Nuked 
Hello, tech enthusiasts! Buckle up as we dive into the fascinating world of CoreWeave, a company that transformed crypto-mining into a $1.5 billion IPO.
On the day of trading, CoreWeave didn’t make the bold entrance everyone expected. Priced at $40, it fell short of the anticipated $47-$50 range, raising only $1.5 billion instead of the hoped-for $3 billion+. However, despite a lukewarm reception, this IPO stands as the largest AI-related listing ever.
Brian Venturo, the Chief Strategy Officer, recalls a time when he and his hedge fund buddies were left with plenty of time after their last venture went south. They weren’t just any hedge fund—they had built a machine learning model to invest in the energy sector. But once fracking changed the landscape, they found themselves looking for new opportunities.
That’s when they stumbled into the world of crypto. What began as casual mining on a pool table quickly escalated into an operation in Venturo’s grandfather’s garage, eventually becoming the largest Ethereum miner worldwide for two and a half years.
Operating thousands of Nvidia GPUs intended for gaming, their setup lacked ventilation and cooling, inspiring them to create robust automation systems. However, they didn’t stop there. They sought to pivot towards AI training, connecting with EleutherAI, an open-source group focused on building large language models.
This partnership ignited their learning curve and surprisingly led to paid business from burgeoning AI startups. To scale further, they secured a whopping $100 million investment from Magnetar, propelling them towards expansion.
CoreWeave eventually attracted the attention of heavyweights in the industry. Microsoft, which had been OpenAI’s primary investor and cloud provider, took note of their services. Now, CoreWeave operates 32 data centers housing 250,000 GPUs, including the elusive Blackwell chips.
Despite concerns about its staggering $7.6 billion debt, Venturo assures investors that revenue deals have been structured to cover these obligations. The journey of these three hedge-fund guys turned crypto miners illustrates how luck and innovation can lead to extraordinary outcomes in the tech industry.
