AI cloud platform operator CoreWeave has closed a $650 million secondary share sale to investors in a deal insiders claim now values the startup at $23 billion.
While the investors were led by Jane Street, Magnetar, Fidelity Management, and Macquarie Capital, both Cisco and Pure Storage took part in the sale, along with others.
Combined with its software, CoreWeave provides access to high-performance GPUs in the cloud to allow organizations to process their AI workloads. Its existing backers include GPU provider Nvidia. The young biz competes against the likes of AWS and Microsoft Azure in this market, and is seen as a rising star by market watchers.
In the secondary stock sale, existing investors sold shares to new investors. According to sources close to the transaction, CoreWeave is now valued at around $23 billion – a massive jump from its valuation of $7 billion around a year ago. CoreWeave was valued at $19 billion only this May, following a $1.1 billion Series C funding round led by private equity firm Coatue.
To cash in on the AI data processing craze, CoreWeave is believed to be moving toward an IPO some time next year.
For its part, alongside its undisclosed financial investment, Pure Storage said it was enabling CoreWeave customers to leverage the Pure Storage flash platform within CoreWeave Cloud, as part of a strategic alliance.
“Integrating the Pure Storage platform into CoreWeave’s specialized cloud service environments enables customers that require massive scale and flexibility in their infrastructure, the ability to tailor their infrastructure and maximize performance on their own terms,” said Rob Lee, chief technology officer at Pure Storage.
The Pure Storage platform is available as an option within CoreWeave’s dedicated environments, which customers access through the CoreWeave Platform.
“Partnering with Pure Storage gives our customers the flexibility to select storage solutions tailored to their specific AI needs. This collaboration strengthens our commitment to providing high speed performance, reliability, and flexibility for our customers who trust our cloud platform to accelerate the development and deployment of AI,” said Brian Venturo, chief strategy officer at CoreWeave.
On the win for Pure Storage, global investment bank William Blair wrote in a report, just published: “CoreWeave represents an exciting new customer opportunity for Pure, especially as media reports indicate that CoreWeave has plans to go public next year, and is experiencing rapid revenue growth on the back of the GPU farms that it has built.
“We believe CoreWeave is the eight-figure Evergreen//One deal that Pure announced in the fourth quarter, which management called out as being with ‘one of the largest specialized GPU cloud providers for AI.'”
The bank added: “Importantly, we do not believe this is the much-anticipated top ten hyperscaler design win that Pure’s management has been telegraphing all year, partly because CoreWeave is not a top ten hyperscaler.”
Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo has previously said a top ten hyperscaler win is expected by the end of this year.
Both Backblaze and VAST Data have previously been announced as storage providers to CoreWeave.
