The leases landed first, the freeze second

In three weeks this summer, companies whose entire history is converting cheap electricity into bitcoin signed the largest property leases of their existence — to tenants that train artificial-intelligence models.

Hut 8, a Miami-based owner of power sites and data centres, fully commercialised its 1 gigawatt Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas on 20 July with a second 15-year, 352-megawatt lease worth $9.8bn to the same high-investment-grade tenant, carrying a 3% annual rent escalator. Across Beacon Point and its River Bend campus, Hut 8 now reports about 949 MW contracted and $26.6bn of base-term contract value on triple-net leases at 99-100% net-operating-income margins.

TeraWulf, an Easton, Maryland owner of low-cost power sites, executed a 401 MW lease with the AI lab Anthropic worth about $19bn over an initial 20-year term. The campus sits on a former aluminium smelter in Hawesville, Kentucky with existing transmission and fibre; first capacity enters service in the second half of 2027, the full 401 MW by early 2028.

Riot Platforms, a Castle Rock, Colorado miner that also builds switchgear and power-distribution gear for data centres through its ESS Metron unit, disclosed on 10 August a 20-year, 191 MW lease at its Rockdale, Texas campus worth about $9.1bn, rising to $16.1bn if both extensions are exercised. Bloomberg identified the unnamed "frontier AI lab" as Anthropic, and five brokers raised price targets. Delivery is phased: 96 MW in December 2027, 95 MW in June 2028.

Then the state that hosts most of this capacity moved. On 3 August Governor Greg Abbott ordered Texas regulators and the grid operator ERCOT to audit every data-centre project in an interconnection queue that has swollen to roughly 474 gigawatts, more than five times the state's record peak demand, with non-compliant projects denied connection. ERCOT suspended the "Batch Zero" large-load notifications scheduled for 7 August and will seek an exception at a 20 August meeting. BloombergNEF estimates the audit could delay 49.8 GW of load and cost projects up to $15bn. It lands on Cipher's Texas-heavy portfolio, Hut 8's Beacon Point, Riot's Rockdale and Corsicana, and MARA's pending Matagorda County purchase.

What the accounts actually say

The reported profit-and-loss statements are getting worse, because mining is being decommissioned before rent starts. Cipher Mining, a New York bitcoin miner turned data-centre landlord, posted second-quarter revenue of $24.8m, down 43.0% year on year, at a gross margin of minus 131% and a net loss of $267.5m; its shares fell about 15% the day after, as investors weighed a revenue miss and negative adjusted EBITDA above rent that starts later. TeraWulf's revenue fell 6.0% to $44.8m with gross margin down to 24.9% from 53.6% — though its high-performance-computing rent reached $31.9m, up 52% in a quarter and now 71% of the total. MARA Holdings, the largest self-miner, saw revenue fall 26.7% to $174.9m at a minus 82.7% gross margin.

Two diverge. Hut 8 grew revenue 81.4% to $74.9m at a 98.9% gross margin. Riot grew 13.9% to $174.2m, with its data-centre segment producing $4.9m of recurring lease revenue against $0.9m in the prior quarter, at an 84% gross margin.

Verdict on business momentum: SPLIT. Current earnings confirm the decline; contracted backlog contradicts it. Consensus makes the gap explicit — Cipher's 2026 revenue is expected to fall 13% to $217.0m before rising 267% to $795.4m in 2027; Hut 8's runs $297.6m, $571.1m and $1.45bn across 2026-28 with losses per share until 2028.

Two valuations, an order of magnitude apart

None of these companies earns a profit, so price-to-earnings is meaningless; sales and gross profit are the usable anchors. Cipher trades at 36.8x trailing and 32.4x forward sales and 12.5x book. TeraWulf trades at 50.2x trailing and 30.2x forward sales — 89.1x trailing gross profit — with diluted shares up 26.8% in five quarters to 485.7m. Hut 8 sits at 34.4x sales and 136.1x gross profit, the dearest in the group.

Against that, MARA trades at 4.6x trailing sales and 2.22x book with $2.5bn of cash and bitcoin against a $3.69bn market value, implying roughly $1.2bn for the operating business and a 4.8 GW power portfolio — but it has no signed hyperscaler lease, only a target of two by year-end. Riot is at 11.3x trailing and 11.7x forward sales, the forward figure sitting above trailing because consensus expects flat 2026 revenue.

Verdict on valuation: CONFIRMS a de-rating at Cipher, TeraWulf and Hut 8, whose multiples price revenue that mostly begins in 2027-28; INCONCLUSIVE at MARA, where the discount reflects the absence of any lease at all.

The floor underneath is thin

Mining still pays the bills until the rent starts, and it barely does. Hashprice — daily revenue per petahash of computing power — was $31.59 on 2 August, near June's record low of $27.67, with the next difficulty retarget due around 22 August. Riot's all-in cost was $49,912 per bitcoin last quarter, MARA's energy cost $38,700, and American Bitcoin's about $36,500, against spot near $63,465 — a price down 46.6% over twelve months. Bit Digital, a New York company that has wound down mining for an Ethereum treasury and a controlling stake in the HPC provider WhiteFiber, has not yet reported the June quarter.

One number needs correcting. American Bitcoin, the two-employee miner 54%-owned by Hut 8 and the cheapest name here at 1.86x sales, appears to have risen 516% in three months. It has not: it executed a 1-for-15 reverse share split effective 2 July, and adjusted for it the stock is down about 61% over that span.

The tape agrees with the caution, not the contracts: Cipher and Hut 8 both stepped down from a steep uptrend to a shallower one in mid-July, Bit Digital into an outright downtrend from 29 July, and neighbours outside the group moved the same way. Announcement-day reactions to these AI deals have decayed from roughly 24% to about 10% since 2024, even as contract sizes grew — the same report notes bitcoin-linked firms control almost 20 GW of firm grid interconnections, capacity that can be energised one to three years faster than a new utility queue.

The setup

Where it stands — Roughly $55bn of contracted AI rent sits behind five companies whose current revenue is shrinking and whose Texas power approvals are frozen. Would confirm — Cipher's Barber Lake Phase 1 rent beginning in October 2026 and Q3 lease revenue appearing in reported results. Would invalidate — The Texas audit delaying energisation at Beacon Point, Rockdale or Corsicana, pushing 2027 delivery dates right. Watch next — The Public Utility Commission of Texas open meeting on 20 August, where ERCOT seeks its Batch Zero exception. Valuation — Hut 8 34.4x trailing / 33.6x forward sales; TeraWulf 50.2x / 30.2x; Cipher 36.8x / 32.4x; MARA 4.6x / 4.3x.