CoreWeave looks to raise up to $2.7bn in IPO

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Data centre operator CoreWeave will seek to raise as much as $2.7bn in a US initial public offering that is expected to be the largest tech listing of the year, according to people close to the matter.

The New Jersey-based start-up would kick off a roadshow with investors to generate interest for its shares as soon as this week, the people said. It will ask investors to pay $47 to $55 per share, selling 49mn shares at the IPO.

Bankers for the company had initially discussed whether the IPO could seek to raise as much as $4bn and had discussed valuing the business at more than $35bn. The group plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker CRWV. Reuters first reported the proposed share price range.

CoreWeave was founded in 2017 to mine the cryptocurrency ethereum but pivoted to artificial intelligence two years later. It was an early and prolific buyer of Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), now holding more than 250,000 of the chips that are the world’s hottest commodity for powering AI models. It leases computing power to large technology companies building AI systems, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta and IBM.

The Financial Times reported that Microsoft, which was the source of 62 per cent of CoreWeave’s revenue in 2024, had walked away from a planned deal with the cloud computing provider over delivery issues. CoreWeave subsequently signed a deal with OpenAI, which has agreed to pay it $11.9bn over five years.

In its IPO prospectus, filed earlier this month, CoreWeave reported revenue of $1.9bn in 2024, compared with $229mn a year earlier and $16mn in 2022. However, its losses widened over that period. It posted net losses of $863mn in 2024, $594mn in 2023 and $31mn in 2022.

CoreWeave has grown rapidly by borrowing large sums. It has raised $12.9bn of debt financing in the past two years, becoming the pioneer of a flurry of asset-backed lending by Wall Street to technology companies with large volumes of AI chips.

Its largest investors are Illinois-based hedge fund Magnetar Capital, private equity giant Blackstone, which has loaned it about $5bn, Nvidia and Fidelity.

CoreWeave was founded under the name Atlantic Crypto by commodities traders Mike Intrator, Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee, who have each sold at least $150mn worth of their stock in the company since December 2023, according to the IPO filings. CoreWeave’s 10 directors and executives, including the three co-founders, collectively own about 30 per cent of the company but have more than 80 per cent of the voting rights.

CoreWeave’s offering comes as President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff announcements have roiled American equities markets in recent weeks, fanning concerns about slowing economic growth in the world’s largest economy and weighing on the broader IPO market, which many bankers had tipped to roar back to life under a Republican administration.

Shares in Venture Global have halved since the liquefied natural gas exporter listed in late January. The company was forced to scale back its IPO plans in the week before going public, eventually pricing at an equity value 40 per cent below what it had originally been seeking.