Core Scientific (CORZ) Shareholders Rejected a $9B Sale. Does the AMD Deal Vindicate Them?

Core Scientific, Inc. (NASDAQ: CORZ ) announced a major infrastructure partnership with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) on July 28, giving the chipmaker's ecosystem access to more than 500 megawatts of U.S. data-center capacity beginning in 2027. The arrangement can expand to 2.5 gigawatts. Core Scientific shares rallied in premarket trading.

The agreement is more substantial than the initial announcement suggested. Core Scientific's earnings release described 15-year agreements covering approximately 530 megawatts across five sites, with more than $14 billion of potential base contracted revenue. Its regulatory filing provided an important distinction: AMD directly leased 377 megawatts, while an unnamed neocloud leased another 152 megawatts under agreements that give AMD certain equipment protections and rights if that customer defaults.

The larger story, however, began nine months earlier. Core Scientific shareholders rejected an all-stock acquisition by CoreWeave whose announcement-date implied equity value was approximately $9 billion. The fixed exchange ratio valued CORZ at $20.40 per share when the transaction was announced in July 2025, but the value shareholders would have received at closing was not fixed and moved with CoreWeave's share price.

In January, Gullane Capital Partners founder Trip Miller, who had opposed the sale, predicted that Core Scientific would secure new AI customers. "I expect them to announce deals for AI with third parties other than CoreWeave," he told Business Insider.

The new agreements appear to deliver precisely that customer diversification. Taken together, AMD's 377-megawatt direct lease and the neocloud's 152-megawatt lease exceed Miller's roughly 400-megawatt expectation, although AMD itself did not directly lease the full 529 megawatts. The question is whether the agreements prove that shareholders were right to preserve Core Scientific's independence, or merely give the company a large, capital-intensive opportunity whose ultimate value remains uncertain.

AMD agreement validates the central argument shareholders made when they rejected CoreWeave: Core Scientific's power portfolio could attract major customers beyond its existing tenant.

Before the new agreements, CoreWeave remained Core Scientific's only meaningful high-density colocation customer. Core Scientific had leased approximately 590 megawatts to CoreWeave, and a single customer generated 77% of the company's first-half revenue.

The new leases almost double total leased customer power capacity to approximately 1.1 gigawatts. Core Scientific said that capacity now represents more than $24 billion of potential contracted revenue, including the existing CoreWeave relationship and the new agreements connected to AMD.