So, here's the thing about being a bitcoin miner these days: sometimes the mining part isn't the main event anymore. Take Core Scientific Inc. (CORZ). The company just reported its fourth-quarter numbers, and the headline is a bit of a mixed bag. They posted an adjusted loss of 29 cents per share, which was wider than the 18 cents analysts were expecting. Sales came in at $79.76 million, also missing the consensus estimate and down from $94.9 million a year ago.
Digging into the details tells a clearer story of a company in transition. The revenue from Core Scientific's own bitcoin mining operations—what they call "digital asset self-mining"—plummeted to $42.2 million from $79.9 million a year ago. The main culprit? They mined 57% fewer bitcoins. A 20% increase in the average price of bitcoin helped cushion the fall, but not enough to stop the slide.
Meanwhile, the other side of the business is booming. Revenue from colocation—essentially renting out space and power in their data centers to other companies—jumped to $31.3 million, up from a mere $8.5 million last year. This is the part of the story that has Wall Street's attention.
"We're now past the halfway point on our existing builds and scaling our colocation platform into a 1.5 gigawatt pipeline of leasable capacity," said CEO Adam Sullivan in the earnings release. "With a multi-geography footprint and proven execution, we're accelerating RFS timelines across multiple sites to position the company for durable growth."
Translation: They're building out capacity fast, and they're finding customers to fill it. The biggest customer, by far, is the AI infrastructure company CoreWeave (CRWV).
The AI Pivot Is On Track
If you want to understand where Core Scientific is going, look at the CoreWeave deal. It's a 12-year agreement worth over $10 billion to provide 590 megawatts (MW) of capacity. According to analysts, they're already ahead of schedule.
Kevin Dede, an analyst at HC Wainwright who reiterated a Buy rating with a $25 price target, noted that 350MW is already energized for CoreWeave, with nearly 200MW already billing. "That puts Core Scientific more than halfway toward fulfilling its 590MW, $10 billion-plus, 12-year agreement with CoreWeave," Dede said. He added that the company remains on track to deliver the full 590MW by early 2027.
Dede's view is that the company's bitcoin mining is "expected to become secondary as colocation ramps up." In other words, the future is in being a landlord for AI compute, not just a bitcoin miner.
This strategic shift is what's keeping analysts optimistic, even as the mining results disappoint. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brett Knoblauch also reiterated an Overweight rating, though he trimmed his price target from $26 to $25 to account for the lower value of the mining business itself.
"Near-term results reflect both the company's Bitcoin mining economics and the ongoing ramp of its AI infrastructure for CoreWeave," Knoblauch wrote. He says investors should focus on "the pace of MW energization for CoreWeave, additional customer announcements, and power pipeline expansion."
