals is pretty straightforward. BTC Miners contribute energized land, high-voltage interconnects, and shell buildings. Fluidstack, a data-center operator, signs multi-year colocation leases with these firms for the “critical IT load,” the power delivered to AI servers. Google then stands behind Fluidstack’s lease obligations, giving risk-averse commercial banks room to underwrite the projects as infrastructure debt instead of speculative crypto financing. The Google backstops TeraWulf established the structural precedent at its Lake Mariner campus in New York. Following an initial phase, the miner announced a massive expansion, lifting the total contracted capacity above 360 megawatts. TeraWulf values the deal at $6.7 billion in contracted revenue, potentially reaching $16 billion with extensions. Crucially, the deal terms indicate Google increased its backstop to $3.2 billion and boosted its warrant-derived stake to approximately 14%. Notably, Google’s role was also evident in Cipher Mining’s AI pivot. Cipher Mining had secured a 10-year, 168-megawatt AI hosting agreement with Fluidstack at its Barber Creek site. While Cipher markets this as approximately $3 billion in contracted revenue, the financial engine is Google’s agreement to backstop $1.4 billion of the lease obligations. In exchange for this credit wrap, Google received warrants convertible into roughly a 5.4% equity stake in Cipher. Hut 8 Corp. further scaled the model on Dec. 17, disclosing a…
