Auradine Raises $153 Million for Bitcoin, AI Businesses

Bitcoin mining firm Auradine has raised $153 million in its latest funding round as it aims to launch a new AI-focused initiative. 

StepStone Group led the Series C funding round, with participation from Maverick Silicon, Samsung Catalyst Fund, MARA Holdings, and other investors, according to Auradine’s statement published on Wednesday. The oversubscribed raise brings the firm’s total raised capital to $300 million. 

Auradine will use its funds to fuel a new business group, AuraLinks AI. The initiative aims to offer open-standards based networking solutions for artificial intelligence data centers—offerings that are in high demand due to the massive computational power and energy requirements of AI workloads.

“Our dual focus on Bitcoin and AI infrastructure places Auradine at the intersection of pivotal technologies that will reshape computing and energy utilization for decades to come,” Auradine co-founder and CEO Rajiv Khemani said Wednesday in a statement. 

“This funding round enables us to scale that vision with greater speed and impact,” he added. 

Auradine’s AI push comes as a brewing trade war between Washington D.C. and Beijing has spurred volatility in the crypto market. 

Bitcoin is trading at $84,925 as of writing time, down 1.3% from its price two weeks ago and 21% from its all-time-high price of roughly $108,000, according to CoinGecko data. The broader crypto market has also experienced heightened volatility since the implementation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, losing 3% of its market value in the past 24 hours. 

Amid the growing instability in the digital assets market, several crypto companies have embraced AI as a means of diversifying their businesses. 

A few weeks ago, Galaxy Digital Holdings signaled it had struck an agreement to use its crypto-mining data center in West Texas to host AI cloud provider CoreWeave. Meanwhile, cloud computing firm Crusoe sold its crypto operations to NYDIG in March as part of its pivot to an AI-focused business model, a statement from the company shows.

Edited by James Rubin