TL;DR · 30-second read
The Short Version
A company that used to mine bitcoin is turning its buildings into data centers for artificial intelligence. Core Scientific says it finished another 48 megawatts of capacity at its campus in Dalton, Georgia. That is enough electricity for tens of thousands of homes. The space is for CoreWeave, which rents computing power to artificial intelligence companies.
The catch is that finishing a building is not the same as getting paid for it. In July, only about a sixth of the space rented out at Dalton was being billed. The company has not said when this new section starts earning money. Its November 5 earnings report should show.
Mugglehead Investment Magazine reported that Core Scientific (Nasdaq: CORZ), the Miami-based bitcoin miner converting its facilities into high-density colocation data centers, said on October 19 that it had delivered another 48 megawatts (MW) at its Dalton, Georgia campus since its July update. The capacity belongs to Phase 2, which is being built for the campus’s first customer, AI cloud provider CoreWeave (Nasdaq: CRWV). Core Scientific did not say whether CoreWeave has accepted the new capacity, how much is now billing, or when revenue from it begins.
Core Scientific’s July 28 earnings presentation showed about 30 MW billing at Dalton against roughly 175 MW leased, with CoreWeave’s buildout there targeted for completion in early 2027. The October update did not revise that date. Core Scientific shares closed up 1.85% at $13.73 on October 19, and CoreWeave closed down 0.44% at $61.12. Core Scientific reports third-quarter results before the market opens on November 5.
Executive Summary
The headline figure is construction progress: 48 MW of data center capacity handed over in Phase 2 at Dalton. In colocation, a tenant rents space, power and cooling in a facility and installs its own servers. Under that model, delivering capacity is only the first step. The landlord’s revenue usually starts once the tenant accepts the space and billing begins, and Core Scientific has not said whether either has happened for these 48 MW.
That distinction matters because Dalton holds most of the unbilled capacity in Core Scientific’s CoreWeave portfolio. In July, roughly 145 MW at Dalton was leased but not yet billing. Chief executive Adam Sullivan put the remaining CoreWeave buildout at 150 MW across all five campuses, and the other four sites were complete or substantially complete. How quickly Dalton moves from delivered to billed therefore largely determines when the rest of the contracted revenue arrives.
For investors and for other miners pursuing AI conversions, the lesson is that the size of a contract says little about timing. The CoreWeave relationship carries more than $10 billion of potential revenue over 12-year terms. What shows up in each quarter’s results depends on how many megawatts have crossed into billing, and the November 5 results are the next point at which that can be checked.
The 145 MW Gap Between Leased and Billed
The core mechanism is simple. A megawatt that is leased is a promise of future income. A megawatt that is delivered has been built. A megawatt that is billing is actually generating revenue. Core Scientific’s July presentation put Dalton at about 175 MW leased and about 30 MW billing, which left roughly 145 MW of contracted capacity outside the billing column. The October delivery of 48 MW sits somewhere in that gap. If every new megawatt had entered billing, Dalton would be near 78 MW, still well under half of its leased capacity. The company has not confirmed that it has.
Core Scientific’s own figures give a rough sense of what the gap is worth. Its mid-July billing capacity of 437 MW corresponded to about $635 million of average annualized colocation revenue under standard accounting rules (GAAP). That is a companywide average of roughly $1.45 million per billed megawatt per year. The figure is a portfolio average and cannot be read as Dalton’s actual pricing, but it shows the scale involved. Each quarter that a large block of capacity sits delivered but unbilled is revenue that has been contracted but not yet earned.
This is why delivery cadence, more than contract size, drives near-term results for converted miners. Revenue arrives in steps as each power block is energized, accepted and billed. A headline lease figure tells investors where the curve should end, but not how fast the company gets there.
Capital Goes Out Before the Revenue Comes In
The timing gap has a cash cost. Core Scientific reported second-quarter capital expenditures of $797.5 million, covering property, equipment, land and development rights. Liquidity at June 30 was $1.82 billion, a measure that combines cash and cash equivalents with digital assets such as bitcoin. Spending of that size goes into buildings and electrical gear months before the corresponding megawatts generate rent.
Revenue is catching up. Colocation revenue rose to $136.7 million in the June quarter from $77.5 million in the March quarter, and billing capacity grew from 395 MW at June 30 to 437 MW by mid-July. The same quarter showed a net loss of $1,155.3 million. The company attributed most of that loss to changes in the fair value of its warrants, which are rights to buy shares at a set price and which become more costly on paper as the stock rises. That is an accounting effect rather than an operating cash outflow, but it means headline profit figures are a poor guide to how the conversion is progressing. Billed megawatts are a better guide.
A Large, Concentrated Contract With Shared Risk
The CoreWeave relationship began with a 16 MW lease at Core Scientific’s Austin campus in 2024. “Our agreement with CoreWeave began with a 16-megawatt lease at our Austin campus in 2024 and has since expanded to 590 megawatts of total contracted capacity,” Sullivan said in his July 28 prepared remarks. The July deck described 12-year terms with two five-year renewal options, no right for either party to terminate unilaterally, and about $850 million in average annualized revenue across the full relationship.
Those terms provide durable revenue once capacity is billing. They also concentrate the outcome on one tenant and on one campus’s construction schedule. The deck said both parties share execution risk, and CoreWeave has its own version of the same gap. It reported 1.5 gigawatts of active power against about 3.7 gigawatts contracted across its business, which means its revenue also depends on capacity being energized on time. That is a company-wide figure and is separate from Dalton, but the incentives line up. Both companies benefit when Dalton megawatts move into service, and both are exposed when they slip.
What November 5 Can Settle
Core Scientific’s third-quarter results are the first point at which the October delivery can be compared with reported billing and revenue. The useful numbers will be billing capacity at Dalton specifically, any updated completion date for the CoreWeave buildout there, and whether the early-2027 target still holds. Because the October update gave no dates for deliveries between July and October, the 48 MW cannot yet be assigned to a single reporting quarter. That allocation is exactly what the results should clarify.
Background
Core Scientific built its business as one of the larger US bitcoin miners and has since been converting its sites into high-density colocation data centers for AI and high-performance computing. The company went through a Chapter 11 restructuring, a court-supervised reorganization of its debts. In March 2025 it named Jim Nygaard, a finance executive formerly of XMS Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley, as chief financial officer, succeeding Denise Sterling, who led the company through the restructuring and more than $1 billion of capital raising.
Converting a mining site involves more than renting out space. AI servers draw far more power per rack and generate more heat than mining machines, so operators must rebuild electrical and cooling systems before a tenant can move in. Core Scientific’s CoreWeave relationship grew from a 16 MW Austin lease in 2024 to about 590 MW across five campuses. By July, four of those sites were complete or substantially complete, leaving Dalton as the main remaining build. Source: Core Scientific reports another 48 MW delivered at Dalton campus, Mugglehead Investment Magazine’s report on the October 19 Dalton delivery update, with figures from Core Scientific’s July 28 results. Primary sources: Core Scientific Appoints Former Investment Banker as New CFO (CoinDesk, March 3, 2025).Sources