one year on
CoreWeave to acquire Core Scientific in $9 billion all-stock deal, absorbing crypto-mining infrastructure for AI compute
The AI cloud provider's acquisition of the data center operator eliminates over $10 billion in future lease obligations and adds 1.3 GW of power capacity, signaling an accelerating land grab for energy and infrastructure.
CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), the AI-focused cloud provider that went public in March, announced Monday it will acquire Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $9 billion. Under the terms, Core Scientific stockholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share held, implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing price before deal talks were reported. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, subject to regulatory and shareholder approval.
The acquisition gives CoreWeave ownership of approximately 1.3 GW of gross power across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with an additional 1 GW+ available for expansion. Critically, the deal eliminates over $10 billion of cumulative future lease obligations that CoreWeave would have paid over the next 12 years. CoreWeave CFO Nitin Agrawal said on an investor call that 840 MW of Core Scientific’s capacity is already allocated to CoreWeave contracts at five locations. The company said it may divest Core Scientific’s crypto mining business or convert it to handle AI workloads. CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator noted that converting cryptocurrency sites costs less than building new AI data centers from scratch.
The deal marks a significant verticalization move for CoreWeave, which had previously leased data center capacity. CoreWeave expects the deal to add $500 million in annual run-rate cost savings by the end of 2027 — a figure that includes the eliminated lease overhead. Core Scientific, which emerged from bankruptcy and relisted on Nasdaq in 2024, has been increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads. The two companies have worked together since 2018. Industry observers are watching closely as the AI-compute land grab extends beyond GPUs to the power and physical infrastructure needed to run them, with crypto-mining facilities — built for high-density, energy-intensive workloads — becoming an increasingly attractive target for conversion.
The record
CoreWeave CEO said in an interview that the deal 'takes the market some time to internalize the value proposition' and that 'we're not paying rent for the next 15 years'
Core Scientific CEO stated in a press release that together the companies will 'be well-positioned to accelerate the availability of world-class infrastructure for companies innovating with AI'
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
It never closed. Core Scientific shareholders voted the deal down that October — the all-stock ratio, they argued, undervalued them — and the company stayed independent, CoreWeave's second failed run at it. The thesis won anyway: converting crypto-mining sites into AI compute became the defining infrastructure trade of the year's second half.
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