Catenaa, Saturday, February 28, 2026- Activist investor Starboard Value said Riot Platforms’ push into AI and high-performance computing could be worth up to $21 billion, urging faster execution as peers move quickly.
Starboard highlighted Riot’s Texas data center campuses, including Corsicana and Rockdale, as capable of generating billions in earnings if fully monetized for AI and HPC workloads. The firm said the AI/HPC business alone could create $9 billion to $21 billion in equity value, dwarfing Riot’s current market capitalization.
Riot launched its AI data center strategy last year and signed an agreement with Advanced Micro Devices in January to lease 25 megawatts of critical IT load at Rockdale, with options to expand to 200 MW. Starboard noted Riot still has roughly 1.4 gigawatts of additional capacity available for monetization.
Other bitcoin miners, including Bitfarms, Hive Digital, CleanSpark, and Cipher Mining, have already pivoted to AI and data center operations, helping boost share prices during a prolonged crypto market downturn that cut bitcoin roughly 50% from its October all-time high.
Starboard acknowledged Riot’s improvements in governance, operational efficiency, and mining uptime but said the company must accelerate its transformation to achieve valuation multiples similar to data center operators. It suggested that, if execution stalls, Riot’s assets could attract acquisition interest.
Riot’s shares (NASDAQ: RIOT) trade near $15.40, up about 33% over the past year but lagging peers including TeraWulf, Hut 8, and Cipher Mining, which posted gains exceeding 170% over the same period.
