
A Spanish-language Gizmodo report describes how some large bitcoin miners are shutting down or repurposing their mining operations into data centers serving AI workloads. The piece highlights declining crypto profitability and growing demand from AI companies for power-hungry GPU infrastructure.
This article aggregates reporting from 1 news source. The TL;DR is AI-generated from original reporting. Race to AGI's analysis provides editorial context on implications for AGI development.
The pivot from crypto mining to AI compute is more than a colorful storyline—it’s a structural shift in where power, GPUs, and capital are going. Bitcoin mining farms already sit on cheap electricity, industrial cooling, and racks of specialized hardware. Swapping ASICs for GPUs and leasing capacity to AI clients is a relatively natural move, especially as AI workloads offer more predictable, longer-term contracts than volatile crypto rewards.
For the AGI race, this trend means the ceiling on available compute might be higher than many long-term forecasts assume. If a significant fraction of the world’s mining capacity retools for AI, the effective global GPU pool expands without waiting for new datacenters to be built from scratch. That can accelerate training schedules and lower marginal costs for mid-tier labs willing to rent from these converted facilities. It also complicates regulatory efforts around energy use and carbon emissions: AI compute may inherit the geographic footprint and political sensitivities of crypto mining in regions where grids are already under stress.