Latest news with #CloudComputing
Coin Geek
2 days ago
- Business
- Coin Geek
CoreWeave signals shift in mining dynamics under new talks
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... In the last week of June, a significant development in the block reward mining sector captured global attention: CoreWeave, a United States-based artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure provider, is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ), a leading BTC mining and high-performance computing (HPC) firm. Announced on June 26, this move follows CoreWeave's rejected $1 billion bid in 2024 and highlights the evolving intersection of BTC mining and AI infrastructure. The negotiations, which could value Core Scientific at $4-$5 billion, reflect broader industry trends toward diversification, driven by rising BTC mining costs, regulatory pressures, and the growing demand for AI-driven computing power. However, the deal also raises concerns about financial risks and market volatility, underscoring the complex dynamics shaping the future of block reward mining. CoreWeave's interest in Core Scientific stems from strategic synergies. Core Scientific, one of North America's largest BTC mining and hosting providers, has pivoted aggressively toward AI infrastructure since exiting bankruptcy in January 2024. Its 590 megawatt (MW) of data center capacity, much of which supports CoreWeave's Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) GPU-based AI workloads through a 12-year, $10.2 billion contract signed in June 2024, makes it a critical asset. CoreWeave, valued at $76.56 billion post its March 2025 initial public offering (IPO), relies on leasing data center space to power clients like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (62% of its 2024 revenue), Meta (NASDAQ: META), and OpenAI. Acquiring Core Scientific would enable vertical integration, allowing CoreWeave to own its infrastructure, reduce leasing costs (currently $850 million annually to Core Scientific), and compete with giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Google Cloud (NASDAQ: GOOGL). Analysts, such as Jefferies' Jonathan Petersen, estimate a buyout price of $16-$23 per share, with Cantor Fitzgerald projecting over $30 and Roth Capital up to $38 in an all-stock deal, a significant jump from CoreWeave's 2024 offer of $5.75 per share. The BTC mining landscape provides context for this shift. The April 2024 BTC halving reduced block rewards to 3.125 BTC, and network difficulty hit 126.98 trillion in May 2025, driving mining costs to an estimated $70,000 per BTC. Core Scientific's Q1 2025 revenue fell 55.6% year-on-year to $79.53 million, with $67.2 million from self-mining, reflecting the halving's impact. Meanwhile, its $580 million net income highlights its pivot to AI, leveraging existing infrastructure for HPC workloads. This aligns with global trends, as miners like Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) and IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) also diversify into AI to offset declining BTC mining margins. CoreWeave, a former crypto miner, sees Core Scientific's 570 MW capacity as a scalable platform to meet surging AI demand, a trend underscored by posts on X describing the deal as a 'paradigm shift' for AI and mining convergence. However, the potential acquisition carries risks. CoreWeave's $11.9 billion debt pile raises concerns about financing, with analysts like D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria suggesting an all-stock deal to avoid further debt or shareholder dilution. Core Scientific's stock surged 35% on June 26, pushing its market cap to nearly $5 billion, but CoreWeave's shares dipped 1-1.5%, reflecting investor fears of overpaying. The deal's high valuation—potentially 40% above Core Scientific's $16.36 share price as of June 19—could strain CoreWeave's balance sheet, especially given its reliance on Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) GPUs and competition from Nvidia's cloud computing push. Regulatory hurdles, including scrutiny over energy-intensive data centers and volatility in AI demand, further complicate execution. Posts on X noted mixed investor sentiment, with CoreWeave's high valuation post-IPO (up 325% YTD) raising concerns about sustainability. Globally, the deal reflects broader block reward mining challenges. Norway's June 28 proposal to ban new mining data centers due to energy concerns and Russia's crackdown on illegal BTC mining (e.g., a June 27 seizure in Buryatia) highlight regulatory pressures. Meanwhile, firms like ZA Miner and CRYPTO MINING FIRM are adopting AI-driven cloud mining to reduce energy costs and hardware barriers, a trend Core Scientific mirrors by repurposing mining infrastructure for AI. However, centralized AI infrastructure risks outages or cyberattacks, and high acquisition costs could limit profitability if BTC prices or AI demand falter. Traditional mining offers more control over assets, potentially appealing to firms avoiding third-party dependencies. CoreWeave's pursuit of Core Scientific underscores the block reward mining industry's pivot toward AI infrastructure amid declining BTC mining profitability and rising energy costs. While the deal could create a powerhouse in digital infrastructure, its financial and regulatory risks highlight the challenges of navigating this evolving landscape. In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek's coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI . Watch | Bitcoin mining in 2025: Is it still worth it? title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen> AI Artificial Intelligence Block Reward Mining BTC Core Scientific CoreWeave
Globe and Mail
13-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
If I Could Buy Only 1 Artificial Intelligence Stock Over the Next Year, Amazon Would Be It, but Here's the Key Reason
There are some excellent artificial intelligence (AI) stocks you can buy right now. However, my favorite -- and largest AI play in my own portfolio -- is Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). To be sure, there are a lot of reasons why I like Amazon as a long-term investment. E-commerce still represents less than one-fifth of all U.S. retail, and there's massive international expansion potential for the business, just to name a few pluses. But the No. 1 reason I love the stock is Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its potential to drive profits higher over the next decade. Why AWS could be a massive catalyst AWS makes up less than 20% of Amazon's revenue, but it's the fastest-growing, most profitable part of the company. Despite accounting for less than one-fifth of sales, as noted, AWS was responsible for 63% of the company's operating income in the first quarter. However, this could be just the beginning. The global cloud computing market is expected to roughly triple in size by 2030, compared with 2024 levels. Assuming AWS simply maintains its current market share, this means that AWS revenue could rise from $107.6 billion in 2024 to about $342 billion in 2030. If Amazon can maintain its current operating margin for AWS (it's likely the margin will improve as the business scales), this would result in about $87 billion in additional annual operating income just from AWS. This alone would likely drive excellent stock returns -- and that's on top of any value added through profit increases from the retail side. Should you invest $1,000 in Amazon right now? Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Amazon wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $657,871!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $875,479!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is998% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to174%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Harvard Business Review
11-06-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
Cloud ERP Migration as Strategic Catalyst
As organizations confront SAP's deadline to transition from legacy ERP Central Component (ECC) systems to SAP S/4HANA cloud platforms, forward-thinking executives recognize this isn't merely a technical upgrade—it's a strategic inflection point that sets the stage for long-term enterprise growth and innovation. Chief information officers (CIOs) must play a pivotal role in aligning executive leadership, anchoring technical decisions in business strategy, and mitigating risks to reputation and compliance throughout the multiyear journey.
Globe and Mail
26-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Amazon Just Sent a Massive Warning to Nvidia Investors
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has seen its sales soar on the back of a few big customers spending heavily to outfit data centers with as many of the chipmaker's GPUs as they can buy. Its top three customers accounted for 34% of sales last year. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is likely one of those big customers. The cloud computing giant spent over $93 billion in capital expenditures over the last 122 months, primarily focused on building out data centers for artificial intelligence (AI). That number will climb above $100 billion this year. While there's a lot of overhead, including buildings, server racks, networking equipment, and more, a good chunk of that spending goes to Nvidia for its leading-edge GPUs. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » But Nvidia's chips aren't the only ones Amazon uses in its servers, and the company just sent a signal that a competitor could be taking up more space in its data centers this year. Amazon's newest AI investment Amazon was caught flat-footed as generative AI took off in late 2022, but it's invested heavily to catch up with its competitors ever since. It made a $4 billion investment in Anthropic early last year, and it added another $4 billion in November. The most recent deal included a strategic partnership where Anthropic will use Amazon's custom silicon for large language model training and inference. Amazon's custom AI chips are designed in partnership with Marvell Technologies. Marvell also makes networking chips and other data center chips among a broader silicon portfolio. Amazon made a small equity investment in the company in late 2021 well before it chose the chipmaker for its custom Trainium and Inferentia chips. Amazon recently made another AI investment. Its first-quarter 13F filing with the SEC revealed a purchase of 822,234 shares of Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD). Those shares are worth about $90 million at today's price, which isn't a huge investment for a company generating tens of billions of dollars in free cash flow every quarter. However, that's still enough to make it Amazon's third-largest marketable equity holding in its portfolio. AMD is Nvidia's closest competitor when it comes to advanced GPUs. It's also the only company Intel has licensed to use its x86 CPU architecture, which is essential for Windows PCs and servers. The chipmaker is well positioned to gain market share on both fronts (GPUs and CPUs), and Amazon's equity investment could signal an acceleration in AMD's sales to the largest cloud computing company in the world. A $500 billion market AMD CEO Lisa Su believes the AI accelerator market -- which includes GPUs and custom silicon solutions like Marvell's -- will grow at an average rate of 60% per year from 2025 through 2028 to reach $500 billion. While Nvidia will likely take the bulk of that spend, smaller companies are positioned to gain market share over that period with improved price performance. Not to mention, AMD and other chipmakers offer cloud providers a chance to diversify away from reliance on Nvidia, ensuring Nvidia's chip prices don't balloon out of control. Indeed, AMD recently struck a deal with Oracle to deploy a cluster of 30,000 AMD MI355X accelerators, which helped push AMD's data center segment revenue 57% higher year over year in the first quarter. AMD's existing data center partnerships for its EPYC CPUs with all the hyperscalers put it in a great position to expand those relationships with its Instinct GPUs. On top of the opportunity in GPUs, AMD has become a leading provider of CPUs for cloud computing. That can be attributed to Intel falling behind in technological capabilities relative to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, where AMD prints its chips. As a result, AMD can offer better price performance with its more power-efficient chips. With better CPUs and a competitive GPU lineup, AMD should continue to take up more and more real estate in the hyperscalers' data centers. Investors can buy AMD stock today for 27-times forward earnings. That's a premium to the overall market, but a discount relative to Nvidia, which trades closer to 32-times earnings. That said, Nvidia continues to grow faster than AMD thanks to its pricing power and scale, so it may deserve a premium to AMD. Amazon very likely bought shares at a better valuation than investors can get today, but its stake in AMD is a strong indication that the chipmaker is continuing to make progress in gaining market share. Given AMD's solid CPU business and the upside potential of gaining share in the fast-growing AI accelerator market, the stock looks less risky than Nvidia at its current price. Should you invest $1,000 in Advanced Micro Devices right now? Before you buy stock in Advanced Micro Devices, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Advanced Micro Devices wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $639,271!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $804,688!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is957% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to167%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Adam Levy has positions in Amazon and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Intel, Nvidia, Oracle, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends Marvell Technology and recommends the following options: short May 2025 $30 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Zawya
23-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Amid 'Jensanity', Nvidia signals plans to keep AI crown
TAIPEI - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang flew out of Taipei on Friday after a week revelling in the adoration of Taiwan's tech industry, and delivering a subtle but crucial message from the U.S. AI chip king on how it plans to keep its crown. While 'Jensanity' swirled around Huang at the Computex trade fair, Nvidia itself was at a crossroads. Having grown to become the world's most valuable chip company, investors fear a drop in spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure as well as damage to sales from U.S. trade friction. U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports have seen Nvidia lose market share in China as it withdraws chips and designs inferior alternatives compliant with evolving U.S. policy. Now, cloud computing giants such as Microsoft and Alphabet's Google have signalled cuts to AI spending. And while the 62-year old CEO has in the past month announced deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars in regions such as the Gulf, analysts said such deals are likely to become scarce. "Is every country going to announce a $10 billion or $50 billion data centre like the Saudis? Of course not," said Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg. "They're sort of running out of obvious deals." When asked by Reuters how Nvidia planned to deal with AI spending slowdown, Huang said, "AI infrastructure is being built out (everywhere) - that's one of the reasons I'm travelling around the world... AI infrastructure is going to be a part of society." NEW GROWTH At Computex, Huang revealed a means of growth that does not rely on mega sovereign infrastructure arrangements: new technology that expands Nvidia's grip on the AI market. The tech's centrepiece is called NVLink Fusion. It allows companies to plug custom chips into Nvidia's AI infrastructure, thereby becoming a platform upon which others can build. "Instead of having to build the entire rack of equipment themselves, (companies) could innovate or differentiate on the custom (chip) itself," said Nick Kucharewski, vice president at Marvell Technology. The bet is that drawing companies to build hardware that utilises Nvidia's Fusion platform will drive demand for the underlying AI network and data centre parts that Nvidia sells. Nvidia has also begun to reach into the enterprise market. This week, it launched a line of servers that Huang described as an "enterprise AI supercomputer". Huang's pitch was that the servers open up a multi-billion dollar market because customers can use them for "everything", such as graphics, virtual machines and AI applications. The enterprise market is large but difficult to break into, said Seaport Research's Goldberg. Deals tend to be small - compared with a sovereign data centre - and more expensive and time-consuming to win. "My sense is we're sort of bumping up against the limits of expanding the customer base," Goldberg said. TAIWAN ECOSYSTEM Nvidia works with some of Taiwan's biggest names in tech, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which makes many of its chips. However, the underlying infrastructure for AI would not be possible without the hundreds of Taiwanese companies big and small supplying components and manufacturing know-how needed to construct Nvidia's complex AI systems. "The purpose of Computex was to bring together the ecosystem and the supply chain," said Ian Cutress, chief analyst at consultancy More Than Moore. Such a network is necessary to support the deals announced in the Gulf and that are likely coming elsewhere in the world in the coming months, Cutress said. Taiwanese industry has embraced Huang, who is perceived as a local-born hero hailing from Taiwan's historic capital of Tainan before migrating to the U.S. when he was nine years old. By the time he flew out on Friday, Huang had appeared on stage or at banquets with nearly every prominent Taiwanese tech executive, including Chairman Young Liu of AI server builder Foxconn who called him the "leader of Team Taiwan". MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai gave Huang chunks of guava in a plastic bag from the Nvidia leader's favoured fruit stall in Taipei during one of the chip designer's events. Solomon Technology, a provider of industrial automation and AI-based inspection solutions which uses Nvidia's software tools, said working with Nvidia is a win-win situation. Shares of Solomon have surged 241% since Huang mentioned the firm at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference in March last year. "The collaboration with Nvidia has given us greater visibility. We weren't very well-known before, but with Nvidia's support, many more people know us now," said Solomon Chairman Johnny Chen.
