On September 26th, Macquarie awarded "outperform" ratings to several bitcoin mining stocks, including MARA, Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, Clean Spark, and Cipher Mining, citing the companies' increasing shift from specific crypto businesses to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) models. In recent years, bitcoin miners have increasingly diversified their businesses, moving from pure crypto mining to infrastructure hosting artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Macquarie analysts Paul Golding and Emma Liang said the trend accelerated after bitcoin's fourth halving event in April. "Some miners see unprecedented access to electricity... as an opportunity to enter the non-crypto-related custody space. Others see this as a distraction from accumulating bitcoin on their balance sheets... but in most cases, growth in mining capacity, and/or land/GPU acquisitions for HPC/AI, has been achieved through the issuance of diluted equity," the analysts wrote in a note Tuesday evening. Macquarie believes several miners will benefit significantly in the long term as the shift to high-performance computing accelerates. Analysts also pointed out that while operating artificial intelligence cloud products in the facilities of bitcoin miners is still in its early stages, these companies have the potential to play a significant role in the artificial intelligence computing market.