Core Scientific plans to finish leaving the Bitcoin mining business before 2026 ends, the US data center operator said on its third-quarter earnings call on Thursday. The company is putting its focus on artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.
Chief financial officer Jim Nygaard gave the timeline. “We expect to complete the wind-down during the fourth quarter and enter 2027 as a pure-play, high-density colocation provider,” he said. From 2027, the company will focus only on leasing data center equipment.
Core Scientific had said in a July quarterly filing that hosted mining would end by Dec. 31, while it kept winding down self-mining. Nygaard’s comment sets a target date for the complete exit. In December 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported the company was already aiming to end its Bitcoin mining operations by 2028.
The quarter ended September 30, 2026 produced $232.9 million in total revenue. The second quarter brought in $164.2 million and the third quarter of last year $81.1 million. Colocation drove the increase, rising nearly 60% from $136.7 million in Q2 to $215.4 million in Q3. In the third quarter of 2025, the segment generated just $15 million.
Mining now makes up a small slice of the business. It produced $17.5 million, or 7.5% of third-quarter revenue. Self-mining revenue fell to $12.3 million from $57.4 million a year earlier, and revenue from hosting other miners dropped to $5.2 million from $8.7 million. According to Nygaard, nearly 50% fewer miners were online at the end of September than at the end of 2025.
The shift toward AI hosting took shape in 2024. Core Scientific signed an initial hosting agreement with CoreWeave in March of that year and announced a much larger deal in June. At the time, the company described AI hosting as an expansion alongside mining, and its June 2024 announcement emphasized preserving Bitcoin mining capacity.
Mining economics worsened in 2026. Core Scientific recorded $266.5 million in mining-related asset impairments in the first quarter, citing weaker Bitcoin prices, historically low hashprice and falling values for mining equipment on the secondary market. In the second quarter, it terminated its mining equipment agreement with Block and Proto and recorded a $41.9 million loss as part of the transition.
