(March 20): CoreWeave Inc, a cloud-computing provider that’s one of the hottest startups in artificial intelligence (AI), and some of its investors are seeking to raise as much as US$2.7 billion in an initial public offering (IPO).

The Nvidia Corp-backed company and current shareholders are marketing the shares for US$47 to US$55 each, according to its filing on Thursday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is selling about 47 million of the shares while existing stockholders are offering the remaining 1.8 million.

At the top of that range, CoreWeave would have a market value of US$26 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in the filing. The listing could value CoreWeave at as much as US$32 billion on a fully diluted basis, according to Bloomberg calculations.

None of CoreWeave’s founders are planning to sell stock in the IPO. Both the offering size and the targeted valuation are smaller than investors and bankers were anticipating before the broader stock market slumped and volatility dented optimism. CoreWeave was looking to raise about US$4 billion from the listing and was expected to target a valuation greater than US$35 billion, Bloomberg reported last month.

The company could increase both the marketed range and the size of the offering based on investor reception.

CoreWeave had revenue of US$1.9 billion in 2024, resulting in a net loss of US$863 million, versus revenue of US$229 million and a net loss of US$594 million in the previous year, according to previous filings.

About 77% of CoreWeave’s revenue came from its top two customers in 2024, one of which was Microsoft Corp, which accounted for nearly two thirds of overall sales, the filings show.

CoreWeave has sealed two sizable deals ahead of its listing, including a pact to deliver AI infrastructure to OpenAI Inc for up to US$11.9 billion, according to a statement. The startup will receive US$350 million worth of CoreWeave stock. 

The Livingston, New Jersey-based company has also agreed to acquire AI developer platform Weights & Biases for about one million shares of Class A CoreWeave shares, the filings show. That deal is expected to close in the first half of 2025, according to a statement.

CoreWeave, led by co-founder and chief executive officer Michael Intrator, was started in 2017 as a crypto mining firm. Along with Nvidia, the firm counts Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Jane Street, JPMorgan Asset Management, Fidelity and Lykos Global Management among its investors.

The firm has also drawn backing from Cisco Systems Inc, which agreed to invest in CoreWeave as part of a transaction valuing it at US$23 billion, Bloomberg News reported in October. Also that month, the company closed a US$650 million credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley.

The AI cloud company has material weaknesses in its internal controls over financial reporting, according to the section of the filings where pre-IPO companies disclose the risks to their businesses. The issues cited included insufficient IT controls over applications supporting financial reporting and a lack of qualified personnel in related roles, the filings show. 

Intrator is expected to hold about 2% of the company’s Class A shares and almost half the company’s Class B shares after the deal, giving him 37% of the shareholder voting power, according to Thursday’s filing. Magnetar will have 7% of the voting power, while Nvidia controls 1.2%.

The cloud computing infrastructure firm was an early adopter of Nvidia’s graphics chips for data centers, getting ahead of a wave of demand for powerful processors to run AI applications. It’s building out data centres based on Nvidia’s chips to offer AI-related computing. 

The IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, along with 11 other advisers. CoreWeave’s shares are expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol CRWV.

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