Bitcoin miners and AI compute peers have already exceeded $30.7 billion in combined capital expenditures for 2025, signaling accelerated infrastructure buildouts.
Public bitcoin miners and their data center peers have already exceeded their full-year 2025 capital spending during their latest 2026 reporting periods, underscoring the extraordinary upfront costs of repositioning power assets for artificial intelligence. A dozen public mining companies tracked by TheEnergyMag recorded $6.87 billion in net cash capital asset spending in the first half of 2026, with IREN contributing only its March quarter because a June-period cash-flow statement was unavailable. That compares with $6.50 billion for all of 2025.
When adding Applied Digital, AI-native CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), and Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS) to the basket, the resulting 15-company cohort spent $30.7 billion—a figure 42.6% higher than the $21.53 billion recorded across the entirety of 2025. This calculation measures cash purchases and deposits for hardware, property, plant, equipment, and other directly identified productive assets, minus cash proceeds and refunds from asset disposals. It excludes finance-lease principal payments and noncash equipment additions.
CoreWeave and Nebius accounted for nearly three-quarters of the 15-company total. CoreWeave paid $14.12 billion for property and equipment, including capitalized internal-use software, during the six months ended June 30, already surpassing its $10.31 billion expenditure for all of 2025. Nebius spent $8.13 billion on property, equipment, and intangible assets during the first half, net of $5.2 million in disposal proceeds. Its comparable 2025 spending stood at $4.07 billion. The company stated that the investment primarily covered GPUs, related hardware, and data-center expansion for its AI cloud business, with second-quarter results indicating that first-half capital purchases were roughly double the entire prior-year figure reported in its Form 20-F.
Among traditional and former miners, TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) spent $1.61 billion, Applied Digital $1.58 billion, Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) $1.18 billion, and Cipher $911.5 million. This concentration illustrates what the AI pivot entails. While power contracts and available land may provide miners with a starting advantage, converting those assets into AI-ready capacity requires substations, buildings, cooling systems, networking equipment, and, under certain business models, GPUs. Consequently, much of the cash outflows occur long before the first corresponding dollar of revenue can be recognized.
The revenue side is beginning to respond. Across nine miners present in both quarters of the supplied revenue schedule, directly reported high-performance computing (HPC), AI cloud, and colocation revenue increased 52% to $205.8 million in the second quarter, up from $135.4 million in the first. Including estimates for MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) and Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT), the comparable totals reached $215.8 million and $140.3 million, respectively. Core Scientific supplied most of the absolute increase, with its colocation revenue rising to $136.7 million from $77.5 million. TeraWulf’s HPC leasing revenue climbed to $31.9 million from $21 million, while Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR)’s AI Cloud revenue grew to $14 million from $3.7 million.
Nevertheless, this acceleration remains modest relative to the construction bill. Those nine comparable miners generated $341.2 million in directly reported HPC and AI revenue during the first half while spending $5.11 billion on capital assets—roughly 15 times the revenue. The same pattern holds for the AI-native companies, though their revenue bases are considerably larger. CoreWeave’s revenue increased 24% to $2.58 billion in the second quarter from $2.08 billion in the first. Its $4.65 billion in first-half revenue represented approximately one-third of its $14.12 billion in cash capital spending. Nebius recorded $582.3 million in second-quarter revenue, up 46% from $399 million in the first quarter, bringing its first-half total to $981.3 million against $8.13 billion in net capital spending.
These ratios are not conventional measures of project profitability. Capital spending constructs assets intended to generate revenue over several years, whereas quarterly revenue only captures capacity that has been delivered, accepted, and placed into service. Customer advances can also finance construction without immediately appearing as revenue. Still, the widening gap highlights the central risk of the transition: expenditure is immediate and largely irreversible, while revenue conversion depends on construction schedules, grid connections, customer acceptance, and sustained demand.
For the remainder of 2026, the key question is not whether AI-related revenue will grow—the filings already confirm that it is. The critical issue is whether that revenue can begin catching up to the unprecedented amount of cash already committed to produce it.