OpenAI has forged a near-$12bn contract with CoreWeave and will take a stake in the cloud computing provider, boosting the group ahead of its expected $35bn public listing.
The ChatGPT maker has signed a five-year deal in which CoreWeave will supply computing power to train and run OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models, said two people with knowledge of the deal. OpenAI is looking to expand beyond a reliance on Microsoft, its biggest partner, for its computing needs.
The Financial Times last week reported Microsoft had walked away from a planned deal with CoreWeave because of the cloud computing provider’s delivery issues. That decision was a blow to the New Jersey-based company, which this month filed for a New York initial public offering in which it will seek to raise about $4bn.
OpenAI’s new $11.9bn contract helps fill that void, and could lead to it outspending Microsoft, which accounted for 62 per cent of CoreWeave’s revenues last year, according to public disclosures. Microsoft has agreed to spend $10bn on CoreWeave’s services by 2030.
As part of OpenAI’s agreement with CoreWeave, the AI company will also get a $350mn equity stake in the group at the time of the IPO, said one person with knowledge of the plans.
CoreWeave, which was founded in 2017 as a cryptocurrency mining operation, pivoted to offering cloud services for technology companies to build and train AI models using Nvidia’s high-performing graphics processing units (GPUs). The group has amassed more than 250,000 of Nvidia’s AI GPUs, making it among the chipmaker’s biggest customers.
OpenAI’s deal with the company is its latest effort to boost and diversify the computing power it has available.
Sam Altman, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, has argued infrastructure will be vital in the race to build cutting-edge AI models. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, meanwhile, recently raised concerns about an “overbuild” of computing capacity as Big Tech giants pour hundreds of billions of dollars into data centres.
OpenAI has also partnered with SoftBank on a potential $500bn data centre effort dubbed ‘Stargate’ in recent months, and struck data centre agreements with Oracle.
OpenAI and CoreWeave declined to comment. Reuters first reported OpenAI had signed a contract with CoreWeave.