Cloud AI provider valued at $19B after raising $1.5B
CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator defended the company’s lower-than-expected IPO pricing on Friday, citing broader macroeconomic headwinds as a key factor. The AI-focused cloud provider priced its shares at $40—well below the initial $47–$55 range—and begins trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol CRWV.
“There’s a lot of headwinds in the macro,” Intrator told CNBC’s Squawk Box. “And we definitely had to scale or rightsize the transaction for where the buying interest was.”
Nvidia backs offering with $250M order
Despite the reduced price, the IPO raised $1.5 billion, giving CoreWeave a non-diluted valuation of approximately $19 billion. Around 10 to 15 long-only and strategic investors made up the majority of the backing group, CNBC reported. Nvidia, a close partner and supplier, anchored the offering with a $250 million order.
Intrator said the funds will be used to pay down CoreWeave’s nearly $8 billion in debt and support continued expansion, especially in Europe. The company offers access to Nvidia GPUs for AI training and high-performance computing workloads and has experienced skyrocketing demand.
Long-term strategy, rapid scale-up
“One of the things that’s made us incredibly effective is we take a really long-term view of where this space is going,” said Intrator. “Our customers are telling us, universally, to continue to build – we cannot keep up with the scale.”
The IPO followed strong market momentum from DeepSeek, which Intrator said pushed CoreWeave to “build bigger” and “build faster.”
Administrative misstep disclosed
Intrator also addressed a loan-related technical default disclosed in the company’s S-1 filing. The $7.6 billion loan, initially used to finance European expansion, triggered issues due to administrative errors, but the company quickly resolved them with lenders. “Those lenders proceeded to go ahead and continue to lend us hundreds of millions of dollars after all of these issues,” he said.