Core Scientific Takes $500M Morgan Stanley Loan, Expandable to $1bn

Core Scientific has closed a $500 million, 364-day loan facility from Morgan Stanley, with an accordion that could add another $500 million, and says it will use the money to build data centres for high-density computing customers rather than to mine more bitcoin.

The company’s release on 5 March sets the price at the Secured Overnight Financing Rate plus 250 basis points. Proceeds, as and when drawn, are for data-centre development: equipment, pre-development costs, real property and energy procurement. “This strengthens our liquidity and enhances our financial flexibility as we execute our development and go-to-market strategy,” chief executive Adam Sullivan said. With the extra capacity, he added, the company “can operate decisively by deploying capital to expedite project ready-for-service timelines”.

The loan lands in a week when TSN also looked at Morgan Stanley’s own expansion into crypto. Here the bank is acting as a lender to infrastructure, not as a crypto product provider.

Update, 23 March 2026: Core Scientific’s lawyers at Cooley said the facility closed at $1 billion, in two $500 million commitments: the first from Morgan Stanley and the second from J.P. Morgan under the accordion.

Core Scientific sold most of its bitcoin first

The loan follows a large sale of the company’s own coins. On its fourth-quarter call, chief financial officer Jim Nygaard said, as reported by CoinDesk, that “we also opportunistically sold just over 1,900 bitcoin for approximately $175 million” in January, adding: “at this time, we hold under 1,000 bitcoin and expect to remain opportunistic going forward.” CoinDesk put holdings at 2,537 BTC on 31 December and around 630 after the sale. The company has not said it will sell the rest.

Mining rewards have been under pressure since the April 2024 halving cut the block subsidy from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC. That gives miners with large power connections a reason to look for steadier income from the same sites.

Three peers, three different treasury policies

Core Scientific is not the only listed miner to treat its bitcoin as a source of funding. The companies’ own disclosures show how differently they are doing it.

Bitdeer’s chief executive, Jihan Wu, said the empty treasury “does not mean it will always be zero in the future”, according to The Block, which reported that the company was prioritising cash for land acquisitions. MARA’s wording comes from its annual report, which says it “may hold bitcoin for long-term investment purposes and may also buy or sell bitcoin from time to time”. CleanSpark’s chief executive Matt Schultz, in its February update, said the company had “meaningfully expanded our hyperscale-ready infrastructure platform” by closing a second Texas campus with 300 megawatts of capacity approved by the state grid operator, ERCOT.

A one-year loan fits a build that needs cash before tenants pay

The structure of Core Scientific’s facility says more than the headline amount. A 364-day loan is short money for an asset that takes years to pay back, and the release ties it to getting projects “ready-for-service” faster. That suggests a bridge: cash to buy equipment and power ahead of customers moving in, to be refinanced or repaid once leases produce income. The risk sits in the timing. If construction slips, the company needs another source of money within a year.

It also shows what lenders will now finance. A large bank is willing to lend against a data-centre build-out by a company still best known as a bitcoin miner. That fits a wider pattern TSN has followed, from Washington tying chip exports to US data-centre building to power access becoming a strategic asset.

Selling bitcoin is now a funding choice, not a verdict on bitcoin

None of the four companies has said bitcoin is worthless to them. Bitdeer says zero is temporary, MARA keeps a very large holding and CleanSpark still holds more than 13,000 coins. What has changed is that treasury coins are being treated as working capital for building sites. For a compliance team or a lender, that makes a miner’s balance sheet harder to read from one month to the next, because holdings can swing with construction schedules rather than with mining output. Bitdeer, for its part, later signed an AI computing agreement in Malaysia, which TSN covered in October. For Core Scientific, the number to watch is how many megawatts are leased and ready before the 364-day facility comes due.

Sources

• Core Scientific, “Core Scientific Secures Strategic Financing with Morgan Stanley for up to $1 Billion” (5 Mar 2026)
• Core Scientific, press release filed as Exhibit 99.1 with the SEC (March 2026)
• Cooley, “Core Scientific Closes $1 Billion Strategic Financing Facility With Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan” (23 Mar 2026)
• CoinDesk, “CORZ sells $175 million in BTC in January as AI pivot accelerates” (3 Mar 2026)
• MARA Holdings, Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 (SEC)
• CleanSpark, “CleanSpark Releases February 2026 Operational Update” (5 Mar 2026)
• The Block, “Bitdeer’s bitcoin treasury drops to zero after miner liquidates remaining 943 BTC” (22 Feb 2026)
• The Block, “Bitdeer CEO says bitcoin balance ‘will not always be zero'” (23 Feb 2026)

Related stories

• SWI Group Raises €800M at a €6.1bn Valuation for AI Infrastructure, and Plans to Turn an Ex-FTX-Backed Bitcoin Miner Into AI Data Centres
• Bitdeer AI Signs an 8-Year Agreement for a 60MW Malaysian Data Centre, With No Customer Yet
• Anthropic Reportedly Has an Unannounced Multiyear Cloud Deal With IREN, The Information Says
• IREN Proposes Redbank, a 900MW Data-Centre Campus Near Wagga Wagga
• Soluna Agrees to Form Texas AI Data Centre Venture With Applied Digital