Core Scientific stock may ride CoreWeave's wave amid progress on Texas site tied to OpenAI: Bernstein

Core Scientific's deepening ties with CoreWeave could see the bitcoin miner-turned-AI diversifier's underperforming stock catch up with the AI hyperscaler's recent price surge, according to analysts at Bernstein.

CoreWeave (CRWV) is up 115% since its $1.5 billion initial public offering in March, with the Nasdaq-listed stock currently trading for around $90 at a $41.5 billion market cap, according to TradingView. Core Scientific (CORZ) is also up around 45% in the same period and 70% over the last 30. Nevertheless, it remains down nearly 25% year-to-date, per The Block's price page — reflecting mixed investor confidence in AI capex, the analysts led by Gautam Chhugani said in a Tuesday note to clients.

However, with CoreWeave securing $15.9 billion in new orders from OpenAI through 2029 and expanding its total revenue backlog to nearly $30 billion, plus Core Scientific advancing its 250MW delivery pipeline for 2025 — including progress on the 260MW Denton site tied to OpenAI — Bernstein predicts investor confidence in CORZ is poised to rebound swiftly.

"We believe, CORZ is still valued as a bitcoin miner and not as a cutting edge data center platform with a capital light model," the analysts said, reiterating their outperform rating for Core Scientific and setting a $17 price target — 57% to the upside.

CoreWeave operates over 30 AI data centers with 420MW of active power and has a total contracted capacity of approximately 1.6GW, with 590MW of that coming from Core Scientific alone. CoreWeave is no stranger to crypto either, having been an Ethereum miner before the network's move to proof-of-stake in 2022 saw the company pivot to AI.

CoreWeave signed an initial 12-year deal with Core Scientific in June 2024, securing 200MW of power capacity to scale its AI cloud operations. The agreement repurposes some of Core Scientific's infrastructure for high-performance AI workloads. Following subsequent expansions in October 2024 and February 2025, CoreWeave's total contracted HPC infrastructure with Core Scientific rose to approximately 590MW across six sites, with total projected revenue now reaching $10.2 billion over the 12-year contract term.

Core Scientific aims to deliver 250MW to CoreWeave in 2025 and the full 590MW by early 2027, using a capital-light model with shared capex, where CoreWeave pre-funds development costs in most cases — estimating a 75% to 80% gross margin on the deal.

Its site in Denton, Texas, will ultimately host one of North America's largest GPU clusters tied to OpenAI workloads, the analysts noted. Core Scientific is also negotiating 50MW to 100MW of non-hyperscaler enterprise deals, with a 50:50 split between CoreWeave and other clients, and its balance sheet has strengthened through debt refinancing and $779 million in liquidity, including 1,200 BTC, they added.

Diversifying from bitcoin mining to AI

Bitcoin mining ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) machines are not suitable for AI workloads. However, operators' underlying infrastructure — including lucrative power supply contracts, the physical sites, and advanced cooling systems — can be adapted for GPU-hosting, making AI data center diversification an attractive option for mining firms amid the LLM boom.

Core Scientific provides GPU hosting infrastructure for AI clients like CoreWeave but does not supply the GPUs themselves. Under their agreements, CoreWeave owns and supplies Nvidia GPUs, while Core Scientific modifies and operates its data center infrastructure to accommodate these high-density, high-performance computing workloads.

The firm's transition has been stark, having allocated approximately 900MW of its 1.3GW total power to AI/HPC use, leaving only around 400MW for bitcoin mining, the analysts noted. Bernstein expects Core Scientific's AI segment to eventually make up 43% of its enterprise value and drive a compound annual revenue growth rate of around 30% through 2029.

Core Scientific's stock is also susceptible to downside pressure from CoreWeave news, however, as demonstrated by a swift 13% drop in March following the firm's disclosure that it had l ost a few contracts from Microsoft . Although, CoreWeave subsequently highlighted the addition of a new, unnamed, hyperscaler customer other than Microsoft and OpenAI, the Bernstein analysts noted — widely reported to be Google-parent Alphabet.