Welcome back! This is Canaan's weekly update on bitcoin mining, energy, and compute infrastructure.
 

The interconnection queue is becoming one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in American infrastructure. ERCOT is now assessing more than 233 GW of large-load interconnection requests - over 70% from data centers, and almost a 300% jump over the prior year-end. CenterPoint Energy alone saw its load requests grow from 1 GW to 8 GW between late 2023 and late 2024, a 700% spike in twelve months. But behind these numbers, there’s another metric that doesn’t get quoted as much: the relationship behind those megawatts.
 

Across every major U.S. grid, utilities and ISOs are deciding which projects move forward, which get studied first, which get curtailed when the grid tightens, and which get told to come back in five years. The basis for those decisions is not just technical, but also consists of whether a counterparty will make the grid operator's job easier or harder over the next two decades.
 

Bitcoin miners have been having this conversation longer than anyone else. In Texas, that conversation has produced one of the more remarkable case studies in modern load management. Bitcoin miners participated in ERCOT's demand-response and ancillary services programs to curtail during grid stress events such as the 2023 summer heatwaves and Winter Storm Heather in 2024.

Hyperscalers, on the other hand, spent the past year discovering that securing power is harder than securing GPUs. The 2026 Data Center Power Report found that utilities estimate they are roughly two years behind the delivery timelines hyperscalers expect, and nearly a third of developers are planning fully on-site-powered campuses by 2030. That migration off-grid often makes more sense, since grid operators do not seem as interested in rigid, always-on, gigawatt-scale loads.
 

On the other hand, grids will integrate substantially more new load if a portion of it is willing to flex during stress periods. The grid will study a 100% firm load as if it would draw its full nameplate capacity during the system's worst hour. That triggers the most expensive transmission upgrades and the longest queue times. A flexible load is studied and often welcomed differently.
 

That is becoming the structural advantage of hybrid mining and AI/HPC sites. If Bitcoin mining operations can shut down instantly while the AI layer doesn't blink, the grid might treat the entire site as a flexible load.

https://x.com/DocumentingBTC/status/2008581922977636776

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) is issuing a Level 3 essential actions alert over large computational loads unexpectedly disconnecting from the grid. Data centers tripping offline without warning during disturbances is the behavior that can undermine the grid operator’s trust in an entire class of customers. And trust takes longer to rebuild than a substation.

That’s why Canaan’s strategy is built around delivering "flexible, dispatchable grid load" and "deepening long-term relationships with power partners." The company understands that who you are to a grid operator may matter more than how many megawatts you have.

Years ago, the conventional wisdom held that the scarce resource in computing was silicon. Then it was power contracts. In 2026, the relationship with the grid might be one of the most valuable assets of a company that is setting the pace for its next phase of buildout.

In the News

• TeraWulf’s HPC Revenue Surpasses Mining Revenue for the First Time

• Core Scientific Shares Tumble as No New AI/HPC Deals Materialize

• Nscale Secures $790M for Microsoft-Backed Norway AI Campus

• Zcash's Price Revival Turns ZEC Miners Into Crypto's Top Power Earners

• MARA Sold $1.5B of Bitcoin as It Shifts Toward AI Infrastructure

• Mining Pools Representing 75% of Hashrate Join Stratum V2 Initiative

• Riot's AI-Fueled Rally Triggers CEO's Trading Plan to Cash Out $4.2M

• KEEL Spent $52M, Sold BTC and LatAm Assets to Fund AI Pivot

• ABTC Secured Bitmain Miners at Discount Using BTC Collateral

Network at a Glance

• BTC price (USD): ~$80,956

• Network hashrate: ~990 EH/s

• Difficulty: 132.47 T

• Hashprice: ~$38.21 / PH / day

Project Spotlight

The A3222 was the chip that took Canaan from the early experimental era into industrial mining. Released in 2015, it moved the Avalon line to a 28nm process - another full node shrink from the 40nm A3233 - and became the silicon foundation of both the Avalon4 and Avalon5 generations.

Each node shrink translated directly into more hashrate per watt, and 28nm was the point at which mining began to look less like a curiosity and more like a real industrial process. But the part of the A3222 era that's easier to overlook is the distribution model. Canaan made the chip available for individual purchase, continuing the open-hardware tradition that had defined Avalon from the start. You could buy raw chips and build your own miner.

That mattered because the industry was bifurcating fast. By 2015, mining was clearly becoming an industrial business - the era of soldering boards in a garage was ending. But Canaan kept selling chips to anyone who wanted them. The community that built around that decision became part of the broader Bitcoin technical culture in ways that closed-ecosystem competitors never quite replicated.

The A3222 also marks the point where Canaan's roadmap shifted from "ship the next node" to "ship the next node and deliver it at scale." The Avalon4, built on this chip, was the first Avalon unit to cross 1 TH/s - a number that felt enormous at the time and that, looking back, signaled the end of the hobbyist era and the start of everything that came after.

Events and Media

• Canaan Inc. Provides April 2026 Bitcoin Production and Mining Operation Updates

• Canaan will report its first quarter 2026 financial results before U.S. market open on May 19, 2026, with an earnings conference call at 8:00 AM ET. Registration link

• Canaan will participate in B. Riley's 26th Annual Investor Conference on May 20, 2026, at The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey.

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• Website: canaan.io

• Support: Customer Care

Disclaimer: This newsletter shares industry commentary and third-party news for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by third-party sources are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Canaan Inc.  For official news, please refer to Canaan’s press releases and SEC filings at https://investor.canaan-creative.com/.