Core Scientific has paid about $444.3m for a company whose asset is 440 megawatts of grid connection, and the contract adds exactly $1m a megawatt if 40 more arrive by the end of the year

Four hundred and forty megawatts. That is what was bought.

Core Scientific said on Friday morning that it had completed its purchase of Polaris DS LLC on 13 August, under a merger agreement signed on 5 May. The aggregate price was about $444.3 million in cash, subject to customary post-closing adjustments. What the money bought, in the company's own description, is approximately 440 currently in service megawatts of gross, grid-connected power capacity being used by Polaris under existing electric service agreements with Oklahoma Gas & Electric.

Divide one by the other and the deal values a connected megawatt at about $1.01m.

The contract says the same number out loud

That figure is not an inference from the headline price alone. The filing writes it into the terms.

The purchase price is subject to increase by an additional $40 million in cash if an additional 40 megawatts of firm electric capacity becomes available to the target before 31 December 2026. Forty million dollars for forty megawatts is exactly one million dollars a megawatt, agreed in advance, contingent on the power showing up by a date.

The two capacity figures are not described in the same words, and the difference is worth holding onto. The 440 is gross grid-connected capacity already in service. The 40 is firm electric capacity becoming available. A contract that prices the second at a round number does not thereby say the first was priced the same way.

What the press release does not carry

Two documents were published within a day of each other, and one of them is shorter than it looks.

The press release gives the price as approximately $444 million, names Oklahoma Gas & Electric, and reiterates the plan to scale the Muskogee campus to about 1.5 GW of gross power, or about 1.0 GW leasable, through a mix of grid-connected and behind-the-meter supply. The next roughly 82 MW at Muskogee is on track to be delivered to a customer beginning in the second half of 2027.

The contingent $40 million is not in it. Neither is the capacity condition attached to it, nor the escrow that a portion of the purchase price was withheld into to secure the seller's indemnification obligations. Those three facts exist only in the filing.

The price also differs by rounding between the two, at $444.3 million against approximately $444 million.

Who sold it

The seller is Top Access Enterprises Limited, a company organised under the laws of Hong Kong and the sole owner of the target. An Oklahoma company, Altair LLC, is a party to the merger agreement for the purposes of one article only.

The chief executive, Adam Sullivan, is quoted saying that site acquisitions this year have added more than 600 MW of leasable power to the portfolio. That is the number to compare against the 440 gross bought here, because the company draws the distinction itself, and at Muskogee it puts leasable at roughly two thirds of gross.