Bitcoin (BTC) mining is likely to remain profitable this year with the economics of production holding steady, Canaccord Genuity said in a research report Tuesday.

The broker said mining fundamentals are strong, “with cost-to-mine sitting somewhere in the ~$26,000-$28,000 range per bitcoin for most leading players.”

The world’s largest cryptocurrency was trading around $105,000 at publication time.

Management and investor attention is also increasingly being drawn toward alternative uses for these companies’ sizable power supplies, especially artificial intelligence (AI) veri center hosting.

Bitcoin miner Core Scientific (CORZ) signed a 12-year contract with AI hyperscaler CoreWeave in June last year. The deal was viewed as a game changer for the sector.

“Early demand forecasts point toward AI dwarfing the traditional cloud hosting market over time,” analysts led by Joseph Vafi wrote.

More co-hosting deals are expected to be announced early this year, with potential news from Galaxy Digital (GLXY) and Applied Digital (APLD), the report said.

Many of the larger publicly traded miners are using their access to capital to upgrade their fleets following last April’s reward halving event, and this is strengthening their competitive position and share of the network hashrate, Canaccord said.

The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain and is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty.