Bitcoin Miners Lead the Charge in AI Infrastructure Buildout

Data center journalist Rich Miller has spent nearly three decades covering the sector's evolution. In recent years, he's noticed a significant shift in strategy.

Miller attributes this change to Northern Virginia's Data Center Alley running into power constraints in 2022. Historically, data centers followed network connectivity and built near major internet hubs. However, as the industry faced power shortages in its most important market, the focus shifted toward following power instead.

This shift helped explain why bitcoin miners suddenly became relevant to AI infrastructure. Miners had spent years finding cheap land, large power positions, and non-traditional sites that weren't necessarily close to major network markets. As AI companies began looking for massive blocks of capacity, those same sites became far more valuable.

TeraWulf's Lake Mariner campus along Lake Ontario is a prime example of this shift. Miller described the former coal plant site as a construction site operating at an unprecedented scale and pace. TeraWulf and Fluidstack are building two large data centers simultaneously, each roughly 330,000 square feet.

The project is running around the clock, with about 300 staff between TeraWulf and Fluidstack and another 1,200 to 1,600 contractors on site daily. Miller noted that this level of activity is not typical in traditional data center tours.