NEW YORK, June 3, 2026, 13:04 (EDT)
Cipher Digital Inc. fell 1.1% to $26.00 on Wednesday despite an early jump and a new price target from Morgan Stanley. The stock had climbed as high as $28.56 in heavy Nasdaq volume, topping 19 million shares.
The shift is important for Cipher as it’s not just seen as a bitcoin miner anymore. More investors are looking at the company like an AI power and data center player, with the main question focused on turning its electricity and land into rents from big cloud customers over time.
Morgan Stanley bumped up its price target on Cipher to $53.50, up from $42.50, and left its Overweight rating unchanged. That rating signals the firm expects Cipher to outperform its coverage group or the benchmark over time.
Cipher changed its name to Cipher Digital Inc. from Cipher Mining Inc. in February. In its annual report, the company said the new name fits plans to grow in high-performance computing, or HPC, which powers AI and other big workloads. Cipher reported a 4.2 gigawatt portfolio over 10 sites. That includes 600 megawatts of HPC data centers now being built for hyperscaler tenants—big cloud or internet companies.
Cipher CEO Tyler Page called 2026 “the year of execution for Cipher” in first-quarter results released last month. He pointed to work at Barber Lake and Black Pearl, a third AI data-center lease with an investment-grade hyperscale client, and a $200 million revolver. GlobeNewswire
Crypto stocks were hit after the latest analyst call. Bitcoin fell 2.2% to around $65,964, weighing on miners. That comes as investors move from old mining ideas to AI infrastructure plays.
TeraWulf slipped around 2.2% while Riot Platforms inched up and MARA Holdings lost about 2.7%. Bernstein lifted its target price on Riot but lowered MARA’s, and Morgan Stanley bumped up its target for TeraWulf, Stocktwits/The Fly reported. Peers traded mixed, with TeraWulf also seen as a miner with AI data-center potential.
Wall Street is making a clear distinction. Miners with locked-in power deals and believable data-center plans are getting more credit from the market. Firms that still depend mainly on bitcoin prices aren’t seeing the same interest.
Cipher’s transition to AI hasn’t delivered steady profits yet. First-quarter revenue came in at $35 million but adjusted EBITDA, which strips out some costs, was a loss of $48 million.
The risks are clear. Cipher flagged in its 10-K that data-center construction could get hit by delays, extra costs, supply chain issues, tariffs, inflation and labor shortages, and those risks mean more now that the stock trades on future AI leases instead of current mining cash flow.
Right now the stock is in the middle. It trades like a bitcoin play getting squeezed by a softer token, but it also has AI exposure that keeps analysts raising their targets. The tone on Wednesday’s tape turned cautious.
