Core Scientific Plans 1.5-Gigawatt Expansion at Oklahoma Campus
Core Scientific (CORZ) announced plans Thursday to expand its Muskogee, Oklahoma campus to 1.5 gigawatts of gross power, making it the company’s largest single-site infrastructure commitment. The announcement, published via Business Wire, came within hours of the company’s first-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings release.
At that scale, the Oklahoma site would rank among the largest dedicated data center campuses in North America. The expansion is designed to serve growing demand from AI and high-performance compute clients.
Scale of the Muskogee Build
The Muskogee campus currently operates at a fraction of the 1.5-gigawatt target.
Reaching that level requires sustained capital investment in power infrastructure, cooling systems, and building construction across multiple phases. Core Scientific has not published a specific timeline for reaching full capacity, but the announcement signals a multi-year development roadmap.
One gigawatt of data center capacity is sufficient to power roughly 800,000 average American homes.
Applied to AI training workloads, which demand far more power per rack than traditional enterprise computing, a 1.5-gigawatt campus represents a significant resource commitment. The company’s primary AI client, CoreWeave, has committed to a 590-megawatt contract already, leaving room for additional tenants as the Oklahoma build progresses.
The Business Wire announcement did not disclose the total capital expenditure estimate for the full 1.5-gigawatt buildout.
Oklahoma was selected partly for its access to low-cost power, a critical variable in data center economics where electricity can account for more than half of operating costs.
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Background
Core Scientific’s infrastructure strategy has evolved sharply since the company exited bankruptcy in January 2024. The Muskogee campus is part of a broader geographic diversification that includes sites in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky.
In early 2026, Core Scientific completed the acquisition of Polaris, a power infrastructure asset that added several hundred megawatts of potential capacity. That deal, valued at $421 million, was positioned as a supply-side move to lock in the power assets needed to fulfill AI contracts before competitors could secure the same sites.
The Oklahoma expansion, in that context, follows a pattern of large-scale pre-commitment to infrastructure ahead of confirmed tenant demand.
What Comes Next
The Muskogee expansion puts Core Scientific on a path that requires substantial debt or equity financing. Management will face questions about how the build is funded, particularly given the ongoing liquidation of Bitcoin holdings to cover capital expenditure.
Analysts will also watch whether Core Scientific can attract additional hyperscale tenants beyond CoreWeave to fill the incremental capacity the Oklahoma campus will create. Power permitting and grid interconnection timelines in Oklahoma will be the immediate operational constraints.
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