CoreWeave, a public Bitcoin miner that dumped Bitcoin for an AI venture, is winning big. According to Blocksbridge Consulting, CoreWeave’s successful $8.5 billion GPU-backed loan has confirmed the AI boom or ‘ComputeFi’ and, by extension, the death of ‘MinerFi’.
The research examined the 2021 Bitcoin mining boom, which crashed hard as the price of BTC fell while the hashrate (computing power and number of miners) soared.
At the end of the 2021 cycle, the sales value of old ASICs (platforms used to mine BTC) dropped and the BTC price crash worsened the situation.
In contrast, newer mining hardware, including Nvidia’s GPU (general processing units), could easily be used for other things. Especially as AI’s demands on data processing and power balloons increase.
As a result, most miners with the latest hardware have easily transitioned partially or fully to AI during the current cycle.
Others like it MARA have been forced to liquidate their BTC holdings to fund these pivots. However, players like CoreWeave have opted for GPU-backed lending, using the computer racks as collateral.
In fact, CoreWeave’s $8.5 billion is unprecedented because it is the largest loan facility ever made using computer racks as collateral in the industry.
And the advantage of ‘ComputeFi’ doesn’t stop at the extensive financing capacity either.
Will the AI Shift Deepen Among Bitcoin Miners?
According to the research firm, ‘ComputeFi’ has solved the speculative nature of the ‘minerFi’ problem.
In the last cycle, BTC and crypto have become mainstream. In fact, most banks and asset managers now allow this to investors to borrow against their crypto holdings. However, overall profitability has increased stretched the sustainability of BTC mining.
Aside from the halving of block rewards in 2024, BTC’s decline has dragged daily miner revenue from over $50 million in 2025 to under $40 million in 2026.
In such a distressed environment, even skilled and active miners looking to transition to AI using solely their BTC earnings may face a challenge.
On the contrary, CoreWeave earned $5.13 billion in revenue by 2025 – representing an annual growth rate of 168%. For MARA, which has partially transitioned to AI, revenue generated was $907 million, indicating an increase of 38%. However, it also suffered a loss of 1.3 billion on its BTC holdings during the crypto winter.
Given declining miner revenues, the ongoing shift to AI among public miners may not slow down anytime soon.
Final summary
- CoreWeave’s $8.5 billion loan, backed by computer hardware, could set the model for future financing of AI ventures.
- The AI shift is also considered more sustainable than the speculative nature of BTC mining.