CoreWeave’s Strategic Play: Why Its Pending Core Scientific Acquisition Is a Game-Changer for AI’s Future

Big moves in AI infrastructure—CoreWeave’s pending buyout of Core Scientific isn’t just another deal. It’s a power grab for the compute-hungry future.

Here’s the kicker: This acquisition isn’t about today’s AI models. It’s about locking down the infrastructure for tomorrow’s trillion-parameter beasts. Core Scientific’s data centers? Now potential GPU goldmines.

Wall Street’s take? 'Optionality'—finance-speak for 'we don’t know how this ends, but it’ll probably print money.' Meanwhile, AI labs keep burning cash like it’s 2021 crypto summer.

The bottom line: When the AI arms race escalates, the winners won’t just own the algorithms—they’ll control the hardware. Smart bet or desperate land grab? Place your trades.

Previous bid rejected, CoreWeave’s IPO 

The two companies last year signed various 12-year contracts whereby CORE Scientific agreed to offer 200 megawatts of infrastructure to host CoreWeave’s HPC services.

CoreWeave then offered to buy all outstanding CORZ shares in cash for $5.75 per share. The company’s stock price hovered around $15 at 1:30 pm ET Monday — down 17% on the day.  

Core Scientific’s board of directors determined the CoreWeave proposal last year significantly undervalued the company. The firm had touted the value of its infrastructure — noting that its HPC contracts offer a stable, high-margin revenue stream that balances out its more volatile bitcoin mining business. 

Core Scientific rejects CoreWeave buyout bid after big HPC deal

Now though, CEO Adam Sullivan said the company could “accelerate the availability of world-class infrastructure for companies innovating with AI” while letting shareholders “participate in the tremendous upside potential of the combined company.”

A Core Scientific spokesperson declined to comment further.

When asked about the timing of the deal, Intrator didn’t comment on last year’s acquisition bid.  — instead noting the importance of owning infrastructure as competition ramps up.

“We think it’s really important to present to the market options for building massive scale solutions to the most complicated compute requirements that they have,” Intrator said.

CoreWeave listed its shares on the Nasdaq exchange in March. The stock opened at $39 and peaked around $184 last month.

But the company needed scale before it could pursue “transformational M&A,” said Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research. CoreWeave’s post-IPO rally gave it the equity currency to get aggressive, he added.

“That said, it looks like this deal hasn’t drawn much interest from merger arbitrage funds,” Sigel told Blockworks Monday. “CoreWeave’s low float and high borrow costs make it tough to hedge, which likely explains the Core Scientific unwind and 20% drawdown post-announcement.”

CRWV shares traded around $160 at 1:30 pm ET, down nearly 3% on the day.  

The VanEck Onchain Economy ETF (NODE), which Sigel manages, had a roughly 5% position in Core Scientific, as of July 3. 

“At $14.25, CORZ looks attractive if CRWV holds steady, given the fixed exchange ratio implies meaningful upside,” he told Blockworks.

Dan Weiskopf, co-portfolio manager of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), said it remains to be seen what such a deal means for CoreWeave’s pipeline of future data center deals. Like NODE, BLOK has allocated about 5% of its assets to CORZ.

“We believe Core Scientific has been working to expand its gigawatts of capacity outside of what has been announced, so it would not be a surprise to see CoreWeave announce additional deals with more capacity,” Weiskopf said. “The operating expertise that these two teams have together will bring synergies based upon the trust from working together for so many years.”

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