CoreWeave announced Monday it will acquire Core Scientific and its data centres in a US$9 billion all-stock transaction, marking the largest deal in the ongoing shift from cryptocurrency mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The deal values Core Scientific at $20.40 per share - a 66% premium to its closing price before acquisition talks were reported in late June.
Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 newly issued shares for each share held, with the transaction expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The AI infrastructure provider will gain control of approximately 1.3 gigawatts of gross power across Core Scientific's national data centre footprint, with an additional gigawatt of potential expansion capacity.
The acquisition eliminates over $10 billion in cumulative future lease obligations the company would have paid for existing contractual sites over the next 12 years.
Core Scientific emerged from bankruptcy in early 2024 and has been transitioning from pure Bitcoin mining to hosting AI workloads - including the 12-year contract with CoreWeave signed in June 2024.
The deal is expected to generate $500 million in annual cost savings by 2027 through streamlined operations and the elimination of leasing overhead.
Its Q1 2025 revenue fell to $79.5 million from $179.3 million the previous year, reflecting both the April 2024 Bitcoin halving and its operational shift toward high-performance computing hosting.
Now an AI hyperscaler, CoreWeave began as an Ethereum miner in 2017 before pivoting to AI infrastructure following Ethereum's 2022 upgrade that reduced mining rewards.
That led to revenue growth of more than eight-fold last year, and it completed a successful IPO in March this year, achieving a market cap of ~$79 billion.
AI pivot
Bitcoin miners across the industry are diversifying into AI infrastructure as mining economics deteriorate following the April 2024 halving, which reduced block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
Network difficulty has reached 126.98 trillion, driving estimated mining costs to $70,000 per Bitcoin whilst AI demand for data centre capacity continues to expand rapidly.
Mid-tier miners including Iren and Hive are generating meaningful revenue from AI-related activities, with some companies deploying thousands of NVIDIA GPUs for machine learning workloads.
By late 2025, artificial intelligence is projected to consume more electricity than Bitcoin mining, representing a fundamental shift in computational resource allocation.
Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani expects the acquisition to set the benchmark for other miners pivoting to AI, noting that power access remains the primary constraint for AI data centre expansion.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the deal "accelerates our strategy to deploy AI and HPC workloads at scale", while providing greater control over critical power infrastructure.
The transaction requires regulatory approval and Core Scientific shareholder approval, with Core Scientific shareholders expected to own less than 10% of the combined company upon closing.
The AI infrastructure business previously made an unsuccessful $1 billion bid for Core Scientific last year - which Core Scientific perhaps rightly rejected as undervalued at the time.
