GPU cloud operator CoreWeave files to go public

Cloud computing infrastructure provider CoreWeave Inc. is eying the public markets, hoping to cash in on investors’ insatiable appetite for all things artificial intelligence.

The company said today it has filed the necessary paperwork for its initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the documents reveal it will trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the “CRWV” ticker symbol. Morgan Stanley is leading the offering, with help from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

CoreWeave may not be the most recognizable name, but it has emerged as one of the major movers and shakers in the AI industry because it provides enterprises with access to that most treasured resource: graphics processing units that underlie today’s AI services.

Through its cloud infrastructure, enterprise customers including Meta Platforms Inc. can obtain on-demand access to some of Nvidia’s most powerful GPUs, including its H100 and H200 chips, which are designed to provide accelerated computing power for large language models and other AI workloads.

The company has quietly built up an extensive network of data centers spanning North America and Europe. Following its most recent funding round in November, it said it had 14 data centers up and running, with plans to expand to 28 by the end of the year. Additionally, it wants to add another 10 data centers on top of that by the end of 2025.

CoreWeave’s ambitious infrastructure building plans are necessary to support its incredible growth, which saw its revenue rise by a stunning 700% in 2024, to more than $1.92 billion. It promises to grow even faster in future too, with more than $15 billion in signed contracts that are yet to be fulfilled. However, it’s not yet profitable, posting a net loss of $863.4 million for the full year.

In its most recent quarter, CoreWeave delivered $747.4 million in revenue. Meanwhile, its gross margin, which measures how much revenue is left over after accounting for the cost of goods sold, hit 76%.

CoreWeave began life as a company called Atlantic Crypto and was initially focused on cryptocurrency mining. But with crypto prices beginning to decline in 2022, the company saw a new opportunity in the nascent AI boom, which kicked off later that year with the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It responded by buying up thousands of GPUs, changing its name to CoreWeave and pivoting as an AI computing cloud for companies looking to train and run their own LLMs.

The company has proved to be a breath of fresh air for many enterprises, offering flexible, on-demand access to vital GPUs. Its approach is in stark contrast to traditional cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google Cloud, which only offer a limited variety of compute options and charge higher prices to access them.

CoreWeave is led by its co-founder and Chief Executive Michael Intrator, who currently controls about 38% of its voting power. The hedge fund Magnetar has a sizable stake in the company and controls 7%, while Nvidia controls 1%, the IPO filing revealed.

The documents also show that CoreWeave currently maintains a fleet of more than 250,000 Nvidia GPUs, though the majority of those are older chips, as Nvidia’s newest Blackwell chips only entered full production in November. At present, the company does not have any chips from Nvidia’s main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

CoreWeave’s public debut will be the first major tech IPO of the year, and comes during an historically quiet time for the industry. The last major tech firm to go public was ServiceTitan Inc., which did so in December, and before that we have to go back to last April, when Rubrik Inc. first started trading. Astera Labs Inc., which sells data center networking chips, and Reddit Inc., also went public last year.

Prior to those entries, there haven’t been any notable tech IPOs since late 2021, which was when the economy first turned unfavorable with rising interest rates and inflation dampening investors’s enthusiasm for risky bets.

CoreWeave may soon be joined on the public markets by another AI infrastructure startup, though. In September, the AI chip startup Cerebras Systems Inc., a direct rival to Nvidia, also filed for an IPO. However, its process has been slowed down following the start of a review by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Dreamina