CoreWeave, NVIDIA-backed GPU cloud provider, sets IPO at $2.7 billion valuation with OpenAI acquiring $350 million in stock.

CoreWeave, an Nvidia-backed GPU and AI infrastructure provider founded in 2017, is pursuing an initial public offering that would value the company at $26 billion and raise up to $2.7 billion. The cloud AI startup is marketing its shares at between $47 and $55 per share, with an assumed IPO midpoint price of $51 per share. CoreWeave plans to offer a total of 48 million shares, which are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol 'CRWV'. The company expects net proceeds of approximately $2.3 billion, or approximately $2.7 billion if the underwriters' over-allotment option is exercised in full. CoreWeave CEO and co-founder Michael Intrator is expected to hold about 2 percent of the Class A shares and about half of Class B shares after the IPO, giving him approximately 37 percent of the shareholder voting power. None of CoreWeave's founders are planning to sell stock in the IPO.

Microsoft and OpenAI have secured major roles in CoreWeave's infrastructure operations and IPO. Microsoft accounted for 62 percent of CoreWeave's overall sales, with the two companies having signed a Master Services Agreement in February 2023 in which CoreWeave provides Microsoft access to its infrastructure and platform services. Approximately 77 percent of CoreWeave's revenue came from its top two customers in 2024. Microsoft-backed OpenAI will receive $350 million worth of CoreWeave stock, and OpenAI has selected CoreWeave to deliver AI infrastructure for up to $11.9 billion. CoreWeave stated that "Microsoft will represent less than 50 percent of our expected future committed contract revenues when combining our RPO balance of $15.1 billion as of December 31, 2024 and up to $11.55 billion of future revenue from our recently signed Master Services Agreement with OpenAI."

CoreWeave's financial trajectory reflects explosive growth in the AI infrastructure sector. In 2024, CoreWeave generated approximately $1.9 billion in revenue, up 737 percent compared to 2023, though the company reported a net loss of $863 million in 2024. As of May 2024, the company had around 550 employees with a total of 32 data centers. CoreWeave provides access to data centers and GPUs for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia, and has positioned itself as an early adopter of Nvidia's GPU technology. CoreWeave CEO Intrator noted that the company has "had a proven track record in bringing the latest Nvidia GPU-based instances to market before others, as we were the first to offer Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs and the first cloud provider to make Nvidia GB200 NVL72-based instances generally available."

CoreWeave's expansion efforts extend globally, with significant investment commitments in Europe and continued innovation in GPU infrastructure. This month, CoreWeave installed its first Norway data center in partnership with Bulk Infrastructure Group to deploy one of the first and largest Nvidia GB200 clusters. Intrator stated that "This milestone is a key step in our European expansion efforts we outlined last June, where we committed to investing $2.2 billion to grow our presence in Sweden, Norway, and Spain by opening new data centers across continental Europe before the end of 2025." At Nvidia GTC 2025 this week, CoreWeave introduced new compute instances featuring Nvidia's upcoming RTX PRO 6000 GPUs. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman praised CoreWeave's capabilities, saying that CoreWeave's computing power led to the creation of "some of the models that we're best known for," and that "CoreWeave figured out how to innovate on hardware, to innovate on data center construction, and to deliver results very, very quickly." CoreWeave's investors include Nvidia, Cisco, JPMorgan Asset Management, Fidelity, and Pure Storage.