Riot Platforms Gets Double Upgrade On Ai Pivot As Jpmorgan, Citi Hike Targets

What Happened

Riot Platforms (RIOT) picked up back-to-back upgrades from Wall Street on Friday, with JPMorgan and Citigroup both raising their outlooks on the bitcoin miner amid changing industry economics and a shift toward high-performance computing.

JPMorgan boosted Riot to overweight from neutral and raised its price target to $19 from $15, calling it the most attractive among its mining peers. Citi upgraded to buy from neutral and lifted its price target to $24 from $13.75. Both firms pointed to Riot’s pivot into artificial intelligence and cloud services as a potential growth driver as mining profits tighten. Riot was modestly outperforming a sharply lower sector on Friday, declining "just" 1.2% to $16.55.

Alongside its upgrade of RIOT, JPMorgan downgraded the previously very hot-handed IREN to underweight from neutral. Shares are down 9.7% on Friday, but still higher by 300% year-to-date. CleanSpark (CLSK) was cut to neutral and it's lower by 9.3% Friday and higher by 34% year-to-date.

Market Context

The bank maintained its buy rating on Cipher Mining (CIFR), and doubled its price target to $12 from $6. The shares were 3.5% lower to $11.20 at publication time.

MARA Holdings (MARA) was kept at overweight, with a reduced price objective of $20, down from $22. The stock was 1% lower around $15.90 in early trading.

Why It Matters

JPMorgan’s analysts are assigning a 50% probability that Riot, Cipher, and IREN each secure near-term high performance computing (HPC) colocation agreements, using Core Scientific’s (CORZ) 800 MW CoreWeave (CRWV) deal as a benchmark. The bank values HPC colocation contracts at $3.7 million to $8.6 million per gross megawatt (MW).

Read more: Bitcoin Mining Profitability Fell in August, Jefferies Says