The company was founded in 2017 by three commodities traders—Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, and Brannin McBee—originally as a cryptocurrency company mining ethereum using GPUs, when it was known as Atlantic Crypto. In the wake of the 2018 cryptocurrency crash, the company was renamed CoreWeave in 2019, pivoting to providing its computing resources to companies that needed them by leveraging its large inventory of GPUs.[1][2][5]
CoreWeave has a startup accelerator program to help startup companies with the access to the large scale GPU-accelerated workloads. As of 2024[update], the company has thirteen data centers across the United States and two in the United Kingdom.[6][7] CoreWeave's infrastructure is built on a Kubernetes-native architecture, designed to support large-scale, GPU-intensive tasks.[6]
CoreWeave, which has privileged access to Nvidia GPUs, which are in short supply,[8] secured a $2.3 billion debt financing facility led by Magnetar Capital and Blackstone by using Nvidia's H100 GPUs as collateral in August 2023.[9] The company raised $1.1bn in funding led by Coatue Management in May 2024, valuing the company at $19bn.[3][10] According to a Bloomberg News report in October 2024, Cisco is set to invest in CoreWeave valuing the company at $23 billion.[11] In the same month, CoreWeave announced that it secured a $650million credit line for expanding its operations and datacenters.[12] Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were among those who led the financing.[12][13] The company has announced plans to invest £750 million ($978.6 million) in the U.K.[14] CoreWeave signed a lease with Onyx Equities and Machine Investment Group for building a $1.2bn data center in New Jersey in Oct 2024.[15] CoreWeave is taking a 280,000 sq ft space at the NEST (Northeast Science and Technology Center) in Kenilworth, New Jersey, for the data center.[16][17] In December 2024, Canadian AI startup Cohere announced plans to build a multi-billion data center built and operated by CoreWeave.[18]
In June 2024, CoreWeave offered to buy Core Scientific, a Bitcoin-miner that had come out of bankruptcy protection, in an all-cash deal for $1billion; however, the offer was rejected.[19][20] In Oct 2024, Core Scientific announced that CoreWeave exercised its option to contract for additional infrastructure as part of the 200MW hosting contract.[21] As part of the agreement, Core Scientific will modify infrastructure at one of its sites to deliver around 120 incremental MW of IT load to host CoreWeave's Nvidia GPUs.
As of 2024[update], Intrator is the company's chief executive, while the other co-founders, Venturo and McBee, are the chief technology officer and chief strategy officer, respectively;[1] the company has around 550 employees.[2] Coreweave announced on October 18, 2024, that Michelle O’Rourke was named as its new chief people officer.[22]
IPO
Bloomberg reported in November 2024 that CoreWeave plans to launch an initial public offering in 2025.[23] In the same month, CoreWeave closed a $650million secondary share sale, raising the company's valuation to $23billion.[24]
