Core Scientific announced a contract with AMD on Monday to supply AI infrastructure capacity of up to 2.5 gigawatts starting in 2027, as the company winds down its bitcoin mining operations and repurposes its data center footprint.
The deal marks a shift away from cryptocurrency mining toward colocation services for artificial intelligence workloads. Core Scientific, which operated some of the largest mining facilities in North America, will convert existing infrastructure to serve GPU-intensive AI customers rather than continue competing for bitcoin block rewards.
Core Scientific operates approximately 800 megawatts of total capacity across its U.S. facilities, according to prior public filings. The 2.5-gigawatt AMD commitment represents a significant expansion of the company's infrastructure footprint and would roughly triple its existing capacity once the contract launches in 2027. The company has already begun hosting AI colocation customers; the announcement did not disclose financial terms or timeline details beyond the 2027 start date.
AMD's decision to anchor capacity with Core Scientific comes as major cloud providers and AI infrastructure firms compete for specialized colocation space for AI training and inference. Core Scientific's existing facilities, built and optimized for 24/7 power draw during the bitcoin era, require minimal adaptation to serve similar workloads.
The company has faced persistent headwinds since 2022, when a crypto market crash and bitcoin difficulty increases eroded mining margins. Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2022, emerged in May 2023, and has since been reducing its bitcoin mining fleet while investing in colocation infrastructure. The AMD deal accelerates that exit; the company did not specify whether it would maintain any active mining operations post-2027.
Other mining operators including Hut 8 and Riot Platforms have pursued similar pivots, leasing or converting capacity to AI colocation or other computing uses. Large-scale operators are now generating returns from their power and real estate positions through premium colocation services with multi-year contracts rather than commodity hashrate competition.
Core Scientific's bitcoin mining fleet has declined from peak levels; the company held approximately 3.5 exahash of computing power as of mid-2026, down from over 8 exahash in early 2022. The AMD contract commitment of 2.5 gigawatts amounts to roughly three times the company's current total operational capacity, which means the company expects to both repurpose existing mining infrastructure and expand facility footprint to meet the deal's requirements.
The timing of the AMD announcement matters. If Core Scientific has not initiated physical colocation deployments for the 2.5-gigawatt AMD contract by the second quarter of 2027, the deal's viability and the company's ability to execute on capacity conversion will become a measurable question for investors and AMD.
