Core Scientific shareholders rejected a $9 billion acquisition; company deepened partnership with AMD for AI and HPC infrastructure.

Core Scientific shareholders rejected a $9 billion all-stock acquisition by CoreWeave in October 2025, and seven months later, their decision appears vindicated by a sweeping infrastructure partnership with AMD that far exceeds the strategic value of the rejected buyout.

CoreWeave first pitched the acquisition in July 2025 as a natural consolidation play in the AI infrastructure space. The all-stock structure would have valued Core Scientific at roughly $9 billion, offering CORZ shareholders 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each of their shares. However, questions about valuation and the acquisition process mounted, and by October 30, 2025, the deal was dead.

On July 28, 2026, Core Scientific announced a transformative partnership with AMD to deliver over 500 megawatts of AI-ready data center capacity beginning in 2027, with the potential to scale to 2.5 gigawatts. The collaboration extends beyond a simple landlord-tenant arrangement. AMD and Core Scientific will jointly deploy AMD's technologies across these facilities, creating purpose-built environments for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The partnership also includes a warrant component that gives AMD the option to purchase Core Scientific common stock at market prices under specific commercial conditions.

Core Scientific's trajectory illustrates one of the most dramatic pivots in the crypto-adjacent space. Once deriving the majority of its revenue from Bitcoin mining and operating one of North America's largest mining fleets, the company filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. Following emergence, it repositioned its massive data center portfolio toward high-density colocation—the power-hungry, cooling-intensive infrastructure demanded by AI model training and inference. Today, colocation services comprise most of Core Scientific's revenue, with Bitcoin mining relegated to a secondary business line. The company reported a notable net loss in Q2 2026.

By partnering with AMD rather than selling to CoreWeave, Core Scientific retains strategic optionality. The 500-megawatt initial commitment with a pathway to 2.5 gigawatts signals that AMD views this as a long-term relationship. If AMD exercises its warrants as the commercial relationship deepens, it would become a significant shareholder, further aligning the two companies' interests.