In this illustration, the Core Weave logo is displayed on a smartphone with stock market percentages in the background.
Omar Marquez | SOPA Photos | Rocket Lite | Getty Images
Corewave, n NvidiaAn artificial intelligence startup backed by leasing chips to other companies announced Friday that it has a new $650 million line of credit to expand its business and data center portfolio.
The cloud infrastructure company said it has raised $12.7 billion from equity and debt investors over the past 18 months, including a $1.1 billion round in May at a $19 billion valuation.
By the end of 2024, CoreWeave plans to have 28 data centers across the United States and abroad — including locations in Austin, Texas, Chicago, Las Vegas, and London — and plans to build 10 more in 2025. It has provided Microsoft and French AI startup Mistral with graphics processing units, or GPUs.
As of last year, CoreWeave reportedly had $2 billion in revenue under a contract set for 2024.
AI models are notoriously expensive to build and train, requiring thousands of specialized chips that have so far largely come from Nvidia. Most, if not all, of the technology companies that play a strong role in AI spend between hundreds of thousands and billions of dollars on Nvidia chips to make their models work. In addition to developing chips, Nvidia has taken stakes in AI startups like CoreWeave, partly as a way to ensure its technology is widely deployed.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley CoreWeave led the financing announced Friday, with participation from Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Jefferies, Mizuho, MUFG and Wells Fargo.
“This credit facility provides additional liquidity to accelerate our growth strategy and capitalize on new opportunities in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence space,” Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, said in a press release.
CoreWeave's new line of credit is part of a broader trend, with banks bracing for a slice of the AI-driven gold rush ahead of a number of potential IPOs in the space. The generative AI market is expected to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2032, according to one estimate.
Last week, OpenAI received a $4 billion revolving line of credit, bringing its total liquidity to more than $10 billion. This news came right after OpenAI closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion.
Many of the same banks contributed to the OpenAI line of credit. The startup has the option to raise it by an additional $2 billion.
CoreWeave declined to provide details about the interest rate it pays or the time frame for the credit facility.
