CoreWeave raises $1.1B in Series C funding to grow its GPU cloud

CoreWeave, a Roseland-based cloud provider for artificial intelligence, on Thursday said it secured $1.1 billion in new funding.

New funding, led by Coatue, reportedly values the company at $19 billion. CoreWeave said the money will be used to support the rapid growth across all areas of the business as well as its expansion into new geographic regions to meet the explosive demand for graphics processing units, or GPU, accelerated cloud infrastructure worldwide.

Fidelity Management also joined in the funding round, along with Lykos Global Management, Altimeter Capital and Magnetar.

“CoreWeave continues to push forward as a provider of critical infrastructure in the development of AI, and the high caliber of investors who continue putting their trust in us validates the enormous opportunity we have to define the next generation of cloud computing,” Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, said. “CoreWeave is designed specifically to tackle the most complex and pressing challenges in high performance compute. With this new round, we will continue investing in and working with the largest AI enterprises in the world.”

Founded in 2017 and originally focused on crypto and blockchain applications, CoreWeave has been investing heavily in its cloud offering. It targets two main use cases: artificial intelligence and graphics rendering. CoreWeave claims its platform allows customers to run such workloads more cost-efficiently than established public clouds and with better performance.

In December, the company announced it closed a secondary investment of $642 million, following a $420 million primary led by Magnetar in April 2023. In August, CoreWeave secured a $2.3 billion debt financing facility led by Magnetar and Blackstone. Also in the last year, CoreWeave increased its data center presence from three to 14 and quadrupled its employee headcount.

“We believe CoreWeave has emerged as a key leader in building the mission-critical infrastructure foundation required to satisfy society’s current and future demand for high performance compute at scale to power the generative AI revolution,” Philippe Laffont, founder & portfolio manager of Coatue, said. “Since partnering in 2023, we have been impressed by the team’s commitment to operational and technical excellence, and we look forward to continuing our partnership as they drive the next phase of growth for the company and industry.”