Matthew Sigel
Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, Portfolio Manager of NODE ETF
Core Scientific has stopped being a bitcoin miner and become a contracted AI-infrastructure landlord with years of revenue visibility. Its Q2 loss is mostly a non-cash warrant mark, not a broken business. AMD signed as anchor tenant for over 500 MW from 2027, scalable to 2.5 GW, earning warrants only as capacity comes online. The test is on-schedule delivery into 2027; if AMD and CoreWeave both scale as contracted, this is one of the more de-risked demand stories in the AI power trade. x.com … Show more
Core Scientific looks attractive as a catch-up trade. x.comÂ
Core Scientific's failure to secure a data center deal in an environment this strong is a bad sign, coming after the CoreWeave delays. x.comÂ
Core Scientific is dirt cheap at under 10x contracted annual net operating income, given that most of that income now comes from investment-grade AMD. x.comÂ
Core Scientific is positioned for the AI capacity shortage as AI companies and labs race to lock in capacity years ahead. It leases compute to CoreWeave and signed an AMD deal for up to 2.5GW of future capacity. AI cloud backlogs have passed $150 billion, and one provider said it could sell out its 2027 capacity at today's terms. x.comÂ
Getting compute six months early can be worth $20B in high-margin revenue, dwarfing the cost of a 50bp rise in rates. On a $50B, 1GW data center, that rise adds $250M in interest, or 1.25% of the cited revenue; most centers are smaller. That leaves a massive buying opportunity in CoreWeave, Nebius, Oracle and Boost Run despite higher yields. x.comÂ
Leasing data centers reduces Oracle's capital intensity and gets GPUs online faster, shortening the path to self-funding growth. Its FY29 free-cash-flow guide is $30B+, and Oracle and CoreWeave each have at least 1.5GW live while the next-largest neoclouds have only a few hundred MW at most despite claiming self-building can scale faster. Oracle's financial risks are declining: leverage is down about 0.75x from its peak earlier this year. x.com x.comÂ
Rising GPU rental rates and Anthropic's compute margins challenge claims of collapsing demand for CoreWeave's capacity. The WSJ reported Anthropic's first-half revenue of $16.3B against $9B in compute and infrastructure spending; Bloomberg reported its Q3 compute margin above 40%. Long contracts and fully amortizing loans cushion demand declines but cap upside. Despite the challenging neocloud model, CoreWeave's risk/reward is by far the best and its quality well ahead of peers. x.com x.com … Show more
Reduced perceived CoreWeave credit risk and a fully ramped lease would support a higher valuation for Galaxy Digital. A $50 share price in 18 months seems reasonable if the CoreWeave lease reaches $1B+ of EBITDA and the first phase of an 830MW lease to a new investment-grade tenant is online by mid-2028, adding $200M-$300M of EBITDA. Further leases and execution at other sites, a crypto bull market and recurring digital-asset licensing revenue could take it much higher. x.comÂ
Core Scientific has more than 4 gigawatts to energize and $500 million of free cash flow coming from CoreWeave. Selling because it announced no new deal with earnings is foolish, since companies in this group rarely announce deals alongside earnings. x.comÂ