As Bitcoin miners increasingly pivot toward high performance computing and AI infrastructure, Bit Digital took a more drastic step, choosing to separate its AI infrastructure business after concluding that investors and lenders evaluate high performance computing and digital assets through entirely different lenses.
During a recent interview with TheStreet Roundtable , Bit Digital CEO Sam Tabar said the decision to carve out the company's AI infrastructure unit, now operating as WhiteFiber, was driven by two core factors: investor alignment and access to credit.
"There are two main reasons for us carving it out," Tabar said. "The first is that high performance computing (HPC) is an institutional product and digital assets is more of a retail product. They're two very different audiences."
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By separating the businesses, Tabar said Bit Digital was able to align each operation with investors who better understand their respective economics.
"Now, WhiteFiber's shareholding is primarily institutional, and they understand the patience that's needed. They understand the economics of data centers and HPC," he said.
Banks hesitant to lend to crypto-linked entities
The second reason proved even more decisive.
There are banks who are very eager to finance your data center development," Tabar said. "But they're not eager to have a counterparty that's involved with digital assets. They want their counterparty to be a pure HPC data center player as opposed to a company that has digital assets and some data centers within the same umbrella."
Once WhiteFiber was separated into its own entity and prepared for a standalone IPO, those constraints began to ease. According to Tabar, the spinout immediately expanded the company's financing options, particularly among traditional banks that had previously been reluctant to engage.
"Since we carved it out and it became its own IPO, WhiteFiber's menu of opportunities with respect to financing is very different now," Tabar said. "There are more options on the table, and our cost of capital has come down because WhiteFiber has absolutely no digital assets involved."
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Predictability, not hostility to crypto
Tabar pushed back on the idea that the move reflected institutional hostility toward crypto itself. Instead, he framed the issue as one of predictability and underwriting standards.
High-performance computing businesses are typically financed against long-term contracts with known customers, allowing lenders to model cash flows over many years. That visibility makes it easier to structure debt and lower borrowing costs.
"I can show a bank a ten year contract and model cash flows that service debt," Tabar said. "I can't do that with digital assets. I can't tell you what they'll generate next month, let alone over ten years."
Crypto mining operations, by contrast, are inherently exposed to price volatility and network dynamics that are difficult for lenders to forecast, even if the underlying infrastructure is sound.
For Bit Digital, the decision was not about choosing between crypto and AI, but about acknowledging that the two businesses are valued, financed, and understood in fundamentally different ways.
By separating them, the company aimed to allow each unit to operate on its own terms, with distinct investor bases, capital structures, and risk profiles.
Bit Digital has reaffirmed its commitment to retain its stake in WhiteFiber as the IPO lockup period expires on Feb. 2.
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jan 29, 2026, where it first appeared in the Innovation section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
