Key Points
These derive from their data center businesses -- a segment in which CleanSpark is also active.
Demand for AI-capable data centers continues to be insatiable.
Although the U.S. stock market as a whole came down with a case of the Mondays on the first trading day of the week, the crypto mining sector bounced well higher. Highly encouraging news from two industry mainstays helped lift sentiment toward peer companies.
One of the beneficiaries was CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK), whose stock closed nearly 11% higher that day.
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The sparks that lit the fire
The most important development in the crypto mining sphere lately hasn't been related to its traditional activity. Several years ago, in order to take advantage of the hot build-out of artificial intelligence (AI)-capable infrastructure, miners began to pivot into the operation of AI data centers. CleanSpark was something of a holdout until recently.
Image source: Getty Images.
On Monday, embracing the pivot seemed like a very wise strategy. CleanSpark rival Iren announced it had signed $2.8 billion worth of AI cloud services contracts with several clients. Better, these customers include such well-capitalized tech sector heavyweights as Nvidia and Microsoft.
As if that wasn't sufficiently market-moving, Hut 8 announced Monday it signed a second lease with an existing tenant at its Beacon Point data center in Texas. This new agreement will be in force for 15 years, and is worth a rich $9.8 billion. Hut 8 did not identify the tenant.
Hot, and only getting hotter
Two splashy deals landing on the same day are clear and unambiguous proof that demand for AI-ready data centers remains sky-high.
More and more, miners like CleanSpark look very wise for pivoting into this segment, which clearly has a long and lucrative future. While Monday's bounce in the affected stocks' share prices was considerable, I think the sector as a whole has even more upside.
Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.