CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK), Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG), and BitFuFu (NASDAQ: FUFU) released their February 2026 operational updates this week, showing a combined output of approximately 1,250 BTC at a time when the global Bitcoin network is more competitive than it has been in years. The reports reveal three distinct strategies for surviving a compressed-margin environment, with two of the three companies now signaling moves into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.

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Network Conditions Were Punishing in February

February was a difficult month for Bitcoin miners across the board. The price dropped as low as $60,000 early in the month before recovering to around $67,000 by month-end. On February 20, the network's mining difficulty increased by 15%, the largest single upward adjustment since the 2021 exodus of Chinese miners reshaped the global hashrate map. The global hashrate now sits near 1 zettahash per second (one zettahash equals one trillion gigahashes, a measure of total computational power on the network). Hashprice, the revenue a miner earns per unit of compute, sits at roughly $23.90 per petahash per second, a figure near multi-year lows. For context, that means the economics of mining are tighter now than at almost any point since the April 2024 halving cut the block reward to 3.125 BTC.

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CleanSpark Led Production and Made an Aggressive Treasury Call

CleanSpark produced 568 BTC in February, the highest output among the three companies. Its fleet of 235,588 miners ran at an average of 43.2 exahashes per second (EH/s), peaking at 50 EH/s. The company holds 1.8 gigawatts of contracted power capacity across U.S. sites, including a newly acquired Texas campus on the ERCOT grid that adds 300 megawatts.

The more significant data point is what CleanSpark did with its output. The company sold 553 BTC, approximately 97% of its February production, for $36.65 million at an average price of $66,279 per coin. That sell-through rate is among the highest the company has recorded. CEO Matt Schultz has framed the approach as intentional. "We run our balance sheet the same way we run our operations: with conviction," he said in the company's monthly release, noting that CleanSpark has repurchased roughly 20% of its shares over the past 18 months. The proceeds are being directed toward AI and high-performance computing infrastructure expansion.

CleanSpark holds a total treasury of 13,363 BTC. Of those, 1,086 BTC are pledged as collateral or recorded in derivative transactions, meaning the company's freely available holdings are lower than the headline figure suggests.

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Cango Completed a Full Strategic Pivot

Cango produced 454.83 BTC in February, down from 496.35 BTC in January. The Chinese-founded, NYSE-listed company, which entered Bitcoin mining in late 2024 after transitioning away from automobile financing and export (AutoCango.com), reached a deployed hashrate of 50 EH/s by month-end. However, the average operating hashrate for the month was only 34.55 EH/s, a gap the company attributed to downtime related to fleet optimization and equipment relocation across its 40-plus global sites. Those sites span North America, the Middle East, South America, and East Africa, with Ethiopia explicitly listed as an active jurisdiction.

Cango's financial position heading into February was already under pressure. In early February 2026, the company force-liquidated a significant portion of its Bitcoin reserves to reduce outstanding loans amid a sharp market selloff, a move that underscored the financial stress accompanying its business model transition.

On February 9, 2026, Cango announced a strategic pivot toward distributed AI inference computing through a new Dallas-based subsidiary called EcoHash Technology LLC, and simultaneously appointed a new AI Chief Technology Officer. Cango's stock fell 17.4% intraday on the day of that announcement, reflecting investor uncertainty about the transition. The February operational report covering month-end production data was released separately in early March as a follow-on monthly update, distinct from the original pivot announcement.

The company described the transition as a "long-term journey" addressing what it calls the "Power Gap," a mismatch between rapidly growing AI compute demand and available grid infrastructure. Cango's roadmap calls for modular, containerized GPU compute nodes deployable across its existing global site network.

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BitFuFu Held Back, Defending Its Balance Sheet

BitFuFu took a more conservative approach. The Singapore-headquartered company, which describes itself as operating one of the world's largest cloud mining platforms with over 623,000 registered users, produced 227 BTC in February: 190 from cloud mining contracts and 37 from its own hardware. Its total hashrate under management fell 10.8% month-over-month to 26.4 EH/s. CEO Leo Lu said the decline was deliberate: "Our February month-end hashrate declined as we maintained a disciplined approach to incremental hashrate procurement" to preserve flexibility and avoid locking into low-margin contracts. The company also reduced its outstanding credit line to $15 million from $40 million as of September 2025, cutting leverage as margins tighten.

That caution has material context. BitFuFu carries approximately $94 million in long-term accounts payable, a liability that helps explain both the credit line reduction and the company's reluctance to commit to new hashrate at current prices.

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The East Africa Question

The regional dimension most absent from mainstream coverage is Cango's East Africa footprint. As of mid-2025, the most recent baseline available, approximately 37% of the company's deployed hashrate was located in East Africa, representing roughly 18.5 EH/s of compute in the region. Ethiopia accounts for an estimated 2.6% of the global Bitcoin network on its own, most of it drawing on surplus hydroelectric capacity. Analysts tracking African Bitcoin mining infrastructure have identified Nigeria as a potential secondary hub by late 2026, situating Ethiopia within a broader regional trajectory rather than treating it as a standalone development.

If Cango follows through on deploying containerized GPU nodes at its existing sites, those East African locations could transition toward AI inference workloads. That would carry real consequences for local energy agreements, workforce skill requirements, and data infrastructure investment in a region where major cloud providers remain largely underserved at the edge-compute level.

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What to Watch

The three companies hold a combined 18,506 BTC on their balance sheets, worth roughly $1.2 billion at approximately $66,000 per BTC.

How each company manages that treasury in the coming months will be a direct signal of confidence in their respective strategies. CleanSpark is selling aggressively to fund AI and high-performance computing buildout. Cango is navigating a full business model transition while managing debt stemming from a forced BTC liquidation in early February. BitFuFu is preserving flexibility. Across the broader sector, similar pivots are already under way: Hut 8 has signed a reported $7 billion lease with Fluidstack covering 245 megawatts in Louisiana, Riot Platforms is developing a Power-as-a-Service model, and Bitfarms has converted a Washington State facility to Nvidia GPU hosting. These moves reinforce that the mining-to-AI transition is a sector-wide shift, not an isolated bet by three companies. An analysis citing CoinShares data projects that mining revenue could fall from 85% to under 20% of total sector revenue by late 2026 as AI and high-performance computing contracts scale up.

For miners with operations in lower-cost energy markets, including East Africa, the question is whether the next wave of infrastructure investment arrives as Bitcoin mining capacity or something else entirely.