TLDR
- Core Scientific (CORZ) is raising $3.3B through a junk bond sale to fund its AI data center expansion.
- The bonds are senior secured notes due 2031, backed by company assets.
- Six AI data centers are being built and leased to CoreWeave under a 12-year deal worth ~$10B in revenue.
- CORZ stock rose ~6% Tuesday and is up nearly 42% year-to-date.
- The raise follows a $1B credit agreement with Morgan Stanley announced in March.
Core Scientific was one of North America’s biggest bitcoin miners. Now it’s gunning to be a major AI infrastructure player — and it needs $3.3 billion to get there.
The company announced Tuesday it plans to raise $3.3 billion through a sale of senior secured notes due in 2031. The notes will be backed by Core Scientific’s assets, giving bondholders priority claims in a default scenario. The debt raise avoids diluting existing investors.
Proceeds will go toward funding ongoing data center construction and paying off existing short-term debt, including borrowings under a 364-day credit facility. Expansion projects are planned across Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
This is not the company’s first big financing move this year. In March, Core Scientific locked in a $1 billion credit agreement with Morgan Stanley. The new junk bond offering builds on that.
From Bitcoin Miner to AI Host
The company was founded in 2017 and grew into a top-tier bitcoin miner before filing for Chapter 11 in December 2022. Rising power costs and a weak bitcoin price squeezed the business. It emerged from bankruptcy in January 2024 and relisted on Nasdaq as CORZ.
The April 2024 halving cut block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125. By late 2025, mining costs climbed while bitcoin’s price dropped from over $125,000 to around $75,800. That math stopped working for most miners.
What miners did have was valuable real estate: built-out data centers, power contracts, and cooling-ready sites. Those assets turned out to be exactly what AI companies needed.
Core Scientific leased capacity to CoreWeave under a 12-year agreement. That deal is projected to bring in roughly $10 billion in revenue. Six AI data centers are currently under construction to support those workloads.
Junk Bond Market Fueling AI Build-Out
Core Scientific isn’t alone in tapping riskier debt markets. Borrowers tied to AI infrastructure have raised $17.9 billion in junk bonds so far this year, according to Bloomberg.
Recent deals include a combined $6.7 billion raised through offerings linked to Google-backed data centers and CoreWeave. Another firm, Edged Compute, is marketing $1.3 billion in bonds for facilities leased to CoreWeave and an Alibaba unit.
The company’s CFO, Jim Nygaard, confirmed the company holds “under 1,000 bitcoin.” In March, it sold $175 million worth of bitcoin to help fund the AI transition.
CORZ stock rose about 6% on Tuesday. It is up nearly 42% year-to-date, while bitcoin fell 11% over the same period.
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