Core Scientific to Exit Bitcoin Mining by End of 2026

Core Scientific expects to exit Bitcoin mining entirely by the fourth quarter of 2026, closing out a transition that has already cut mining to just 7.5% of quarterly revenue. The company plans to start 2027 as a dedicated, high-density colocation provider serving artificial intelligence and high-performance computing clients.

CFO Jim Nygaard set the timetable on Thursday during the firm's Q3 earnings call. "We expect to complete the wind-down during the fourth quarter and enter 2027 as a pure-play, high-density colocation provider," Nygaard told investors and analysts on the call.

The date firms up a plan the company had already sketched. A July quarterly filing disclosed that hosted mining would end by Dec. 31, alongside a continuing wind-down of self-mining. Thursday's comment adds a target for the full exit.

What do the Q3 numbers show?

The third-quarter results lay out the shift in blunt arithmetic. Bitcoin mining — self-mining plus hosting for other operators — produced $17.5 million of Core Scientific's $232.9 million in quarterly revenue. Colocation services delivered $215.4 million, roughly 92% of the top line.

The mining side is shrinking on every metric the company reports:

• Self-mining revenue fell to $12.3 million, down from $57.4 million a year earlier.
• Revenue from hosting other miners dropped to $5.2 million from $8.7 million.
• The company had nearly 50% fewer miners online at the end of September than at the end of 2025, according to Nygaard.

How did the pivot happen?

The turn toward AI began in 2024. Core Scientific signed an initial hosting agreement with CoreWeave in March of that year, then followed with a much larger deal announced in June. At the time, the company framed AI hosting as an expansion that would run alongside mining. Its June 2024 announcement stressed preserving Bitcoin mining capacity.

That framing did not survive the economics. By December 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that Core Scientific was already targeting a wind-down of its Bitcoin mining operations by 2028. The company has now pulled that deadline forward by more than a year.

Mining economics added pressure in the months that followed. Core Scientific recorded $266.5 million in mining-related asset impairments in the first quarter of 2026, citing weaker Bitcoin prices, historically low hashprice and falling secondary-market values for mining equipment. In the second quarter, it terminated a mining equipment agreement with Block and Proto, booking a $41.9 million loss as part of the transition.

What does this change for the sector? Core Scientific, once among the largest publicly listed Bitcoin miners, becomes the most prominent convert to the AI-infrastructure camp — a path several rivals have already taken as hashprice squeezed margins across the industry.

Why the political timing is awkward

The planned exit lands amid fresh political friction over data-center growth in the United States. Opponents of data-center development were among the winners of the Democrats' sweeping midterm gains, Reuters reported Wednesday. The backlash centers partly on electricity bills and the strain large facilities place on local resources.

That matters for Core Scientific's core business. A pure-play colocation model depends on powering and expanding high-density facilities, and the election results introduce uncertainty for companies building out AI infrastructure. Local opposition, grid constraints and rate disputes can slow the very projects that now account for nearly all of the company's revenue.

Cointelegraph reached out to Core Scientific for comment on the plans.

The operational takeaway is straightforward. Core Scientific has roughly a year to decommission its remaining mining fleet, finish the transition of its sites and prove it can grow colocation revenue fast enough to absorb the residual mining income — before the fourth-quarter 2026 deadline the CFO has now put on the record.