Cryptocurrency mining company Core Scientific Inc. has cut 10% of its workforce.
The Austin-based company announced the layoffs Aug. 11, the same day it reported a net loss of nearly $862 million in the second quarter.
"We have discontinued our blockchain technologies development business," CEO Mike Levitt said on a call with analysts. "We have taken costs out of our corporate activities and are continuing to develop ways to execute our business more efficiently. To date, we have eliminated approximately 10% of our workforce. None of whom are involved in our data center activities. While taking steps to become leaner and more efficient, we remain focused on growing our business and improving profitability."
The company didn't expand on the layoffs during the call. Core Scientific, which went public earlier this year after moving its headquarters to Austin, had 205 full-time employees at the end of 2021. That number would equate to about 20 people being laid off.
The company said it also cut back on spending and renegotiated vendor contracts.
"We now expect our operating expenses in the second half of the year to be 25% lower compared to the first half of the year," Chief Financial Officer Denise Sterling said.
The news comes amidst major volatility in the crypto market through much of the first half of the year.
But Core Scientific slightly exceeded analyst estimates by reporting $164 million in revenue. Meanwhile, the company said it mined 6,567 bitcoins in the first half of the year.
For example, in July it produced 1,221 bitcoins. In the same month, it sold 1,975 bitcoins at an average price of $22,000 apiece – or about $44 million total.
Mining is getting more expensive in some respects as energy prices increase and a heat wave sweeps across large swaths of the country. That has forced companies such as Core Scientific to sometimes shut down those energy-hungry operations when power grids approach peak usage.
"We love our sites in Texas, and we like the folks in Texas and we're based in Texas," Levitt said. "And I recognize that this is an unprecedented heat wave, but it's still not very fun to be curtailing, kind of four hours to five hours a day when it's 104 degrees, that has implications for our productivity. And so we need to be very careful about what percentage of our operations reside where you can have that kind of an issue."
