Core Scientific Pays $42M to Exit Block’s Bitcoin Mining Deal as AI Revenue Surges
Core Scientific has paid $41.9 million to terminate a bitcoin miner contract with Block’s Proto unit, marking the data center operator’s accelerating retreat from bitcoin mining toward AI infrastructure.
The settlement canceled the existing contract and all future equipment deliveries, Core Scientific said in its second-quarter regulatory filing. The company tied the decision to the wind-down of its remaining mining obligations and its transition to high-density colocation operations.
The terminated agreement, announced in July 2024, called for Block’s Proto division to supply 3-nanometer mining chips representing about 15 EH/s of computing power. Canceling the order removes what had been a potentially substantial expansion of Core Scientific’s mining fleet.
The company now says it isn’t investing in new mining equipment to maintain or expand its hashrate. Instead, it plans to extract cash from the remaining fleet while converting facilities and selling or retiring miners when appropriate.
That shift is visible in second-quarter results. Colocation revenue rose to $136.7 million from $10.6 million a year earlier, accounting for 83% of total revenue. Self-mining revenue fell 66% to $21.5 million, representing just 13% of quarterly revenue. Revenue from third-party mining hosting was $6 million.
Core Scientific said bitcoin production declined 53% from a year earlier, while average realized bitcoin price fell 27%. The company has been reallocating power from mining equipment to data-center capacity used for graphics-processing units and other high-density systems.
Core Scientific had 395 megawatts of billable colocation capacity as of June 30 and 437 megawatts by mid-July. Total leased customer capacity has reached about 1.1 gigawatts.
Its colocation revenue currently comes entirely from CoreWeave, which accounted for about 77% of total revenue in the first half. Core Scientific this week announced a separate partnership with AMD covering up to 2.5 gigawatts of potential capacity.
Overall second-quarter revenue more than doubled to $164.2 million from $78.6 million.