Why bitcoin miner CleanSpark beat Microsoft for Wyoming AI data center deal, and what it means for crypto mining’s future
CleanSpark, a Las Vegas based bitcoin miner, is moving into artificial intelligence, beginning to develop AI data centers alongside its crypto-mining business. The company’s CEO laid out details of the recently announced strategy on CNBC’s “Crypto World” this week, and why it’s likely to become core to the business models of more crypto mining companies.
One key example of why bitcoin miners can win in the booming data center market: CleanSpark recently won a 100-megawatt site in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and beat out the tech giant Microsoft for the contract, according to its CEO.
How did a company with a market cap under $6 billion best a $4 trillion company?
Speed to market.
“We were able to scale up and deploy 100 megawatt bitcoin mining facility in about six months, where to build a proper AI data center is going to take three to six years,” CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz said on CNBC. “Certainly, Cheyenne didn’t select CleanSpark because we had a stronger balance sheet than Microsoft,” he added.
The shift comes as competition for power intensifies, and in a sense, brings CleanSpark full circle, with Schultz noting that it started as an energy company before shifting to bitcoin mining five years ago and becoming one of the largest mining operations.
CleanSpark operates about 1.03 gigawatts of energized facilities and has another 1.7 gigawatts in its development pipeline. Schultz said the plan is to use bitcoin mining to rapidly build out and scale the infrastructure, or “monetizing megawatts” as he referred to it, and then where data centers are already established, identify areas where it makes more sense to convert those to high performance compute and AI. Atlanta is one area he cited as a a prime example of an AI data center hotspot, second only to Northern Virginia on the East Coast.
“Bitcoin miners are uniquely positioned in that we have the ability to build out and energize data centers very rapidly,” Schultz said. “Where we’re seeing constraints is on access to power,” he added.
An array of bitcoin mining units inside a container at a CleanSpark facility in College Park, Georgia, on April 22, 2022.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty Images
On Tuesday, CleanSpark announced a partnership with Submer, a data center design and construction firm, to develop AI- focused campuses across North America. The aim is to combine CleanSpark’s energy and land portfolio with Submer’s liquid-cooled, high density infrastructure systems.
“We are positioned to deliver AI capacity at gigawatt scale, faster, cleaner, and more efficiently than traditional approaches,” Schultz said in a press release announcing the deal. “This relationship perfectly aligns with our vision of transforming CleanSpark’s infrastructure platform into the backbone of the next era of intelligent computing,” he said.
Training and running AI models requires enormous power. Hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are spending record sums on new data centers, and signing deals at a fast pace with utility companies to build new nuclear reactors and restart mothballed ones, but face years of delays in connecting to the grid.
“Hyperscalers are spending 60% of their free cash flow on capex to try and keep up with AI,” Schultz said on CNBC. “Bitcoin miners already own what’s hardest to get: land, substations, and direct access to electricity,” he added.
Shares of Cleanspark have gained more than 100% this year, but the pivot also helps offset shrinking crypto margins. April’s bitcoin halving cut block rewards in half, which tightened profitability.
Performance of bitcoin mining company Cleanspark in past one-year period.
According to the U.S. government, total annual electricity consumption reached a record high in 2024 — and data centers are expected to add pressure to that usage trend if the market continues to grow despite fears of a bubble in the AI sector.
“As we analyzed the opportunities, it was readily apparent that the cash flows and the profitability for a pivot, a strategy that is down dual tracks, maximizing the value of bitcoin mining operations but also using access to land and power to provide AI data center services, is really the most appealing for shareholders,” Schultz told CNBC.
In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, the bitcoin miner brought in around $198.6 million in revenue, which was up almost 91% year over year. Meanwhile, it holds 12,703 bitcoin in its corporate treasury.
Schultz said the AI expansion won’t replace crypto. “It’s [bitcoin mining] a terrific part of our business,” he said.
CleanSpark also benefits from a flexible power model. Its mining operations can shut down during grid stress and push electricity back into the system. This is something AI centers cannot easily do.
“Blending a bitcoin mining facility with an AI data center gives you the ‘interrupt’ ability, the flexibility of those loads that the utility so desperately needs,” Schultz said.
When there is increased demand on the grid, Cleanspark receives signals from utilities and can curtail loads and push power back to the grid rapidly. AI data centers are “the opposite side” of that approach, Schultz said, with many of the agreements requiring uptime of 99.99999%.
That flexibility proved valuable in Georgia when hurricane Helene damaged a local substation. CleanSpark powered down its rigs and redirected energy to the grid. “The lights came back on at the hospital within an hour while they restored the community infrastructure,” Schultz said.
Enphase Energy just launched a new off-grid system that lets homeowners power their homes without a utility connection – even for extended periods. The California-based Enphase says the off-grid setup delivers a seamless way to live independently from the grid while still using solar, batteries, and a standby AC generator.
A full off-grid setup
The new system combines Enphase’s IQ Battery 5P with embedded grid-forming microinverters, IQ8 Series Microinverters with Sunlight JumpStart, and a third-party standby AC generator. The components work together to supply power to a home and automatically manage energy sources to maximize efficiency and reliability.
If the batteries are drained and the generator runs out of fuel, the Sunlight JumpStart feature can automatically recharge the batteries the next morning once the sun comes up.
The IQ Battery 5P delivers 3.84 kVA of power per 5 kWh of capacity, and systems can be scaled up to 40 kWh and 15.4 kVA. That’s enough power to start big household appliances like HVAC systems or water pumps. The IQ System Controller 3G provides the backbone, managing solar, batteries, and generator inputs to deliver up to 46 kVA of off-grid power.
Smarter control and connectivity
Each system connects to the cloud through Enphase’s IQ Combiner 5C HDK, which bundles solar interconnection, communications, and metering into one box. For homes without reliable broadband, the built-in 4G LTE Cat 4 modem keeps the system online for monitoring, firmware updates, and remote support.
Homeowners can manage everything from the Enphase App – from solar generation and battery status to generator integration and load control.
Why it matters
As grid outages become more common and homeowners look for ways to gain energy independence, off-grid systems like this are becoming more appealing.
“With the launch of our off-grid solution, we are giving homeowners a reliable path to complete energy independence,” said Nitish Mathur, Enphase’s SVP of customer experience. Enphase says over 100 homes are already operating entirely off-grid using its technology. The company plans to expand availability beyond the US in 2026.
Read more: Battery boom: 5.6 GW of US energy storage added in Q2
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Global offshore wind targets are still strong enough to triple global capacity by 2030, despite the US’s offshore wind stagnation under Trump. A new analysis from energy think tank Ember and the Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA) shows that the rest of the world is charging forward, underscoring confidence in offshore wind as a cornerstone of future clean energy systems.
Based on the latest NHTSA report, Tesla’s ‘Robotaxis’ keep crashing in Austin, Texas, despite ‘safety monitors’ preventing an unknown number of crashes.
Under an NHTSA Standing General Order SGO, automakers are required to report crashes involving their autonomous driving (ADS) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) within five days of being notified of them.
For years, Tesla was only reporting ADAS crashes, since, despite the names of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems, they are only considered level 2 driver assistance systems.
Since the launch of the Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, where Tesla moved the supervisor from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat, it has now reported its first few crashes under the ADS reporting.
In the first month of operation in July, Tesla reported three crashes with its ‘Robotaxi’ service in Austin.
This week, NHTSA has updated its crash report and revealed a 4th crash that happened in September:
| Report ID | Incident Date | Incident Time (24:00) | Make | Model | Model Year | Automation System Engaged? | Highest Injury Severity Alleged | Crash With | Roadway Type | Weather |
| 13781-11687 | SEP-2025 | 01:25 | TESLA | Model Y | 2026 | ADS | Property Damage. No Injured Reported | Other Fixed Object | Parking Lot | Partly Cloudy |
As we previously highlighted, when it comes to both ADS and ADAS crash reporting, Tesla abuses the redacting capacity and hides most information about its crashes, unlike most of its competitors.
Therefore, we don’t have much information about this new crash, but it reportedly occurred in a parking lot and involved a Tesla Robotaxi crashing into a “fixed object,” resulting in property damage.
What’s most interesting about this crash is that it comes as Tesla released the first bit of data about its Robotaxi program in Austin.
During its earnings call last week, Tesla confirmed that the Robotaxi fleet has traveled 250,000 miles since its launch in late June.
Therefore, Tesla Robotaxi currently crashes at a rate of about once every 62,500 miles. That’s with a safety monitor with a finger on a kill switch, ready to stop the vehicle at all times.
We have no data on how often Tesla’s safety monitors prevent crashes in its robotaxis.
For comparison, the NHTSA report lists 1,267 crashes involving Waymo vehicles. However, Waymo’s robotaxis have covered over 125 million fully driverless miles since inception. That’s a crash every 98,600 miles and without any onboard safety monitor.
Electrek’s Take
That’s the problem with comparing Tesla and Waymo.
At least we can now clearly see that Waymo’s incident rate is much lower than Tesla’s, but that’s with a safety monitor in Tesla robotaxis that prevents an untold number of crashes.
The actual difference could be 10x higher. We simply don’t know. Tesla has always refused to share any data regarding disengagement or intervention rates.
One thing is clear: Tesla is way behind Waymo in autonomous driving safety.
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