Bitcoin Miner Core Scientific Shares Spike After Signing $2B of Additional Computing Contract

The extension of the previous deal with CoreWeave brings total revenue potential for the miner to more than $6.7 billion.

AccessTimeIconAug 6, 2024 at 5:01 p.m. UTC
Updated Aug 7, 2024 at 8:59 p.m. UTC
  • Core Scientific's shares surged as much as 17% on a new deal with CoreWeave.
  • The miner now expects to generate a total of $6.7 billion in revenue over the life of the contract, starting in the first half of 2026.

The shares of bitcoin miner Core Scientific (CORZ) surged as much as 17% on Tuesday, outperforming other crypto-linked stocks, after the company signed an extension of its earlier high-performance computing (HPC) contract with CoreWeave.

The miner said in a statement that it has exercised its option from a previous contract to host about 112 megawatt (MW) of additional GPUs for "AI Hyperscaler" firm CoreWeave. The new contract is expected to add about $2 billion of additional revenue, bringing the total to $6.7 billion, starting in the first half of 2026. CoreWeave will be bearing the cost for all capital investments needed to get Core Scientific’s existing mining infrastructure ready for HPC, the statement added.

"We have now contracted with CoreWeave for a total of 382 megawatts of HPC infrastructure, reflecting the strong demand for high-power data center infrastructure and the unique ability of our team to deliver it," said Adam Sullivan, Core Scientific’s CEO.

Previously, the miner said it will provide hosting infrastructure for 200MW worth of GPUs for CoreWeave, with options to add further capacity. Subsequently, the two companies expanded the deal by 70MW more, making this new deal a third extension.

The original deal brought the limelight back into the mining industry, which was hurt by the brutal crypto winter and a low profit margin due to recent halving.

The HPC and artificial intelligence (AI) companies require energy intensive data centers, sites and infrastructure which are expensive and time consuming to secure. Bitcoin miners on the other hand, already have power contracts and infrastructure that are ready to support such needs, making them the easier candidates to host the HPC and AI-related machines than building from scratch or use legacy data centers.

Taking advantage of this market opportunity, Core Scientific said it has options for another extension of the contract to host 118MW worth of additional machines for HPC computing.

"The latest contract also validates that our strategy for developing application-specific data centers aligns with the increasing energy density requirements for high-performance computing that legacy data centers do not typically satisfy," said Sullivan.

Edited by Nikhilesh De.

Disclosure

Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.

CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. The Bullish group is majority-owned by Block.one; both companies have interests in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive options in the Bullish group as part of their compensation.

Aoyon Ashraf

Aoyon Ashraf is managing editor with more than a decade of experience in covering equity markets