CoreWeave is not released. Hot on the heels of a major funding round valuing the cloud GPU company at $19 billionthe New Jersey startup has opened an office in London that will serve as its European headquarters.
Additionally, Coreweave said it would open two data centers in the UK this year as part of a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) investment, its first outside the US
Founded in 2017, CoreWeave is one of several AI-focused cloud computing companies benefiting from the recent rise in AI, including the creative AI hype sparked by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. CoreWeave offers access to cloud-based AI “compute,” which is the infrastructure and resources needed to perform computational tasks such as processing data and running machine learning models.
Developers building AI applications need access to GPUs (graphics processing units), which are complex to set up and manage, as well as expensive to run, as they are usually rented for a fixed period of time. CoreWeave makes this processing power available on demand and at scale, serving up a range of Nvidia GPUs to meet the various use cases of developers.
A number of players have emerged in this nascent space — and they’re getting funded, too. Lambda raised $320 million a few months agoand last month, French startup FlexAI emerged from stealth with $30 million, but with a focus on developing AI models across multiple architectures, not just Nvidia.
CoreWeave is among the leaders in the GPU cloud space. Last week it said it had raised $1.1 billion in a round that nearly tripled its valuation from a figure of $7 billion was previously reported in December. Such is the AI gold rush, and Nvidia itself has seen its market capitalization quadruple in the past 12 months. more than $2 trillion.
UK & AI
The United Kingdom is considered among the leading countries for R&D investment in artificial intelligence, behind the US and China. Google’s DeepMind is based in the UK capital and recently Microsoft committed $3.15 billion to build the AI infrastructure in the country in the coming years as well. The Redmond-based giant’s fledgling consumer AI division also got its first international hub in London and is fronted by former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffman.
The AI talent grab will only intensify in the coming years across the UK. supporting engineering, operations, finance and go-to-market roles.
Like cloud computing in general, building local “computing” infrastructure should also mean lower latency and higher performance applications for local companies. Given CoreWeave’s plans to open two data centers in the UK by the end of this year, it’s safe to say the company was likely already working on those plans before today’s announcement.
It also means that by the end of 2024, CoreWeave will have 28 data centers operating worldwide, though the company won’t say how many it has today. It had 14 at the end of 2023, all of which were in the US
“We are seeing unprecedented demand for AI infrastructure and London is a major AI hub in which we are investing,” said CoreWeave CEO and co-founder Mike Intrator. in a statement. “Expanding our physical footprint in the UK is an important milestone in the next phase of CoreWeave’s growth.”
