Riot Platforms Sold 9,665 Bitcoin in H1 2026 to Fund AI Pivot

Q2 Sale Draws Down One of Mining’s Largest Treasuries

Riot Platforms disclosed it sold 4,300 BTC during the second quarter of 2026, drawing down one of the bitcoin mining industry’s largest corporate treasuries as the Nasdaq-listed company funds operations and an increasingly ambitious expansion into data centers.

The sale left Riot holding 11,380 BTC as of June 30, down from roughly 15,680 BTC at the start of the quarter. Of that remaining stack, 5,821 BTC, just over half, is pledged as collateral against existing loans, meaning it isn’t freely available for the company to sell or move without first satisfying lenders.

The Q2 sale follows a similar move in the first quarter, when Riot sold BTC for $289.5 million. Added together, Riot offloaded roughly 9,665 BTC across the first half of 2026, a sizeable drawdown for a company that has spent years building its treasury as a core part of its balance sheet strategy.

That said, Riot still mined actively during the period, producing 1,587 BTC in the second quarter at an average cost of $49,912 per coin, excluding depreciation, contributing to quarterly revenue of $174.2 million, a 14% year-over-year increase. Cash on hand stood at $548.9 million, of which $77.5 million was restricted, with total liquid assets around $1.2 billion.

The mining side of the business had entered the year on stronger footing too, as Riot’s deployed hashrate reached 42.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) by Q1 end, a 26% increase from the same period in 2025, even as the company was already selling down its bitcoin holdings to fund its expansion.

Riot’s AI Data Center Pivot

Since the start of the year, Riot has been facilitating a pivot from pure bitcoin mining toward artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing. The company’s most consequential move so far is a 20-year, 191-megawatt lease with Anthropic. The deal is projected to generate approximately $9.1 billion in revenue for Riot through 2048.

Moreover, the firm has stood up its first data center revenue streams, including tenant fit-out and operating lease income, as it builds toward becoming an operator of AI infrastructure rather than solely a bitcoin miner.

Investors have taken notice and evaluators have said Riot’s AI and high-performance computing expansion could be worth up to $21 billion, a number that helps explain why the company is willing to part with bitcoin it once treated as a long-term holding.

Part of a Broader Industry Shift

Riot isn’t alone in its dynamism, with Marathon, the largest publicly traded bitcoin miner by treasury size, selling approximately 23,093 BTC for roughly $1.6 billion at an average price of $70,631 during the first half of 2026 (redeploying the proceeds toward debt reduction and growth initiatives).

Bitcoin.com News has also reported that publicly listed miners collectively sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, a figure that surpassed their combined full-year 2025 sales.

That trend has left some mining entities, like Bitdeer Technologies, with no bitcoin reserves left at all, while others such as Cleanspark have reorganized leadership teams specifically to accelerate AI initiatives rather than continue growing their bitcoin stacks. Riot’s 11,380 BTC treasury, still worth roughly $730 million at current prices, keeps it among the larger holders even after two consecutive quarters of selling.

That said, if data center income scales as projected, Riot may have less need to keep selling bitcoin in the back half of 2026.