Category: Business

Meta and CoreWeave have expanded a long-term artificial intelligence infrastructure agreement worth about $21 billion, extending their partnership through December 2032. Both companies have seen their shares rise Thursday following the announcement.

CoreWeave announced the expanded deal Thursday, describing it as an extension of the companies’ existing relationship and an increase in infrastructure supporting Meta’s AI operations.

“This is another example that leading companies are choosing CoreWeave’s AI cloud to run their most demanding workloads,” CoreWeave co-founder, CEO, and Chairman Michael Intrator said in a statement.

The agreement gives Meta access to AI cloud capacity from CoreWeave to support the development and deployment of its AI systems, including inference workloads that run trained models at scale.

The infrastructure will be deployed across multiple locations and will include some of the first deployments of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform. CoreWeave said the distributed deployment is intended to optimize performance, resilience, and scalability for Meta’s AI systems, and reflects rising demand for infrastructure capable of supporting large-scale AI workloads.

Meta and CoreWeave previously struck a $14 billion AI infrastructure deal in 2025, under which the cloud provider agreed to supply computing power to Meta through 2031.

The news comes as Meta accelerates its push into advanced AI systems. On Wednesday, the company introduced Muse Spark, a natively multimodal model capable of processing text, images, and voice and designed to tackle complex reasoning tasks using multiple AI agents.

Meta has also outlined a new Advanced AI Scaling Framework that expands how it evaluates risks and tests its most capable models before deployment.

“As we build more capable and more personalized AI, reliability, security, and user protections are more important than ever,” Meta said in a statement. “Advanced models require an advanced approach to safety—one that scales with the technology.”

Shares of Meta and CoreWeave rose after the companies announced their expanded AI infrastructure deal. Currently, Meta (META) is trading above $630 per share, up about 3% on the day, while CoreWeave (CRWV) has jumped 5.5% to a recent price of $93.70.

OpenAI has paused its planned Stargate artificial intelligence infrastructure project in the United Kingdom, citing high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty, according to a report by CNBC that was confirmed by a company spokesperson.

The ChatGPT giant first announced the Stargate UK infrastructure project in mid-September 2025, in partnership with chipmaker Nvidia and infrastructure provider Nscale. The plan called for deploying up to 8,000 GPUs beginning in the first quarter of 2026, with the potential to scale to about 31,000 GPUs over time.

“Everything starts with compute,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement at the time. “Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilize what we’re building with Nvidia to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale.”

The Stargate project had been expected to support local computing infrastructure for AI systems in the country. Proposed locations included sites such as Cobalt Park in northeast England, part of a designated “AI Growth Zone.”

A critical factor in the decision to halt the project stems from industrial electricity cost in the U.K., which averages about 24 pence per kilowatt-hour for medium-sized businesses—and AI data centers require far more power than typical industrial sites. Often, data centers run at 50–100 megawatts continuously, and more than 140 projects are already waiting for grid connections totaling over 50 gigawatts.

At current prices, operating a 100-megawatt data center could cost roughly $125 million to $250 million a year, highlighting the growing energy demands of AI infrastructure.

The Stargate U.K. project followed OpenAI’s July 2025 memorandum of understanding with the U.K. government, focused on adopting frontier AI systems in public services. It also comes months after the Trump administration announced a Stargate AI infrastructure initiative in January 2025.

While Altman and OpenAI have not made a public statement regarding the status of Stargate UK, OpenAI told CNBC it continues to evaluate the project and may proceed if conditions improve.

“We continue to explore Stargate U.K. and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment,” OpenAI said in a statement.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.

Publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) was uplisted to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Thursday, with shares of BMNR concluding trading on the smaller NYSE American exchange with Wednesday’s market close. 

Shares in the firm are up nearly 1% since opening on the new trading venue, recently changing hands around $21.75. 

“Today, BitMine achieved a major milestone by being uplisted to the ‘Big Board’ NYSE,” BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said in a statement. “The NYSE is the envy of capital markets around the world, and BitMine is proud to be the newest company traded on this exchange.”

Alongside its uplisting, the firm also announced its board of directors approved an increase in its previously established share buyback program, raising its limits from $1 billion to $4 billion. 

“BitMine’s expanded $4 billion buyback reflects our commitment to shareholders,” said Lee. “There may be a time in the future when BitMine shares are trading below intrinsic value, and the Company wants to be in a position to accretively retire common shares.”

It doesn’t appear that BitMine has actually used funds to repurchase shares to date. Decrypt reached out to the company for confirmation and clarification, but did not immediately receive a response.

Other publicly traded digital asset treasuries have similarly approved share buyback programs to repurchase outstanding shares when their mNAV—the ratio of their market cap compared to the value of the net assets they hold—trades below 1, or at a discount. 

For example, competing Ethereum treasury firm Sharplink (SBET) has remained committed to only acquiring ETH when its mNAV is above 1. At all other times, the firm repurchases shares of SBET in a move that is deemed more beneficial for shareholders.

While Lee indicates the firm may repurchase shares in the future when they are trading below “intrinsic value,” publicly available data shows that the firm is currently trading below an mNAV of 1. 

Nevertheless, it has sought to consistently purchase Ethereum, not shares of BMNR, adding around $150 million worth of ETH last week.  

At the time of writing, its intraday market cap is around $9.81 billion, according to data from Yahoo Finance. Meanwhile, its Ethereum tokens alone—of which it has more than 4.8 million—account for more than $10.6 billion in net assets as ETH changes hands at $2,216. 

The firm also maintains around $14 million in BTC and total cash holdings of $864 million, giving it around $11.4 billion in total holdings, according to a Monday press release.

Shares of BMNR have fallen around 63% in the last six months of trading as Ethereum itself has slid 55% from its August all-time high of $4,946.

Morgan Stanley became the first major U.S. commercial bank to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF on Wednesday, with its MSBT product posting inflows of $30.6 million in its first trading day according to data from Farside Investors.

Despite the newcomer’s first-day performance, Wednesday marked a second day of net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs, with the funds shedding $124.5 million. Nevertheless, the investment products remain in the black for the week, thanks to Monday’s $471 million one-day haul, their biggest since February.

MSBT’s 0.14% expense ratio makes it the cheapest Bitcoin ETF available, undercutting category leader BlackRock’s IBIT by 11 basis points. The launch intensifies competition with BlackRock’s IBIT, which holds $56 billion in assets while charging 0.25% annually; on Wednesday, IBIT drew in $40.4 million.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart suggested that the product “might be a loss leader,” arguing that “this is their way of, potentially trying to get some crypto millionaires—a lot of people with a lot of money—to join their wealth management product.”

In a tweet, Seyffart’s colleague Eric Balchunas called MSBT’s debut “arguably biggest btc launch since they began” and projected first-year assets under management of $5 billion.

Earlier this week, Balchunas told Decrypt earlier this week that Morgan Stanley’s offering is “not going to knock off BlackRock and become the biggest, but I believe it will do well,” adding that. “What Morgan Stanley has going for it is a captive audience. It’s got its own army of advisors.”

Bitcoin is currently trading at $71,260, down 0.6% on the day and up 6.6% on the week, per CoinGecko data. On prediction market Myriad, owed by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan, users are evenly split on the cryptocurrency’s prospects, putting an even chance on its next move taking it to $84,000 or $55,000.

BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo has revealed that he donated $5.4 million (£4 million) to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, saying he was motivated to become politically active for the first time by what he described as a failing UK political system.

Delo, who is based in Hong Kong, wrote in a Daily Telegraph op-ed that he made the contribution earlier this year before the introduction of a £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens living abroad. He said the funding would help build Reform into “a genuine alternative party of government”.

In the article, Delo said the UK faced a “grave threat” driven by “self-deception” among political elites and argued that Reform was gaining support by recognising the scale of the country’s problems.

Delo co-founded BitMEX, one of the crypto industry’s earliest derivatives exchanges. In 2022, he pleaded guilty in the U.S. to breaching the Bank Secrecy Act after failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls, paying a $10 million criminal fine. He later received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, describing the case in his op-ed as “a regulatory failing that isn’t even a crime in the UK.”

His donation adds to significant backing for Reform from internationally based donors, including £11.4m from Thailand-based Tether investor Christopher Harborne.

Reform UK and crypto

The funding comes as Reform positions itself as the UK’s most crypto-aligned political party. It has accepted cryptocurrency donations, promoted pro-crypto policies and built ties with industry figures, distinguishing it from more cautious approaches taken by Labour and the Conservatives.

That stance has placed Reform at the centre of a broader debate over crypto and political finance. Government ministers have moved to tighten rules on overseas donations and imposed a moratorium on cryptocurrency contributions following a government-commissioned review into foreign financial influence. The review recommended capping donations from expatriates and highlighted risks around transparency and enforcement in crypto-based funding.

Reform has branded these recommendations an attack on its party specifically and has pushed back, arguing existing rules can accommodate crypto and that tighter restrictions risk disadvantaging newer parties. Critics, including transparency campaigners, argue that crypto donations could create new channels for opaque or foreign-linked funding.

Reform leader Nigel Farage, who last month invested in a Bitcoin treasury firm and has made tens of thousands of dollars from speaking engagements at crypto conferences, retweeted Delo’s op-ed, stating that “the scheming and dishonest Keir Starmer will not stop us.”

“In fact, his actions have only made brave people like Ben Delo even more determined to beat Labour at the next election,” he added.

Farage has also advocated crypto-friendly policies, including lower taxes on digital assets and the creation of a national Bitcoin reserve.

Reform described Delo as “a true patriot”.

Delo said he intends to relocate to the UK, which would allow him to continue donating without restriction. He said the move reflected both personal reasons and a desire to play a more direct role in the country’s future.