Core Scientific is turning to the high-yield debt market to fund a bold pivot from bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure.
The Nasdaq-listed company (CORZ) is preparing to sell about $3.3 billion of junk bonds as it pushes ahead with construction of AI-capable data centers and other related investments. The move underscores how demand for AI compute is straining data centers, power capacity and advanced chips — and how some firms are tapping riskier financing to keep up.
What Core Scientific is building
- CORZ is developing six data centers designed to support AI workloads. Capacity from those sites is leased to CoreWeave under a 12-year agreement that, sources tell Bloomberg, could generate roughly $10 billion in revenue over the life of the deal.
- The company says proceeds from the bond sale will be used to repay existing debt, bolster reserves and cover potential construction shortfalls across several states — a sign of how capital‑intensive the AI buildout has become.
Where the money story fits
- Borrowers tied to AI infrastructure have already raised an estimated $17.9 billion in junk bonds so far this year, per Bloomberg. Recent large offerings tied to Google-backed data centers and CoreWeave totaled about $6.7 billion, and Edged Compute is marketing $1.3 billion in bonds to finance facilities leased to CoreWeave and an Alibaba unit.
- Core Scientific last month sold $175 million in bitcoin to help fund its AI transition. CFO Jim Nygaard says the company still holds “under 1,000 bitcoin.”
Why miners are pivoting to AI
- The economics of bitcoin mining shifted sharply after the April 2024 halving, which cut block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Rising power costs and falling BTC prices made many mining operations unprofitable, pushing firms to find new revenue streams.
- Miners’ existing assets — power contracts, grid connections, cooling-ready sites and built data centers — are a natural fit for hosting the power-hungry GPUs used in AI training and inference. Hyperscalers, including Microsoft and Alphabet, are among those competing for these sites.
A quick history
- Core Scientific was founded in 2017 and grew into one of North America’s largest bitcoin miners. After being squeezed by high energy costs and weak bitcoin prices, it filed for Chapter 11 in December 2022, then emerged from reorganization in January 2024 and returned to Nasdaq as CORZ.
- The pivot away from pure mining toward AI hosting has attracted investor interest and helped spur the broader AI infrastructure financing wave.
Market reaction
- Core Scientific’s shares rose about 6% on Tuesday and are up nearly 42% year-to-date, while bitcoin was down roughly 11%.
Bottom line: Core Scientific is betting big that repurposing its power- and cooling-ready infrastructure for AI workloads will outpace the returns from mining. But raising billions in junk bonds highlights the financing risk and heavy capital requirements of that transition.
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