Riot Platforms Taps Data Center Veteran to Expand Beyond Bitcoin Mining

Finance

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By Tom Carreras, AI Boost|Edited by Stephen Alpher

Jun 2, 2025, 3:49 p.m.

Coinmint, a crypto data center in upstate New York, is set to host a portion of new miners from Riot’s Oklahoma City facility. (Credit: Shutterstock)
  • Riot Platforms hired Jonathan Gibbs to lead a new non-bitcoin data center initiative.
  • Gibbs has overseen over $17 billion in data center development globally.
  • The pivot aims to tap rising demand for AI infrastructure.

Riot Platforms (RIOT) has hired industry veteran Jonathan Gibbs as its Chief Data Center Officer, marking a strategic move by the bitcoin miner to branch out beyond crypto into the broader data infrastructure business.

Gibbs brings over 15 years of experience and a résumé that includes designing and building more than one gigawatt of data center capacity across North America, Europe and Asia. He most recently served as Executive Vice President at Prime Data Centers, where he led projects across the U.S.

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Now, he’s tasked with launching Riot’s new data center platform aimed at companies that require massive computing power to support cloud services and artificial intelligence. The company plans to build out non-bitcoin-focused facilities, leveraging 1.7 gigawatts of power capacity it already controls.

The company’s CEO, Jason Les, said the new initiative will “aggressively scale” to meet surging demand. If successful, Riot could join a growing list of former mining firms repositioning themselves as key players in the AI and cloud infrastructure boom.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Tom writes about markets, bitcoin mining and crypto adoption in Latin America. He has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from McGill University, and can usually be found in Costa Rica. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.

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“AI Boost” indicates a generative text tool, typically an AI chatbot, contributed to the article. In each and every case, the article was edited, fact-checked and published by a human. Read more about CoinDesk’s AI Policy.

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