Shares of several bitcoin miners with large Texas campuses that are expanding into AI and data center infrastructure gained on Thursday as state regulators approved a new framework for connecting large electricity users to the grid.
Cipher Digital (CIFR) reached a new all-time high of $30 today and is up over 10% according to The Block's equities price page, while Core Scientific (CORZ) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) were up 3% and 2.2%, respectively.
This comes as the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved ERCOT's new "Batch Zero" process for allocating grid capacity power to large-scale electricity users.
Texas is grappling with a massive wave of power demand from the AI data center sector. ERCOT says more than 438,000 megawatts of proposed demand are currently in its connection queue, with roughly 90% of those requests coming from data centers.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas developed the new system after realizing its older approach of evaluating power requests one by one was becoming too slow.
As the title suggests, projects will now be evaluated in batches, allowing the agency to "assess how all the projects interact with each other and with the existing grid, producing a single, coordinated picture of what transmission upgrades are needed."
The changes could be a boon for the handful of bitcoin mining firms that have spent years building power-hungry facilities across Texas and are now marketing their campuses for AI and high-performance computing workloads.
Cipher Digital has signed multiple hyperscaler AI agreements across its Texas facilities, including a $5.5 billion Amazon Web Services lease at its Black Pearl campus and an earlier Barber Lake deal supported by a Google guarantee.
Riot Platforms reported its data center revenue debut earlier this year, generating $33 million while expanding AMD's lease agreement to 50 megawatts. It continues to build out its Corsicana campus, which is expected to support up to 1 gigawatt in power.
Meanwhile, Core Scientific generated $78 million in colocation revenue in the first quarter, more than double the revenue from its bitcoin mining operations.
Texas is not alone in struggling to meet power demands for AI infrastructure.
Also on Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered six regional grid operators outside of Texas to show that the companies building data centers in their regions aren't passing those costs onto households and businesses and that their policies protect grid reliability.
FERC Chair Laura Swett described the issue as one of the country's top priorities.
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