CoreWeave Aims for $2.7 Billion IPO, Highlighting AI Cloud Computing Boom

AI Cloud Firm CoreWeave Seeking IPO of About $2.5 Billion

CoreWeave Inc., a cloud-computing provider that's one of the hottest startups in artificial intelligence, and some of its investors are seeking to raise about $2.5 billion at the midpoint of a marketed range in an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The Nvidia Corp.-backed company and current shareholders are planning to offer the shares for $47 to $55 each, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information wasn't public yet. CoreWeave is expected to disclose proposed terms for the listing and begin marketing the shares Thursday, the people said.

AI-Cloud Firm CoreWeave Seeks $2.7 Billion in Dialed Back IPO

CoreWeave Inc., a cloud-computing provider that's one of the hottest startups in artificial intelligence, and some of its investors are seeking to raise about $2.7 billion in an initial public offering. The Nvidia Corp.-backed company and current shareholders are marketing the shares for $47 to $55 each, according to its filing on Thursday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is selling about 47 million of the shares while existing stockholders are offering the remaining 1.8 million.

Exclusive: CoreWeave to ask for $47 to $55 per share in IPO, sources say

NEW YORK, March 19 (Reuters) - CoreWeave, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, is planning to ask investors to pay $47 to $55 for each of its shares when it begins marketing its initial public offering this week, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Anirban Sen and Chris Reese Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence Echo Wang Thomson Reuters Echo Wang is a correspondent at Reuters covering U.S. equity capital markets, and the intersection of Chinese business in the U.S, breaking news from U.S. crackdown on TikTok and Grindr, to restrictions Chinese companies face in listing in New York. She was the Reuters' Reporter of the Year in 2020.

CoreWeave looks to raise up to $2.7bn in IPO

Data centre operator CoreWeave will seek to raise as much as $2.7bn in a US initial public offering that is expected to be the largest tech listing of the year, according to people close to the matter. The New Jersey-based start-up would kick off a roadshow with investors to generate interest for its shares as soon as this week, the people said. It will ask investors to pay $47 to $55 per share, selling 49mn shares at the IPO. Bankers for the company had initially discussed whether the IPO could seek to raise as much as $4bn and had discussed valuing the business at more than $35bn. The group plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker CRWV. Reuters first reported the proposed share price range. CoreWeave was founded in 2017 to mine the cryptocurrency ethereum but pivoted to artificial intelligence two years later. It was an early and prolific buyer of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), now holding more than 250,000 of the chips that are the world's hottest commodity for powering AI models. It leases computing power to large technology companies building AI systems, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta and IBM. The Financial Times reported that Microsoft, which was the source of 62 per cent of CoreWeave's revenue in 2024, had walked away from a planned deal with the cloud computing provider over delivery issues. CoreWeave subsequently signed a deal with OpenAI, which has agreed to pay it $11.9bn over five years. In its IPO prospectus, filed earlier this month, CoreWeave reported revenue of $1.9bn in 2024, compared with $229mn a year earlier and $16mn in 2022. However, its losses widened over that period. It posted net losses of $863mn in 2024, $594mn in 2023 and $31mn in 2022. CoreWeave has grown rapidly by borrowing large sums. It has raised $12.9bn of debt financing in the past two years, becoming the pioneer of a flurry of asset-backed lending by Wall Street to technology companies with large volumes of AI chips. Its largest investors are Illinois-based hedge fund Magnetar Capital, private equity giant Blackstone, which has loaned it about $5bn, Nvidia and Fidelity. CoreWeave was founded under the name Atlantic Crypto by commodities traders Mike Intrator, Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee, who have each sold at least $150mn worth of their stock in the company since December 2023, according to the IPO filings. CoreWeave's 10 directors and executives, including the three co-founders, collectively own about 30 per cent of the company but have more than 80 per cent of the voting rights. CoreWeave's offering comes as President Donald Trump's erratic tariff announcements have roiled American equities markets in recent weeks, fanning concerns about slowing economic growth in the world's largest economy and weighing on the broader IPO market, which many bankers had tipped to roar back to life under a Republican administration. Shares in Venture Global have halved since the liquefied natural gas exporter listed in late January. The company was forced to scale back its IPO plans in the week before going public, eventually pricing at an equity value 40 per cent below what it had originally been seeking.

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave aims to raise up to $2.7 billion in US IPO

March 20 (Reuters) - Nvidia-backed CoreWeave is aiming to raise as much as $2.7 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, a regulatory filing by the AI startup showed on Thursday. The artificial intelligence-focused cloud services provider and some of its investors are looking to sell 49 million shares priced between $47 and $55 each. The offering is expected to be a key test of appetite for AI-focused companies after the launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek's low-cost model and an analyst report Microsoft had cut back on data-center leases tempered the once red-hot demand. Meanwhile, stock market volatility - driven by uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariffs and renewed recession fears - also threatens to stall the U.S. IPO market's recovery, analysts say. Earlier this month, CoreWeave signed a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with OpenAI. The deal will give OpenAI a stake in the company, which will issue shares worth $350 million to the ChatGPT maker through a private placement at the time of its IPO. The company, which provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, is aiming to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CRWV." Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are leading a syndicate of Wall Street banks underwriting the offering. Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Technology

CoreWeave tests investor risk appetite with $7.5bn in looming debt repayments

CoreWeave is facing nearly $7.5bn in debt repayments by the end of next year, requiring investors in its blockbuster public listing to take a leap of faith in the cloud computing group's ability to grow fast enough to settle the looming obligations. The US company, which leases computing capacity to tech groups building artificial intelligence models, is gearing up for the largest stock market debut of the year. This week it revealed it was seeking to raise as much as $2.7bn in the share sale, valuing the business at $32bn. As the New Jersey-based group prepares to start an investor roadshow, it is attracting scrutiny for its huge debt burden, borrowing at high interest rates, and forthcoming maturities on billions of dollars of loans. CoreWeave's IPO prospectus, filed in early March, revealed it had debt and interest payments due in 2025 and 2026 that far outstripped its existing cash flow from operations. The company has further warned it expects to borrow more in future. It will borrow again this year to satisfy a new contract with OpenAI worth $12bn over five years, which requires it to build more powerful data centres. Some of the company's biggest investors have expressed enthusiasm about its upcoming IPO. Speaking at his chipmaker's GTC conference this week, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said he was "super proud" of CoreWeave and called it a "great partner". Other investors are more wary. "No one knows where it's going to be in three years' time," said one hedge fund manager. "Uncertainty is also the devil of all good investments. It may be fine, but it may not be." CoreWeave was launched in 2017 to mine cryptocurrencies, but pivoted to AI two years later having amassed a large stash of Nvidia's graphics processing units -- chips that became the world's hottest commodity for building AI systems. It has grown rapidly amid an explosion in AI in the past two years, with revenue soaring from $16mn in 2022 to $1.9bn last year. CoreWeave has yet to turn a profit. Since 2022, it has recorded net losses totalling $1.5bn. The group has also borrowed extensively to fuel its growth, raising $12.9bn of debt in the past two years secured against its more than 250,000 Nvidia chips and its contracts with customers, such as Microsoft. It has drawn about $8bn, with another $4.4bn of loans undrawn at the end of last year. Its biggest lenders are private equity group Blackstone and Illinois-based hedge fund Magnetar Capital. These loans require CoreWeave to have contracts with large and creditworthy companies that cover the future debt repayments. CoreWeave's $8bn of debt would incur nearly $1bn of annual interest costs, according to Financial Times calculations. This would drop to nearly $850mn with the planned debt repayment from IPO proceeds. The company operates as a "take or pay" business model, under which its customers sign an agreement to pre-purchase a set amount of computing capacity for a fixed number of years. It then raises the capital -- almost entirely through debt -- needed to build the clusters of chips that will satisfy that contract. In addition to its debt, CoreWeave rents its 30 data centres and much of its equipment, resulting in operating lease liabilities of about $2.6bn in 2024. CoreWeave leases much of its data centre capacity from Core Scientific, a separate listed company whose shares have plunged about 40 per cent this year. One hedge fund manager likened CoreWeave to the "WeWork of AI data centres" because of the mismatch between its liabilities and assets, with long-term lease commitments but far shorter contracts with customers. Its revenues are also highly concentrated on a small number of customers and suppliers. Nvidia is its biggest supplier, one of its largest customers and an investor in the company. In 2024, contracts with Microsoft accounted for 62 per cent of total revenue. The FT in March reported Microsoft had walked away from some of its commitments with CoreWeave over delays, threatening future sales to the tech group. CoreWeave said all of its contractual relationships continued as planned. Days later, the company secured a $12bn deal with OpenAI, while revealing it had granted the ChatGPT maker $350mn of equity in the company ahead of its IPO. CoreWeave has $5.8bn of liquidity, made up of the loans that it has not drawn and $1.4bn in cash. It said in its IPO filings it had $15.1bn of remaining performance obligations -- revenue it expects to generate from contractual agreements in future -- as of December 2024. The company paid $941mn to service its debt in 2024, roughly a third of its $2.9bn net cash from operations that year, according to the company's financial reports. That bill will rise this year to about $3.5bn because of principal payments and interest on a $4bn loan that it must start paying in October, and a $1bn loan that matures in December and must be paid in full. The terms of CoreWeave's borrowing require it to quickly pay down its debt to offset the rapidly depreciating value of the chips it puts up as collateral. Nvidia's Huang this week joked that he was the "chief revenue destroyer" of his chipmaker because its newest line of high-performing AI chips, Blackwell, make its previous generations of products seem obsolete. "[CoreWeave] are financing a capital-intensive, hard-asset business with relatively short-term paper," said an executive at an investment firm with short positions on tech stocks. "Added to that, they're borrowing against assets [Nvidia GPUs] that are depreciating. That's not ideal." Most of CoreWeave's borrowing came from two "delayed draw term loans" worth $2.3bn and $7.6bn that it agreed in July 2023 and May 2024 respectively. It secured the $1bn loan just six months later, in December 2024. It is obliged to pay off the entire $1bn loan when it carries out its IPO. It borrowed the funds from a consortium of banks led by JPMorgan and MUFG last year at an effective interest rate of 12 per cent. A short seller with exposure to a number of AI companies said: "A third of cash flow going to servicing debt, given both the substantial risks and the inherent capital intensity of this business, that is a huge issue." "If they were unable to replace the extent of its Microsoft business [in the future], what would that do to its margin structure and how likely would they be able to refinance?"

CoreWeave to ask for $47 to $55 per share in IPO: Reuters sources

CoreWeave, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Nvidia , is planning to ask investors to pay $47 to $55 for each of its shares when it begins marketing its initial public offering this week, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The price range, which has not been previously reported, would translate into an offering of $2.3 billion to $2.7 billion for CoreWeave, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the discussions are confidential. CoreWeave could possibly raise this range before the IPO prices should investor demand prove strong, said the sources. CoreWeave did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia. It competes against cloud providers such as Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS. Its customers include big tech companies such as Meta, IBM and Microsoft. In its IPO filing earlier in March, CoreWeave reported revenue of $1.92 billion in 2024, compared with $228.9 million a year earlier. Its net loss widened to $863.4 million during the same period, from $593.7 million in 2023. Roughly two-thirds of its revenue came from Microsoft.

CoreWeave aims to raise up to $2.7 billion in IPO

After filing its initial prospectus earlier this month, CoreWeave updated the document with an expected pricing range of $47 to $55 per share. The company said it plans to sell 49,000 shares in the offering, including some from existing investors. Based on the number of Class A and Class B shares outstanding after the offering, the deal would value the company at $26.5 billion at the top of the range, though that number could be higher on a fully diluted basis. Originally known as Atlantic Crypto, the company got its start in 2017 by offering infrastructure for mining the ethereum cryptocurrency. After digital currency prices fell, the company bought up additional graphics processing units (GPUs) and changed its name to CoreWeave, with a focus on AI. Revenue has soared in recent years thanks to booming demand for Nvidia's GPUs. In 2024, sales jumped more than 700% to $1.92 billion, with 77% of revenue coming from two customers. Microsoft is by far the biggest client, accounting for 62% of revenue last year. Microsoft, whose Azure cloud unit has supplied computing power to OpenAI, started working with CoreWeave in 2023 to meet OpenAI demand, following the launch of ChatGPT the prior year. CoreWeave plans to trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol "CRWV." The company is largely controlled by its three co-founders. CEO Michael Intrator will control about 37% of the voting power after the offering, the filing said. Chief Data Officer Brannin McBee will control 19%, while Chief Strategy Officer Brian Venturo will have 25%. At the end of 2024, CoreWeave's 32 data centers housed over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs, with a majority using the previous-generation Hopper architecture, according to the filing. Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs were in full production as November. Last year, Elon Musk startup xAI quickly wired up a data center cluster in Tennessee housing 100,000 Nvidia GPUs. Morgan Stanley is leading the offering, with help from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. CoreWeave will be attempting to enter the public market during a historically slow stretch for tech offerings. Other companies on file include online lender Klarna and digital health startup Hinge Health. It's also a particularly volatile moment for the market and tech stocks, as investors fret over President Trump's tariff policy and massive cost cuts. The Nasdaq is headed for its steepest quarterly drop since 2022.

The concern with CoreWeave's 250,000 Nvidia chips ahead of its IPO

With 250,000 highly-desired Nvidia graphics processors, CoreWeave has become one of the most prominent "GPU clouds," a status it hopes investors will value when it debuts on the public markets. But the world of artificial intelligence hardware is moving so quickly that it raises questions about how long those chips will remain on the cutting edge and in demand. It's a concern that could impact investor demand for shares of CoreWeave, one of the most anticipated IPOs in years. CoreWeave, which rents out remote access to computers based on Nvidia AI chips, said in a financial filing this month that most of its AI chips are from Nvidia's Hopper generation. Those chips, such as the H100, were state-of-the-art in 2023 and 2024. They were scarce as AI companies bought or rented all the chips they could get in the wake of OpenAI ushering in the generative AI age with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. But these days, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says that his company's Hopper chips are getting blown out of the water by their successors - the Blackwell generation of GPUs, which have been shipping since late 2024. Hopper chips are "fine" for some circumstances but "not many," Huang joked at Nvidia's GTC conference last week. "In a reasoning model, Blackwell is 40 times the performance of Hopper. Straight up. Pretty amazing," Huang said. "I said before that when Blackwell starts shipping in volume, you couldn't give Hoppers away." That's great for Nvidia, which needs to find ways to keep selling chips to the companies committed to the AI race, but it's bad news for GPU clouds like CoreWeave. That's because the New Jersey company models the future trajectory of its business based on how much it anticipates being able to rent Nvidia chips out for over the next five to six years. Huang may have been kidding, but Nvidia spent much of its event detailing just how much better its Blackwell chips are. In Nvidia's view, the best way to decrease the high cost of serving AI is by buying faster chips. Blackwell systems are in full production and shipping to customers, and Nvidia plans to introduce an upgraded version of Blackwell in late 2026. When new chips come out, the older chips -- the kind CoreWeave has a quarter of a million of -- go down in price, Huang said. So too does the price of renting them. Older chips don't just stop working when new ones come out. Most companies, including CoreWeave, plan to use Hopper chips for six years. But Nvidia is telling customers that its newer, faster chips are capable of producing more AI content, which leads to more revenues at a better margin for clouds. An H100 would have to be priced 65% lower per hour than an Nvidia Blackwell GB200 NVL system for the two systems to be competitive in price per output to a renter. Put another way, the H100 would have to rent at 98 cents per hour to match the price per output of a Blackwell rack system priced at $2.20 per hour per GPU, SemiAnalysis estimated, speaking generally about AI rentals. H100s rented for as much as $8 per hour back in 2023 and often required long commitments and lead times, but now, usage of those chips can be summoned in minutes with a credit card. Some services now offer rented H100 access for under $2 per hour. The industry could be entering a period where the useful life of AI chips is reduced, Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote in a note on Friday. He was focused on hyperscalers -- Meta, Google and Amazon -- but the trend affects smaller cloud providers like CoreWeave, too. "These assets are becoming obsolete at a much more rapid pace given how much innovation and speed improvements happen with each generation," Sandler wrote. This threatens company earnings if they end up depreciating older equipment faster, he said. CoreWeave says that if there were to be changes to the "significant" assumptions it makes about the useful lifetime of its AI infrastructure, it could hurt its business or future prospects. CoreWeave has also borrowed nearly $8 billion to buy Nvidia chips and build its data centers, sometimes using the GPUs it amassed as collateral. Analysts and investors are also increasingly asking questions about the useful lifespan of these new AI systems and whether their financial depreciation schedules should be accelerated because the technology is improving so fast. CoreWeave says in its filing that it seeks to offer state-of-the-art infrastructure and says it will continue spending to expand and improve its data centers. "Part of this process entails cycling out outdated components of our infrastructure and replacing them with the latest technology available," the New Jersey company said. "This requires us to make certain estimates with respect to the useful life of the components of our infrastructure and to maximize the value of the components of our infrastructure, including our GPUs, to the fullest extent possible." CoreWeave and Nvidia maintain a good relationship. CoreWeave will certainly buy more chips from Nvidia, which owns more than 5% of the New Jersey company. "We're super proud of them," Huang said last week. But Nvidia's road map for releasing new chips that it proudly touts will make their predecessors obsolete is a threat to CoreWeave's ambitions.

$25 billion AI startup is a red hot property but blogger that predicted the rise of DeepSeek thinks it could be the next WeWork

Now he's targeting CoreWeave, calling it a turkey and the "WeWork of AI" Towards the end of January 2025, Jeffrey Emanuel, Founder and CEO of Pastel Network, wrote an interesting and insightful essay about Nvidia. More specifically, he discussed what he saw as its overvaluation and the threat it faced from a small Chinese startup called DeepSeek. noting, "history shows that markets eventually find a way around artificial bottlenecks that generate super-normal profits," and that, "Nvidia faces a much rockier path to maintaining its current growth trajectory and margins than its valuation implies." That article, which went viral, helped cause the largest-ever single-day drop in the stock market, wiping $2 trillion off global markets and slashing Nvidia's market capitalization by $600 billion. The latest target of Emanuel's observations is Roseland, New Jersey-based CoreWeave, which offers cloud infrastructure optimized for Nvidia GPUs and is expected to go public in the coming weeks in what will be a closely watched IPO. In his takedown of the company, Emanuel described it as the "WeWork of AI," referring to the infamous flexible office space startup that was once valued at $47 billion but overexpanded, mismanaged funds, and collapsed after a failed IPO. As Emanuel wrote two weeks ago, "If it [CoreWeave] really IPOs for $30b+ then it's a much better short than NVDA ever was. They have absolutely no durable moat and will soon be structurally disadvantaged on the cost curve for inference for specific LLM models versus hyperscalers like AWS, which have their own proprietary silicon (because clearly CoreWeave doesn't know the first thing about making custom silicon, and won't anytime soon)." MarketWatch picked up on this and cautioned investors. The site wrote, "CoreWeave set an estimated price range of $47 to $55 a share for its initial public offering, and an offering size of 49 million shares. Based on the midpoint of the estimated range, CoreWeave's IPO would raise $2.5 billion for the company. That would make its IPO the fourth since 2022 to raise at least $2.5 billion, after Lineage, Arm Holdings, and Kenvue, according to Renaissance Capital." "CoreWeave would have a market cap of about $25 billion based on the midpoint of the estimated pricing range," the site added. While that's far less than the $35 billion many market watchers have been predicting, Emanuel says, "that's still at least $20b too high for this turkey!"

AI cloud operator CoreWeave files for $2.7B IPO - SiliconANGLE

CoreWeave Inc., the operator of a cloud platform optimized for artificial intelligence workloads, today filed to go public. The company plans to sell 49 million shares for between $47 and $55 apiece. On the high end of the range, the initial public offering would value CoreWeave at $26 billion. Bloomberg reported today that the cloud provider had originally sought to raise up to $4 billion at a $35 billion valuation. CoreWeave hosts more than 250,000 Nvidia Corp. graphics cards in 32 data centers worldwide. It's among the few cloud providers that offer the Blackwell B200, the chipmaker's latest and most capable AI accelerator. CoreWeave also provides workstation-grade Nvidia graphics cards optimized for rendering tasks. The company says that its platform provides better performance for AI workloads than the major public clouds. According to CoreWeave's IPO filing, Llama 3.1 can be trained on its platform with 3.1 million fewer graphics card hours than on an unnamed competing cloud. The company also promises to significantly speed up related tasks such as loading LLMs onto Nvidia chips. CoreWeave has developed several custom software tools for its platform. One of them, SUNK, promises to help enterprises make their cloud-hosted AI environments more efficient. Companies often use Kubernetes to power their inference workloads and another open-source tool, Slurm, to carry out AI training. The two tools usually have to be deployed on separate server clusters. SUNK makes it possible to run Slurm on Kubernetes, which removes the need for customers to maintain two separate server clusters. CoreWeave's feature set has helped it win deals with several major tech firms. The cloud provider counts OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc., IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. among its customers. The latter company accounted for 62% of the $1.9 billion in revenue that CoreWeave generated last year. The cloud provider has experienced rapid sales growth since the release of ChatGPT. Its revenue jumped 737% in 2024 and 1,346% the year before that. CoreWeave is spending heavily to keep up its top line momentum: the company's loss widened from $594 million in 2023 to $594 million last year. In today's IPO filing, CoreWeave detailed that it plans to maintain revenue growth by expanding its international presence. The company also intends to launch industry-specific offerings for segments such as the banking sector where it expects AI demand to increase. "Although it is early, we have already started to see strong interest from such industries," CoreWeave stated in the filing. The company's plan to boost its financial performance could also involve changes to its data center construction strategy. Currently, CoreWeave leases most of its cloud facilities. The company's IPO filing states that it "may make investments" to take more ownership stakes in its data centers." CoreWeave hopes that "this will enable us to have more control and accountability over the delivery timeline of new builds, and allow us to exert more control over our data center costs." Lowering infrastructure costs could help the company move closer towards profitability. CoreWeave will list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CRWV.

Microsoft bails on $12B CoreWeave deal as OpenAI steps in

Microsoft opted not to pursue a nearly $12 billion option to acquire additional data-center capacity from CoreWeave, signaling a shift in how large tech firms are adjusting their AI investments. OpenAI secured the contract last week, emphasizing the growing demand for AI resources. CoreWeave is aiming for an IPO that seeks to raise up to $2.7 billion, the first significant public offering for a dedicated artificial intelligence company since the release of ChatGPT in 2022. This IPO is seen as a crucial test for the AI sector's health. Reports earlier this month indicated that Microsoft had "walked away from some of its commitments," a claim that CoreWeave disputes. Investors expressed concern in February after an analyst suggested Microsoft was retracting its datacenter leases, which the company strongly denied. Despite these developments, Microsoft plans to maintain its substantial investment in AI, stating it will allocate $80 billion. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, reassured viewers on CNBC that the company remains committed to this budget, suggesting that the decision regarding CoreWeave reflects a more strategic approach to spending rather than a reduction in AI efforts. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, acknowledged CoreWeave as one of its premier compute partners, noting that its computing capabilities were instrumental in developing several of OpenAI's prominent models. He stated in CoreWeave's roadshow video that the company has innovated in hardware and data center construction to deliver rapid results. Analyst Jeffrey Emanuel raised concerns about CoreWeave's business model, likening it to WeWork, which faced challenges with debt payments during the COVID-19 pandemic due to its leasing strategies. In contrast, Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, indicated that their company is not considering an IPO at this time.

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave targets up to $32 billion valuation in test for AI IPOs

Meanwhile, ahead of the IPO, CoreWeave had tied up with some of the biggest AI heavyweights, including Sam Altman's OpenAI. Last week, the company signed an $11.9 billion infrastructure contract with the ChatGPT maker. Nvidia currently owns 5.96% of CoreWeave's Class A shares, which is expected to be reduced to 5.05% after the offering.CoreWeave is targeting a valuation of up to $32 billion on a fully diluted basis in its U.S. initial public offering, as the Nvidia-backed startup bets on strong demand for generative artificial intelligence. The listing is seen as crucial to the revival of a largely moribund U.S. IPO market, as well as a gauge for investor appetite for new entrants in a sector that has propelled stock markets to record gains over the past two years. The cloud services provider and some of its investors are looking to sell 49 million shares priced between $47 and $55 each to raise as much as $2.7 billion in the offering, the company said on Thursday. Reuters was the first to report the terms on Wednesday. Meanwhile, ahead of the IPO, CoreWeave had tied up with some of the biggest AI heavyweights, including Sam Altman's OpenAI. Last week, the company signed an $11.9 billion infrastructure contract with the ChatGPT maker. CoreWeave, which provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia, will issue shares worth $350 million to OpenAI through a private placement in the IPO. Nvidia currently owns 5.96% of CoreWeave's Class A shares, which is expected to be reduced to 5.05% after the offering. The company has about 583 million fully diluted shares outstanding, according to a person familiar with the matter. Based on the total number of shares listed in the filing, its targeted valuation was $26 billion at the top end of the range. Litmus test A strong CoreWeave debut could reignite confidence in IPOs and encourage more companies to go public, while a weak showing may aggravate concerns that appetite remains fragile despite improving market conditions. With AI demand in focus, CoreWeave's IPO is expected to serve as a key test of whether investors believe specialized data centers can outpace traditional cloud giants. Nvidia rival Cerebras is also reportedly readying a 2025 listing, while data center operator Switch is weighing an IPO at a valuation of about $40 billion, Reuters reported in September. The offering comes after the launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek's low-cost model and an analyst report that Microsoft had cut back on data-center leases tempered the once red-hot demand. "There are growing concerns that the explosion in AI-related data center demand won't be as strong as previously thought, meaning investors will either demand a bargain price for CoreWeave shares or they might sit on the sidelines for now," Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell, told Reuters. The company, founded in 2017 as a crypto miner, had initially planned to raise over $3 billion in its share sale at a valuation topping $35 billion, sources told Reuters in November. CoreWeave discontinued that business after Ethereum underwent an upgrade in 2022, called "The Merge", which reduced rewards for miners. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters of the IPO. CoreWeave aims to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CRWV."

Nvidia-Backed AI Startup CoreWeave Sets IPO At $2.7B; OpenAI Will Get $350M In Stock

From OpenAI receiving $350 million worth of stock to CoreWeave's expected $26 billion market valuation, here's what to know about CoreWeave's upcoming initial public offering. The Nvidia-backed GPU and AI infrastructure provider is marketing its shares for between $47 per share to $55 per share, according to CoreWeave's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "We estimate that the net proceeds from the sale of shares of our Class A common stock in this offering will be approximately $2.3 billion -- or approximately $2.7 billion if the underwriters' over-allotment option is exercised in full -- based upon the assumed IPO [midpoint] price of $51 per share," said CoreWeave in its Thursday filing. 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 the CEO about 37 percent of the shareholder voting power, according to the SEC filing. [Related: Nvidia Buys Synthetic Data Startup Gretel To Boost AI, LLMs] Livingston, N.J.-based CoreWeave plans to offer a total of 48 million shares, which are expected to begin trading soon on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol 'CRWV'. OpenAI Gets $350 Million In CoreWeave Shares; Microsoft A Big Part Of CoreWeave IPO Approximately 77 percent of CoreWeave's revenue came from its top two customers in 2024, one of which was Microsoft, according to the filings. Microsoft accounted for 62 percent of CoreWeave's overall sales, the filing said. In February 2023, CoreWeave and Microsoft signed a Master Services Agreement in which CoreWeave provides Microsoft access to its infrastructure and platform services. "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," said CoreWeave in the filing. CoreWeave has finalized two large deals ahead of its stock listing, including a partnership to deliver AI infrastructure to OpenAI for up to $11.9 billion. Microsoft-backed OpenAI will receive $350 million worth of CoreWeave stock, the filing said. None of CoreWeave's founders are planning to sell stock in the IPO. CoreWeave By The Numbers In 2024, CoreWeave generated approximately $1.9 billion in revenue, up 737 percent compared to 2023, according to the SEC filing. 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. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave delivers a cloud platform of top-notch software and infrastructure that is helping to power the next wave of AI. CoreWeave provides access to data centers and GPUs for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia. This week at Nvidia GTC 2025, CoreWeave CEO Intrator touted the introduction of new CoreWeave compute instances featuring Nvidia's upcoming RTX PRO 6000 GPUs. "CoreWeave 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," said Intrator on LinkedIn this week. CoreWeave was an early adopter of Nvidia's GPUs for data centers, getting ahead of a wave of demand for processors to run AI applications. Market Momentum In March 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 at Bulk's data center. "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," said Intrator. "We're following through on this commitment as we expand AI infrastructure that will help shape the future globally." OpenAI also selected CoreWeave this month to deliver AI infrastructure. "AI is transforming the world, but it requires an entirely new kind of cloud -- one built for scale, speed, and efficiency. CoreWeave was purpose-built for this moment," said Intrator. "This [OpenAI] partnership is a testament to our ability to consistently deliver the latest AI infrastructure on ambitious timelines with superior performance at scale." OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman this week said CoreWeave's computing power led to the creation of "some of the models that we're best known for." "CoreWeave figured out how to innovate on hardware, to innovate on data center construction, and to deliver results very, very quickly," said Altman in a statement.

Meet This Under-the-Radar AI IPO Stock Growing Its Revenue 737% | The Motley Fool

The company is currently benefiting from the AI boom. Will its success continue? Is the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) finally coming out of its slumber? Spurred on by the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), it just might be. Since the 2021 popping of the bubble for hypergrowth and special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC), very few new technology stocks have gone public. In 2021, over 1,000 companies came public. That number fell to around 200 in each of the last three years. Now, 2025 may see a resurgence in IPOs. We have buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna set to hit the public markets shortly. Perhaps most important will be CoreWeave, an AI infrastructure start-up backed by Nvidia. It just filed its paperwork to go public and should make a debut sometime in 2025. With revenue growing at a blistering pace, there is bound to be a lot of excitement around this first blockbuster IPO in the AI sector. Should you join the party and buy some shares of CoreWeave? CoreWeave is trying to compete with the hyperscaler cloud computing providers (for example, Amazon Web Services) by building data centers and computing clusters custom-made for AI. It began as a start-up that pivoted from cryptocurrency mining when it realized all the Nvidia computer chips it owned would be perfect to sell to AI software companies. As you are likely well aware of, demand for AI-focused cloud computing has gone crazy in the last few years and turned Nvidia into one of the top three most-valuable stocks in the world. CoreWeave -- which Nvidia invested in -- has benefited greatly from this spending. Revenue was $1.9 billion in 2024, up 737% year over year from 2023. It looks like this fast revenue growth will continue in 2025 as its remaining performance obligations or backlog has reached $15.1 billion at the time of its IPO prospectus. It looks like this backlog might grow, too. In exchange for ownership in the company, CoreWeave has signed an $11.9 billion contract with start-up OpenAI ahead of the IPO. OpenAI will now own $350 million worth of CoreWeave stock and use its infrastructure for its AI services. Growth, without exaggeration, has been phenomenal for CoreWeave in the last few years. The growth metrics look quite attractive at CoreWeave. But it isn't all sunshine and rainbows. It has heavy customer concentration with Microsoft, which accounted for 62% of its revenue in 2024. I see this as a big risk to its business. Microsoft is in reality a competitor with its Microsoft Azure cloud service and is going to CoreWeave to help match up the computing demand from its AI customers such as OpenAI. If/when supply catches up with demand in the AI sector, Microsoft could easily take its data center spending in house instead of outsourcing it to CoreWeave. The intense cash burn is also nothing to sneeze at. In order to finance its growth and build out all these data centers, CoreWeave has taken on $2.5 billion in short-term debt and $5.5 billion in long-term debt. In 2024, it burned $6 billion in free cash flow due to its $8.7 billion in capital expenditures. CoreWeave has a massive backlog, but in order to make this business profitable, it needs to keep growing revenue at a rapid pace. This is not guaranteed to happen and is a risk to the company. Even with the current correction of the Nasdaq index, there is a ton of excitement around AI stocks and the CoreWeave IPO. Unless the market crashes and management pulls the IPO, this will likely be one of the biggest debuts in recent years. That doesn't mean you should buy the stock at the IPO. Smart investors know that two-thirds of IPOs underperform the market for three years after they go public. This is likely due to the lockup periods that restrict the ability to sell stock at the IPO. Insiders will typically sell some stock after this lockup period ends, which can drive down prices. There is a lot to like with CoreWeave's business. It is growing incredibly quickly in a space (AI) that has loads of potential for growth. But it is also burning a lot of cash, has major customer concentration risk with Microsoft, and could underperform the broad market like most other IPOs. Keep CoreWeave stock on your watch list for now. According to the historical data, you will have the chance to buy it for a cheaper price in the next few years.

Considering Investing in the CoreWeave IPO? Here's a Different Nvidia-Backed Data Center Stock You Might Want to Check Out Instead. | The Motley Fool

So far this year, the Nasdaq Composite dropped by about 8%. Broad sell-offs in mega-cap artificial intelligence (AI) stocks are some of the biggest drags on the market. Despite these murky conditions, one AI unicorn has its eyes set on an initial public offering (IPO). CoreWeave, a start-up backed by Nvidia, recently filed its S-1, showing the company and current shareholders are marketing the shares from $47 to $55. With 48.7 million shares in potentially in play, the IPO is valued at roughly $2.7 billion. While CoreWeave's public debut has been highly anticipated, I'm wary about investing in the company right now. Let's explore CoreWeave's business, the current state of the company's financial profile, and why a different Nvidia-backed AI data center stock may be the better buy. CoreWeave specializes in renting out high-performance chipsets known as graphics processing units (GPUs). GPUs are an integral component for training generative AI applications, and are primarily developed by the likes of Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom. In addition, cloud hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are exploring their own custom silicon solutions, as is social media and metaverse leader Meta Platforms. Per CoreWeave's S-1 filing, many of these businesses leverage the company's compute rental services. While all of this looks impressive, some of the finer details packed deep in CoreWeave's filings have me concerned. For example, in 2024 CoreWeave posted revenue of $1.9 billion -- an increase of 736% from 2023. But that growth came at a cost. Last year, CoreWeave's net loss widened to $863 million -- materially higher than the company's loss of $593 million in 2023. To be fair, many start-ups invest aggressively in growth for years -- choosing to double down on product development and marketing at the expense of profitability. While I'd like to be lenient as it pertains to CoreWeave's mounting losses, there's a more pernicious trend that spooks me. During 2022 and 2023, CoreWeave derived 41% and 73% of its revenue from just three customers. Then in 2024, 77% of the company's revenue came from just two customers -- with Microsoft accounting for 62% of sales (up from 35% in 2023). So, CoreWeave has high degrees of customer concentration -- and it's actually rising. To me, CoreWeave is a high-cash-burn business relying on a select number of customers for the majority of its growth. All in all, I think the business is quite risky. Investing in IPO stocks tends to carry outsize risk. Given how much hype has surrounded AI over the last few years, my hunch is that investors are eager to buy something new. For this reason, I think it's highly likely that CoreWeave's shares could experience a dramatic melt-up during its first few days of trading. Given the financial analysis explored above, I would not encourage investors to chase any momentum in CoreWeave stock though. Instead, I'd look for alternative opportunities that may witness some tangential interest as a result of CoreWeave's IPO. For example, Nebius Group (NBIS 2.71%) is a AI data center stock also backed by Nvidia, and I think it's a more compelling opportunity than CoreWeave right now. Nebius specializes in AI infrastructure, outfitting data centers with GPUs such as Nvidia's new Blackwell architecture. For now, the company operates primarily in Europe but has recently started expanding its footprint in the U.S. Outside of infrastructure, Nebius also operates across cloud software and robotics. In 2025 alone, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are planning to spend upward of $320 billion on AI infrastructure -- from chipware, data center construction, robotics, and more. Given Nvidia's Blackwell chips are projected to capture a portion of this spend, I see rising interest in AI infrastructure as a bullish secular tailwind for Nebius in the long run. While Nebius is a much smaller company than CoreWeave today, I see it as more of a diversified business spanning several different pockets of the AI realm. Over time, I think investors may come to appreciate Nebius' multifaceted AI platform -- which could come with meaningful upside to the company's current valuation. By contrast, if CoreWeave does not swiftly demonstrate an ability to acquire more customers and identify a concrete path to profitability, investors will likely sour on the stock -- leaving those who chased the momentum during the IPO holding the bag.

This Nvidia-Backed Artificial Intelligence (AI) Unicorn Is About to Go Public. Here Are 2 Reasons I Won't Be Investing. | The Motley Fool

Data center start-up CoreWeave is going public soon in a deal worth approximately $2.5 billion. For many people, investing in the stock market is the most effective way to build wealth. Unless you're an accredited investor, accessing opportunities in private companies is rare. That said, every now and again, a private company becomes large enough that investors consider the potential of an initial public offering (IPO). Private companies that have eclipsed a valuation of $1 billion or more are often referred to as unicorns in the financial world. CoreWeave, an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up with the financial backing of none other than Nvidia (NVDA -0.75%) , recently filed its S-1 with an expected valuation of approximately $24 billion. While the combination of AI, support from Nvidia, and a highly anticipated IPO might sound like a recipe for making a fortune, here are two reasons why I won't be chasing CoreWeave's IPO. The table below breaks down CoreWeave's revenue over the last few years. While these figures are undoubtedly impressive, there's more than meets the eye here. Data source: CoreWeave S-1 Filing. YOY = year over year. When analyzing financial statements, investors can sometimes become enamored by a company's revenue growth to the point that they ignore some important underlying details. Sure, growing revenue over 700% and eclipsing $1 billion in annual sales are terrific milestones, but where is this growth actually coming from? According to notes in CoreWeave's S-1, 41% and 73% of revenue in 2022 and 2023, respectively, was concentrated in three customers. Furthermore, 77% of revenue in 2024 came from only two customers. CoreWeave goes on to disclose that its largest customer (Microsoft) accounted for 16%, 35%, and 62% of sales between 2022 and 2024. These trends not only suggest some extreme levels of customer concentration, but CoreWeave's largest client is effectively driving the bulk its growth. In other words, if Microsoft churns as a customer or decides to downgrade its contract, then CoreWeave's growth would protract in a meaningful way. Another important part of financial analysis is looking past revenue and studying the rest of the income statement. The three major financial statements -- income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows -- are intertwined. Below, I've outlined some key details that stuck out to me in CoreWeave's financial profile. Data source: CoreWeave S-1 Filing. When a company files its financials with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it does so under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). But GAAP financials can benefit from adjustments at times. For example, many companies (especially start-ups) issue stock-based compensation (SBC) to their employees. Augmenting an employee's salary with SBC is a nice sweetener as it gives them a chance to participate in the upside of a liquidity event such as an acquisition or IPO. The catch is that SBC is tucked into operating expenses on the income statement, and it can make a company's expense profile look more inflated than it really is. The reason for that is SBC isn't a true cash expense like a contract with a vendor or a salary. In the table above, I normalized CoreWeave's operating expenses to exclude SBC. As you can see, the company's expense profile is growing over 500% annually (and rising). And toward the bottom of the income statement, you'll see interest expense from the debt CoreWeave carries on its balance sheet. While debt isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm a little wary in CoreWeave's case. At the end of 2023, CoreWeave carried $1.5 billion of debt. But by the end of last year, debt had ballooned to $7.9 billion -- hence the notable rise in interest expense shown above. According to required disclosures, CoreWeave will have roughly $8.0 billion of principal payments on its debt between 2025 and 2029, and $5.6 billion of that amount is due in the next two years. Considering the company holds only $1.4 billion of cash and equivalents and continues to burn cash at a high rate, I'm not thrilled about the company's current liquidity profile. The CoreWeave IPO is garnering a lot of hype supported by a bullish AI narrative. But the underlying financial profile of the company could be stronger. Moreover, given CoreWeave's mounting losses and questionable path to profitability, I wouldn't chase any lofty valuation targets that Wall Street might be trying to sell.

Should You Invest in the CoreWeave IPO? History Offers a Clear Answer. | The Motley Fool

CoreWeave's IPO could set the stage for the next chapter of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. During the last two years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a generational megatrend rarely witnessed in the capital markets. While the S&P 500 posted total returns of 26% and 25% during 2023 and 2024, respectively, a closer analysis of these trends shows that investors have largely flocked to a small cohort of megacap stocks over the last couple of years. The collective performance of the "Magnificent Seven" -- Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Apple, and Tesla -- has played an outsize role in fueling the market to new highs. However, this year has gotten off to a rough start for the Magnificent Seven, with each member except Meta posting a negative return year to date as of this writing. From a macro perspective, I suspect that uncertainty over tariffs, as well as ongoing spending for AI infrastructure have left some investors tepid over the near-term prospects of their once-favorite stocks. In addition, some of them may simply be fatigued by the Magnificent Seven and are looking for new growth opportunities. And what better place to look for growth than an initial public offering (IPO), right? Well, maybe. Let's explore AI's hottest new IPO stock: a data center infrastructure specialist backed by Nvidia called CoreWeave. After analyzing a couple of high-profile technology IPO stocks from recent years, my hope is that investors will come away with a clear idea of whether or not investing in the CoreWeave offering is a prudent choice right now. In September 2020, enterprise software company Snowflake went public on the New York Stock Exchange. This was one of the most hyped IPOs that I can think of in recent memory. With backing from some of the most prestigious venture capital firms in the world -- including Sequoia, Altimeter, and Redpoint -- as well as notable strategic investors, such as Salesforce and none other than Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Snowflake looked like a no-brainer opportunity. Shares opened at $245 on its first day of trading and rose as high as $319. By the end of its first day as a public company, Snowflake had made it into the record books, becoming the largest software IPO in history. There was undoubtedly a high degree of euphoria during its early days as a public company, but the enthusiasm was short-lived. When AI emerged as the market's next big catalyst a couple of years ago, Snowflake's foray into the space was suspiciously quiet. Unlike some of its software counterparts, it failed to captivate investors and sell them on how AI was going to be a transformative opportunity underscored by long periods of high-margin growth. The chart above illustrates the stock's return since going public. As you can see, the company experienced multiple sudden price jumps during some early periods as a public company. But over the last couple of years, investors have largely soured on the stock, with shares now down roughly 38% since inception. Just two weeks after Snowflake went public, a peer in the enterprise software landscape, Palantir Technologies, made its debut on the New York exchange. The storyline around Palantir at the time of its IPO was quite the opposite compared to Snowflake. Few on Wall Street had a firm grasp on its business model. Moreover, the company's close (and secretive) relationship with the Department of Defense inspired many investors to view Palantir as a government contractor or a consulting agency, and less so as a true technology platform. Its first day of trading wasn't too special. Shares opened up at $10 and closed slightly lower around $9.50. For the first couple of years as a public company, one of its largest challenges was winning over institutional investors. In a paradox for the ages, it actually was the rise of AI that started turning heads on Wall Street from Snowflake to Palantir. Following the company's release of its Artificial Intelligence Platform in April 2023, Palantir has done an impressive job diversifying its business beyond government contracts. It is now working closely with many of the largest AI developers in the private sector, including Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Meta Platforms, and Databricks. By unlocking new opportunities in the commercial sector, Palantir has been able to accelerate revenue growth while simultaneously widening profit margins and minting free cash flow on a consistent basis. What was once a stock that sat in the shadows of the tech realm just three short years ago swiftly transitioned into one of the top-performing stocks in the S&P 500 last year. In fact, if you invested in Palantir at the time of its IPO and held through today, you would be sitting on a gain of 838%. Narratives surrounding CoreWeave's upcoming IPO are echoing that of Snowflake. CoreWeave is not only the first major IPO for an AI unicorn in recent years, but a successful public debut could also set the stage for a flood of high-profile private technology companies yearning to hit the public exchanges. This article underscores one clear point: Investing in a stock at the time of an IPO carries quite a bit of risk. I think the hype surrounding CoreWeave could inspire some outsize buying activity, and investors who aren't careful could get caught up in a nasty momentum trade and end up holding the bag. To me, the most prudent strategy is to let time pass and assess CoreWeave's operating performance for its first few quarters as a public company. Long-term investors will have ample buying opportunities at various price points should they choose. But for now, I think the safer option is to let the IPO shake out, and astute investors are better off monitoring the company's progress over the next several months. Over time, CoreWeave's stock price should begin to follow a more fundamental trajectory based on the company's actual underlying results.

CoreWeave Scales Back IPO to $2.7 Billion | PYMNTS.com

With Nvidia's blessing and OpenAI as a key customer, artificial intelligence (AI) startup and cloud computing provider CoreWeave is seeking to raise approximately $2.7 billion in an initial public offering (IPO). According to a Bloomberg report Thursday (March 20), shares of the Nvidia-backed startup are reportedly priced between $47 and $55 each. CoreWeave plans to offer about 47 million shares, with existing stockholders selling the remaining 1.8 million. At the top of the proposed range, the company could achieve a market value of $26 billion based on outstanding shares. The IPO's size and valuation target are lower than initially anticipated because of a broader stock market slump due to increased volatility. Previously, CoreWeave was aiming to raise about $4 billion and target a valuation exceeding $35 billion, according to a previous Bloomberg report. The report also said the company disclosed weaknesses in internal controls related to financial reporting, citing issues such as insufficient IT controls and a lack of qualified personnel in related roles. Founded in 2017 as a crypto mining firm, CoreWeave reported revenue of $1.9 billion in 2024, with a net loss of $863 million, Bloomberg said. Other noteworthy numbers from the SEC filing: About 77% of CoreWeave's 2024 revenue came from its top two customers, with Microsoft making up nearly two-thirds of overall sales. In preparation for its Wall Street debut, CoreWeave has secured two significant partnerships. The company has agreed to provide AI infrastructure to OpenAI in a contract worth up to $11.9 billion. Additionally, CoreWeave plans to acquire AI developer platform Weights & Biases for approximately 1 million shares of Class A stock. CoreWeave's investors include Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Jane Street, JPMorgan Asset Management, Fidelity and Lykos Global Management. According to Bloomberg, Cisco Systems Inc. has also agreed to invest in CoreWeave as part of a transaction valuing the company at $23 billion. According to the SEC filing, CoreWeave CEO and Co-founder Michael Intrator is expected to retain significant control post-IPO, holding about 2% of Class A shares and nearly half of Class B shares, granting him 37% of shareholder voting power. Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are leading the IPO, with 11 other advisers also involved. CoreWeave's shares are expected to trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol CRWV.

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave targets $26 billion valuation in AI IPO test

March 20 (Reuters) - CoreWeave said on Thursday it was targeting a valuation of up to $26 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, as the Nvidia-backed startup bets on strong demand for generative artificial intelligence. The AI boom, which has powered super-sized gains for chipmakers such as Nvidia and other big tech firms, has driven a surge in global demand for infrastructure such as data centers and high-powered servers. The cloud services provider and some of its investors are looking to sell 49 million shares priced between $47 and $55 each to raise as much as $2.7 billion in the offering. Reuters was the first to report the terms on Wednesday. Earlier this month, CoreWeave signed a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with generative AI pioneer OpenAI, which gives the ChatGPT maker a stake in the company. CoreWeave will issue shares worth $350 million to OpenAI through a private placement at the time of its IPO. The offering is expected to be a key test of appetite for AI-focused companies after the launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek's low-cost model and an analyst report Microsoft had cut back on data-center leases tempered the once red-hot demand. The U.S. IPO market has struggled to regain momentum after a near three-year slump, with still high interest rates and economic uncertainty keeping many companies on the sidelines. While there have been a handful of high-profile listings, analysts say a broad revival hinges on larger, buzzy debuts that can reignite confidence and draw more firms to the public markets. CoreWeave, which provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia, is aiming to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CRWV." In its IPO filing earlier in March, CoreWeave reported revenue of $1.92 billion in 2024, compared with $228.9 million a year earlier. Its net loss widened to $863.4 million during the same period, from $593.7 million in 2023. Roughly two-thirds of its revenue came from Microsoft . Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are leading a syndicate of Wall Street banks underwriting the offering. (Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave aims to raise up to $2.7 billion in US IPO

(Reuters) - Nvidia-backed CoreWeave is aiming to raise as much as $2.7 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, a regulatory filing by the AI startup showed on Thursday. The artificial intelligence-focused cloud services provider and some of its investors are looking to sell 49 million shares priced between $47 and $55 each. The offering is expected to be a key test of appetite for AI-focused companies after the launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek's low-cost model and an analyst report Microsoft had cut back on data-center leases tempered the once red-hot demand. Meanwhile, stock market volatility - driven by uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariffs and renewed recession fears - also threatens to stall the U.S. IPO market's recovery, analysts say. Earlier this month, CoreWeave signed a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with OpenAI. The deal will give OpenAI a stake in the company, which will issue shares worth $350 million to the ChatGPT maker through a private placement at the time of its IPO. The company, which provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia, is aiming to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CRWV." Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are leading a syndicate of Wall Street banks underwriting the offering. (Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)