Bitcoin miner Cango sold $305 million of BTC during market slump to fund AI shift

Bitcoin miner Cango (CANG) completed the sale 4,451 $BTC over the weekend, raising roughly $305 million in USDT as it looks to reduce leverage and reposition its business around artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The company said it raised $305 million from the sale, suggesting an average sale price of about $68,524 per coin, or not far above multi-year low prices for bitcoin.

Shares are little-changed in Monday trading, but are lower by 83% on a year-over-year basis.

The company’s bitcoin sales were “based on a comprehensive assessment of current market conditions,” the firm said, as it plans to shift into AI computing infrastructure. Cango plans to deploy modular GPU units across its global network of over 40 sites to serve small and mid-sized businesses needing on-demand AI inference capacity, it said.

The company used the proceeds of its $BTC sale to pay down a bitcoin-collateralized loan, bolstering its balance sheet. The company still holds 3,645 $BTC worth more than $250 million, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.

“In response to recent market conditions, we have made a treasury adjustment to strengthen balance sheet and reduce financial leverage, which provides increased capacity to fund our strategic expansion into AI compute infrastructure,” the company wrote in a letter to shareholders.

Its move into the AI sector comes as it faces what it framed as a gap between rising compute demand and existing grid capacity. Cango wrote that it’s well positioned to take advantage of that gap.

Cango is not alone. A growing group of bitcoin miners is scaling back exposure to pure mining and redirecting capital and infrastructure toward AI data centers and high-performance computing.

Bitfarms (BITF) has said it plans to exit crypto mining entirely by around 2027, and famously declared it’s no longer a bitcoin company as it shifts to high-performance computing and AI workloads.

Analysts at KBW have warned that the industry’s pivot toward AI workloads is compelling, but that the path to monetization is fraught with execution risks. That led to a downgrade not only on Bitfarms but also in Bitdeer (BTDR) and Hive Digital (HIVE).