Crypto miners are increasingly finding that the hottest customer in AI isn't buying Bitcoin (BTC)—it's buying power. Within days of each other, TeraWulf Inc. (WULF) and IREN Ltd. (IREN) emerged as the latest beneficiaries of Anthropic's AI infrastructure buildout. They just added to a trend that has been quietly reshaping the industry's former Bitcoin miners.

The common thread isn't cryptocurrency anymore. It is access to the land, electricity and data center capacity that frontier AI companies are racing to secure.

The developments suggest Anthropic isn't simply signing isolated infrastructure deals—it's increasingly turning to a familiar group of companies that already own one of AI's scarcest resources: megawatts.

Anthropic's Latest Winners

TeraWulf stole the spotlight this week after announcing a 20-year lease agreement with Anthropic at its Justified Data Campus in Kentucky. The deal is expected to generate approximately $19 billion in contracted revenue, transforming the former Bitcoin miner into a long-term AI infrastructure provider. Alongside the announcement, TeraWulf said it would sell its 50.1% interest in the Abernathy joint venture to recycle capital into wholly owned AI infrastructure assets.

Days earlier, IREN shares surged after the company revealed it had been shortlisted for Anthropic's reported $15 billion AI data center project. The news sparked a sharp rally, helped by the stock's elevated short interest, and quickly shifted attention away from investor concerns surrounding the company's recently approved executive compensation package.

Taken together, the announcements point to a broader pattern rather than two standalone wins.

A Club That's Getting Bigger

Long before TeraWulf and IREN grabbed headlines, Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) had already secured its own role in Anthropic's AI ambitions.

Last year, Hut 8 partnered with Anthropic and cloud provider Fluidstack to develop hyperscale AI infrastructure. The partnership marked one of the earliest examples of a publicly traded Bitcoin miner pivoting from cryptocurrency toward powering large language models.

Now, TeraWulf's blockbuster lease and IREN's project shortlist suggest Anthropic is expanding that playbook rather than reinventing it.

That shouldn't come as a surprise. Bitcoin miners spent years building power-intensive operations with access to substations, transmission infrastructure and large-scale energy contracts. These assets have now become increasingly valuable as AI developers race to deploy ever-larger computing clusters.

The New AI Currency

The market is beginning to value those assets differently.

For years, investors judged crypto miners largely on Bitcoin prices and mining efficiency. Increasingly, however, companies with abundant power capacity are being rewarded for something entirely different: their ability to host AI workloads.

If Anthropic continues leaning on former Bitcoin miners to expand its infrastructure footprint, TeraWulf and IREN may not be the exceptions—they could be the latest members of a growing club.

For investors, that shifts the question from which miner will produce the most Bitcoin to which one owns the next gigawatt of AI-ready power.