Core Scientific Turns Off Its Last Bitcoin Miners for AI

• Core Scientific plans to finish shutting down its Bitcoin mining fleet before the end of 2026.
• Leasing data center capacity to AI customers now generates almost all of the company’s revenue.
• The company sold nearly its entire Bitcoin reserve this year to help pay for construction.
• One customer still accounts for most of the revenue, so concentration risk remains high.

Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ), which emerged from bankruptcy in January 2024 as one of North America’s largest listed Bitcoin miners, told investors on November 5 that it will switch off its remaining machines during the fourth quarter and enter 2027 purely as a provider of AI data center capacity. The announcement came with third-quarter results in which colocation, the business of renting out powered and cooled facilities for other companies’ servers, brought in $215.4 million of the $232.9 million in total revenue.

Revenue came in well above the roughly $198.4 million analysts had expected, yet the stock dropped more than 10% during Thursday’s session to a 52-week low as AI-linked shares sold off across the Nasdaq.

By the end of September the company was running nearly 50% fewer mining machines than in December 2025 and had stopped buying new equipment. According to its quarterly report filed with the SEC, it will run the remaining fleet for cash and may sell hardware as it is retired, so some mining revenue will still appear in the December quarter.

Mining Earned $12.3M in Q3

Self-mining revenue dropped from $57.4 million a year earlier, as the company produced 66% fewer coins and sold them at an average Bitcoin price 38% lower. Colocation revenue grew roughly fourteenfold over the same period, driven by new capacity delivered to CoreWeave, the AI cloud provider that has been Core Scientific’s main tenant since 2024.

Reported net income of about $1.18 billion came mostly from a noncash gain on the fair value of the company’s warrants, which are securities that let holders buy shares at a fixed price. Adjusted EBITDA, an operating profit measure that excludes interest, taxes, depreciation and one-off items, tells more about the leasing business. It rose to $133.6 million from $41.1 million in the second quarter.

$75,500 to Mine a $58,400 Coin

The April 2024 halving cut the block reward to 3.125 BTC, and the price has not compensated. In its Q2 2026 mining report, CoinShares estimated that listed miners spent an average of about $75,500 in cash per Bitcoin produced, while the coin ended June near $58,400. Those are industry figures, but Core Scientific’s books show the same pressure. It wrote down mining equipment by $266.5 million in the first quarter and paid $41.9 million in the second to cancel a chip order from Block. CoinShares put Core Scientific’s own cash cost at roughly $105,800 per coin in the second quarter, when the company mined just 300 BTC.

What the company kept is grid access, now the bottleneck for AI. Mining income moves daily with the Bitcoin price, while a colocation lease fixes payments for 12 to 15 years with built-in annual increases. Mining chips cannot run AI workloads, though, so every converted site needs new electrical systems, liquid cooling and networking, which pushed third-quarter capital spending to roughly $985 million from $244.5 million a year earlier.

3,374 BTC Sold to Fund Construction

The proceeds went toward capital spending, cutting the treasury by about 98.7% to coins worth roughly $2.7 million. Several listed miners still add Bitcoin to their balance sheets as a reserve asset, which makes this sell-off unusual in the sector.

AMD Holds 1,925 MW in Reserve

CoreWeave’s contract started at 16 MW in Auburn, Alabama and has grown to 590 MW across five sites, of which 485 MW was billing at September 30. Management puts annualized colocation revenue above $700 million at that level and expects double-digit growth in the fourth quarter compared with the third.

On July 28 the company signed 15-year agreements for about 530 MW across five campuses, roughly 380 MW for AMD directly and 150 MW for a smaller GPU cloud provider whose payments AMD guarantees. Core Scientific values the base contracts at more than $14 billion, with about half the capacity due in 2027. AMD can also reserve another 1,925 MW through December 28, 2028.

CoreWeave Pays 84% of the Bills

According to the 10-Q, one colocation customer generated 84% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026, so any delay with CoreWeave would hit results directly until AMD capacity starts billing. Management said on the call that the company holds about $800 million in cash, plus roughly $840 million in restricted cash and debt reserves tied to specific projects and loans, which cannot be spent freely. Construction delays or slow utility connections would push back the point where lease income covers the spending.

Q4 Should Show Zero Hashrate

The Bitcoin network will absorb the exit without disruption, since difficulty resets roughly every two weeks and the remaining miners collect a larger share of rewards. Riot Platforms is taking a slower route, leasing 50 MW in Texas to AMD and 191 MW to Anthropic while most of its capacity still mines Bitcoin.

The fourth-quarter report will be the first to show whether self-mining revenue has reached zero and whether the last 32 coins have been sold. Because AMD’s reservation right runs until the end of 2028, any third large tenant would need capacity outside the sites AMD has claimed.