How power capacity decides the mining-to-AI pivot

Capacity is the product

The pivot from bitcoin mining to AI and high-performance computing (HPC) comes down to one question. Who has power that is secured, energized and ready for a tenant?

The latest earnings calls from three companies show the same move in different stages. Riot Platforms has leases signed. Keel Infrastructure has utility capacity secured and an expansion planned. MARA Holdings has a large pipeline that still needs approvals. Reading each company by the stage of its megawatts is more useful than reading the headlines about AI demand.

Riot: capacity turned into contracts

Riot Platforms ($RIOT) is the furthest along in these facts. It has secured a data center lease with AMD for 50 megawatts of critical IT capacity at Rockdale, with full delivery scheduled for May 2027.⁵

The larger deal is with a leading frontier AI lab. Riot executed a lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at Rockdale, expected to generate approximately $9.1 billion in total contract revenue.¹ Critical IT capacity is the power actually available to the tenant's computing equipment, so it is the number a lease is priced on.

The company says the two leases together carry approximately $416 million to $462 million in estimated average annual net operating income (NOI), the profit a site earns after its running costs.⁶ That is contracted income tied to named tenants, which is a different thing from a pipeline of potential sites.

This is why Riot ranks first in our score. The data shows the pivot at the point where capacity has become signed revenue, and the same Rockdale site hosts both leases.^5,1

Keel: secured power, with room to grow

Keel Infrastructure sits one step earlier. It has secured utility capacity of 350 megawatts at Panther Creek with PPL.⁷ A utility-secured connection matters because getting grid power is often the slowest part of building a data center.

The company is also planning to expand Panther Creek's power capacity up to 500 megawatts or more.³ That is a plan, and it holds only if the expansion is delivered as described.

Keel has also secured uncontracted power in PJM for Sharon.⁴ PJM is the grid operator for that region. The word to notice is uncontracted: the power is in hand, but the facts do not show a tenant signed for it. That is the gap Riot has already closed at Rockdale, and it is why Keel is third in our score and not higher.

MARA: the largest pipeline, with conditions attached

MARA Holdings is second in our score, and its facts read differently. The company expects its power portfolio to reach approximately 4.8 gigawatts upon completion of pending transactions and required approvals.⁸ Both conditions matter, because the figure is a target and not capacity in service.

A large part of that rests on one site. MARA acquired rights to a powered land site in Matagorda County, Texas, representing up to 2 GW of potential capacity.⁹ The company says the site has the potential to support approximately 2 GW of future capacity upon ERCOT and interconnection approval.² ERCOT is the Texas grid operator, so approval is the step that turns a land right into usable power.

MARA also has capacity that already earns. Long Ridge's power output is more than 70% contracted under long term agreements.¹⁰ That gives the company an operating base of contracted power next to a pipeline that is still waiting on approvals.

What to watch next

The three companies give a simple way to sort the pivot. Contracted capacity with named tenants sits at the top of the ladder. Secured but uncontracted power is the next rung. Potential capacity awaiting approvals comes after that. Riot's Rockdale leases are on the first rung, Keel's Panther Creek and Sharon are on the second, and MARA's Matagorda County is on the third.^1,7,4,2

The next earnings reports should show which megawatts moved up a rung. Watch for three things: a tenant named against Keel's uncontracted PJM power, ERCOT and interconnection approval at MARA's Matagorda County site, and delivery progress on Riot's AMD lease toward its scheduled May 2027 date.^4,2,5

Rank in our score is an observation about the data and not a forecast. If those milestones arrive as the companies describe them, the ordering can change, and that is the reason to keep reading the stage of each megawatt and not just the total.