AI cloud provider CoreWeave is going public via an IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The number of shares and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined, but CoreWeave is offering shares of its Class A common stock under the ticker "CRWV."
Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC will serve as joint lead book runners for the proposed offering, alongside other book runners Barclays, Citigroup, MUFG, Deutsche Bank Securities, Jefferies, Mizuho, Wells Fargo Securities, and BofA Securities. Guggenheim Securities, Needham & Company, and Galaxy Digital Partners LLC will serve as co-managers for the proposed offering.
Reports that the company was looking to file an IPO imminently emerged last week, and rumours have been circling since last year.
In the company's SEC filing, CoreWeave noted that as of December 31, 2024, it had 32 data centers operating more than 250,000 GPUs in total, and more than 360MW of active power.
"Our total contracted power extends to approximately 1.3GW as of December 31, 2024, which we expect to roll out over the coming years," the company added.
In addition, CoreWeave noted that its revenue has seen a huge incremental increase over the years. "Our revenue was $16 million, $229 million, and $1.9 billion for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 1,346 percent and 737 percent, respectively.
"During these periods, we continued to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a result, our net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $31 million, $594 million, and $863 million, respectively. Our adjusted net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $27 million, $45 million, and $65 million, respectively."
In addition, up to December 31, 2024, CoreWeave has raised total commitments of $12.9 billion in debt to support its expansion. Investors include Magnetar, Blackstone, BlackRock, DigitalBridge, Coatue, PIMCO, and Carlyle, among others.
CoreWeave, which was originally founded in 2017 as a cryptomining firm, lists among its strengths that its platform has been designed for AI, has access to the highest performing GPUs, and is operating at scale with opportunities to expand.
The company wrote in its filing about the complexity of AI infrastructure. "Depending on the configuration of the data center, a single 32,000-GPU cluster may require the deployment of approximately 600 miles of fiber cables and around 80,000 fiber connections.
It added: "Acquiring the necessary high-performance components requires managing a complex global supply chain, and the data centers themselves need to be specifically designed for high-performance compute," while noting that "generalized clouds operated by hyperscalers were not built to serve the specific requirements of AI" and were created "over a decade ago."
The company noted in its risks, however, that "a substantial portion of our revenue is driven by a limited number of our customers" and that the loss of spend from one or a few of the company's top customers would "adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects." Around 77 percent of CoreWeave's revenue in 2024 was from its two largest customers, Microsoft being the largest and accounting for 62 percent of CoreWeave's revenue that year. In November 2024, Microsoft announced it would spend around $10 billion on CoreWeave's services by the end of the decade.
The company also acknowledged that as they are leasing data center space from others, they could be impacted by outages out of their control. CoreWeave added: "In the future, we may develop our own data centers, rather than relying on third parties and, because of our limited experience in this area, we could experience unforeseen difficulties. "
Additionally, CoreWeave acknowledged that there is uncertainty about the commercialization of AI and the "continued rapid pace of developments in the AI field," the limited number of suppliers for necessary hardware - three suppliers accounted for 76 percent of purchases in 2024, lack data center capacity and power availability, as well as the high capex requirements of CoreWeave's operations and extensive competition.
