Core Scientific to Exit Bitcoin Mining Entirely by End of 2026

Core Scientific will shut down its Bitcoin mining operations entirely by the end of 2026 and enter 2027 as a pure-play AI and high-performance computing colocation provider, the company said on its November 5 earnings call covering third quarter 2026 results. The decision follows a quarter in which self-mining generated $12.3 million — down roughly 79% from $57.4 million a year earlier — and ran at a $7.5 million gross loss.

CEO Adam Sullivan put the deadline in plain terms on the call: "We expect to complete our exit from Bitcoin mining by year end." CFO Jim Nygaard confirmed the schedule, saying the company expects to complete the wind-down during the fourth quarter and "enter 2027 as a pure-play, high-density colocation provider." The fleet is already contracting sharply: Nygaard said the number of mining machines still running at the end of September was close to half of what the company had online at the start of the year.

What does the pivot change for the business?

The revenue mix has already decided the question. Colocation — leasing powered data center space to AI compute tenants rather than running mining machines — generated $215.4 million in the quarter ended September 30, up nearly 60% from the prior quarter and roughly 92% of total revenue of $232.9 million. Colocation gross profit reached $128.4 million at a 60% margin. Bitcoin mining in total, combining self-mining with hosted machines for third parties, contributed $17.5 million, or 7.5% of revenue. In practical terms, one dollar of colocation now accompanies roughly twelve cents of mining revenue.

The 2026 accounts explain the retreat. Core Scientific wrote down $266.5 million of mining assets in the first quarter, citing weaker Bitcoin prices and a hashprice near historic lows. In the second quarter it terminated its Block/Proto mining chip supply agreement at a $41.9 million loss. Digital assets on the balance sheet fell to $2.7 million on September 30, from $222 million at the end of 2025 — a decline of nearly 99% in nine months.

The exit is sector-wide, not idiosyncratic

Core Scientific is not alone in walking away from the business that built it. IREN, which reported the same day, said its Bitcoin mining revenue fell 58% quarter over quarter to $28 million while its AI cloud revenue grew 182% to about $200 million. IREN aims to substantially complete its own mining transition by December 31, 2026, per its 10-Q filing. MARA and CleanSpark have also redirected capital toward AI infrastructure.

The pattern is consistent across the sector: the same buildings, grid connections and cooling systems that once hosted hashboards are worth far more leased to AI tenants under long-term contracts.

Two contracts carry the strategy

Core Scientific's post-mining future rests on two anchor customers. It holds a CoreWeave contract covering roughly 590 megawatts, with the last 100 MW of that buildout expected to start recognizing revenue within a few months. A second, 530 MW AMD-backed agreement spans five campuses, with initial delivery targeted for the first half of 2027. Management projects the two contracts together will generate $1.8 billion in average annual run-rate revenue once fully delivered.

The company is already billing 485 megawatts of colocation capacity as of September 30, supporting more than $700 million in annualized colocation revenue. It ended the quarter with about $1.7 billion in liquidity, including roughly $800 million in cash — a buffer that covers more than half of that run-rate figure before any new financing.

For practitioners, the operational question is execution risk, not direction. The mining exit removes a loss-making line by the fourth quarter of 2026; the AMD delivery window in the first half of 2027 is the next milestone that determines whether the $1.8 billion run-rate projection converts into recognized revenue on schedule.