Cipher Mining (CIFR) didn’t issue a press release. It didn’t report earnings. It didn’t even post on social media. And yet, its stock jumped more than 13% on Tuesday.
The reason was a fast-spreading rumor that Cipher, which builds industrial-scale data centers for bitcoin mining and high-performance computing, might be in line for a major deal with Meta (META).
“This is 100% speculation but the rumor mill is saying Meta deal with CIFR,” said Mike Alfred, founder of Alpine Fox and one of the first to float the idea on X. “I’ll believe it when I see it, but the trading today has certainly been unusual.”
What’s especially telling is how little it took to light the fuse.
Alfred had already teased something big last week, saying his “spidey sense” was tingling and Cipher “has a hyperscaler deal teed up.” He never named Meta. But in a market this hungry for AI infrastructure exposure, that was enough.
Then came a cascade of speculative dots being connected.
Some users pointed to a Facebook post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where he laid out plans for multiple supercomputing clusters — including Prometheus and Hyperion — that will draw several gigawatts of power and take up “a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.”
Others cited his “superintelligence” comments and noted how Meta’s data center ambitions have exploded alongside its AI hiring spree, including rumored pay packages of up to $200 million to lure talent away from Apple and OpenAI.
If not Meta, maybe Stargate?
Still others flagged a Wall Street Journal piece describing the struggles OpenAI and SoftBank have had kickstarting Trump’s $500-billion Stargate initiative, a megaproject intended to boost U.S. AI infrastructure.
With no deals signed, the vacuum leaves room for a smaller player like Cipher to surprise.Or maybe it’s none of the above. After all, one X user said the source was “a guy who knows a guy who works at Meta.”
But if there’s one things that’s certain, it’s this: Cipher is already up 49.6% year-to-date, and Tuesday’s rally added even more froth to an already-hyped story.
And Alfred, not one to let things cool down, posted one last teaser: “Possible news ON CIFR after hours today or pre market tomorrow.”
Whether anything actually drops remains to be seen. But in the AI infrastructure boom, rumor is starting to matter more than earnings ever did.
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