On a largely bleak Tuesday for Bitcoin mining stocks, TeraWulf’s share price soared nearly 17% after the Nasdaq-listed firm announced it was adding more artificial intelligence (AI) compute power. This expansion is part of an ongoing, Google-backed joint venture with AI cloud company Fluidstack.
TeraWulf stock (WULF) closed at $17 per share following the news. Shares have since dipped slightly to $16.24 in after-hours trading, according to Yahoo Finance.
The Easton, Maryland-based company revealed that the two partners will develop 168 MW of critical IT load at a site in Abernathy, Texas, during the second half of this year. This development is under a 25-year hosting commitment, with TeraWulf holding a majority stake of 51% in the joint venture.
TeraWulf and Fluidstack had already signed a deal in August to collaborate on building a new data center, supported by Google.
“This is exactly the evolution we outlined: converting advantaged infrastructure positions into contracted megawatts with investment-grade counterparties and doing so at strategic scale,” said TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager.
Meanwhile, other leading Bitcoin miners experienced declines on Tuesday. Riot Platforms tumbled 6.2%, CleanSpark fell nearly 5.2%, and MARA Holdings dropped nearly 3.5%, according to Yahoo Finance. IREN was also down almost 4%.
Mining Bitcoin has become more challenging since last year’s halving event, which cut the number of digital coins earned per block from 6.25 to 3.125. Despite Bitcoin’s price rising, the increase has not kept pace with previous cycles, and the difficulty of mining has intensified. This has prompted miners to explore new revenue sources.
In related news, top publicly-traded miner Hut 8 unveiled plans in August to develop 1.53 gigawatts of new capacity across four U.S. sites.
Google, meanwhile, announced last month a separate deal to backstop an agreement between Fluidstack and Bitcoin miner Cipher, giving Google the right to acquire a 5.4% stake in Cipher.
Bitcoin mining stocks have generally gained this year on news of companies tapping into the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technology.
As for Bitcoin’s price, it was recently trading below $113,000 — representing a 1.6% drop over the past 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has fallen about 10% since hitting an all-time high above $125,000 earlier this month, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko.
In a Myriad prediction market, about two in three respondents agree with crypto trader Mando that Bitcoin’s next move will be up to $120,000, rather than dropping to $100,000 as entrepreneur KBM expects.
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