** Shares of bitcoin miners and data center developers Terawulf WULF.O and Cipher Mining CIFR.O rise 9.5% and 7.7%, respectively, after Morgan Stanley starts coverage with "overweight" rating

** "We are seeing signs of increasing willingness among key AI players to pay higher "time to power" premia in the form of increasingly rich economics to bitcoin companies for using their power access to serve DC developers," MS analysts said in a note

** We are not yet reflecting the most recent HUT transaction value creation in our valuation assumptions - MS

** Hut 8 HUT.O in December signed a deal valued at about $7 bln to lease a data center in Louisiana, involving partnerships with AI model developer Anthropic and infrastructure provider Fluidstack

** Mara Holdings MARA.O shares flat as MS starts with "underweight" rating; analysts says MARA is less likely to pursue bitcoin-to-DC transactions, and bitcoin mining economics have degraded substantially

** In the past one year, WULF up 215%, CIFR up 168%, MARA down 50%

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar)

((sruthi.shankar@thomsonreuters.com;))