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Core Scientific’s CEO pioneered the highly lucrative move by bitcoin miners into AI computation work.
By Tom Carreras, Aoyon Ashraf|Edited by Nelson Wang
Updated Dec 10, 2024, 4:57 p.m. UTCPublished Dec 10, 2024, 2:51 p.m. UTC
It was a transformational year for bitcoin miners, with a cohort of them plowing significant resources into running artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. None, however, have done it quite like Core Scientific (CORZ), which under CEO Adam Sullivan’s leadership emerged from bankruptcy in January and then proceeded to ink a multi-billion dollar megadeal with longtime business partner, AI hyperscaler CoreWeave.
In fact, Sullivan’s company was the first miner to move into AI computation on a scale that brought investors’ much-needed attention back to the mining industry. Once Core was able to secure the deal and saw its share price explode higher, most of the other miners followed suit, making AI work the new normal for the industry. Investors even began pressuring miners that didn’t diversify into AI to do so.
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Considering Core’s deal and investor sentiment, it would come as no surprise for data-center-hungry private equity or big tech firms to soon make an acquisition offer for Core Scientific and perhaps for other bitcoin miners as well.
This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.
Tom was sucked into crypto in 2020 and is very much enjoying the ride. Now a markets reporter for CoinDesk, he previously wrote for DL News about bitcoin ETFs, the Federal Reserve, bitcoin mining and crypto adoption in Latin America. He has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from McGill University and can usually be found in Costa Rica. He holds BTC, ETH and SOL above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
Aoyon Ashraf is CoinDesk’s managing editor for Breaking News. He spent almost a decade at Bloomberg covering equities, commodities and tech. Prior to that, he spent several years on the sellside, financing small-cap companies. Aoyon graduated from University of Toronto with a degree in mining engineering. He holds ETH and BTC, as well as ALGO, ADA, SOL, OP and some other altcoins which are below CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
