Bitcoin miner Core Scientific posts $580M Q1 profit but misses revenue estimates

Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific Inc. posted a net profit of $580 million with its first quarter results, but missed analyst revenue estimates after a drop in its mining profits.

Core Scientific’s Q1 2025 results, published on May 7, saw it more than double its $210 million net income from the year-ago quarter, while its total revenue reached $79.5 million, missing Zacks analysts' estimates by 8.11%, and falling from its $179.3 million in revenues for Q1 2024. 

The firm’s primary source of revenue came from $67.2 million in self-mining revenue, $3.8 million in hosted mining revenue, and $8.6 million in colocation, formerly listed as high-performance computing (HPC) hosting.

Core Scientific said its drop in Bitcoin (BTC) mined and revenue was due to the halving on April 20, 2024, when mining rewards were cut from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, and its operational shift to HPC hosting, primarily used for artificial intelligence.

However, the losses were partially offset by a 74% increase in the average price of Bitcoin and a 33% decrease in power costs due to lower rates and usage. 

As part of its HPC hosting shift, Core Scientific inked a deal in February with AI startup CoreWeave for a $1.2 billion data center expansion. As a result, Core Scientific anticipates entering 2026 with annualized colocation revenue of $360 million.

Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan said in a statement that its first quarter was an “inflection point,” as the firm positioned itself at the “center of one of the most important shifts in modern computing,” as the demand for high-performance data infrastructure has accelerated.

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Shares in Core Scientific (CORZ) closed May 7 trading down 1%, falling to $8.90, according to Google Finance. However, they jumped over 3% to trade at $9.24 after the bell.

In an August report, asset manager VanEck estimated that if publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies shifted 20% of their energy capacity to AI and HPC by 2027, they could increase additional yearly profits by $13.9 billion over 13 years.

Riot Platforms appointed three new directors to its board in February, one of whom has experience converting Bitcoin mining assets toward HPC.

Hive Digital, Hut 8 and Iris Energy converted part of their operations to HPC and AI last year, and TeraWulf sold its stake in a Bitcoin mining facility for $92 million in October, with the proceeds marked for hosting AI and building HPC data centers. 

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