Crypto miners run powerful computing sites, often covering acres of land, where they solve complex mathematical puzzles in order to authenticate transactions and produce digital coins. But with high energy and computing costs, and with the rewards for mining having recently halved, many are struggling to turn a profit.

AI companies require a large amount of energy and computing infrastructure, two things that bitcoin miners typically have access to. AI groups are betting that using miners’ high-performance computing (HPC) data centres will be faster and cheaper than building their own.

Bitcoin miners hope that shifting their strategy towards AI will give them higher, more stable revenues.

However, the race to build out new data centres is straining electricity grids in some parts of the world, given the huge power requirements of HPC. Bitcoin mining is also highly energy intensive, and both sectors have been criticised for the vast amounts of power they consume.

Google’s greenhouse emissions have surged 48 per cent in the past five years, amid the expansion of its data centres for AI processes, while bitcoin mining uses more energy than Pakistan or Ukraine annually, according to data from the University of Cambridge.