Shares of Cipher Mining (CIFR) are climbing again on Wednesday, and it's not hard to see why. Wall Street is getting excited about the company's big bet on artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC). Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd added fuel to the fire by maintaining an overweight rating and raising his price target from $40.50 to $42.50. That's a pretty bold call for a stock trading around $20.
Byrd isn't alone in his optimism. Last Friday, Needham analyst John Todaro kept a buy rating and bumped his target from $22 to $25. And just last Thursday, Jefferies analyst Jonathan Petersen initiated coverage with a buy rating and a $32 price target. When three analysts in a week all say nice things, the market tends to listen.
The reason for all this love? Cipher is pivoting hard from Bitcoin mining to AI data centers. In its May 5 earnings update, CEO Tyler Page said, "We built on the strong momentum from last year by signing our third AI data center campus lease with an investment-grade Hyperscale tenant in the first quarter." That's a fancy way of saying big, creditworthy companies are renting space in Cipher's data centers to run AI workloads.
And the numbers are staggering. Cipher now has 907 megawatts of operating and contracted capacity, plus a pipeline of about 3.3 gigawatts of grid-connected projects. Of that, 700 MW is specifically for HPC, which translates to over $11.4 billion in contracted revenue. That's a lot of future cash flow, and it explains why analysts are willing to overlook a so-so quarter.
Speaking of which, Cipher's first-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings weren't great. Revenue came in at $34.84 million, missing the consensus estimate of $36.01 million. But Page tried to keep the focus on the future, saying, "Looking forward, we will continue to build on this momentum and establish ourselves as the leading HPC development platform."
There's also a potential short squeeze brewing. Short interest ticked up to 55.95 million shares, or 16.69% of the float. With average daily volume of 23.45 million shares, it would take short sellers about 2.39 days to cover. If the stock keeps rising, those shorts might get nervous and buy back shares, pushing the price even higher.
As of Wednesday afternoon, CIFR shares were up 5.8% at $19.89. Over the past month, the stock has gained about 4%, roughly in line with the S&P 500's 4.2% rise. But year-to-date, Cipher is up about 32%, crushing the S&P 500's 7.8% gain. Not bad for a company that started out mining Bitcoin.
