Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
CoreWeave
The New Jersey GPU cloud that began in 2017 as Atlantic Crypto, an Ethereum-mining operation run by three former commodity traders, turned its mining GPUs into a rental business in 2019, and became the largest and most closely watched "neocloud" of the generative-AI boom. It rents large clusters of the newest Nvidia accelerators, mostly on multi-year take-or-pay contracts, to a handful of very large buyers: Microsoft (~67% of 2025 revenue), OpenAI (~$22.4bn of contracts signed in 2025), Meta (~$14.2bn in September 2025 plus ~$21bn in April 2026) and, from 2026, Anthropic and Jane Street (company filings and announcements). Revenue went from ~$229m (2023) to ~$1.92bn (2024) and ~$5.13bn (2025), with 2026 guidance of ~$12.4–13.2bn (company, August 2026). It also became the reference case for the risks of the model: customer concentration, ~$35.6bn of debt at June 30, 2026 (company 10-Q), a revenue backlog (~$104bn, June 2026) that depends on delivering data centres others build, a failed ~$9bn bid for its landlord Core Scientific (October 2025), and a supplier, Nvidia, that is also its shareholder, backstop buyer and kingmaker.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2017 as Atlantic Crypto, by Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee (Peter Salanki is also listed as a co-founder in some accounts); renamed CoreWeave in 2019 (most sources date the change to late 2019, verify)
- Headquarters
- Livingston, New Jersey (press releases); large offices in New York and elsewhere
- Ownership / structure
- Public (Nasdaq: CRWV) since March 28, 2025. Dual-class shares give the founders voting control (S-1). Large holders include Magnetar (an early backer), Nvidia (stake reported above ~10% after its January 2026 purchase, verify), Jane Street (one of the five largest holders after April 2026, company) and index funds. The co-founders were reported to have sold ~$2.3bn of stock since the IPO (reported, 2026, verify)
- Leadership (2026)
- Michael Intrator (co-founder, CEO); Brian Venturo (co-founder, chief strategy officer); Brannin McBee (co-founder, chief development officer); Peter Salanki (CTO); Nitin Agrawal (CFO) (company; verify current titles)
- Products
- CoreWeave Cloud: bare-metal and Kubernetes-managed GPU clusters (H100, H200, Blackwell B200/GB200 NVL72, GB300, Vera Rubin from 2026), InfiniBand networking, storage, "mission control" cluster management; software layer from acquisitions: Weights & Biases (experiment tracking, 2025), OpenPipe (reinforcement-learning tooling, 2025), Marimo (notebooks, 2025), Monolith AI (engineering AI, 2025)
- Scale
- ~250,000 GPUs in 32 data centres at end-2024 (S-1); ~1.5 GW of active power and ~3.7 GW contracted at June 30, 2026 (company); 2025 revenue ~$5.13bn, GAAP net loss ~$1.17bn, adjusted EBITDA ~$3.09bn, capex ~$14.9bn (company, February 2026)
- Market value
- IPO at $40 (March 2025, ~$19–23bn depending on share count, reported); intraday high ~$187 (June 20, 2025); ~$60–80 a share in October 2026 after a stock-and-bond sell-off (market data, reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Ethereum-mining origins and the pivot (2017–19); Nvidia allocation and GPU-backed debt (2023–24); Microsoft contracts and concentration (2023–25); the downsized $40 IPO (2025); the OpenAI contracts (2025); Weights & Biases and the software layer (2025); the rejected Core Scientific merger (2025); Nvidia's capacity backstop and $2bn investment (2025–26); Meta, Anthropic and lab diversification (2025–26); delivery delays, interest costs and the 2026 bond sell-off
10 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2017
Atlantic Crypto and the Ethereum Mining Origins
Founding / pivot
2023
Microsoft Contracts and Customer Concentration
Compute deal
2023
Nvidia Allocation and GPU Backed Debt
Compute deal / financing
2025
Core Scientific Merger Rejected
Acquisition (failed)
2025
Data Centre Delays Debt and the 2026 Bond Selloff
Restructuring risk / failure (execution and financing stress)
2025
IPO at 40 Dollars
IPO
2025
Meta Anthropic and Lab Diversification
Compute deal
2025
Nvidia Backstop and the 2bn Investment
Compute deal / investment
2025
OpenAI Contracts
Compute deal
2025
Weights and Biases and the Software Layer
Acquisition