CoreWeave strikes $11.9B deal with OpenAI to deliver AI infrastructure

CoreWeave announced on March 11 that it had struck a five-year deal worth up to $11.9 billion with OpenAI, the nonprofit research and development company that created ChatGPT. Through the deal, OpenAI will become an investor in CoreWeave through the issuance of $350 million of stock, while CoreWeave will deliver AI infrastructure.

The deal comes ahead of the anticipated CoreWeave initial public offering (IPO). According to its offering filing, the company, founded in 2017 in Livingston, New Jersey, reported $1.9 billion in revenue with a net loss of $863 million in 2024. CoreWeave provides cloud-based GPU infrastructure to AI developers.

The new deal may provide a boost to CoreWeave, as roughly two-thirds of the company’s revenue came from Microsoft, which had planned to spend $10 billion on CoreWeave by 2030. According to a report from the Financial Times, Microsoft has canceled some contracts with the AI company due to missed deadlines, though CoreWeave has denied this.

Related: Core Scientific to host more CoreWeave infrastructure, targets $8.7B revenue

CoreWeave’s main competitors are Amazon, Oracle and Google, along with smaller clients DataCrunch, Lambda and Foundry.

The cloud artificial intelligence market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, according to Fortune Business Intelligence. In 2022, the size of the market was estimated to be $46.7 billion. By 2030, it is expected to be $398 billion. The compound annual growth rate during that time period is estimated to be 30.9%.

Cloud AI involves a combination of cloud computing and artificial intelligence services that businesses can use to theoretically increase their revenue. Some of the aspects of a business that these services touch on include scalability, predictive analytics and cost savings by not having to build their own AI model.

Related: Saudi Arabia partners with tech giants in $14.9B AI expansion

There are budding integrations with Cloud AI and blockchain as well. As Cointelegraph reported, one of the challenges with integrating AI and blockchain is scalability and processing power, which cloud computing platforms aim to help solve. These integrations may impact Web3 gaming as well.

But, while the fusion of these technologies is promising, there are roadblocks, including the centralization within the cloud computing industry.

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