Riot and Hut 8 count AI leases in tens of billions of dollars while mining still pays the bills

Three listed bitcoin miners reported third-quarter 2026 results on November 4, and two of them, Riot Platforms and Hut 8, now describe their growth in contracted megawatts rather than in bitcoin mined, according to their filings: Riot, Hut 8 and American Bitcoin. The third, American Bitcoin, still earns all of its revenue from mining.

Contracts worth tens of billions against quarterly revenue in the tens of millions

Riot said it signed a 15-year lease with what it called a leading Frontier AI Lab for its entire Corsicana campus, 910 megawatts of critical IT capacity and "approximately $28 billion in total contract value." Including an earlier lease at Rockdale and an AMD contract, Riot has leased 1,151 megawatts, representing about $38 billion of long-term contracted revenue.

Hut 8 said a second lease at its Beacon Point campus brought expected base-term contract value across its AI data center portfolio to about $26.6 billion. Its third-quarter revenue was $71.1 million, of which $1.3 million was Power and $1.4 million Digital Infrastructure, with the rest in Compute.

Those leases are not yet revenue. Riot's first delivery under the Corsicana lease is 400 megawatts in September 2027, and Hut 8 targets initial data hall delivery in the second quarter of 2027 at River Bend and the third quarter of 2027 at Beacon Point Phase 1. Both companies describe the figures as expected or contracted, and both attach conditions such as financing and construction.

What the quarter's revenue still shows

The two segments are still small next to mining at Riot. Riot's revenue was $181.4 million, of which $116.0 million came from Bitcoin Mining and $18.4 million from Data Center, which is about 64% and 10% of the total (computed from the reported figures). At Hut 8, the Power and Digital Infrastructure lines together were $2.7 million of $71.1 million, about 3.8% (computed).

Company	Quarterly revenue	Data center or power-related revenue	Contracted value cited
Riot Platforms	$181.4 million	$18.4 million	about $38 billion
Hut 8	$71.1 million	$2.7 million	about $26.6 billion
American Bitcoin	$63.4 million	none reported	none

Source: company releases, November 4, 2026. Contract values are the companies' own figures. Hut 8's data center line combines Power and Digital Infrastructure revenue.

Bitcoin is being sold to pay for the build

Riot said it sold 20,264 bitcoin in the first nine months of 2026 for proceeds of about $1.5 billion, "primarily to fund data center development." That is about $74,000 per bitcoin on average (computed). It ended September with 2,418 bitcoin and $748.2 million in cash.

Hut 8 used bitcoin sales for a different purpose. It sold about 954 bitcoin for net proceeds of $74.8 million to repurchase 953,802 shares in the quarter, then about 2,148 bitcoin for $175.4 million to repurchase another 2,384,677 shares after quarter-end. The board raised the repurchase authorization to $1.0 billion.

American Bitcoin, which is majority-owned by Hut 8, went the other way. Its reserve grew about 5% to about 8,427 bitcoin, and its chief executive said it did so "without issuing shares through our ATM program or purchasing Bitcoin during the quarter." The company said it sold a portion of production to cover operating costs.

Mining still earns a margin, and gains swamp it

Riot's average cost to mine, excluding depreciation, was $39,265 per bitcoin against an average bitcoin price of $70,855 in the quarter. American Bitcoin's cost to mine was about $42,100 against revenue per bitcoin of about $71,100. By those reported figures the gap is about 45% at Riot and about 41% at American Bitcoin (both computed). The two companies define cost differently and the comparison is only rough. Riot's cost figure includes $24.7 million of power curtailment credits, equal to $15,067 per bitcoin mined.

Bitcoin's own price move distorts the profit lines. Hut 8's net income was $189.5 million, which included $413.8 million of primarily unrealized gains on digital assets, and its Adjusted EBITDA under its revised definition, which excludes mark-to-market gains and losses attributable to Hut 8, was $33.0 million. American Bitcoin's net income of about $126 million came with a gain on digital assets that FinanceInTime reported was larger than the profit itself. FinanceInTime also reported on bitcoin's move after the election.

The filings do not show how much of each company's future profit will come from leases and how much from mining, and none of the three gives a figure.

The profit that depends on bitcoin's price is shrinking in importance, but not yet in size

We think the quarter shows a business model changing faster than its income statement. Riot and Hut 8 are asking investors to value them on contracts that start paying in 2027 and 2028, while the current profit still moves with a price neither controls. We do not forecast price levels.

The opportunity is that rent on contracted capacity does not move with bitcoin. Riot's lease, in the company's description, is payable on all 910 megawatts "irrespective of utilization." The threat is execution: construction, financing and tenant terms that the filings themselves call forward-looking. Selling bitcoin to pay for the build also gives up the asset these companies were built around, a trade-off American Bitcoin has so far declined.

We would watch two things in the next filings: how much data center revenue appears against the contract values, and whether mining margins hold at the roughly 41% to 45% gap seen here. Our view would change if delivery dates slip or if financing for the new campuses requires equity.

The view in this final section is FinanceInTime's editorial opinion, for information only. It is not investment, tax, legal or other advice, and it does not take your circumstances into account. Forecasts are uncertain and past results do not guarantee future ones.