CoreWeave, which provides computing power for A.I., was founded by three Bitcoin enthusiasts. The company is now set to make the first prominent A.I. initial public offering.
In 2016, three New York commodities traders — Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee — fell in love with cryptocurrencies. They were using Bitcoin to bet on pool games and fantasy football and were captivated by its wild swings in price.
They soon decided to create more digital currencies through a process called “mining,” which requires a lot of computing power. So they logged on to Amazon and ordered two Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs, powerful chips that can run calculations and analyze enormous amounts of data. They then stockpiled the components, filling up a garage and a warehouse.
In 2017, Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo and Mr. McBee started the company Atlantic Crypto to mine cryptocurrencies. When crypto prices cratered two years later, they renamed the business CoreWeave and raised money to buy as many GPUs from distressed crypto miners as possible. Their bet: that the chips would eventually feed the development of artificial intelligence, whose creation also requires substantial computing power.
They were right. When OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022 and unleashed an A.I. frenzy, the demand for computing power exploded — and CoreWeave was in the sweet spot.
“We assumed this was going to happen,” Mr. Intrator, 55, CoreWeave’s chief executive, said in a 2023 interview with The New York Times. “We were well positioned for this transition.”
CoreWeave is now set to find out whether it is in the sweet spot again — this time with Wall Street. This month, the tech company filed paperwork for a public listing. If its initial public offering of stock goes as planned, it will be the first prominent A.I. start-up to reach the stock market. And it would test investor appetite at a time when the market has slipped into a correction, which could delay an offering.
