Core Scientific Inc. achieved a remarkable $580 million profit in the first quarter, more than doubling its earnings from the same period last year. While this strong financial performance suggests stability, the company’s underlying business is undergoing significant transformation with a deliberate pivot toward artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. 🤯 Despite surpassing expectations on profitability, Core Scientific fell short of revenue forecasts, reporting just $79.5 million—a sharp decrease from the previous quarter and missing analyst predictions by over 8%. 📉 The revenue shortfall can be attributed largely to reduced Bitcoin output following the April halving event that resulted in a lower block reward per transaction from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, impacting mining revenue. However, Core Scientific managed to remain profitable thanks to two crucial factors: a significant increase in Bitcoin’s average market price and a substantial drop in power costs due to efficiency gains. 📈 CEO Adam Sullivan highlighted the shift as strategic turning point for the company and emphasized their move into high-performance computing (HPC), a booming field driven by AI demand. 💻 This is reflected in their recent $1.2 billion data center expansion agreement with AI startup CoreWeave, which if successful could generate an annual revenue of up to $360 million by 2026, diversifying the company beyond Bitcoin mining.