CoreWeave agrees to infrastructure deal worth up to $11.9 billion with OpenAI

AI hyperscaler and former crypto miner CoreWeave, which serves top firms — including IBM, Meta and Microsoft — has announced an infrastructure deal with the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI worth up to $11.9 billion.

The strategic deal involves expanding OpenAI's compute capacity for training and delivering its latest models at scale to its hundreds of millions of global users, according to a statement late Monday. 

"Partnering with OpenAI on this new contract underscores CoreWeave's proven ability to deliver reliable and performant infrastructure services, powering AI Innovations for world-leading AI labs," CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator said. 

OpenAI will also become an investor in the AI hyperscaler through the issuance of $350 million worth of CoreWeave stock.

"Advanced AI systems require reliable compute, and we're excited to continue scaling with CoreWeave so we can train even more powerful models and offer great services to even more users," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman added. "CoreWeave is an important addition to OpenAI's infrastructure portfolio, complementing our commercial deals with Microsoft and Oracle, and our joint venture with Softbank on Stargate."

CoreWeave seeks to raise $4 billion via IPO

Earlier this month, CoreWeave filed an S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, hoping to raise $4 billion at a $35 billion valuation via an initial public offering, pending agency approval.

The IPO would offer Class A common stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker "CRWV," with the proceeds intended for working capital, corporate expenses, debt repayment and potential acquisitions in what could become one of the largest stock market flotations in recent years.

Before Ethereum's transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake network in 2022, known as The Merge, Ethereum mining was a substantial part of CoreWeave's business — accounting for 61% or $9.7 million of the $15.8 million total revenue generated that year.

CoreWeave was already involved in AI before The Merge, providing access to data centers and high-performance chips for AI workloads, primarily sourced from Nvidia. However, with Ethereum mining no longer an option, CoreWeave intensified its AI focus since then, helped by the boom in demand amid the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other large language models.

According to the prospectus, CoreWeave's annual revenue rose to $229 million in 2023, then surged to $1.9 billion in 2024. 

Retaining connections with the mining industry

CoreWeave hasn't completely abandoned its connections with the mining industry, however. In June 2024, the firm signed a 12-year deal with Bitcoin miner Core Scientific, securing 200 megawatts of power capacity to scale its AI cloud operations. The agreement repurposes some of Core Scientific's infrastructure for high-performance AI workloads.

Following subsequent expansions in October 2024 and February 2025, CoreWeave's total contracted HPC infrastructure with Core Scientific rose to approximately 590 megawatts across six sites, with total projected revenue now reaching $10.2 billion over the 12-year contract term.

Microsoft setback

Last week, the Financial Times reported that CoreWeave had lost a few contractual commitments from Microsoft due to "delivery issues and missed deadlines," with partner Core Scientific's share price dropping 13% following the news. CoreWeave had warned in its IPO filing that any disruption in its Microsoft partnership could harm its business and financial outlook, with Microsoft representing 62% of its total revenues in 2024.

CoreWeave has raised a total of more than $14.5 billion in debt and equity across 12 financing rounds.