Ionic Raises $400M as AI Revenue Tops Bitcoin Mining Ahead of Nasdaq Listing
Ionic Digital, the bitcoin miner formed out of the Celsius bankruptcy, has filed to go public on Nasdaq after a sharp shift in operations toward AI infrastructure leasing. The company reported $51.4 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, with digital infrastructure leasing accounting for $44.0 million, compared with just $7.4 million from bitcoin mining. A year earlier, all of Ionic’s revenue came from mining, which generated $41.1 million in Q1 2025. Its net loss narrowed to $13.0 million from $28.0 million over the same period.
The revenue shift reflects Ionic’s decision to repurpose its flagship Ward County site in West Texas for AI and high-performance computing instead of bitcoin mining. In October 2025, Ionic entered into a 126-month triple net lease with Nscale, committing the full 234 megawatts (MW) of current power capacity at Ward County. Monthly fixed lease payments are scheduled to begin in August 2026. Payments under the lease represent about $1.95 billion of contracted revenue. In February 2026, Ionic amended the lease to add a contractual obligation for Nscale to lease another 89 MW if capacity becomes available, potentially raising total contracted revenue to about $2.6 billion.
Meanwhile, Ionic has dramatically scaled back its bitcoin mining footprint. As of March 31, the company owned about 120,600 miners with a total nameplate hashrate of 12.2 EH/s, but only about 23,200 miners were active, contributing 2.0 EH/s. That compares with about 116,500 active miners and 8.9 EH/s a year earlier. Ionic mined 95.7 bitcoin during Q1 2026 and sold none, versus 1,331 bitcoin mined in all of 2025.
The company is consolidating its remaining mining operations around four sites in Midland, Texas, representing 112 MW of current power capacity. Ionic said it intends to bring those sites to market for HPC and AI development and may eventually wind down bitcoin mining over time. Its S-1 filing positions Ionic less as a hashrate-growth story and more as a power-and-land monetization platform. Ward County currently has 234 MW of installed capacity, with plans to expand to as much as 700 MW.
As of March 31, Ionic had $34.9 million in cash, $192.1 million in cryptocurrency assets, and $554.0 million in total assets. Total liabilities were $17.2 million. The company had no debt and held 2,815.6 bitcoin in treasury.
The proposed listing will be a direct listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker “IOND,” rather than a traditional underwritten IPO. Ahead of the listing, Ionic completed a $400 million private placement on June 26, selling about 7.55 million shares of Series A convertible preferred stock at $53 per share, along with warrants. Investors agreed not to transfer shares below $70 for six months after listing. Ionic was incorporated in January 2024 to acquire mining assets from Celsius Mining and began operations on Feb. 1, 2024.