This Company Won Big With Bitcoin and AI. Why It’s Now Favoring One Over the Other

Austin, Texas, company Core Scientific went from bankruptcy to stock market darling this year by betting on two technologies: Bitcoin mining and AI data centers. Shares are up 400%.

But if given the choice of whether to invest more in one business over the other, executives answer without hesitating: the data centers.

“We really just value long-term, stable cash flows and predictable returns,” Chief Operating Officer Matt Brown said in an interview. The company began life as a Bitcoin miner. Even though Bitcoin has been a great asset lately, it’s very volatile. By comparison, Core Scientific can earn steady profits for years by hosting servers owned by companies that sell cloud services to AI providers, Brown said.

This year, you couldn’t go wrong betting on either. Bitcoin is up 116%, and data centers are in high demand because tech companies need them to power their AI applications.

The two technologies seem to have little in common, but they both depend on the same thing: access to reliable power. Core Scientific has a lot of it, operating nine grid-connected warehouses in six states with access to so much electricity they could serve several hundred thousand homes. Other Bitcoin miners have similarly transitioned to data center hosting , but few with quite so much success.

Core Scientific’s business didn’t look quite so good at the start of the year. The company started 2024 under the shadow of bankruptcy protection. It had too much debt on its balance sheet after going public through the SPAC process in 2022 and succumbed to a Bitcoin price crash. But the company’s fortunes quickly turned around after it emerged from bankruptcy on Jan. 23 with $400 million less debt.

The company started the year focused entirely on crypto mining, but quickly pivoted as it saw demand surge for electricity for AI data centers.

In June, the company signed a deal with a company called Coreweave to lease data center space for AI cloud services. Coreweave has since agreed to lease 500 megawatts worth of space. Core Scientific says it will get paid $8.7 billion over 12 years under the deal.

Privately held Coreweave is one of the fastest-growing companies behind the AI revolution. It was once a cryptocurrency miner, but has since transitioned to offering cloud services, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. It’s closely connected to Nvidia , which has invested money in Coreweave and given the company access to its top-end chips. Coreweave expects to be one of the first customers for Nvidia ’s upcoming Blackwell GPUs.

Core Scientific’s quick success in this new world has surprised even the people who are driving it.

“Every once in a while I need to pinch myself, to see I’m actually not dreaming,” Brown said.

Core Scientific’s success does create a high bar for the stock to keep rising. The company is expected to lose money this year, largely because of a change in the value of stock warrants—an accounting shift that doesn’t reflect underlying earnings. Analysts see the company becoming profitable in 2025, when more of its data center deals start to hit the bottom line. They see EPS jumping tenfold by 2027. Shares trade at about 13 times those 2027 estimates.

The data center opportunity should only grow from here, as tech companies build more powerful AI systems. Of the 1,200 megawatts worth of gross power capacity Core Scientific has contracted, about 800 megawatts are going to data center computing deals and 400 megawatts toward Bitcoin mining.

Brown said the company has good relationships with its power suppliers and can potentially add more capacity without having to buy more real estate. It expects to be able to secure about 300 more megawatts worth of power at existing sites, perhaps by the end of the year.

It’s also in the hunt for new sites, including at “distressed” conventional data centers that have lost their tenants. Core Scientific has figured out how to quickly spiff up bare-bones data centers and turn them into high-tech sites with resources like liquid cooling equipment and much higher levels of electricity.

A single server rack in a standard data center might need 6 or 7 kilowatts of power. A high-performance data center can use as much as 130 kilowatts per rack; Core Scientific is working on increasing capacity to 400 kilowatts. The company likens the process of upgrading the warehouses to turning a ho-hum passenger vehicle into a Formula One racing car.

Core Scientific’s transformation from a broken-down jalopy to a hot rod has been a wild story. Its fate next year will depend on just how quickly the AI revolution unfolds.

For many Australians, the 2026 Federal Budget initially felt like a direct challenge to the way wealth is created, held and transferred between generations.

The headlines were immediate: changes to capital gains tax, reforms to discretionary trusts, restrictions on negative gearing and increased scrutiny of investment structures. Unsurprisingly, affluent families, business owners and investors began asking the same question:

Is the way we hold our wealth still fit for purpose?

In recent days, the government has announced several significant amendments following industry consultation and public feedback, including exempting testamentary trusts from the proposed 30 per cent minimum tax and expanding capital gains tax concessions for small businesses.

The backdown is welcome. But it also highlights something much bigger.

This Budget has accelerated a conversation that many Australian families have been postponing for years.

The conversation is not really about tax. It is about wealth stewardship.

For decades, Australians have built wealth through businesses, property, investments and careful long-term planning. Yet many families have not revisited the legal structures surrounding those assets in years, sometimes decades.

We often see clients who have spent years building significant wealth, only to discover their legal arrangements no longer reflect their current circumstances.

Their children are now adults. They may own multiple properties.

They may have sold a business, entered a second marriage, become grandparents or accumulated digital assets that did not exist when their original estate plans were prepared.

The trust that distributes income may need to be reconsidered. The bucket company may no longer be so attractive.

The Budget has simply exposed a reality that already existed: wealth structures cannot remain static while life continues to evolve.

Importantly, trusts themselves are not the issue.

Trusts are legitimate planning tools that provide flexibility, protection and continuity. When used appropriately, they allow families to adapt to changing circumstances over time.

And neither is tax the issue, really. Getting the fundamentals right is more important for long-term, sustainable wealth than a few favourable tax treatments around the edges.

The real issue is complacency.

Too often, families create structures and assume the job is done. It isn’t.

Estate planning is no longer a document you sign once and file away in a drawer. It is an ongoing process that should evolve alongside your life.

We are also seeing a broader shift in how Australians define wealth itself. It is no longer just the family home and an investment portfolio.

Modern wealth includes businesses, digital assets, cryptocurrency, intellectual property, frequent flyer points and increasingly complex family arrangements.

At the same time, Australians are living longer than ever before, meaning wealth may need to support multiple generations simultaneously. This creates new responsibilities and new risks.

How do you help your children enter the property market without exposing family wealth to relationship breakdowns?

How do you structure wealth so that it remains a source of opportunity rather than future conflict?

These are the questions families should be asking now.

The recent debate surrounding testamentary trusts also serves as an important reminder that policy decisions can have unintended consequences for vulnerable Australians. It is encouraging that the government has listened to feedback and clarified its position.

But the lesson remains: the wealth landscape is changing.

Increasingly, governments, regulators and tax authorities are paying closer attention to how wealth is held and transferred. That means families cannot afford to adopt a “set-and-forget” approach to their structures.

The families who will be best placed for the future are not necessarily those with the greatest wealth.

They are the families with the greatest clarity. Clarity around ownership, succession and governance. And clarity around how wealth will transition from one generation to the next.

Ultimately, preserving wealth is not about avoiding change.

It is about preparing for it.

Because the greatest risk is not change itself.

It is losing the ability to respond to it.

Anthony Hunt is Co-Founder of Wealth Lawyers and former COO of Westpac Private Bank. He advises business owners, investors and affluent Australian families on wealth protection, succession planning and intergenerational wealth transfer

This Company Won Big With Bitcoin and AI. Why It’s Now Favoring One Over the Other

The Federal Budget may have softened some of its proposed tax reforms, but it has exposed a bigger issue: too many families are relying on wealth structures that no longer reflect the realities of modern life.