CoreWeave, a cloud computing platform built for large-scale computing, is changing the way cloud infrastructure gets built and operated. At Fortune’s AI Brainstorm summit in San Francisco, co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator addressed critics who question the company’s performance, emphasizing that CoreWeave’s approach is about collaboration rather than competition.
Just last week, the tech giant revealed a major expansion of its own partnership with OpenAI, valued at up to $6.5 billion. This acquisition amplifies CoreWeave’s commitment to expand its generative AI capabilities. It further anchors the company as a top player in the quickly evolving cloud backbone space.
CoreWeave is making moves as audacious as its ambitions to power up its growth. The company aims to further expand into the federal market and provide impactful, cloud infrastructure solutions to U.S. government agencies and the defense industrial base. This strategic move reflects the firm’s overall goal to expand its clients beyond just real estate firms and grow their reach within local, state, and federal governmental sectors.
Beyond its relationship with OpenAI, CoreWeave has had some significant acquisitions in recent months. In October, it made public its acquisition of Marimo, creator of an open-source notebook, and Monolith, another AI-focused company. Later this year, the company fully acquired Weights and Balances, an AI developer platform. They enlisted the help of OpenPipe, a startup that focuses on deploying AI agents at scale with reinforcement learning.
Even with these innovations, CoreWeave is still under intense scrutiny about its role in the rapidly growing AI data center industry. Observers widely criticize the sustainability of its business model even as it’s benefiting from a highly volatile stock performance. Over the last eight months, CoreWeave’s stock price has gone on an unbelievable rollercoaster ride. It launched at $40, shot up to more than $150 and then came crashing down to land around $90. The firm’s massive debt load has even more deepened worries about the company’s financial health.
“I think people are myopic a lot of times,” – Michael Intrator
Intrator spoke at the summit in defense of them. He recognized that trying to implement a new business model within the typically staid utility world can breed doubt.
“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 some people some time,” – Michael Intrator
CoreWeave’s inventory of Nvidia GPUs has proven to be a trump card for the company. In fact, they’re so valuable that CoreWeave has reportedly financed its operations off their back. This unique approach has drawn both praise for innovation and criticism for potential risks associated with high levels of debt.
CoreWeave is continually working through challenges and exploring new opportunities in this dynamic cloud computing space. It is still as committed as ever to changing the way we use cloud services, especially in the realm of AI. For the company—and America—to truly prosper, the company needs to evolve and push boundaries. That’ll be important for further entrenching its dominant position in an intensely competitive market.
