Core Scientific (CORZ) is completely pivoting its core business from Bitcoin mining to artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure provision. The company announced a strategic partnership with AMD to lease 529 megawatts of AI computing capacity across the United States. The 15-year contract carries more than $14 billion in potential baseline revenue for Core Scientific. The market responded immediately to the decision, with CORZ shares rising 5.6% in pre-market trading, while AMD shares slipped 4%.
Of the total capacity, AMD is directly leasing 377 MW to be allocated across facilities in Pecos and Hunt County, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. The remaining 152 MW is leased by an undisclosed cloud computing provider for facilities in Auburn, Alabama, and Dalton, Georgia. The cloud provider’s operations will also be fully supported by AMD. This new capacity to serve AMD customers is scheduled to begin operations in 2027.
2.5-Gigawatt Expansion Option and Stock Warrants
The capacity ceiling in this initial agreement could grow substantially larger. AMD holds the right to reserve an additional capacity of up to 1,925 MW through December 28, 2028. If all options are exercised, the partnership between the two parties could expand to a capacity of approximately 2.5 gigawatts. The collaboration encompasses end-to-end data center design and deployment of hardware such as AMD Instinct GPUs, EPYC processors, and ROCm software stacks.
In addition to lease fees, AMD received warrants granting the right to purchase up to 30 million shares of Core Scientific at an exercise price of $23.47 per share. A total of 6.5 million warrants vested immediately upon signing, with the remainder vesting in tranches alongside capacity expansions. With this new collaboration, Core Scientific’s total contracted power capacity now reaches 1.1 gigawatts, boosting the potential revenue across all its contracts beyond $24 billion.
The Cost of Closing the Bitcoin Mining Chapter
Core Scientific’s pivot to becoming a pure-play infrastructure provider necessitated the cancellation of its crypto mining expansion plans. The company officially terminated an agreement to purchase 3nm Bitcoin mining chips from Block, an about-face that forced it to incur a $41.9 million loss. The deal previously signed in 2024 with Block was originally designed to inject an additional 15 exahashes per second (EH/s) of mining power into its fleet.
Despite scrapping plans for new mining hardware, the company’s balance sheet indicates it has not completely liquidated its crypto holdings. A report as of June 30 showed the company held 848 BTC worth $49.7 million, up from 547 BTC three months earlier. This increase in reserves followed a major sell-off in the first quarter of 2026, when Core Scientific offloaded 2,385 BTC valued at $208.2 million. The decision to trade crypto rigs for AI servers required millions of dollars in upfront losses, and shareholders now await whether the next 15 years of lease revenue will prove worthwhile.
Reported by CoinDesk.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
