Fresh off one of the year’s highest-profile IPOs, CoreWeave Inc. on Monday said it has agreed to acquire Core Scientific Inc., a data center provider, in an all-stock $9 billion transaction.
The artificial intelligence (AI) cloud computing giant said the deal, scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter, would significantly improve its ability to support large-scale AI development and meet its AI power needs. It could add at least two gigawatts of power capacity through Core Scientific’s nationwide data center infrastructure, according to CoreWeave.
Equally important, CoreWeave said the acquisition should extend its vertical expansion across the AI supply chain with additional energy infrastructure considered so crucial to meet the power demands of AI cloud computing technology.
“Verticalizing the ownership of Core Scientific’s high-performance data center infrastructure enables CoreWeave to significantly enhance operating efficiency and de-risk our future expansion, solidifying our growth trajectory,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said in a statement announcing the deal. “Owning this foundational layer of our platform will enhance our performance and expertise as we continue helping customers unleash AI’s full potential.”
What is more, the proposed deal would eliminate $10 billion or more in future overhead from leasing costs for sites CoreWeave currently contracts from Core Scientific while hauling in about $1.6 billion in assets, CoreWeave said in an investor presentation.
The acquisition signals that CoreWeave is no longer content to be a specialized player in building datacenters for the AI cloud market, say analysts. By securing its own infrastructure at scale, they said, CoreWeave could challenge established hyperscalers head-on with the idea that owning the digital real estate is the ultimate path to victory in a market dominated by AI speculation and investment.
“CoreWeave’s acquisition of Core Scientific represents a refreshingly straightforward move in a market currently dominated by partnership-driven strategies. While many data center storage players like Dell, HPE, Oracle, and VAST Data are focused on technological building blocks for the AI era, CoreWeave is making a bold bet on the importance of owning the foundational layer of the data center stack itself — namely, the power and the real estate,” Brad Shimmin, vice president of practice lead for data management and analytics at The Futurum Group, said in an email.
CoreWeave, which went public in March, boasts a market value of more than $75 billion — nearly four times its value of $20 billion after its last private fundraising round.
