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Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered a comprehensive audit of every data center project waiting for grid connection in the state on Monday, a move Bernstein analysts said will slow new supply and raise the value of power capacity that miners and AI operators have already secured.
Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and grid operator ERCOT to review all data center projects sitting in the state's interconnection queue, where such requests now make up roughly 90% of ERCOT's 474 gigawatt pipeline. The order immediately paused ERCOT's "Batch Zero" process, which had been due to classify the first group of large electricity users this month.
In a note to clients Tuesday, Bernstein said the audit would create delays for developers with pipeline assets still pending approval, but leave existing, already-approved operations untouched. The firm named Cipher, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific as the miners with the most exposure to delay, since their near-term expansion plans depend on new Texas grid connections. Riot Platforms, IREN, and TeraWulf were flagged as relative beneficiaries — the first two through already-approved Texas footprints, TeraWulf through power diversified across Kentucky, Maryland, and New York.
The logic is straightforward: if the audit throttles speculative new supply while political resistance to data centers grows, the megawatts operators have already locked in get scarcer. Scarcer capacity earns more per megawatt. Bernstein estimates miners have contracted roughly 8 GW of power to hyperscalers and AI-chip makers across more than 20 deals worth over $160 billion in the past two years, and rates Cipher, CleanSpark, IREN, Core Scientific, Riot, and TeraWulf all "Outperform."
Part of a pattern Blockhead has tracked
The note lands in the middle of a shift that's been building all year. Bitcoin miner Ionic Digital's Nasdaq debut last week was pitched almost entirely around its 234-megawatt Texas AI buildout rather than its mining business, and shares jumped roughly 26% on day one. The same week, Poolin's bankruptcy sale of its Pyote and Tarbush assets drew interest from AI and hyperscale operators alongside traditional mining buyers, following a marketing process that contacted more than 335 potential bidders. And Blockhead's own weekly wrap noted Hut 8's second 15-year, 352-megawatt lease at its Beacon Point campus as part of the same story: a basket of miner stocks has risen even as bitcoin itself has fallen, because operators are increasingly valued for the power and shells they've already secured rather than the machines running inside them.
Bernstein's note suggests Texas politics just made that math better for whoever got there first — and worse for anyone still waiting in the queue.
