Cipher Mining Soars 34% After Sealing 15-Year, $5.5B Data Center Deal with Amazon
Bitcoin miner Cipher Mining saw its shares jump by more than 34% on Monday after unveiling a landmark $5.5 billion, 15-year agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), marking one of the most significant partnerships yet between a cryptocurrency miner and a major technology firm.
Under the terms of the deal, Cipher will lease and operate turnkey data center space for Amazon’s AI workloads across two phases, scheduled to begin in July and August 2026.
The partnership reflects a broader shift within the crypto mining sector as companies increasingly channel their energy and infrastructure toward artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) services.
The announcement coincided with Cipher’s third-quarter earnings report, which showed a narrowed net loss of $3 million, compared with $46 million in the previous quarter. Adjusted earnings also climbed to $41 million, up from $30 million, helping boost investor confidence. Cipher’s stock surged from $18.65 to an intraday high of $25.02 before closing at $22.76.
Expanding into AI and Cloud Infrastructure
The move aligns with a growing trend among Bitcoin miners to diversify revenue streams following the April 2024 halving, which cut mining rewards to 3.125 BTC per block. With lower profitability from Bitcoin mining, firms are increasingly leveraging their massive energy capacities to support data-heavy AI operations.
Cipher has already made strides in this area. In September, Google purchased a 5.4% stake in the company through a $3 billion partnership with AI infrastructure provider Fluidstack, strengthening Cipher’s foothold in the high-performance computing sector.
Chief Executive Tyler Page described the latest Amazon deal as “a major step forward,” noting that it follows the company’s earlier collaboration with Fluidstack and Google, which “established Cipher’s credibility in the HPC space.”
In addition to the AWS partnership, Cipher disclosed a majority ownership in a new joint venture to build a one-gigawatt AI hosting facility in West Texas, known as Project Colchis. The company will provide most of the financing and retain a 95% equity stake in the project.
Tech Giants Eye Bitcoin Miners
Cipher’s deal is part of a broader wave of collaborations between major cloud providers and crypto infrastructure companies. On the same day, rival miner IREN announced a $9.7 billion GPU cloud services agreement with Microsoft, while TeraWulf signed a $3.7 billion hosting deal in August with Fluidstack, backed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
As energy-intensive computing becomes central to both AI and blockchain operations, the lines between traditional Bitcoin mining and cloud infrastructure are blurring.
For firms like Cipher, partnerships with hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google signal not just diversification, but a redefinition of what it means to be a crypto miner in the age of AI.
