🌐 DeepSeek, AI Shockwaves, and Why TeraWulf is Betting Big on Zero-Carbon Bitcoin Mining and HPC Data Centers

The business and tech worlds shook this week as DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company, released its open-source model—allegedly built for a fraction of the cost of the LLMs from OpenAI, Google, and others.

Market caps tumbled. CNBC pundits swung between shock, elation, and panic. Some declared a paradigm shift to cheap AI, predicting that years from now, we’ll ask, “Where were you when DeepSeek changed everything?”

Not so fast, says Nazar Khan, ​​this week’s Supercool guest. Nazar is the co-founder and CTO of TeraWulf, a $2 billion publicly listed Bitcoin miner now expanding into high-performance computing (HPC) data centers for AI.

On DeepSeek, Nazar Makes Three Points:

1. If DeepSeek forces a recalibration of how much compute is needed to run AI models, great. AI must get cheaper to become ubiquitous and deliver on its world-changing promise.

2. Whether fewer GPUs are required in a post-DeepSeek world is debatable. Regardless, demand for AI infrastructure still far exceeds supply—and will for years.

3. DeepSeek is not the final word. Expect more shocks as AI advances. Remember, ChatGPT is only two years old.

So that’s the take from a C-suite executive at an AI infrastructure company whose business has come under scrutiny in the wake of DeepSeek. But the primary reason we sought out Nazar?

TeraWulf’s Bitcoin and new HPC/AI operations—and what they reveal about the future of energy-intensive digital infrastructure.

Bitcoin, AI, and the Energy Debate

Bitcoin and AI are among the most energy-intensive technologies on Earth. Critics argue their carbon footprints are massive:

• Some say If Bitcoin were a country, it would be the 27th largest carbon emitter, on par with Pakistan (more on this below)

• And AI? A single AI query uses 10x more energy than a Google search, per Goldman Sachs. Scale that up, and the climate concerns grow fast.

But TeraWulf challenges this narrative.

TeraWulf’s operations run on 91% zero-carbon energy, mostly hydropower, at its Lake Mariner site on Lake Ontario in Western New York. Its 500MW+ capacity makes it one of North America's largest digital infrastructure facilities.

Yes, natural flowing water, one of the oldest sources of power, dating back to ancient Greek civilizations, is powering some of the modern world’s most sophisticated digital infrastructure.

Terawulf’s site was once home to a coal plant. Now, it's a clean-energy hub for Bitcoin mining and AI data centers.

December was a big month for TeraWulf:
✅ Mined the 7th most Bitcoin among US-listed public companies ( together, they account for 30% of global mining capacity).
✅ Entered into a partnership with Core42, the U.S. subsidiary of AI powerhouse G42, to build and operate HPC-AI data centers.

And just two weeks ago Terawulf:
✅ Demolished a 613-foot smokestack from the old coal plant—literally clearing the way for the next era of digital infrastructure.

The Digital Economy Needs Real-World Infrastructure

There’s no futuristic AI or crypto-driven digital economy without massive, complex, real-world energy infrastructure to power it.

Just look at OpenAI’s Stargate announcement last week—a $500 billion AI infrastructure project designed to create a compute moat primarily against cheap Chinese AI.

The scale of what’s coming is staggering. Here’s why:

• Old data centers can’t handle HPC-AI. They weren’t built for today’s power or cooling demands. Most HPC-AI data centers must be built from scratch.

• HPC-AI data centers must do two things exceptionally well:

  1. Deliver low-cost power. For Terawulf, this entails optimizing energy costs through demand-response capabilities—ramping up operations when power is cheap and throttling down when prices spike.

  2. Evacuate massive amounts of heat from high-performance GPUs. Unlike conventional air-cooled data centers of almost, Terawulf and other AI data center providers rely on liquid cooling, a more efficient method for dissipating heat, reducing energy waste, and lowering operational expenses.

• No two AI data centers are the same. Forget the idea that a data center is a data center. Everything is new. Engineering teams are deploying differing solutions for power, cooling, and workloads. Climate, topography, and other factors also influence data center design.

Why is TeraWulf Expanding Into HPC-AI Now?

The short answer? Money.

TeraWulf’s leadership cut their teeth in energy, building large-scale power plants and selling electricity wholesale to utilities at their previous company, Beowulf.

Then, Nazar saw a better way to monetize energy: turn it into Bitcoin.

Now? TeraWulf believes HPC/AI data centers could be an even better way to monetize power.

Bitcoin. AI. Energy. Infrastructure. It’s all converging—and TeraWulf is making a bet that the future of high-performance computing will be built on clean energy.

This week, Nazar Khan takes us inside that future.

Listen to this podcast episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

↓

Quote of the week:

“The challenge that a lot of older data centers have is that they were built to meet 20 and 30 kilowatt per rack loads. We're already at 120 to 130 today, and we're going to 200 plus. And so we're designing for 200 plus. Again, this gets into efficiency. We're going to operate server racks with those GPUs in the tightest space and have the most efficient cooling.

“For these types of data centers,  it's only been the last 18 to 24 months that they’ve hit scale in terms of deployment. So, in some sense, we're all trying to figure it out.

“So to anyone who says, ‘Oh yeah, this is exactly how you do it,’ they're probably not right. We have a design that we think is wonderful. I would be shocked if we didn't find half a dozen ways to make it better on the next go-round.” 

- Nazar Khan, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer, Terawulf

Number of the week: 56.75%

That’s the percentage of clean energy used by Bitcoin miners globally in October 2024—up from 33.85% in October 2020, a 60% jump in just four years.

Since China’s 2021 mining ban, Bitcoin operations have increasingly shifted to greener grids in the U.S., Canada, and Paraguay and as far afield as Bhutan.

Many of the world’s largest miners, including TeraWulf, are now prioritizing clean energy—not just for sustainability but for cost savings and long-term reliability.

↓

Related Stories

Here’s the December leaderboard of the top 10 U.S.-listed Bitcoin miners—ranked by total Bitcoin mined—plus their clean energy profiles and global market share.

1. MARA Holdings | 890 BTC | 6.4% market share

📍 HQ: Fort Lauderdale, FL
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: The world’s largest public Bitcoin miner has recently ramped up its clean energy strategy. In 2024, MARA secured deals in Texas and North Dakota to use excess natural gas for mining, bought a wind farm in Texas, and commercialized recycled heat from mining operations in Finland to warm nearly 80,000 homes.

2. CleanSpark | 668 BTC | 4.8% market share

📍 HQ: Henderson, NV
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: Operates across Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Wyoming, running primarily on low-carbon nuclear power. CleanSpark’s rural-focused strategy makes it a key player in sustainable mining, as discussed by Co-founder & Chairman Matthew Schultz on the Supercool podcast in October.

3. IREN | 529 BTC | 3.8% market share

📍 HQ: Sydney, Australia
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: 98% hydropower across three sites in British Columbia, Canada. In Texas, IREN takes advantage of excess renewable capacity, operating an area 250 miles northwest of Dallas where wind and solar outpace the transmission infrastructure.

4. Riot Platforms | 516 BTC | 3.7% market share

📍 HQ: Castle Rock, CO
🚫 Clean Energy Profile: Not Supercool.

5. Core Scientific | 291 BTC | 2.1% market share

📍 HQ: Austin, TX
🚫 Clean Energy Profile: Not Supercool.

6. Bitfarms | 211 BTC | 1.5% market share

📍 HQ: Toronto, Canada
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: Mines in Canada, the U.S., Paraguay, and Argentina. Primarily hydropower in Canada, the U.S., and Paraguay, but also uses natural gas in Argentina.

7. Terawulf | 158 BTC | 1.1% market share

📍 HQ: Easton, MD
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: 91% zero-carbon energy, primarily hydropower (see full write-up above).

8. Bitdeer | 145 BTC | 1% market share

📍 HQ: Singapore
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: 67% clean energy, primarily hydropower across the U.S., Norway, and Bhutan. Bhutan operations are particularly notable, set to reach 600 MW of renewable capacity soon.

9. Hive Digital | 103 BTC | 0.74% market share

📍 HQ: Vancouver, Canada
🌍 Clean Energy Profile: 100% hydropower at sites in Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay. Upcoming expansion in Paraguay will tap into 300 MW of surplus hydropower.

10. Hut 8 | 89 BTC | 0.64% market share

📍 HQ: Miami, FL
🚫 Clean Energy Profile: Some hydropower and nuclear in the mix, but lacks transparency.

Takeaways:

• Bitcoin’s climate impact depends on the operator.

• Hydropower dominates among the most sustainable Bitcoin miners.

• Geography matters—many sustainable miners set up shop in regions with excess clean and renewable energy.

• Most top miners are accelerating the energy transition; a few slackers… well, not.

↓

Supercool in the news

This week, I had the opportunity to appear on two podcasts:

Let’s Talk, People with Emily Frieze-Kemeny

Emily and I discuss business leadership in the age of climate change.

Listen everywhere you get your podcasts:  Apple, Spotify, and Everywhere Else

Build it Better with Dave Cooper

Dave and I discuss sustainable innovation in the housing and commercial building industries.

Watch it on YouTube 

🌐