Raising 4 billion, valuation exceeding 35 billion, "NVIDIA's favored child" AI cloud vendor Coreweave applies for IPO within a week

On February 26 local time, Bloomberg reported that AI cloud computing company CoreWeave is considering filing for an IPO within a week, seeking a valuation of over $35 billion and planning to raise $4 billion. Currently, CoreWeave has the support of tech giants like Cisco, with other investors including NVIDIA, Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, and Jane Street. According to a Bloomberg report last November, CoreWeave has hired Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan to lead its IPO efforts. At the beginning of 2023, when NVIDIA invested $100 million in CoreWeave, the company's valuation was only $20. In October 2023, CoreWeave also announced that it secured a $650 million credit facility led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan. CoreWeave: "NVIDIA's Favorite Child" Headquartered in New Jersey, CoreWeave was founded in 2017 and initially started as a cryptocurrency mining company before venturing into cloud computing services. It is worth mentioning that NVIDIA's preference for CoreWeave has reached a level of "treating it as its own"—after receiving investment from NVIDIA, CoreWeave became a direct cloud computing power supplier for NVIDIA, with even Microsoft ordering cloud computing power from them. In June of this year, Microsoft signed a $1.6 billion contract with CoreWeave, primarily because Microsoft itself could not obtain enough GPUs from NVIDIA. Analysis suggests, CoreWeave's success helps NVIDIA diversify its operational risks and effectively counter potential competitors in the chip industry—Amazon and Google. Currently, NVIDIA's largest AI chip customers are Amazon, Microsoft, and Google's parent company Alphabet. However, Amazon and Google have already developed their own AI accelerator chips to reduce their reliance on NVIDIA. Meanwhile, second-tier cloud GPU providers like CoreWeave will enable NVIDIA to better control the deployment of its GPUs in the market and reduce risks from major clients.