Core Scientific to Exit Bitcoin Mining by Year-End and Become a Pure-Play AI Data Center Provider

Core Scientific Inc. (NASDAQ:CORZ) said on Thursday it plans to abandon Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) mining entirely by year-end and reposition itself as a pure-play high-density colocation provider focused on AI and high-performance computing

Core Scientific Ready for Rebrand

During the earnings call, CFO Jim Nygaard said that Core Scientific continued scaling back Bitcoin mining during the third quarter, with nearly half as many miners operating at the end of September compared with year-end 2025.

“We expect to complete the wind-down during the fourth quarter and enter 2027 as a pure-play high-density colocation provider,” the executive announced.

Bitcoin self-mining and hosted mining produced third-quarter revenue of $17.43 million, roughly 7.5% of the company’s total revenue and down roughly 73.6% year-over-year.

On the other hand, high-density colocation brought in $215.43 million, more than fourteen times the revenue from the same quarter last year.

Major Shift in Bitcoin Mining Industry

Core Scientific, once one of the biggest Bitcoin miners, has aggressively redirected its power and real estate capacity toward AI and high-performance workloads.

Core Scientific is providing hundreds of megawatts of data center capacity to host high-performance computing infrastructure for CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV).

In addition to its relationship with CoreWeave, Core Scientific has entered into a 530-megawatt, 15-year leasing arrangement involving Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) and a neocloud counterparty across five campuses. AMD directly leases 377 MW, while the neocloud company leases the remaining 152 MW.

Mining revenues have fallen significantly following Bitcoin’s last halving event in April 2024, according to Blockchain.com, as the block subsidy was cut in half from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Price Action: As of this writing, BTC is down 6.3% in the last 24 hours to $75,662.81, according to Benzinga Pro. 

Core Scientific shares were up 1.67% in overnight trading after closing 10.82% lower at $11.38 during Thursday’s regular trading session.

CORZ shows a weak price trend across short-, medium-, and long-term timeframes, according to Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings.

Photo courtesy: Robert Way via Shutterstock