AMD Said 500 Megawatts And Leased 377

Two sets of leases, one number

Core Scientific and AMD announced on 28 July that AMD had secured more than 500 megawatts of United States data centre capacity, with the ability to expand to 2.5 gigawatts. The release quotes Mathew Hein, AMD's senior vice president and chief strategy officer of corporate development, and Adam Sullivan, Core Scientific's chief executive. It does not say who signed what.

The Form 8-K filed the same day does. Under Item 7.01, Core Scientific discloses two separate sets of lease agreements executed on 27 July: the AMD Leases, covering 377 megawatts of critical IT capacity at Pecos, Texas, Muskogee, Oklahoma and Hunt County, Texas, and the Neocloud Leases, covering 152 megawatts at Auburn, Alabama and Dalton Phase 3, Georgia, signed by an unnamed neocloud.

Both numbers are real. Only one of them is AMD's tenancy. The announcement adds them together and files the total under AMD's name, which is how a 377 megawatt lease becomes a 500 megawatt headline.

The 152 megawatts AMD did not rent

The filing explains why the two blocks travel together. Core Scientific, the neocloud and AMD have each entered a Credit Support Agreement covering every Neocloud Lease. It establishes protections for AMD equipment held inside the neocloud's leased premises, gives AMD the right but not the obligation to cure certain neocloud defaults, and sets out AMD's rights and obligations if the neocloud materially defaults.

Read those three clauses in order. AMD's hardware will sit in halls rented by a company AMD does not control, under a lease AMD did not sign, and AMD has bought itself the option to pay that company's arrears rather than lose access to its own equipment. The support terminates at the earliest of the lease expiring, specified circumstances relating to the neocloud's insolvency or default, or 15 years.

That last clause is worth sitting with. The protection is drafted to end on the event most likely to trigger it. AMD took direct leases on the capacity it needs and a contingent obligation on the capacity it wanted counted.

A warrant sized for capacity nobody has signed

Core Scientific issued AMD a warrant for up to 30 million shares at 23.47 dollars, the volume-weighted average price over the five trading days before the leases were executed. It runs to 27 July 2031 and vests at 12,222 shares for every megawatt of critical IT load contemplated by the leases. Roughly 6.5 million shares vested on execution.

Divide the warrant by its own vesting rate. Thirty million shares at 12,222 per megawatt is about 2,455 megawatts. The 529 megawatts signed on 27 July, plus the 1,925 megawatts AMD holds as a reservation of capacity right through 28 December 2028, comes to 2,454. The equity was sized to the ceiling of the option rather than to the leases.

Two more numbers fall out of the same document. At 12,222 shares per megawatt, 6.5 million vested shares correspond to 529 megawatts, so AMD earned roughly 1.86 million shares on the neocloud's 152 megawatts, on a lease it did not sign. And 30 million shares against the roughly 508 million fully diluted shares in Core Scientific's own earnings deck is about 5.9 per cent of the company.

Nothing opens before 2027, and none of it is in Europe

Core Scientific's second-quarter deck, filed as Exhibit 99.2 to the same 8-K, puts dates on the halls. Pecos and Auburn are marked for the first half of 2027, Dalton and Muskogee for the second half of 2027, and Hunt County for the first half of 2028, with the full 530 megawatts delivered by the end of 2028.

Set that schedule against the reservation right, which expires on 28 December 2028. AMD has to decide on the additional 1,925 megawatts in the same quarter the first tranche finishes construction, which means the expansion call gets made on sites that have been operating for months rather than years.

The same deck shows the concentration. CoreWeave holds about 590 megawatts, the AMD and neocloud block about 530, and the company describes just over one gigawatt of customer contracted capacity in total. Two relationships account for nearly all of it, across facilities in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas. Seven states, no European site.

What to ask when a supplier says capacity is secured

European buyers will meet this deal secondhand, in a procurement meeting, as evidence that AMD capacity is now available at scale. It is worth being exact about what has been contracted. A 15-year term with three five-year options is a serious commitment. A reservation right that lapses at the end of 2028 is a different instrument, and a press release total is neither.

Put three questions to the supplier in writing. Which legal entity signed the lease for the capacity being offered. When does that specific hall energise, by half-year rather than by year. And if the tenant is not the vendor whose logo sits on the proposal, what happens to your workload the month that tenant misses a payment.

None of this makes the deal weak. Core Scientific has contracted the largest tranche in its history, and AMD has bought optionality at a price it can walk away from. It does mean the number quoted to you in 2026 describes 2028, and describes Texas.

Read next: 256 Cores on One Chip Changes Your Rack Math  |  Nvidia Stopped Renting Its CPU Core From Arm