Core Scientific (CORZ) Stock Drops After Q4 Miss as AI Pivot Continues

LDR

• Core Scientific (CORZ) posted Q4 revenue of $79.8 million, well below Wall Street’s $122 million estimate, with losses widening to $0.42 per share vs. the expected $0.08.
• Crypto mining revenue dropped nearly 50% year-over-year to $42.2 million, hurt by Bitcoin trading around $68,000 — roughly 46% off its late-2025 peak.
• The company is pivoting hard toward HPC and AI colocation, building toward a 1.5-gigawatt pipeline of leasable capacity across multiple sites.
• Core Scientific is expanding into Texas with 430 megawatts of new gross power capacity, plus 300 megawatts added at existing Georgia and Texas sites.
• CORZ ended Monday down 2.8% at $16.49, dropping as low as $14.69 in after-hours before recovering — though the stock remains up over 13% year-to-date.

Core Scientific missed Wall Street’s fourth-quarter revenue targets by a wide margin, sending CORZ lower on Monday.

The company reported Q4 revenue of $79.8 million — down 16% from a year earlier and well short of analyst expectations that ranged from $90 million to $122 million depending on the estimate source.

Its loss widened to $0.42 per share, against forecasts of just $0.08.

Core Scientific, Inc., CORZ

Crypto mining revenue bore the brunt of the damage, falling nearly 50% year-over-year to $42.2 million.

Bitcoin has been trading around $68,000 — nearly half its peak of over $126,000 hit earlier in late 2025. The cryptocurrency ended 2025 at just under $88,500 and has continued to slide.

That drop has squeezed margins across the mining sector. The April 2024 halving, which cut block rewards in half, added more pressure on top of rising energy and infrastructure costs.

Pivoting to AI and HPC

Core Scientific has been actively repositioning away from pure bitcoin mining and toward hosting and colocation for high-performance computing and AI workloads.

CEO Adam Sullivan said the company is “now past the halfway point on our existing builds and scaling our colocation platform into a 1.5-gigawatt pipeline of leasable capacity.”

That’s not just talk. The company announced an expansion in Texas, adding around 430 megawatts of gross power capacity at one site alone.

It also added 300 megawatts across other locations in Georgia and Texas.

Net income for Q4 came in at $216 million, but that figure was heavily influenced by a $330.3 million non-cash fair value gain. Adjusted EBITDA showed a loss of $42.7 million.

RIOT Holds Flat on Its Own Miss

Rival miner Riot Platforms posted Q4 revenue of $152.8 million — up 7% year-over-year, but still short of the $157 million analysts had expected.

One data point worth flagging: a separate LSEG figure cited $647.4 million for RIOT’s Q4 revenue, a major discrepancy likely explained by the inclusion of engineering revenue and other line items in different analyst models.

RIOT ended Monday at $16.43, moving less than 1% after hours to $16.28.

CORZ ended the regular session down 2.8% at $16.49. It fell to a low of $14.69 after the bell before recovering to close the after-hours session roughly flat.

Year-to-date, CORZ is still up more than 13%.

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