CoreWeave, a publicly traded AI cloud infrastructure company, announced on Friday a “multi-year” agreement with artificial intelligence developer Anthropic that will exploit CoreWeave’s cloud computing data centers to run Claude AI model workloads.
According to CoreWeave, the deal will be rolled out in phases, with “the potential to expand over time.” announcement.
CoreWeave shares are up more than 12% on Friday and are trading at $102.73 at the time of writing.
The deal follows CoreWeave’s recent $8.5 billion capital raise, led by tech giant Meta Platforms.
The financing was secured based on CoreWeave’s deployed compute power, which is tied to predictable cash flows rather than graphics processing unit hardware, marking a noticeable departure from established cryptocurrency mining financing structures.
CoreWeave transitioned away from cryptocurrency mining and rebranded itself as an artificial intelligence infrastructure company in 2019 as the mining sector faced prolonged economic pressure following the 2018 cryptocurrency downturn.
Related: Core Scientific secures up to $1 billion loan from Morgan Stanley for data centers
Artificial intelligence continues to drive miners away as economic difficulties hamper the cryptocurrency industry
Bitcoin (BTC) miners are grappling with rising energy costs, reduced rewards and falling prices for crypto assets, causing many to repurpose their mining equipment for AI processing.
According to the latest mining report from asset manager CoinShares, as many as 20% of Bitcoin miners are unprofitable in the current economic environment.
Crypto miners need to generate yield on their assets by deploying their cryptocurrencies on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms to support falling revenues, according to market maker Wintermute.
The economic challenges facing the mining industry have worsened following the October 2025 market crash, which sent the price of BTC plummeting from a high of around $126,000 to a low of $60,000. Prices have since stabilized at $73,000.
According to market analyst Ran Neuner, high mining costs and shrinking profit margins are threatening the profitability of Bitcoin mining, and AI workloads are becoming much more attractive in this environment.
“Both industries compete for the same thing: electricity, and now artificial intelligence is willing to pay much more for it,” he says he said.
Warehouse: Artificial intelligence has dramatically accelerated the quantum threat to Bitcoin: AI Eye
