Author: Heart of Computing Power

On April 12, 2026, Riot Platforms, one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies in North America, disclosed in an SEC filing that its Chief Data Center Officer, Jonathan Gibbs, had resigned.

He directly gave up 1.1 million unvested restricted shares.

At this time, only ten months had passed since he was recruited with great fanfare, and a high-ranking executive threw away his stock options, which he hadn't even had a chance to enjoy, just to leave.

Where exactly did this grand drama of mining companies transitioning to AI get stuck?

1. The mining farm allocated 600 megawatts to the AI, but the people who came to mine it ran away.

Gibbs, 38, was the executive vice president of product delivery at Prime Data Centers (a company that builds customized data centers for cloud providers and large enterprises) before joining Riot. He was responsible for the design, development, and construction of data centers across the United States and had worked in the infrastructure field for more than a decade.

Riot's recruitment of him clearly has only one purpose: to convert the 600 megawatts of power originally intended for mining rigs at its Corsicana, Texas base into a managed data center for AI clients.

In the first quarter of 2025, Riot also sold 3,778 Bitcoins for cash to raise money for the project.

During the same period, the company lowered its mining hashrate target for the end of 2025 from 46.7 EH/s to 38.4 EH/s.

Mining is shrinking, while AI is expanding; the direction is clear.

An insider pointed out, "It would have been unimaginable two years ago for a mining company to be willing to cut its own computing power targets and sell its own cryptocurrency to build data centers. But the problem is, even after cutting targets, selling cryptocurrency, and poaching talent, those people still left."

Gibbs joined the company in June 2025 and left in April 2026, serving for less than a year.

Riot has not publicly stated the reason for Gibbs' departure.

The SEC filing only shows that the stock was cancelled, without any disclosure of the reasons for leaving the company.

But Gibbs' decision to leave, foregoing potential gains of approximately $18.7 million, cannot be explained by a typical job change.

So where exactly is this 600-megawatt AI transformation plan stuck?

Second, the electricity used for mining and the electricity used for AI are not the same type of electricity.

In reality, the distance between mining farms and AI data centers is much greater than Riot's investors thought.

The infrastructure requirements for Bitcoin mining can be summarized in six words: electricity and internet access are all that's needed.

The factory doesn't need constant temperature and humidity. If the machines stop, just restart them. Even if there's a power outage for a few hours, the only loss is mining a few less coins.

But AI data centers are completely different.

Industry insiders break down this gap in detail: "The power redundancy in mining farms is usually N, which is just enough. AI data centers, however, require N+1 or even 2N, with each power supply line needing independent backup and switching times in milliseconds. This single modification alone costs far more than just adding a few generators; the entire power distribution architecture needs to be completely rebuilt."

Besides electricity, the environment is also a major challenge.

The NVIDIA H100 chip has a power of 700W and will reduce its frequency when the temperature exceeds 80 degrees Celsius. The traditional air cooling limit is 12-15kW per cabinet, which cannot handle the AI load. A liquid cooling system must be used. However, the design of the liquid cooling pipeline, the circulation of coolant, and the detection of leaks are all independent projects for mining companies.

At the next level, enterprise cloud customers require availability of 99.99% or higher, with unplanned downtime not exceeding 52 minutes per year.

It's important to understand that mining farms never face such constraints.

An industry insider added, "Mining companies do have inherent advantages in transitioning to AI, but doing AI is not the same as mining. The standards for each process are different, the timeline will get out of control, the budget will get out of control, and people will collapse."

Riot's Corsicana facility was originally built to mining standards, and transforming it into an enterprise-grade AI data center is essentially starting from scratch.

Gibbs was the person brought in to do this, but he left ten months later, and Riot has not announced a successor as of press time.

Could it be that Riot can't handle this level of modification?

III. First Quarter Financial Report: Mining is Profitable, Transformation is Burning Money

Riot's full-year financial report for 2025 looks like two different companies.

On the positive side, revenue reached a record $647.4 million, a 72% increase over the previous year.

Bitcoin mining revenue reached a record high of $576.3 million, with 5,686 coins mined throughout the year, more than 800 more than the previous year.

He has 18,005 bitcoins in his account, worth about $1.6 billion at the end of the year, in addition to more than $300 million in cash.

On the downside, the company suffered a net loss of $663.2 million for the year, compared to a profit of $109.4 million the previous year.

In just one year, the company went from making 100 million to losing 660 million, a difference of over 700 million US dollars.

Adjusted EBITDA (profit excluding non-operating factors) plummeted from $463.2 million in 2024 to just $12.96 million.

The huge losses were mainly due to paper losses caused by Bitcoin price fluctuations, as well as investments in AI transformation.

In this scenario, Riot continued to sell tokens to raise funds in Q1 of 2026, selling 3,778 Bitcoins for $289.5 million in cash.

While cutting back on mining expansion, they are simultaneously increasing management expenses to build AI data centers.

The problem is that the person in charge of the AI transformation just left, there have been no public updates on the project's progress, and the volatility of Bitcoin's price could wipe out another quarter's profits at any time.

An industry insider said, "The story of mining companies turning to AI makes perfect sense on paper, because the ultimate goal of AI is electricity, and mining companies control the grid capacity. But there are always problems in implementation. For example, Riot's first executive left after only ten months."

Riot has not yet announced a successor for its Chief Data Center Officer.

The 600-megawatt AI data center project is currently in a vacancy regarding the person in charge.

When the tide recedes, will those AI data centers built with the proceeds from selling Bitcoin actually bring stable long-term revenue to the companies, or will they just be a bunch of idle electrical equipment?

After all, forcibly changing the underlying DNA of a company is always much more difficult than replacing a graphics card.

Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 0.63% to 102.29 T this morning

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