Needham starts Core Scientific with Buy on first mover advantage

Needham analyst John Todaro initiated coverage of Core Scientific with a Buy rating and $16 price target. Core is the first mover among bitcoin miners in what will be a fast growing, high demand environment for high-performance compute data center capacity, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm expects the company to be first to market with a 100MW-plus site, positioning it as “The Early Mover” in retrofitting mining sites to high-performance compute. Needham believes the company’s first customer agreement with CoreWeave is a unique deal among peers and offers attractive economics and terms. It estimates $500M in annualized revenue in 2026 and $400M in gross profit from the HPC contribution.