Core Scientific sold $208 million worth of bitcoin in the first quarter, the company disclosed this week, as the miner accelerates its pivot from crypto mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure. The sale marks one of the larger quarterly bitcoin disposals by a publicly listed mining firm, and comes as Core Scientific expands its partnership with cloud AI startup CoreWeave.
A $208 million bitcoin sale
The Q1 sell-off represents a significant chunk of Core Scientific's bitcoin stash. The company didn't say how many coins it sold, but at current prices that's roughly a third of its holdings. The timing matters: bitcoin has been trading in a range this spring, and the sale gives Core Scientific a war chest to fund its infrastructure buildout.
Core Scientific has been selling bitcoin regularly over the past year to cover operating costs and capital expenditures. This quarter's total is the highest yet. The company's balance sheet now holds fewer coins than it did at the start of 2026.
The CoreWeave expansion
The real story, though, is what Core Scientific is buying with that cash. The miner inked a 590 megawatt contract expansion with CoreWeave, a cloud computing firm specializing in AI workloads. Over 12 years, the deal is projected to generate $10.2 billion in revenue for Core Scientific.
That's a staggering number for a company that, two years ago, was primarily known for running bitcoin mining rigs. The expansion brings Core Scientific's total contracted capacity with CoreWeave to over 1 gigawatt. Most of that power will go to running Nvidia H200 and B200 GPUs for AI training and inference.
Why the shift now
The math is simple: AI computing leases command far higher margins than bitcoin mining. A single megawatt of HPC capacity can generate three to five times the revenue of the same megawatt used for mining, depending on the contract. Core Scientific's existing mining fleet still runs, but new builds are increasingly dedicated to AI clients.
The pivot also hedges against bitcoin price volatility. Mining revenue is tied directly to BTC's market value and network difficulty, both of which can swing wildly. AI contracts are typically fixed-price or indexed to compute demand, offering more predictable cash flows.
Core Scientific expects to have the additional 590 MW fully energized by the end of 2027. The company is also in talks with other hyperscalers and AI labs for similar deals. For now, the $208 million bitcoin sale gives it the liquidity to keep building without tapping equity markets. The next quarterly filing will show whether the AI revenue ramp is on track.
