Core Scientific, a major US-listed bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure firm, has sold about 1,900 bitcoin for roughly $175 million as part of an accelerated strategy to shift its business toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centres, senior executives confirmed during its fourth-quarter earnings disclosures. The move cuts the company’s bitcoin holdings to below 1,000 coins and underscores a broader industry trend of miners repositioning assets to capture growth in AI-driven infrastructure services. The strategic sale, executed in January, generated an average price of around $92,100 per coin, significantly above current market trading levels, and comes as demand for large-scale computing capacity from AI workloads surges. Chief Financial Officer Jim Nygaard characterised the disposal as “opportunistic” and said the company expects to remain flexible in monetising its crypto assets to fund investments in AI infrastructure rather than reinvesting in cryptocurrency mining operations.
Core Scientific’s Q4 earnings revealed a business under transformation. Revenue for the period fell short of expectations, with the company reporting $79.8 million against a consensus forecast of more than $122 million and a net loss of $0.42 per share. Bitcoin mining revenue nearly halved, reflecting both softer cryptocurrency price conditions and the diminishing returns from self-mining activity.
Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan described the legacy mining segment as being in “runoff”, maintained primarily to satisfy minimum power requirements as legacy sites are repurposed into colocation facilities capable of hosting AI and HPC workloads. These facilities are being built under a multi-year contract with CoreWeave, a significant customer and partner in the company’s transition.
Core Scientific ended the year with approximately $530 million in liquidity and highlighted access to up to $4 billion of potential financing tied to contracted capacity under the CoreWeave partnership, providing cushion for capital expenditures needed to scale its AI infrastructure footprint. Executives pointed out that bitcoin sales are intended to fund such build-outs rather than rebuild mining capacity.
The conversion of former mining sites into AI data centres has already progressed across several states. As of the latest earnings call, roughly 350 megawatts of capacity had been energised, with close to 200 megawatts currently billing. These expansions, located in Texas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia, are integral to the company’s long-term plan to transition every megawatt of its portfolio to colocation services within the coming years.
Core Scientific is part of a cohort of former bitcoin miners that are leveraging their existing power-dense infrastructure to capture market share in the AI and HPC data-centre sector. Competitors such as Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms have also monetised significant portions of their crypto holdings and announced shifts toward AI and colocation services, reflecting a competitive dynamic where traditional mining yields are less profitable amid volatile digital asset prices.
Market reaction to the company’s disclosures was mixed. While the pivot strategy appealed to investors focused on long-term data-centre growth, the earnings miss and ongoing losses in the mining business triggered volatility in Core Scientific’s share price in after-hours trading. Analysts noted that execution risk remains a key consideration, with colocation and AI market demand needing to materialise at scale to support profitability beyond mining revenues.
Despite these headwinds, management emphasised the potential for higher margins in AI hosting relative to bitcoin mining. Hosting and colocation services, particularly for “Neoclouds” and enterprise AI clients, can command revenue multiples significantly above those historically seen in mining, presenting a strategic rationale for the pivot.
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