OpenAI is deepening its access to AI infrastructure through a five-year, $11.9 billion agreement with CoreWeave, a cloud provider built around large-scale GPU capacity. The companies said the arrangement also gives OpenAI $350 million worth of equity in CoreWeave.
The timing matters. CoreWeave filed to become a public company last week, though it has not yet priced or scheduled its debut. For a company heading toward a planned IPO, landing OpenAI as a direct customer changes the story investors will be asked to evaluate.
A major cloud bet centered on GPUs
CoreWeave runs an AI-specific cloud service and, according to the company, had a network of 32 data centers operating more than 250,000 Nvidia GPUs as of the end of 2024. Since then, CoreWeave said it has added more GPUs, including Nvidia’s latest product, Blackwell, which supports AI reasoning.
That kind of infrastructure is central to the current AI race because advanced models require large amounts of compute. The source article notes that OpenAI needs more compute resources, and that Sam Altman complained just last week that OpenAI is “out of GPUs.”
The agreement therefore does two things at once. It gives OpenAI access to a cloud service designed for AI workloads, and it gives OpenAI an ownership stake in the company providing that capacity. The equity portion is described as separate from CoreWeave’s planned IPO.
Why CoreWeave gains more than revenue
The agreement is also significant for CoreWeave because of its customer mix. Before this deal, CoreWeave’s biggest customer was Microsoft. In 2024, Microsoft accounted for 62% of CoreWeave’s revenue.
CoreWeave’s revenue grew to $1.9 billion in 2024, up from $228.9 million in 2023. That scale of growth is striking, but relying heavily on one customer can concern IPO investors. A large OpenAI contract gives CoreWeave another major relationship to point to as it seeks to raise $4 billion or more in its IPO.
Several details shape the investor picture:
- CoreWeave is backed by Nvidia, which holds a 6% stake.
- The company has $7.9 billion of debt on the books.
- CoreWeave says it will use at least some IPO proceeds to pay down debt if the offering generates the billions of new capital it hopes for.
- The three co-founders have already cashed out of $488 million worth of shares, or over $150 million apiece.
CoreWeave’s background adds another layer to the story. The company began as a crypto mining operation founded by former hedge fund guys, according to the source article. Its shift from crypto mining to AI cloud infrastructure shows how the same GPU-heavy foundation can be redirected toward a very different market.
The Microsoft and OpenAI relationship keeps changing
The deal is not only about CoreWeave. It also lands inside the increasingly complicated relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.
Microsoft is a major backer of OpenAI under a deal that entitles Microsoft to collect a portion of OpenAI’s revenue. At the same time, tensions have been rising for years as OpenAI’s business has grown. The companies compete for enterprise customers, and OpenAI is reportedly working on rolling out pricey AI agents.
In January, as part of the massive Stargate AI infrastructure deal with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, Microsoft ceased being OpenAI’s sole cloud provider. The CoreWeave agreement extends that pattern: OpenAI is continuing to widen its infrastructure options beyond Microsoft.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is building more of its own AI technology. It is working on its own AI “reasoning” models comparable to OpenAI’s o1 and o3-mini. It is also developing a family of models called MAI that are competitive with OpenAI, and it hired Mustafa Suleyman to lead Microsoft AI.
What the deal signals
The CoreWeave agreement shows how access to compute has become a strategic issue for AI companies. For OpenAI, the immediate value is more cloud capacity from a provider already serving Microsoft. For CoreWeave, the value is a major new customer and a stronger position before its planned IPO.
It also shows that partnerships in AI can be both cooperative and competitive. Microsoft backs OpenAI, buys heavily from CoreWeave, and builds its own models. OpenAI depends on Microsoft but is also expanding its infrastructure relationships and competing for enterprise customers.
That is why the CoreWeave deal stands out. It is a cloud contract, an equity investment, an IPO signal, and another marker of how the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship is becoming more complex as demand for GPUs grows.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment, according to the source article.