Bernstein on Nov. 4 cut price targets for seven bitcoin miners that have shifted capacity into hosting computing for artificial intelligence. Analyst Gautam Chhugani tied the move to Democrat Gina Hinojosa's win in the Texas governor's race a day earlier.
Bernstein lowered its price targets to $15 from $23 for Cipher Mining, to $55 from $100 for IREN, to $20 from $36 for TeraWulf, to $19 from $32 for Core Scientific, to $18 from $35 for Riot, to $10 from $17 for MARA and to $11 from $24 for CleanSpark.
“We now value AI colocation business at 12x EV/one year forward EBITDA,” Chhugani wrote.
Hinojosa has promised to withhold permits for new sites until Texas sets rules shielding residents from rising power and water bills. The same day, voters in more than 29 U.S. communities approved curbs on data centers: Ballotpedia tracked 41 such ballot measures on Nov. 3 across 10 states.
Some of those measures are advisory only, and whether they will bind local governments remains unclear.
Research firm SemiAnalysis estimates Texas will account for nearly 30% of U.S. data center capacity due to come online by 2028. Goldman Sachs calculates that states now likely to tighten rules make up close to 45% of the country's planned data center capacity.
BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink warned that a nationwide moratorium on data centers would push the economy into recession. OpenAI, meanwhile, started referring to its data centers as “compute campuses.”
Texas already imposed a temporary freeze on new data centers in August 2026 because of strain on the power grid. State officials have not set a timeline for permanent rules, and it remains unclear whether the Nov. 3 votes are binding on local governments.
