Core Scientific to Complete Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Exit by Year-End 2026

Q4 Wind-Down Confirmed on Earnings Call

Core Scientific will finish winding down its crypto mining business before 2026 closes, management said on Thursday's third-quarter earnings call, and the company plans to enter 2027 as a pure-play high-density colocation provider. Chief Executive Adam Sullivan set the deadline in a single line: the company expects to “complete our exit from Bitcoin (BTC) mining by year end.” Chief Financial Officer Jim Nygaard restated it in operational terms, saying Core Scientific expects to “complete the wind-down during the fourth quarter.” The comments came alongside the company's third-quarter results, a release filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that shows how far the retreat has already run. No action has been asked of bitcoin holders; the unwind is internal to the company and its data center customers. The news lands as the Bitcoin (BTC) price slips about 4.7% over the past 24 hours, a soft backdrop for the asset the company is leaving behind.

The quarter that ended Sept. 30 shows the pivot's scale. Digital asset self-mining revenue slid to $12.3 million, roughly 79% below the $57.4 million of a year earlier, and hosted mining for third parties added only $5.2 million. Self-mining actually posted a $7.5 million gross loss. Colocation revenue moved the other way, rising almost 60% from the second quarter to $215.4 million, and of $232.9 million in total revenue, colocation now accounts for about 92%. Colocation gross profit reached $128.4 million on a 60% margin, while adjusted EBITDA hit $133.6 million, more than triple the prior quarter, with the margin expanding to 57% from 25%. Fleet shrinkage backs the numbers: Nygaard said Core Scientific had close to 50% fewer ASIC mining rigs running at the end of September than at the close of 2025, as power and floor space are repurposed under long-term customer agreements for AI and high-performance computing workloads. Investor materials describe that repurposing as continuing “as circumstances allow.”

485 Megawatts Now Billing

Contracted capacity is what makes the exit arithmetic work. Core Scientific was billing 485 MW of colocation capacity at quarter-end, a rise of 90 MW during the quarter, capacity the company says averages more than $700 million a year in annualized colocation revenue under GAAP. The last 100 MW or so of the CoreWeave buildout is in commissioning, and Sullivan said it should begin generating revenue over the next few months. CoreWeave's contracted total stands at 590 MW. Beyond that sits 530 MW under an AMD-backed agreement across five campuses, with initial deliveries slated for the first half of 2027 and the full buildout by the end of 2028. The two relationships together cover about 1.1 gigawatt, and once fully delivered and billing, management expects that portfolio alone to produce $1.8 billion in average annual run-rate revenue alongside $1.6 billion of net operating income.

Bitcoin (BTC) is nearly gone from the balance sheet. The earnings exhibit filed with the SEC puts digital assets at $2.7 million on Sept. 30, against $49.7 million three months before and $222 million at the end of 2025. The exit has already cost cash: the second quarter carried a $41.9 million contract-termination loss after the company ended a Block/Proto mining chip supply agreement. Liquidity stood near $1.7 billion at quarter-end, roughly $800 million of it cash, following heavy capital spending on the AMD sites and the Polaris acquisition. Sullivan framed the wind-down as simplifying the business toward “more attractive long-term growth opportunities.” Nygaard added that opening 2027 with a “very clean P&L,” one without mining in the numbers, should give investors a clearer read on a true colocation run-rate. Public miners elsewhere have been selling coins and leasing campuses to AI tenants, and published research notes describe a widening funding gap between operators that can finance data center builds and those that cannot.

AMD Financing and the Q4 Cutoff

COINOTAG's read: this is a listed miner deliberately taking its Bitcoin (BTC) exposure to almost zero, and the balance sheet shows the choice largely executed, with digital assets down from $222 million to $2.7 million in ten months. It is also a strategic step away from proof of work economics toward data center leasing, a path spreading across the Bitcoin mining sector and mirrored by Keel Infrastructure's sale of its entire bitcoin treasury for $192 million. Two questions stay open past the deadline management set: whether the last machines go dark on schedule in Q4, and whether the AMD financing package lands in time to keep the 2027 colocation run-rate growing. The release does not answer either.