Bitcoin Miners Lead Crypto Stock Bounce as OpenAI-Broadcom Deal Fuels AI Trade

Crypto mining stocks tied to the red-hot artificial intelligence (AI) data center trade were the fastest horses on Monday to recover from Friday's market rout. Bitfarms (BITF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) surged 26% and 20% respectively on Monday, while Bitdeer (BTDR), IREN (IREN) and MARA Holdings (MARA) advanced around 10%. The rally reflects optimism that booming AI compute demand will help miners. Perhaps boosting sentiment was ChatGPT creator OpenAI striking a deal with chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO) to build up custom chips for AI and machine learning. Also on Monday, Bloom Energy (BE) announced a $5 billion deal with Brookfield Asset Management to deploy fuel cells in data centers to satisfy AI's voracious energy demand. The gains occurred after Friday's steep downturn as trade tensions between the U.S. and China ratcheted up, with Trump imposing a 100% increase in tariffs on Chinese goods to retaliate against tightening rare earth metals export controls. Investor concerns eased somewhat over the weekend, and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes were up 2.1% and 1.4% on Monday. Other crypto related names enjoyed modest gains. Strategy (MSTR), the world's largest bitcoin treasury firm, climbed 2.8%, while crypto exchange Coinbase was roughly flat. Digital brokerage Robinhood, which earns a large portion of its revenue from crypto trading, was up 1%. Ethereum (ETH) treasury firm BitMine (BMNR), meanwhile, bounced almost 7% as the firm said to capitalize on the crypto plunge of the past few days, purchasing over 200,000 tokens worth over $840 million at current prices. Read more: Tom Lee's BitMine Bought the Dip, Adding Over 200K ETH to Ethereum Treasury