CoreWeave shows how crypto-era infrastructure quietly became AI’s backbone

CoreWeave’s glow-up from crypto-mining hustle to AI infrastructure titan is the ultimate tech pivot — and it’s exposing how GPU farms are getting a second life in the AI gold rush. Ethereum’s move away from proof-of-work killed demand for GPU mining, so companies like CoreWeave flipped the script: they’re now running AI training and high-performance compute on hardware that used to chase crypto.

The Miner Mag newsletter just dropped the tea: CoreWeave started shifting away from mining back in 2019, first into cloud computing, then full-send into AI infrastructure. Now they’re one of the biggest independent GPU operators outside the Big Tech clouds — and Nvidia just backed them with a $2 billion equity investment. That’s not just a vote of confidence; it’s a power move.

The bag is real: CoreWeave execs have cashed out roughly $1.6 billion from stock sales since the company’s IPO in March last year. When your pivot pays off, you take profits.

CoreWeave isn’t alone. Crypto miners like HIVE Digital, TeraWulf, Hut 8, and MARA Holdings are also repurposing their energy infrastructure and compute capacity for AI and high-performance computing. It’s the ultimate recycle play: take the hardware and power setups built for mining, and retool them for the AI boom.

But here’s the irony: AI data centers are now facing the same heat Bitcoin miners caught years ago. Local opposition is rising over power consumption, grid strain, and land use — sound familiar? The same communities that pushed back against crypto mines are now side-eyeing AI facilities.

The market is fragmenting fast. According to Bloomberg data (via DC Byte research), thousands of new players are jumping into the data center game. By 2032, Big Tech’s share of global compute capacity could drop below 18%. Translation: the AI infrastructure game is getting decentralized, just like crypto did.