CoreWeave's $9B Core Scientific acquisition is a bid for more power

CoreWeave just added 1.3 gigawatts of datacenter capacity to its rent-a-GPU scheme with the $9 billion acquisition of crypto-mining outfit Core Scientific, the companies announced Monday.

Power has become a major constraint for datacenter operators looking to capitalize on the ongoing AI boom. By absorbing Core Scientific, CoreWeave sidesteps this headache while also curbing its reliance on colocation partners.

CoreWeave's business model revolves around leasing massive quantities of Nvidia GPUs acquired in large part through debt financing. However, without datacenters to house all those servers and adequate power to run them, the whole enterprise grinds to a halt.

Core Scientific is a bitcoin mining outfit that's been moonlighting as a high-density colocation provider for a while now. The company has ten datacenters across Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas in various stages of operation and development. Combined, the company boasts 1.3 gigawatts ...