CoreWeave Wins a New $6.5 Billion Contract With OpenAI. The Stock Is Rising.

CoreWeave said OpenAI would use the new capacity to train its “most advanced” next-generation AI models. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg)

Key Points

About This Summary

• CoreWeave’s stock rose after the company announced an expanded business agreement with OpenAI worth up to $6.5 billion.
• The new agreement increases OpenAI’s total contract value with CoreWeave to up to $22.4 billion.
• This deal follows other major AI infrastructure announcements, including Nvidia’s $100 billion investment in OpenAI.

CoreWeave shares rose in early trading Thursday after the artificial-intelligence cloud firm announced an expanded business agreement with OpenAI of up to $6.5 billion.

It is the third time this year that OpenAI has given business to CoreWeave. In March, CoreWeave received an initial contract from OpenAI worth up to $11.9 billion, which was followed in May by another deal worth up to $4 billion. The total value of the OpenAI contract is now up to $22.4 billion.

“We are proud to expand our relationship with OpenAI, a company consistently at the forefront of advancing artificial intelligence,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said in the release.

In early trading Thursday, CoreWeave stock was up 2.91% to 137.28 amid a falling stock market.

CoreWeave said OpenAI would use the new capacity to train its “most advanced” next-generation AI models. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave provides large-scale access to graphics processing units, or GPUs, via the cloud.

CoreWeave’s latest deal with OpenAI follows a flurry of AI infrastructure announcements this week.

On Monday, OpenAI and Nvidia announced a new partnership in which the leading maker of AI chips plans to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI to support the buildout of 10 gigawatts of AI data-center capacity.

A day later, OpenAI announced that five new data-center sites are under development with partners SoftBank and Oracle . The new sites bring OpenAI’s Stargate Project—including infrastructure projects with CoreWeave—to nearly seven gigawatts of capacity and more than $400 billion in investment over the next three years, OpenAI said in a blog post.

Write to Tae Kim at tae.kim@barrons.com