Ahead of a possible $4 billion IPO, CoreWeave’s founders already pocketed $488 million

CoreWeave’s initial S-1 document for its upcoming IPO is full of surprises. Backed by Nvidia, CoreWeave runs an AI-specific cloud service from its network of 32 data centers that together have more than 250,000 Nvidia GPUs as of the end of 2024, according to the company. Since then, it has also added a number of Nvidia’s latest product, Blackwell, which supports AI reasoning. While we don’t know yet how many shares CoreWeave plans to sell or at what price, the IPO specialists at Renaissance Capital estimate the company hopes to raise at least $3.5 billion at a $32 billion valuation, and possibly over $4 billion. That’s a big, but not crazy big leap over its last valuation in November when it closed a $650 million secondary share sale that valued it at $23 billion, as reported by Reuters. One surprise from the filing is that the company’s three co-founders have already sold off much of their Class A holdings between that 2024 tender offer and one held in 2023. Whatever happens in th ... Read full article.