In another failure movement with Microsoft, Openai pays $ 12 billion in Coreweave
In a failure of chess at the level of the Grand Master, Openai signed a Agreement of $ 11.9 billion over five years With the Cloud-Lourds service provider GPU, Coreweave, according to Reuters, who quotes people close to the agreement.
The agreement involves OPENAI to receive $ 350 million in equity in Coreweave, sources in Reuters told Reuters. Private placement would be separated from Corewave planned iPo.
Coreweave made a request for a public company last week, but it has not yet evaluated or planned its debut.
It is a victory for the two companies. One of the reasons why this agreement is so breathtaking (apart from the billions of dollars involved) is that before this offer, the biggest customer in Coreweave was Microsoft. In fact, in 2024, Microsoft represented 62% of Coreweave revenues, which reached an astonishing $ 1.9 billion, almost eight times compared to only $ 228.9 million in 2023.
Supported by NVIDIA, which has a 6%stake, Coreweave manages a specific AI cloud service with a network of 32 data centers which operated more than 250,000 NVIDIA GPU at the end of 2024, according to the company. Since then, Coreweave has added more GPU, including the latest product of Nvidia, Blackwell, which supports AI reasoning, said the company.
Such dependence on a customer is generally worrying for Introductive investors on the stock market, and could have added “hair” as they say, to the hopes of Coreweave to raise $ 4 billion or more in its IPO. Landing Openai as a direct customer in an agreement of several billion dollars should help Corewave appease investors.
Microsoft and Openai’s relationship
What makes this decision just as interesting is that it is another step in the deterioration and frequency relationship between Microsoft and Openai.
It is as if the CEO of Openai Sam Altman had seen the use by Microsoft of Coreweave and said: “Take my beer.”
Not only will OpenAi have access to the same cloud, but it will also have a participation in the company that executes it.
Microsoft is, of course, an Openai big lessor in an agreement that gives Microsoft to collect a portion OPENAI income. But the tensions between two companies have been increasing for years, because Openai’s fortune has skyrocketed. Openai competes with Microsoft for corporate customers and is even would have worked on the deployment of expensive AI agents.
In January, as part of the huge Stargate AI infrastructure, infrastructure with SoftBank, Oracle and others, Microsoft has stopped being opened unique cloud supplier. Openai needs more calculation resources. Last week, Altman Complains that Openai is “outside the GPUs”.
For its part, Microsoft works on its own models of “reasoning” of AI comparable to OpenAi O1 And O3-min. He develops a whole family of his own models called Mai which is competitive with Openai. He too Hired Altman’s rival, Mustafa Suleyman To direct Microsoft AI.
But Coreweave is a surprising piece of chess.
Coreweave began his life as an crypto mining operation, founded by former hedge guys, He said. The three co -founders have already collected $ 488 million in shares – more than $ 150 million each. Coreweave also has a superb debt of $ 7.9 billion on books.
If the IPO generates the billions of new capital that he hopes will, the company says that it will use at least that to repay the debt.
While these founders once literally tried to use GPUs to reach money, they do it figuratively.
Coreweave and Openai did not respond to our request for comments.
