The Public Utility Commission of Texas has approved ERCOT’s ‘Batch Zero’ system for allocating electrical capacity, boosting shares of Cipher, Riot, and Core Scientific.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved on Thursday the new “Batch Zero” framework developed by ERCOT to manage grid connection requests from large industrial consumers. The decision pushed up the share prices of several Bitcoin mining companies operating in Texas that are converting their campuses into artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure, according to a report by The Block.
Cipher Digital (CIFR) hit a new all-time high of $30 on Thursday, gaining more than 10%. Core Scientific (CORZ) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) rose 3% and 2.2% respectively. The rally reflects industry operators’ expectations that the new system will simplify and accelerate grid access for high energy-consumption projects.
The problem the framework aims to solve is significant: ERCOT currently has more than 438,000 megawatts of proposed demand in its connection queue, approximately 90% of which comes from data centers. The old system evaluated requests one by one, proving too slow to handle a wave of this magnitude. With the new batch approach, the agency will be able to “assess how all projects interact with each other and with the existing grid, producing a single, coordinated picture of the necessary transmission upgrades.”
Mining companies that have built high-consumption facilities in Texas over the years are now among the primary beneficiaries of this change. Cipher Digital has signed agreements with AI hyperscalers across multiple Texas campuses, including a $5.5 billion lease contract with Amazon Web Services at the Black Pearl campus and an earlier agreement at Lake Barber backed by a Google guarantee. Riot Platforms recorded its data center revenue debut in the first part of the year, generating $33 million and expanding its lease agreement with AMD to 50 megawatts, while continuing to develop the Corsicana campus, which is expected to support up to 1 gigawatt of power.
Core Scientific generated $78 million in colocation revenue in the first quarter, more than double its Bitcoin mining revenue. The transition toward AI services is thus redefining the business model of major miners, who leverage existing energy infrastructure to offer computational capacity to institutional clients. On this topic, the growing institutionalization of the Bitcoin ecosystem is also opening new frontiers in the lending and financial services segment.
Texas is not the only front on which this game is being played. Also on Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered six regional grid operators outside Texas to demonstrate that costs related to data center connections are not being passed on to households and businesses, and that their policies safeguard grid reliability. FERC Chair Laura Swett described the issue as one of the country’s top national priorities.
