Riot Platforms Soars 20% on Earnings and $28 Billion Corsicana AI Lease; Cipher Digital Plunges 13%, MARA Drops 5%

Investors are sorting the crypto miners turned AI landlords by who has signed tenants, and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT | RIOT Price Prediction) is pulling away from the group. Riot stock is at $16.88, up 20% in early action. In its…

Market Movers desk. Editor: David Moadel.

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Investors are sorting the crypto miners turned AI landlords by who has signed tenants, and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT | RIOT Price Prediction) is pulling away from the group. Riot stock is at $16.88, up 20% in early action. In its Q3 2026 report, released before the open, Riot Platforms announced the largest lease in its history: a 15-year lease of its entire Corsicana, Texas campus to an unnamed leading frontier AI lab.

Riot Platforms said the Corsicana lease covers 910 megawatts of critical information technology (IT) capacity and carries a total contract value of approximately $28 billion over the initial term. The crypto background is only somewhat supportive. Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) is at $78,265, up 0.8%.

Riot Turns Its Corsicana Letter of Intent Into a Signed Lease

The Corsicana deal completes a process Riot started on August 10, when it reported Q2 2026 results and disclosed a nonbinding letter of intent (LOI) with a single tenant for the full site. On that call, Riot CEO Jason Les spoke. “While an LOI is not a signed lease, this milestone reflects the depth of demand for large-scale fully approved power in today’s market and the confidence prospective tenants have in Riot’s ability to deliver.” That condition no longer applies to Corsicana, which now has a signed tenant.

August 10 also brought Riot’s first frontier AI lab lease, a 20-year, 191-megawatt deal at its Rockdale campus expected to generate $9.1 billion in total contract revenue. Combined with a lease to Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD), that agreement lifted Riot to 241 megawatts of executed capacity and an estimated $9.8 billion in long-term contracted revenue. Les framed the year on that call: “If 2025 was the year of preparation, 2026 is the year of execution.”

Cipher Digital and MARA Slide While Riot Rallies

Cipher Digital (NASDAQ:CIFR) stock is at $7.03, down 13%. Meanwhile, MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA) stock is at $6.82, down 5%. Of the three names, Cipher Digital has the largest decline, and MARA’s drop is softer but still runs opposite to Riot and to Bitcoin’s gain.

That split points to a market paying for signed, long-dated tenants over the AI-hosting theme as a whole, with both Cipher Digital and MARA pursuing the same conversion as Riot, so the gap comes down to how far along each company is.

Riot’s Signed Tenants Set It Apart From Cipher Digital and MARA

All three companies started as Bitcoin miners and are repositioning their power assets for AI compute. Riot has gone furthest with signed hyperscaler-grade tenants, and its ESS Metron subsidiary manufactures switchgear and power distribution units, which are constrained components in the data center supply chain. Also, Riot still sells its Bitcoin production to help fund operations and its share of data center capital spending.

Cipher Digital has lease revenue starting at its Black Pearl campus and an amended long-term lease at Barber Lake, though it carries a heavy debt load while its mining revenue shrinks. MARA is in the earliest stage of the transition, since it hasn’t signed an AI lease yet and its Long Ridge Energy acquisition is still awaiting Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval. The company has said it expects to sign at least one AI infrastructure lease before year-end.

What Comes Next for Riot’s Corsicana Campus

Riot’s next test is clear. The company must build Corsicana while hitting its Rockdale milestones, where the frontier AI lab’s first 96 megawatts are targeted for December 2027 and the full 191 megawatts for June 2028. The bulls can point to long-dated contracted revenue from AMD and frontier AI tenants, along with financing Riot has already lined up for Rockdale. Mining economics give the bears their case, since Riot’s cost to mine reached 69.6% of production value in Q2, up from 49.6% a year earlier.

Riot’s Corsicana and Rockdale sites sit in Texas, where Bloomberg reported that the governor-elect has called for an immediate moratorium on data center development. Construction risk at Riot runs through 2028, and the 5,821 bitcoins the company holds as collateral restrict its liquidity. A cautious approach may be reasonable until the Texas data center policy debate resolves.

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David Moadel is financial writer specializing in stocks, ETFs, options, precious metals, and Bitcoin. David has written well over 1,000 articles for leading online publications, helping investors understand markets, income strategies, and risk.His work has appeared in The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, U.S. News & World Report, TipRanks, ValueWalk, Benzinga, Market Realist, TalkMarkets, Finmasters, 24/7 Wall St., and others.With a master’s degree in education, David has taught at the elementary, high school, and college levels. That teaching background shapes his writing style: clear, educational, and practical. David has also built a loyal social-media audience by providing trustworthy financial content on YouTube, X/Twitter, and StockTwits.