Riot Platforms, Inc.
Overview
Riot Platforms (Nasdaq: RIOT), based in Castle Rock, Colorado and formerly known as Riot Blockchain, is one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners in North America. Its business has historically run on three legs: Bitcoin mining at company-owned, vertically integrated facilities; an Engineering segment (the former ESS Metron) that builds power distribution and electrical equipment; and power/demand-response activity that monetizes its interruptible load in the ERCOT Texas market. As of the Q1 2026 10-Q, the company controls roughly 1.26 GW of developed, energized grid power plus another ~0.6 GW of approved/under-construction capacity at Corsicana.
The crown jewels are two Central Texas sites. The Rockdale Facility provides up to ~700 MW of developed capacity on land Riot now owns fee-simple after a 200-acre acquisition. The Corsicana Facility in Navarro County is equipped for ~400 MW today and is approved to reach ~1 GW, with a 600 MW substation under construction. A Kentucky facility adds 162 MW (up from 65 MW a year earlier). Together the Texas footprint is the ~1.7 GW headline management cites.
What changed the story is the January 2026 lease with AMD at Rockdale, Riot's first third-party AI/HPC data center tenancy. Riot is the landlord, leasing energized capacity out rather than renting it. The company began recognizing data center revenue in Q1 2026 ($33.2M, mostly tenant fit-out services), and CEO Jason Les framed the quarter as 'a definitive inflection point' marking Riot's transition into an active, revenue-generating data center operator.
Market Thesis
The power is the entire thesis. Riot is not promising to find megawatts; it already owns large blocks of energized, fully interconnected ERCOT grid power that took years to permit and build. In a market where the binding constraint for AI compute is grid power and interconnection queues stretch years, owning ~1.26 GW online plus a path to ~1 GW at Corsicana is a scarce, real asset. The AMD lease proves the conversion thesis is more than a slide: 50 MW of critical IT load contracted, a 10-year primary term, roughly $636M of total revenue and ~$51M average annual NOI, with a 91% gross margin on the first 5 MW delivered. AMD already exercised its expansion from 25 MW to 50 MW, with a path to 200 MW.
The bull case: Riot is being re-rated from a volatile miner trading on Bitcoin to a contracted infrastructure landlord with hyperscaler-grade tenancy. If it converts even a fraction of its 1.7 GW Texas portfolio to AI leases at AMD-like economics, the recurring, high-margin lease revenue dwarfs the lumpy mining cash flows, and the ~$1B Bitcoin treasury plus minimal debt fund the buildout without dilution. The Street has noticed — multiple firms moved targets into the high-$30s in June 2026.
The bear case is that the AI revenue is still tiny against the hype. The signed AI offtake is only 50 MW of a 1.86 GW base — well under 3% — and exit-2026 lease run-rate is guided to just ~$38M. The other ~1.2 GW still mines Bitcoin, so the P&L remains hostage to BTC price; Q1 2026's $500M net loss was driven by a $326.7M fair-value markdown on its Bitcoin holdings. Converting mining halls to Tier-of-service data centers is capital-intensive and slow, Corsicana's 600 MW end-use is still under 'formal evaluation,' and Riot is unproven as a colocation operator competing against CoreWeave, Crusoe, and dedicated developers.
Approach
Owns ~1.86 GW of ERCOT grid power and is leasing energized capacity to AMD as a landlord, not running GPUs itself. Still ~97% Bitcoin-mining load today; AI is a 50 MW sliver. Power/real-estate first, compute later.
Power Position
Operational power is energized and earning today. Secured is grid-secured or under construction — not yet drawing load. Announced is pipeline — committed sites and stated intent. The gap between them is where the risk, and the re-rating, live.