Thursday, Bitcoin miner-turned-AI-factory Cipher Mining (Nasdaq: CIFR) announced a $1.4 billion senior note due 2030 to finance the construction of its data center in Texas. The notes will pay 7.125% and we’re given a ‘BB-” rating by credit rating agency Fitch due to “elevated completion risk,” mainly due to the aggressive timeline for deployment.
Cipher expects its tenants to move in the summer of 2026.
The proceeds will fund part of the construction of its Barber Lake Facility, a high-performance computing data center near Colorado City, Texas, which just signed deals with both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Fluidstack as major tenants at the 244 megawatt (MW) facility.
Cipher intends to use the debt instruments to fund development of the 168 megawatts (MW) of critical IT load for Fluidstack, per Fitch.
Cipher said it will provide a completion guarantee for the Barber Lake Facility, committing to fund its subsidiary if the proceeds from the notes and other available funds are insufficient to finish construction.
Financial engineering has become a common check list item for Bitcoin miners pivoting toward “powershell” AI infrastructure builds. Convertible notes, which allow a company to raise large amounts of cash with minimal initial dilution, have become a favorite for mining CFOs.
