Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms is having a classic glow-up crisis. Sure, it flexed hard in Q1 2025 by doubling revenue to $161.4 million—a spicy 103.5% jump year-on-year, thanks mostly to a $71.5 million boost from its bread-and-butter Bitcoin mining biz.
But then came the mood killer: a net loss of $296.4 million. Ouch. For context, this time last year, Riot was raking in $211.8 million in profits. That’s quite the pivot from printing money to bleeding it, all while chasing the shiny promises of AI and high-performance computing (HPC).
CEO Jason Les put a brave face on it, pointing to the hard grind of building up the Corsicana Facility, scaling hash rates, and making operations slicker than ever. The market applauded (briefly), with Riot’s stock closing 7.32% up at $7.77, before tripping and sliding 3.73% in after-hours, based on figures from Yahoo Finance.
Still, Riot is determined to go full AI. Following rivals like Hut 8 and Core Scientific, it’s been pouring resources into the Corsicana site—snapping up nearby land, laying fiber lines, and working on a power-packed substation set to deliver 1.0 GW of juice by early 2026. That’s a lot of electricity for future robot overlords.
On the mining front, Riot pumped out 1,530 BTC in Q1, slightly up from 1,364 BTC last year. It ended March holding a tidy stash of 19,223 BTC. But mining isn’t getting any cheaper—the average cost to produce one bitcoin ballooned to $43,808, almost double the $23,034 it cost in Q1 2024. Why? Blame the April 2024 halving and a beefier global hash rate, up 41% year-on-year.
In short, Riot is betting big on AI while Bitcoin mining gets pricier. Bold move—or burnout waiting to happen?
Emmanuel Ekokotu
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