Cango pivot toward AI platform expansion drives first Bitcoin sales

Cango (NYSE:CANG) reported a slowdown in Bitcoin production for January as extreme winter weather hampered operations, prompting the company to break its long-standing "HODL" strategy to fund a pivot into artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The Dallas-based miner produced 496.35 BTC in January, a 13% decline from the 569 BTC generated in December.

Average daily production fell to 16.01 BTC, down from 18.35 BTC in the previous month.

While the company maintained a total deployed hashrate of 50 EH/s, severe cold and blizzards across North America forced temporary curtailments, dragging the average operating hashrate down to 37.02 EH/s from 43.36 EH/s.

In a tactical shift, Cango sold 550.03 BTC during the month—more than its total monthly production—to capitalize on liquidity for its expanding inference platform.

The company, which transformed from a Chinese automotive servicer into a global mining powerhouse over the last year, ended January with 7,474.6 BTC in its treasury.

"Extreme cold caused temporary downtime, but favorable network difficulty adjustments helped mitigate the impact," said Paul Yu, Chief Executive Officer of Cango.

"Starting this month, we are selectively selling mined Bitcoin to support the expansion of our inference platform. This flexibility allows us to manage liquidity with greater agility as we seize new business opportunities in AI compute."

The move marks a significant evolution for Cango, which has aggressively scaled its infrastructure across four continents since late 2024.

By diversifying into high-performance computing (HPC) and AI inference, Cango joins a growing cohort of miners seeking to decouple their revenue streams from the volatility of Bitcoin mining rewards and network difficulty.