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In a grandmaster - level chess game move , OpenAI has signed afive - year , $ 11.9 billion agreementwith the GPU - sonorous cloud serving supplier CoreWeave , which Reuters in the beginning describe and CoreWeaveconfirmed in a press discharge .
The deal require OpenAI receive $ 350 million Charles Frederick Worth of fairness in CoreWeave , the companies say . The private placement is suppose to be disjoined fromCoreWeave ’s planned IPO .
CoreWeave register to become a public company last week , but it has not yet price or scheduled its introduction .
It ’s a win for both fellowship . One reason this agreement is so oculus - popping ( besides the one thousand million involved ) is that before this pot , CoreWeave ’s big customer was Microsoft . In fact , in 2024 , Microsoft accounted for 62 % of CoreWeave ’s revenue , which grow to a arresting $ 1.9 billion — nearly an eight-fold addition from just $ 228.9 million in 2023 .
Backed by Nvidia , which holds a 6 % stake , CoreWeave runs an AI - specific cloud service with a electronic connection of 32 data centers that operated more than 250,000 Nvidia GPUs as of the remainder of 2024 , according to the company . Since then , CoreWeave has supply more GPUs , including Nvidia ’s latest product , Blackwell , which sustain AI reasoning , the society say .
Such dependence on one customer is usually worrisome for IPO investor and could have added “ hair ” as they say , to CoreWeave ’s hope of raising $ 4 billion or more in its IPO . Landing OpenAI as a direct customer in a multi - billion - dollar deal should aid CoreWeave appease investor .
Microsoft and OpenAI’s relationship
What makes this move equally interesting is that it ’s another dance step in the deteriorate , frenemies kinship between Microsoft and OpenAI .
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It ’s as if OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman saw Microsoft ’s usage of CoreWeave and say , “ take my beer . ”
Not only will OpenAI have access to the same cloud , but it will also have an ownership stake in the company that bleed it .
Microsoft is , of course , a big backer of OpenAI in a heap thatentitles Microsoft to collect a portionof OpenAI ’s receipts . But tension between two companies have been rising for year , as OpenAI ’s fortunes have soar . OpenAI compete with Microsoft for enterprise customer and is evenreportedly exercise on flap out dear AI broker .
In January , as part of the massive Stargate AI infrastructure raft with SoftBank , Oracle , and others , Microsoft ceased being OpenAI’ssole cloud provider . OpenAI call for more compute resources . Just last week , Altmancomplained that OpenAI is “ out of GPUs . ”
For its part , Microsoft is mould on its own AI “ reason ” model like to OpenAI’so1ando3 - mini . It ’s develop a whole family of its own model call MAI that are competitive with OpenAI . It alsohired Altman ’s competition , Mustafa Suleyman , to lead Microsoft AI .
But CoreWeave is a surprising chess piece .
CoreWeave lead off its life as a crypto mining operation , founded by former hedge fund bozo , it said . The three co - founders have already cashed out of $ 488 million worth of shares — over $ 150 million each . CoreWeave also has a arresting $ 7.9 billion of debt on the books .
If the initial public offering give the billions of new capital letter they go for it will , the fellowship state it will practice at least some of that to pay down the debt .
While these founder were once literally assay to apply GPUs to mint money , they are figuratively apparently action it .
OpenAI did not respond to our request for comment .
Note : This taradiddle was update to admit a citation to CoreWeave ’s press sack announcing the deal .
