On Thursday, Core Scientific’s shareholders rejected a $9 billion all-stock acquisition proposal from its partner and rival, CoreWeave. The valuation was current at the time of the vote.
The rejection followed a recommendation to vote “no” from Sina Toussi of Two Seas Capital, their largest shareholder. Toussi’s firm specializes in companies emerging from bankruptcy. Core Scientific exited bankruptcy in January 2024.
Core Scientific, originally a crypto miner and still active in the field, shares its origins with CoreWeave, the AI data center provider, which also began as a miner.
However, CoreWeave, supported by investor and partner Nvidia, has shifted its focus to AI workloads. Since its initial public offering, its stock has surged from a $14 billion market capitalization to $66 billion today (around $140 per share), as investors see it as an opportunity to participate in the AI boom. The company has been using its shares for acquisitions.
CoreWeave had previously entered into a $10 billion, 12-year agreement with Core Scientific to utilize its facilities for AI services. This was before finalizing an outright acquisition deal announced in July. The offer represented a premium over Core Scientific’s stock price at that point.
Toussi, however, believes that Core Scientific has the potential to become another CoreWeave independently. “Since the transaction announcement in July, investments in AI infrastructure have accelerated, pushing the equity valuations of Core Scientific’s competitors to even greater heights,” he stated in his opposition letter. “Why would anyone approve a deal worth only $16.40 per share?”
As a result, investors rejected the agreement, and CoreWeave withdrew. Core Scientific’s stock value increased following the announcement, and the company’s current market capitalization stands at $6.6 billion.
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Investors rejecting acquisition offers in anticipation of more lucrative deals is yet another indication that we are in, or approaching, an AI bubble.
Meanwhile, CoreWeave remains in acquisition mode. On Thursday, it promptly acquired Marimo, an open-source alternative to Jupyter Notebook, for an unspecified amount. PitchBook estimates that Marimo has secured approximately $5 million in funding.
Python notebooks serve as development tools that integrate code, rich media, and explanatory text into a single, easily shared file. They are frequently employed for interactive data analysis and the development of AI applications, aiding CoreWeave in its efforts to ascend from hosting to AI app development.
