Core Scientific shareholders on Thursday rejected an all-stock buyout offer from partner and competitor Coreweave that was valued at $9 billion at the time.
The company did this following a recommendation for a negative vote from Sheena Tussi, the largest shareholder at Two Seas Capital, a firm focused on post-bankruptcy companies. Core Scientific emerged from bankruptcy in January 2024.
Core Scientific started out as a crypto miner and is still part of it, sharing its early history with AI data center provider CoreWeave, which also started out as a miner.
However, CoreWeave worked with investor and partner Nvidia to transition to delivering AI workloads. From its IPO to now, the company’s stock has soared from a market cap of $14 billion to its current $66 billion (about $140 per share) as investors see it as a way to get involved in AI efforts. The company has spent those shares on acquisitions.
CoreWeave already had a $10 billion, 12-year contract with Core Scientific to use its facilities for AI services, even as it finalized a deal to fully acquire the company announced in July. The offer was at a premium to Core Scientific’s stock price at the time.
But investor Tussi thinks Core Scientific could turn into another CoreWeave on its own. “Since the acquisition was announced in July, investment in AI infrastructure has accelerated and Core Scientific’s peers have seen higher stock valuations than ever before,” he wrote in a letter of dissent. “Why would anyone vote for a deal that was only $16.40 per share?”
Investors rejected the deal and CoreWeave withdrew. Core Scientific’s stock price rose on the news, and the company’s market capitalization now stands at $6.6 billion.
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Investors turning down takeover offers in favor of bigger offers is another sign that we’re in, or at least heading towards, an AI bubble.
Meanwhile, CoreWeave is still shopping. On Thursday, the company reversed course and acquired open source Jupyter Notebook competitor Marimo for an undisclosed sum. PitchBook estimates Marimo has raised about $5 million.
Python notebooks are development tools that combine code, rich media, and descriptive text into one shareable file. These are commonly used for AI app development as well as interactive data analysis, helping CoreWeave move its stack from hosting to building AI apps.
