CIFR · Amazon started paying rent at Black Pearl. Nine AI-campus names still mix tenants, backstops, and blanks.

Why this theme is on the tape

Nine former Bitcoin miners now print as AI-campus landlords. The headline is usually one pile of names: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Nvidia, AMD, CoreWeave, Fluidstack. Those names do not all do the same job. One is on the lease. One backstops the tenant. One owns the GPUs. One is a press report about an unnamed hall. Mixing them into a single “partner quality” ranking is how the tape turns a map into a buy list.

This article charts Cipher Digital Inc. (NASDAQ: CIFR) — formerly Cipher Mining — because Amazon Data Services is a named tenant, Google sits behind Fluidstack as credit support, and Black Pearl started collecting HPC rent in August 2026. The other eight names are listed so an “AI campus” headline is not treated as one book. It is a map, not a ranking, and not a trade instruction.

Four jobs that get lumped together

A hyperscaler or frontier lab on the lease is the cleanest public tell: they owe rent if the hall is delivered. Cipher’s Black Pearl book and TeraWulf’s Anthropic lease in Kentucky sit there. A credit backstop is a different job. Google’s Fluidstack support at Cipher’s Barber Lake, TeraWulf’s Lake Mariner, and Hut 8’s River Bend means Google stands behind the tenant’s payment obligations. It is not Google taking the hall as a colocation customer in the public telling.

A chip company or GPU-cloud operator can be the named tenant, the hardware stack, or both. AMD’s Core Scientific and Riot leases are tenant lines. IREN’s Microsoft and Nvidia contracts are GPU-cloud seats where IREN owns more of the kit. Dell shows up as a technology provider on some campuses, including Bitdeer’s Tydal halls. That is not the same as Dell signing a landlord lease.

An unnamed investment-grade tenant, unnamed hyperscaler, or unnamed frontier lab is a contracted line with a missing name. Applied Digital, Riot, CleanSpark, Bitdeer, and Hut 8’s Beacon Point all have at least one of those blanks. Press IDs are not company filings. This article keeps them apart.

How much is up, and who it is for

The CIFR price chart above is the stock. The table below is campus load plus the initial-term dollars the company has named for that lease or cloud seat. Cyan in the load column is live or billing critical IT. Magenta is contracted and still coming. The megawatt total on this figure is those two added together. Dollars are contracted payments over the initial term, not extensions and not a valuation. A dash means the company has not given a clean base-term figure for that line. This is a map of disclosed megawatts and named deal dollars. It does not rank the stocks.

What Cipher has actually printed, and who is on the lease

Cipher rebranded from Cipher Mining in February 2026. For the quarter ended 30 June 2026 it reported $25 million of revenue and adjusted EBITDA of −$30 million. Restricted cash was large because project bonds sit at the campuses. That print is still mostly the old compute book. HPC rent at Black Pearl began after the quarter closed, so none of it is in the $25 million.

Black Pearl, near Wink, Texas, is a 15-year triple-net lease covering about 300 MW of gross capacity and 216 MW of critical IT load. Cipher’s project-financing materials name Amazon Data Services, Inc. as the tenant, with Amazon.com as parent guarantor on base rent and operating expenses, about $5.5 billion of contracted lease payments over the initial term, and no termination for convenience after final rent commencement. The Q2 2026 release still called the counterparty an investment-grade hyperscale tenant. Under an amendment at the tenant’s request, Cipher began delivering initial capacity at the beginning of August 2026 — two months ahead of the original October 1 first-rent target — and said rent had commenced. Initial delivery is not the whole 216 MW. Remaining Phase I halls were still in mechanical fit-out; Phase II was still structure and underground electrical.

Barber Lake, in Colorado City, Texas, is the Fluidstack campus. The original September 2025 lease was 168 MW of critical IT for ten years, about $3 billion of base-term contracted revenue, with Google LLC backstopping Fluidstack’s obligations and receiving Cipher warrants. Later company materials describe a roughly 300 MW gross Barber Lake campus with Fluidstack/Google. Google is the backstop and an equity-linked holder, not the named colocation tenant. In Q2 the tenant had commenced beneficial use — partial occupancy and network racks. First-phase commercial delivery was still a September 2026 target, with rent a later 2026 clock, often described as October. Beneficial use is not the same as full rent.

Stingray is the third contracted HPC campus, under construction and fully funded through substantial completion by an $810 million project bond priced at 6.000%. Company materials have grouped it with the Amazon-leased Texas book. Earthwork and underground electrical were underway in Q2. Apollo is an option on about 288 acres within 25 miles of San Antonio for up to 900 MW of studied load in ERCOT Batch Zero. An option is not a lease. Cipher has pointed to on the order of $11.4 billion of contracted HPC revenue across the leased Texas campuses. Contracted dollars are not Q2’s $25 million.

The other tape names, without ranking them

These are the U.S.-listed names that usually move when headlines say miners became AI landlords. They are not a ranked list. Each one sits on a different counterparty clock. Live megawatts, contracted gigawatts, and unnamed tenants are not the same print.

• CIFR (Cipher Digital) — Amazon Data Services on the Black Pearl lease (~216 MW critical IT, ~$5.5 billion base term); rent commenced August 2026 on initial capacity. Fluidstack is the Barber Lake tenant; Google backstops Fluidstack and holds warrants. Stingray is still construction. Q2 printed $25 million.
• WULF (TeraWulf) — possibly the cleanest named-tenant story in the group: Anthropic itself signed the 20-year, about 401 MW lease at Justified in Hawesville, Kentucky (~$19 billion initial / ~$33 billion with extensions; delivery 2H 2027–early 2028). Lake Mariner has 102 MW live. Fluidstack is the large HPC lease there; Google’s $600 million credit support is a backstop, not Google as colocation tenant. Core42 (G42) is also a named Lake Mariner tenant.
• HUT (Hut 8) — the widest public collection, if confirmed relationships and press reports are not mixed. River Bend is a 245 MW, 15-year Fluidstack lease (~$7.0 billion base term) with a Google financial backstop; Hut 8 and Fluidstack also described a broader partnership to deliver infrastructure that Anthropic would use on Fluidstack clusters. That makes Anthropic a named downstream compute user on River Bend, not the entity on the Hut 8 lease. Beacon Point in Nueces County, Texas, is 704 MW contracted to an unnamed high-investment-grade tenant (~$19.6 billion base term). Hut 8 has not officially named that tenant. Press reports have pointed at Nvidia holding a lease and Lambda selling compute toward Anthropic. Those reports are not Hut 8’s filing. Delivery is a 2027 clock. Almost none of the 949 MW AI book is live yet.
• CORZ (Core Scientific) — probably the strongest named chip-company relationship. In July 2026 the company announced 15-year AMD agreements for about 530 MW across five sites and more than $14 billion of potential base contracted revenue, with an exclusive reservation right toward about another 2 GW (up to about 2.5 GW in total). About 380 MW is direct triple-net to AMD at Pecos, Hunt, and Muskogee; about 150 MW at Auburn and Dalton is for an unnamed neocloud with AMD credit support. CoreWeave remains a separate ~590 MW book. Total leased capacity was about 1.1 GW / more than $24 billion. By mid-July Core Scientific was billing 437 MW (~$635 million annualized colocation). AMD’s 530 MW is still a 2027–2028 delivery, not that billing line.
• IREN (IREN Limited) — Microsoft, Nvidia, and a hardware stack, with more GPU-ownership risk than a WULF-style landlord. The five-year, $9.7 billion Microsoft cloud agreement is the named hyperscaler seat; Horizon 1 at Childress was accepted on 13 August 2026. A separate five-year, $3.4 billion Nvidia AI Cloud contract (May 2026) covers air-cooled Blackwell in existing Childress capacity. Dell appears in the broader GPU/server stack on some IREN halls; it is not a named IREN landlord tenant in the company’s Microsoft and Nvidia releases. IREN owns GPUs. A landlord lease and a GPU-cloud contract are different residual-value stories.
• APLD (Applied Digital) — CoreWeave is named: 400 MW at Polaris Forge 1, 175 MW live as of 30 June 2026. Fiscal 2026 printed $611.3 million. The larger economic line is an unnamed investment-grade hyperscaler that Applied Digital says has now chosen it for three campuses — Polaris Forge 3 and Delta Forge 1 at 300 MW / about $7.5 billion of base-term revenue each, plus Delta Forge 2 at 210 MW / about $5.2 billion — roughly $20 billion of contracted revenue. The company has not publicly identified that customer. The full book is 1,410 MW / about $36 billion of base-term lease revenue. Live megawatts are still the CoreWeave campus.
• RIOT (Riot Platforms) — AMD is named; the larger lease is not. AMD’s Rockdale lease was amended to 50 MW; the first 25 MW was delivered on time in Q2 2026, with the rest aimed at November 2026 and May 2027. After quarter-end Riot signed a 20-year, 191 MW build-to-suit with “one of the world’s leading frontier AI labs” at Rockdale — about $9.1 billion initial / about $16.1 billion with extensions; 96 MW targeted for December 2027 and the full 191 MW for June 2028. Combined contracted IT is 241 MW / about $9.8 billion. The unnamed lab is much larger economically than AMD’s existing contract. Riot has not named the lab. Press reports have pointed at Anthropic. Those reports are not Riot’s filing.
• CLSK (CleanSpark) — the numbers are large and the name is missing. On 14 July 2026 CleanSpark announced a 20-year triple-net lease for 175 MW of critical IT at Sandersville, Georgia, with a “high-investment-grade global technology company” that it did not identify: about $6.6 billion of contracted revenue over the initial term, about $11.6 billion if both five-year extensions are exercised, about $330 million of average annual NOI contribution, deliveries from Q4 2027. The same tenant executed a letter of intent and exclusivity over CleanSpark’s Texas portfolio (718 acres, up to 885 MW of secured and planned power). An LOI is not a definitive lease. If that tenant is later named as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Nvidia, or another similarly strong counterparty, the CLSK reading would sit closer to the named-tenant group. Until then it is a contracted line with a blank.
• BTDR (Bitdeer) — Volta is on the lease; the lab sits one step downstream. On 4 August 2026 Bitdeer’s Tydal Data Center AS signed a 16-year colocation and services agreement with Volta Tydal AS for 121 IT MW (about 133 MW gross) at Tydal, Norway: about $4.7 billion over the initial term, about $8.0 billion with an eight-year renewal. Dell is the named technology provider; the 121 MW is configured for Nvidia GPUs. Volta’s customer is an unnamed “leading AI lab.” Press reports have pointed at Anthropic. Bitdeer did not name the lab. Phase I is targeted for 31 December 2026 and Phase II for 31 March 2027, with credit-support milestones still in front of the payments. Volta carries less public counterparty weight than Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Anthropic on the landlord’s own lease.

Where a name would change the reading

Partner quality is not a stock ranking. It is a question of who owes the rent, who stands behind the tenant, and who is still a blank. On that map, Cipher is unusual because Amazon is a named tenant and Google is a named backstop on a second campus, and initial Black Pearl rent has already started. TeraWulf is unusual because Anthropic signed the Kentucky lease rather than sitting only as a downstream compute user. Riot is unusual because AMD is already billing a small hall while the 191 MW frontier-lab line — the larger economic contract — still has no public name. CleanSpark is the blank with Sandersville-sized dollars: the tenant quality, if disclosed, would change how that book is read. None of that is a statement about valuation, and none of it is a trade.

What this does not tell you

Amazon paying rent on initial Black Pearl capacity is evidence that Cipher delivered a first HPC hall and that a named hyperscaler is on the lease. It is not proof that 216 MW is all billing, that Barber Lake rent starts on the October clock, that Stingray or Apollo become leases on a dated calendar, or that Q3’s income statement already looks like an $11.4 billion contracted book. Google’s Fluidstack backstops at Cipher, TeraWulf, and Hut 8 are credit support. They are not Google colocation deals. Anthropic on TeraWulf’s Kentucky lease is not Anthropic on Hut 8’s Beacon Point lease, Riot’s 191 MW hall, or Bitdeer’s Tydal campus unless those companies say so.

Live megawatts (TeraWulf’s 102 MW, Applied Digital’s 175 MW, Core Scientific’s 437 MW billing, Riot’s 25 MW AMD, IREN’s accepted Horizon 1) are not the contracted gigawatts behind them. The table uses only disclosed live versus contracted IT load, plus initial-term dollars where the company named them. Cipher’s Amazon line stays in coming until the company breaks out how much of Black Pearl is already on. Unnamed tenants at Beacon Point, Applied Digital’s three-campus hyperscaler, Riot’s frontier lab, CleanSpark’s Sandersville counterparty, and Volta’s AI lab are contracted lines with missing names. Press reports are not filings.

On MarketNeon, CIFR is the chart on this page because Amazon is a named tenant and rent has commenced. HUT, WULF, CORZ, IREN, APLD, RIOT, CLSK, and BTDR can run hot on the same “AI campus” headline while their counterparties sit on different clocks. This article is context for those prints. It does not rank the names, and it does not tell anyone to buy or sell.