By
Bena Ilyas
May 17th, 2024
Core Scientific said that it would leverage its Bitcoin mining infrastructure towards other high-computing AI applications in the future.
On Wednesday, May 8, Bitcoin miner Core Scientific reported $210 million net income for Q1 of 2024, against the $0.4 million net loss in the same quarter last year. Besides, the company’s first-quarter revenue stood at $179.3 million which includes $150 million coming from crypto mining activities and $29.3 million from hosting services.
Core Scientific in Q1 2024
By the end of the first quarter, Core Scientific’s cash and cash equivalent on the balance sheet was $98.1 million, surging nearly 100% from $50.4 million in Q4 2023. In Q1 2024, the Bitcoin miner produced 2,285 Bitcoins through mining, the most among all the public-traded Bitcoin mining companies in North America. As of the current Bitcoin (BTC) price, the value of the Bitcoins mined during Q1 stands at $172.5 million.
The company disclosed a total hash rate of 25.5 exahashes per second (EH/s), comprising 19.3 EH/s for self-mining, used for internal Bitcoin production, and 6.2 EH/s for hosting, catering to its clients’ Bitcoin mining needs.
Core Scientific boasted ownership and oversight of approximately 745 megawatts of infrastructure, positioning itself as the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner in North America. CEO Adam Sullivan revealed that the company is in talks with customers regarding the conversion of more than 500 megawatts into high-performance computing capabilities. Sullivan emphasized that this move would allow the firm to operate in two highly promising markets simultaneously, leveraging both computing and Bitcoin mining.
Using Bitcoin Mining Infra for AI Purposes
As said, Core Scientific will repurpose its Bitcoin mining infrastructure for other high computing applications such as AI operations. they have already deployed a 16-megawatt data center capacity for an AI startup.
This development comes following the latest bitcoin halving, which cut the miner revenue in half from 6.25 BTC previously to now at 3.125 BTC. This has resulted in an annual revenue loss of $10 billion for Bitcoin miners.
As a result, Core Scientific and several other Bitcoin mining companies are looking to shift gears and capitalize on the AI boom. Thus, they are repurposing some of their assets in order to provide services to AI companies, which have high computational requirements. Core Scientific has been in discussions with several such AI startups in recent times.
On the other hand, other Bitcoin miners like Marathon Digital are willing to double their Bitcoin mining capacity. Marathon has adjusted its hash rate target for 2024, increasing it from the previously planned 35-37 exahashes per second (EH/s) to a new goal of 50 EH/s.