Bitcoin pure-play miners-turned-AI companies Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY) and TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) posted vastly different results as they reported their second-quarter 2026 figures on Aug. 5.
The relatively nascent AI data center business for both companies played a crucial role in the second-quarter results posted before markets opened on Wednesday. TeraWulf's profits set the stage for its stock to gain in pre-market trade, while Galaxy's losses triggered a fall that touched nearly 7%.
How did the markets react to Galaxy's Q2 earnings report?
Investors weren't impressed as Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY) wrapped up the quarter ended June 30 with an $85 million loss, despite it making significant progress from the $216 million loss booked in Q1. Diluted and adjusted earnings per share came to -$0.09.
At the time of filing this report, according to Google Finance, Galaxy's shares were trading in pre-market at $20.99, down roughly 6.55%.
Galaxy pointed to low yields from its digital assets portfolio as the reason for its not-so-impressive second-quarter numbers.
Galaxy's data center segment, however, offset the lag. Adjusted gross profit was $20 million, $3 million more than Q1. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $11 million.
Cryptopolitan reported that Galaxy confirmed the commissioning of all 133 megawatts of critical IT load for the CoreWeave lease at its Helios campus in West Texas in Phase 1. The deal is expected to open an $80 million per quarter rental payment stream beginning with the next Q3 report.
TeraWulf's high-performance computing leasing delivers profits, accounts for over 70% of revenue
The second firm of the data center duo, TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF), reported around the same time, and, per Google Finance, its shares had gained 1.64% to $19.19 in premarket trade.
High-performance computing leasing brought in $31.9 million out of $44.8 million in revenue booked by Terawulf for the quarter. The roughly 71% high-performance computing segment contribution highlights heightened demand for AI compute, which brought the firm around $34 million in Q1.
TeraWulf reported cash and cash equivalents of $3 billion.
Company management also guided for improved numbers in Q3, pointing to the commissioning in early July of 102 MW of revenue-generating, critical IT load. Another 336 MW is expected to go live at some point. CFO Patrick Fleury also said that the commissioning of CB-3 secured $600 million in credit support from Google to cover the lease obligations of tenant Fluidstack.
The growth is not about chips but power
Both companies used the quarter to significantly expand their pipelines beyond current capacity. TeraWulf announced a 20-year lease with Anthropic for roughly 401 MW at its Justified power plant in Hawesville, Kentucky. The deal is valued at roughly $19 billion in contract value, or up to $33 billion if Anthropic exercises two five-year extensions. The company also agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy joint venture for around $530 million and received FERC approval to acquire the Morgantown power plant in Maryland.
Galaxy, in turn, said it expanded its power portfolio to over 5.7 GW after acquiring three development sites in Texas after quarter-end and completed a $3.5 billion secured note offering on July 28 to finance the next phase of the Helios project. The company also inked a multi-year deal with BNY, an asset custodian bank managing assets worth over $60 trillion, to support staking on BNY's digital asset platform.
The common factor is power. As Cryptopolitan reported in May when TeraWulf received a permit for its Muskett facility, access to power, power transmission, and getting permits from utilities have become a limiting factor for AI infrastructure growth. The International Energy Agency predicts that data centers' electricity consumption will nearly double to about 945 terawatt-hours by 2030.
