JPMorgan has upgraded Bitcoin miners Cipher Mining (Nasdaq: CIFR) and CleanSpark (Nasdaq: CLSK) to Overweight in its coverage citing a rise in high-performance computing agreements that increased confidence in miners’ colocation strategies, according to a new report published Monday.
The firm now values a megawatt of critical IT colocation capacity between $8 million to $17 million, up from $4 million to $9 million. Similarly, a megawatt of critical IT cloud capacity could be worth as much as $19 million, compared with $12 million previously.
Cipher received a new December 2026 price target of $18, up from $12. CleanSpark’s December 2026 target was kept at $14. JPMorgan attributed the upgrades to recently announced hosting agreements and projected conversions of approved power capacity to HPC use. The bank cited more than 600 MW of gross contracted HPC capacity between recent deals by Cipher and IREN.
The report stated that Cipher could reach about 480 MW of critical IT capacity by 2026, reflecting 64 percent of its approved power portfolio. CleanSpark’s outlook incorporated assumptions for a colocation contract at its 285 MW site in Texas by late 2026. JPMorgan assigned a blended valuation of $14 million per MW for Cipher and $13 million per MW for CleanSpark when calculating the updated targets.
The bank raised IREN’s (Nasdaq: IREN) price target to $39 from $28 and kept the stock at Underweight. IREN’s target was based on a critical IT valuation of $17 million per MW and an assumed 660 MW of HPC load by 2026. JPMorgan lowered Riot Platforms’ (Nasdaq: RIOT) target to $17 from $19 and MARA Holdings’ (Nasdaq: MARA) target to $13 from $20 after updating bitcoin price, network hashrate and share-count assumptions.
JPMorgan’s diluted share-count estimates are on average 20 percent to 33 percent higher than the figures listed in Bloomberg for the miners it covers. The report cited at-the-market issuance programs, convertible-note dilution and option exercises as factors contributing to the difference.
Cipher’s diluted share count was revised to 480 million. CleanSpark’s estimate rose to 334 million. The bank also reported that combined diluted market capitalizations for Cipher, CleanSpark, IREN, Riot and MARA were about $8 billion higher than indicated when using Bloomberg share-count data.
Bitcoin’s decline of about 17 percent since the bank’s prior update led JPMorgan to revise its mining-related assumptions. It updated its baseline network hashrate to 1,080 EH/s and daily revenue per EH/s to $39,600. Mining businesses were valued using a range of $1 million to $2 million per MW based on cost structures and expected post-halving margins.
The firm also outlined upside scenarios assuming full conversion of miners’ power portfolios to HPC. Cipher showed the largest potential upside when including unapproved capacity that may not energize until 2028 or later. CleanSpark’s full power portfolio could support a significantly higher valuation in a full HPC conversion scenario, the report stated.
Miners under JPMorgan’s coverage could sign an additional 1 GW of HPC agreements by the end of 2026, the bank said.
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