OpenAI Signs $12 Bn Deal with NVIDIA-backed CoreWeave

OpenAI has reportedly signed a significant five-year deal worth $11.9 billion with CoreWeave, a cloud services provider specializing in AI-focused GPU infrastructure and backed by NVIDIA.

As part of this agreement, OpenAI will receive $350 million worth of equity in CoreWeave. This partnership comes ahead of CoreWeave's planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) and represents a major development for the company, which has seen rapid growth in recent years.

CoreWeave, which began as a cryptocurrency mining operation, has evolved into a leading player in the AI cloud service industry, operating an AI-specific cloud infrastructure across 32 data centers with over 250,000 NVIDIA GPUs. The deal with OpenAI is expected to reduce CoreWeave's dependence on Microsoft, which accounted for 62% of its revenue in 2024.

This partnership comes ahead of CoreWeave's planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) and represents a major development for the company, which has seen rapid growth in recent years.

This strategic move highlights the changing dynamics between Microsoft and OpenAI, as the latter seeks more computing resources amid claims of being "out of GPUs". The partnership with CoreWeave is expected to provide a major boost to the company ahead of its IPO.

According to a report by The Information, It’s unclear whether the OpenAI contract is a net new deal for CoreWeave. Microsoft has previously signed deals with CoreWeave to get extra capacity for OpenAI. Notably, Microsoft is CoreWeave’s largest customer and has signed deals to spend more than $10 billion renting AI servers through 2030.

The deal with OpenAI is expected to reduce CoreWeave's dependence on Microsoft, which accounted for 62% of its revenue in 2024.

CoreWeave has raised more than $14.5 billion in debt and equity across 12 financing rounds. Last year, CoreWeave raised over $7 billion in one of the largest private debt financing rounds in history, led by asset managers Blackstone and Magnetar.