CoreWeave’s pending Core Scientific buy gives ‘optionality’ as AI needs evolve
After its IPO, the cloud provider needed more scale before it could pursue “transformational M&A,” VanEck’s Matthew Sigel says
VanEck Head of Digital Assets Research Matthew Sigel | DAS 2025 New York by Mike Lawrence for Blockworks
CoreWeave’s pending acquisition of Core Scientific reflects the ongoing race to meet the growing demand for high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure as AI needs evolve.
A year after Core Scientific (CORZ) rejected CoreWeave’s bid to buy out the bitcoin miner — and with CORZ stock roughly tripling since that time — the combination is now deemed mutually beneficial.
The all-stock deal would give CORZ stockholders 0.1235 newly issued shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) stock for each share of CORZ stock.
Expected to close in the fourth quarter, the transaction is valued at roughly $9 billion and comes two months after CoreWeave’s acquisition of AI developer platform Weights & Biases in May.
While Core Scientific tallied $67 million in digital asset self-mining revenue during the first quarter, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator made clear the company is not looking to expand its crypto market footprint.
“Our lens on the physical infrastructure is that it provides us with tremendous optionality to be able to provide massive computing infrastructure for our clients,” he said during a Monday investor call.
Goldman Sachs predicts global data center power demand to increase up to 165% between 2023 and 2030. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during a February earnings call that Amazon Web Services plans to spend $100 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025.
The CoreWeave-Core Scientific combination would eliminate roughly $10 billion of future lease overhead for existing contractual sites over the next 12 years, CoreWeave executives noted. It also gives the cloud provider the ability to repurpose infrastructure dedicated to crypto mining for HPC usage in the medium term, they added.
Previous bid rejected, CoreWeave’s IPO
The two companies last year signed various 12-year contracts whereby Core Scientific agreed to offer 200 megawatts of infrastructure to host CoreWeave’s HPC services.
CoreWeave then offered to buy all outstanding CORZ shares in cash for $5.75 per share. The company’s stock price hovered around $15 at 1:30 pm ET Monday — down 17% on the day.
Core Scientific’s board of directors determined the CoreWeave proposal last year significantly undervalued the company. The firm had touted the value of its infrastructure — noting that its HPC contracts offer a stable, high-margin revenue stream that balances out its more volatile bitcoin mining business.
Read more: Core Scientific rejects CoreWeave buyout bid after big HPC deal
Now though, CEO Adam Sullivan said the company could “accelerate the availability of world-class infrastructure for companies innovating with AI” while letting shareholders “participate in the tremendous upside potential of the combined company.”
A Core Scientific spokesperson declined to comment further.
When asked about the timing of the deal, Intrator didn’t comment on last year’s acquisition bid. — instead noting the importance of owning infrastructure as competition ramps up.
“We think it’s really important to present to the market options for building massive scale solutions to the most complicated compute requirements that they have,” Intrator said.
CoreWeave listed its shares on the Nasdaq exchange in March. The stock opened at $39 and peaked around $184 last month.
But the company needed scale before it could pursue “transformational M&A,” said Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research. CoreWeave’s post-IPO rally gave it the equity currency to get aggressive, he added.
“That said, it looks like this deal hasn’t drawn much interest from merger arbitrage funds,” Sigel told Blockworks Monday. “CoreWeave’s low float and high borrow costs make it tough to hedge, which likely explains the Core Scientific unwind and 20% drawdown post-announcement.”
CRWV shares traded around $160 at 1:30 pm ET, down nearly 3% on the day.
The VanEck Onchain Economy ETF (NODE), which Sigel manages, had a roughly 5% position in Core Scientific, as of July 3.
“At $14.25, CORZ looks attractive if CRWV holds steady, given the fixed exchange ratio implies meaningful upside,” he told Blockworks.
Dan Weiskopf, co-portfolio manager of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), said it remains to be seen what such a deal means for CoreWeave’s pipeline of future data center deals. Like NODE, BLOK has allocated about 5% of its assets to CORZ.
“We believe Core Scientific has been working to expand its gigawatts of capacity outside of what has been announced, so it would not be a surprise to see CoreWeave announce additional deals with more capacity,” Weiskopf said. “The operating expertise that these two teams have together will bring synergies based upon the trust from working together for so many years.”
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