Nvidia-backed AI cloud provider increases use of cryptocurrency mining facilities — CoreWeave expands contract as miners pivot to AI

CoreWeave, an AI hyper-scaler partnered with GPU giant Nvidia, has expanded its existing contract to rent high-performance computing capacity from Core Scientific. Core Scientific is one of the largest owners and operators of cryptocurrency mining services in North America.

CoreWeave was once a cryptocurrency mining outfit itself. It pivoted away from that business years ago, moving instead into visual effects rendering, inference service, and pixel streaming. When the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT opened the firehose of demand for AI computing, CoreWeave saw an opportunity.

The company now offers, among other services, cloud-based AI training, fine-tuning, and operation of different models. It’s worked alongside Bit192, for example, to bring GPT-NeoX-20B to Japan.

It uses Kubernetes-native infrastructures with more than 45,000 high-end Nvidia GPUs to handle compute-intensive needs for a variety of scenarios. Because the demand for such computing capabilities has grown so quickly, many cryptocurrency miners, such as Core Scientific, are repurposing their data centers to meet the need.

Under the original contract, Core Scientific was to provide 200MW of high-performance computing (HPC) hosting to CoreWeave for 12 years. That contract includes options to expand that infrastructure, which Core Scientific recently announced CoreWeave had exercised.

The terms of the new agreement will see Core Scientific modify a total of 100MW of its owned infrastructure. This will add approximately 70MW more capacity for CoreWeave to use for its Nvidia GPUs in HPC operations. According to Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan, “many data centers built in the last 20 years are not suitable to support future computing requirements.”

Through its application-specific data centers (ASDCs), Core Scientific can support the higher rack energy densities needed by HPC operations, like those CoreWeave employs. Core Scientific’s data center in Austin, Texas has a total of 1.2GW of contracted power available for its operations.

By the second half of 2025, CoreWeave will likely be leasing around 270MW of that capacity. It also still has the option of expanding an additional 230MW of HPC hosting infrastructure at other Core Scientific sites.

CoreWeave isn’t just operating in the U.S., however. The company is also expanding in Europe, with plans for data centers in Norway, Spain, and Sweden by the end of 2025. CoreWeave already has two data centers in the U.K., as well as a European headquarters.