OpenAI inks $12bn CoreWeave deal in latest move away from Microsoft
Cloud infrastructure company CoreWeave will supply OpenAI with infrastructure to run the firm’s latest models in a deal worth nearly $12 billion.
The partnership comes as OpenAI looks to expand beyond Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and ahead of CoreWeave’s IPO.
The deal with OpenAI is worth $11.9 billion over five years, and reportedly also includes the allocation of $350 million in CoreWeave shares for OpenAI at the time of the IPO, which is expected to value the company at $35 billion.
“Partnering with OpenAI on this net new contract underscores CoreWeave’s proven ability to deliver reliable and performant infrastructure services, powering AI Innovations for world-leading AI labs,” said Michael Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, in a statement.
“We remain a partner-of-choice to meet the bleeding-edge needs of pioneers to unleash AI’s potential to change the world.”
Commenting on the deal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the partnership will enable the firm to train “even more powerful models and offer great services to even more users”.
End of exclusivity for OpenAI and Microsoft
OpenAI has long used Microsoft as its primary cloud provider, running all of its systems on Azure as part of a wider partnership worth more than $10 billion.
However, this period of exclusivity appears to be winding down. In January, Microsoft confirmed this was ending, although the ties between the two firms remain close and Microsoft will maintain right of first refusal with OpenAI.
At the same time, Microsoft also confirmed its Copilot systems would offer AI models beyond OpenAI’s own.
Shortly after, the US government unveiled its Stargate AI infrastructure plans worth $500 billion. The landmark infrastructure project will see Oracle build huge data centers built across the US, which will be used by OpenAI.
“CoreWeave is an important addition to OpenAI’s infrastructure portfolio, complementing our commercial deals with Microsoft and Oracle, and our joint venture with Softbank on Stargate,” Altman added.
Founded in 2017, CoreWeave specializes in cloud infrastructure capabilities, leveraging Nvidia GPUs. The company provides AI-optimized data centers using Nvidia chips, and works with a host of major industry players such as Meta and Cisco – the latter of which invested in CoreWeave last year.
The firm has scaled rapidly in recent years, emerging as a leading alternative infrastructure provider. CoreWeave opened two new data centers in the UK earlier this year, powered by Nvidia H200 GPUs, as part of a £1bn investment in the country.
In January, IBM announced a deal with CoreWeave that would see it build one of the first NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip-enabled AI supercomputers. And now, it’s OpenAI’s turn.
Similarly, last summer the company also announced plans to build data center facilities in Norway, Sweden and Spain.
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