CoreWeave’s $9B Bet on Core Scientific: Power Is the New Currency of AI
Inside America’s biggest crypto-to-AI pivot: ownership of watts, liquid cooling reality, and the shareholder math.
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In July 2025, Wall Street watched a surprise headline flash across screens:
CoreWeave is buying Core Scientific for $9 billion.
At first glance, it looked absurd.
One of the fastest-scaling AI infrastructure firms, fresh off a blockbuster IPO, was swallowing a bankrupt Bitcoin miner.
But beneath the noise, this wasn’t a bailout. It was a power grab.
Literally.
From Crypto to Cloud: Two Diverging Paths
CoreWeave’s story is one of bold pivots.
Founded in 2017 as a garage-based Ethereum miner, the company nearly collapsed when Ethereum’s Merge wiped out GPU mining in 2022. Instead of folding, CoreWeave doubled down on its GPUs, refocusing as a cloud provider for AI workloads.
By 2025, the pivot had paid off.
A $23B IPO. Explosive revenue growth, from $229M in 2023 to nearly $2B in 2024. Multi-billion-dollar contracts with OpenAI and Microsoft. CoreWeave had become a new kind of cloud: purpose-built for AI.
Core Scientific’s trajectory couldn’t have been more different.
Once North America’s largest Bitcoin miner, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after Bitcoin’s crash, soaring energy prices, and the Celsius implosion left it drowning in debt. By 2024 it had emerged from Chapter 11 leaner but scarred, with one crucial asset intact: 1.3 gigawatts of power capacity across nine U.S. sites.
In a market where AI racks consume 50–200 kW each, compared to 5–10 kW for traditional servers, that power was gold.
The Strategic Rationale: Vertical Integration for Survival
For CoreWeave, the logic was simple:
Secure power at scale – No AI hyperscaler can grow without it.
Cancel $10B in leases – CoreWeave had been paying Core Scientific for capacity. Owning the landlord meant killing those obligations.
Save $500M annually by 2027 – Vertical integration delivers real cost efficiencies.
CEO Michael Intrator said it plainly:
“Verticalizing the ownership of Core Scientific’s infrastructure enables CoreWeave to significantly enhance operating efficiency and de-risk our future expansion.”
For Core Scientific, the deal offered a dignified pivot. No longer just a relic of the crypto bust, it could ride CoreWeave’s AI trajectory instead of fighting for relevance.
Deal Structure: An All-Stock Gamble
The acquisition values Core Scientific at ~$20.40 per share, a 66% premium. Shareholders will receive 0.1235 shares of CoreWeave for each Core Scientific share.
But there’s a catch: the exchange ratio is fixed. Core Scientific’s fate is tied to CoreWeave’s volatile stock. No collar, no floor. If CoreWeave’s price falls, the $9B headline shrinks.
Unsurprisingly, investors balked.
Core Scientific’s stock fell 18% after the announcement, CoreWeave’s slipped 3%. Activist hedge fund Two Seas Capital—Core Scientific’s largest active shareholder, vowed to vote against, calling the deal “materially undervalued” and “unfairly favoring CoreWeave”.
What It Means for the Industry
This deal isn’t just about two companies, it’s a bellwether for the future of digital infrastructure:
The Great Pivot – Crypto miners like Riot and Hut 8 are following Core Scientific’s lead, redirecting hundreds of megawatts toward AI workloads. Ten megawatts of Nvidia GPUs can now generate revenue equivalent to 100 megawatts of Bitcoin mining.
Power as Scarcity – Deloitte projects U.S. AI data center demand will rise 30x by 2035. The bottleneck isn’t chips; it’s gigawatts.
Rise of the Neoclouds – CoreWeave is no AWS clone. By fusing GPUs, data centers, and power, it signals a new model: vertically integrated AI-first clouds.
Risks on the Horizon
Execution won’t be easy. Retrofitting crypto mining farms for AI-grade reliability requires billions in capex. CoreWeave’s dependence on a few giant customers (Microsoft accounted for 62% of 2024 revenue) creates concentration risk. And with potential shareholder revolt brewing, the deal could still be derailed.
The Verdict
CoreWeave’s acquisition of Core Scientific is more than M&A, it’s a symbol of the AI era’s shifting economics. In the 2010s, the scarcest resource was chips. In the 2020s, it’s megawatts.
If the deal succeeds, it validates vertical integration as the winning strategy and sets off a wave of consolidation. If it fails, it will be remembered as a case study in overreach, when an AI darling overpaid for a bankrupt miner.
Either way, one truth stands: the future of AI will be written not just in code, but in concrete, copper, and power lines.