It’s been quite the year for CoreWeave. In March, the artificial intelligence cloud infrastructure provider launched one of the biggest and most anticipated IPOs of the year that fell short of its hype.
Another setback came in October, when a planned takeover of the cloud provider’s business partner Core Scientific fell through due to skepticism from shareholders of the takeover target.
Meanwhile, the company has acquired a number of different companies, its stock has went up and belowand it was both criticized and praised for its role in the booming AI data center market.
In an interview at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday, CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator defended his company’s performance from critics, noting that it was in the midst of creating a “new business model” for how cloud computing can be built and run. Nvidia’s collection of GPUs is so valuable, they borrow against it to help fund their business. The strain seemed to imply: If you’re blazing a new trail, you’re bound to encounter some bumps in the road along the way.
“I think people are myopic a lot of the time,” Intrator said when asked about his company’s occasionally volatile stock price. “Yeah, it’s crazy,” he admitted, noting that CoreWeave’s IPO came just before President Trump’s tariffs took effect — a particularly uncertain time for the overall economy.
“We went out into one of the most challenging environments, right around Liberation Day, and despite incredible headwinds, we managed to launch a successful IPO,” the CEO told Brainstorm editorial director Andrew Nusca. “I couldn’t be more proud of what the company has accomplished,” he added.
CoreWeave stock may have debuted amid the economic downturn in March, but its price has come a long way since then. It debuted at $40 and, in the last eight months, has climbed to well over $150, but currently costs around $90. His critics are more cautious have compared it in a meme stock because of its tendency to go up and down.
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Some of the uncertainty surrounding CoreWeave stock has been credited to the company heavy level of debt. Shortly after CoreWeave announced a deal on Monday to issue even more debt to finance the data center build-out, its shares fell about 8%.
Intrator seems to see his company as a disruptor, one whose unconventional tactics may take some getting used to. “When you introduce a new model, when you introduce a new way of doing business, when you disrupt what has been a static environment, it’s going to take time,” he said during his appearance on Tuesday.
CoreWeave has essentially started its corporate life as a crypto miner but was briefly integrated into a central provider of “artificial intelligence infrastructure” to some of the major players in the tech industry. In this role, it provides GPUs to AI developers and has made significant partnerships with Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta and other tech titans.
Another topic discussed on Tuesday was the concept of “circularity” in the AI industry. “Circular” venture deals, in which a small number of powerful AI companies invest in each other, have often been criticized and raised questions on the long-term financial stability of the sector. Perhaps not surprisingly, since Nvidia is one of its investors and its GPU supplier Intrator dismissed those concerns. “Companies are trying to deal with a violent shift in supply and demand,” he said. “You do it by working together.”
Since the IPO, CoreWeave has continued to make efforts to expand its business. After acquiring Weights & Biases, an AI developer platform, in March, it acquired OpenPipe, a startup that helps companies build and deploy AI agents through reinforcement learning. In October, it also made deals to acquire Marimo (creator of an open source notebook) and Monolithanother artificial intelligence company. It also recently announced an expansion of its cloud collaboration with OpenAI and he said he has plans go to the federal marketwhere it wants to provide cloud infrastructure to US government agencies and the defense industrial base.
