Core Scientific announced it will acquire Polaris, a bitcoin mining operator, for $421 million in an all-stock transaction that converts a dormant crypto site into a live AI data center campus in Oklahoma. The deal closed Tuesday without prior market speculation. Polaris shareholders receive Core common stock at a fixed exchange ratio tied to Core's thirty-day volume-weighted average price. The transaction adds 700 megawatts of stranded mining capacity to Core's existing 1.2 gigawatts of contracted hyperscale pipeline.

Polaris operates a single-tenant mining facility in Grady County, Oklahoma, built in 2022 during the proof-of-work expansion cycle. The site holds 180 megawatts of energized capacity and 520 megawatts of permitted but unbuilt infrastructure on 640 acres of land with direct substation access. Core will decommission the Antminer S19 and Whatsminer M30 rigs currently on-site and convert the facility to GPU-optimized cooling and power distribution by Q3 2025. The company did not disclose which hyperscaler will anchor the campus but confirmed lease negotiations are underway with two Tier 1 cloud providers.

The deal matters because it confirms the structural bid under stranded bitcoin mining sites in EPA non-attainment zones where new data center permits face multi-year regulatory review. Polaris holds grandfathered air quality permits that exempt the site from Oklahoma's updated NOx and particulate limits, a $40 million to $60 million permitting advantage compared to greenfield builds. Core's stock traded up 11.2% on Wednesday morning, valuing the combined entity at $2.1 billion. The company now holds the third-largest pipeline of crypto-to-AI conversion sites in North America, behind Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms. Core's management expects the Oklahoma campus to generate $180 million in annual revenue at full lease-up, implying a 2.3x revenue multiple on the acquisition price.

Allocators should watch three follow-on events. First, Core's anchor tenant announcement, expected within sixty days per the investor deck. Second, the company's updated guidance on its Texas and North Dakota sites, where similar conversions are pending EPA review. Third, the Senate Energy Committee's markup of the AI Data Center Permitting Act, scheduled for late February, which would federalize certain air quality exemptions and accelerate the bid for grandfathered mining sites. Core's CFO noted on the call that the company is evaluating "several additional inbound opportunities" from bitcoin miners seeking liquidity before the halving cycle tightens margins further.

The Polaris deal prices at $601 per kilowatt of energized capacity, a 23% premium to the $488 per kilowatt average paid in five comparable mining-to-hyperscale transactions since September 2024. The premium reflects Core's willingness to pay for permitted but unbuilt capacity in a market where new power interconnection queues stretch past 2028.