AI startup CoreWeave gets $7.5bn in debt deal

AI startup CoreWeave gets $7.5bn in debt deal

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CoreWeave has raised US$7.5 billion in debt financing to invest in its cloud data centres.

The news comes fresh off a $1.1 billion equity funding round led by Blackstone with participation from Coatue, Carlyle, BlackRock, Magnetar and others.

In its equity financing two weeks ago, the company was valued at around $19 billion.

CoreWeave was founded in 2017 as an Ethereum mining company based in New York. The firm has profited massively from the boom in generative AI over the past year.

A pivot in 2019 by its co-founders to building a specialised cloud infrastructure has more than paid off. Chief strategy officer Brannin McBee claims in a recent interview with VentureBeat that the company made $30 million in revenue in 2022 and is on track to book $500 million in business this year.

CoreWeave is one of the main providers of Nvidia’s chips for running AI models – and demand for those chips are at an all time high, following soaring popularity.

According to several sources, Microsoft has begun to rely on CoreWeave to help supply OpenAI with computing power.

This positions CoreWeave in direct competition with industry giants like Amazon and Google, as the company has secured Nvidia’s AI-focused graphics processing units that are currently in limited supply.

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