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Although recent stock market volatility has pushed down prices for many stocks, the artificial intelligence (AI) sector remains a compelling investment, with the tremendous transformative potential it brings to many industries.
As Lisa Su, CEO of semiconductor giant Advanced Micro Devices, said, "We believe AI is a once-in-a-generation transition that will reshape virtually every portion of the computing market."
A newcomer to the AI space is the recent initial public offering (IPO) CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV). The company went public on March 28, and AI semiconductor powerhouse Nvidia was among those that bought shares.
CoreWeave provides the cloud computing infrastructure needed by AI systems through a global footprint of 32 data centers. Could this newly public company make a great AI investment for the long haul? Let's dig in to find out.
Although CoreWeave operates in the crowded cloud computing industry, it differentiates its services by catering to the specific technological demands of generative AI. This is the tech that OpenAI's ChatGPT uses, and the one that propelled an AI investment frenzy.
A key point of differentiation from cloud competitors is the company's effectiveness in optimizing AI systems to run on its infrastructure. It does this by focusing on boosting the efficiency of its data centers.
For instance, the company uses liquid cooling systems, which allow it to stack servers closer together than older data centers that rely on air cooling. This means more servers, which translates into more computing power -- and generative AI requires a lot of processing power to produce the humanlike responses seen in systems such as ChatGPT.
CoreWeave began as a cryptocurrency miner, mainly for Ethereum. To do this work, the company gobbled up a ton of semiconductor chips produced by industry leader Nvidia.
But Ethereum changed its data validation system from a mining-based proof of work process to an ownership-related proof of stake design. CoreWeave's revenue potential was adversely affected by this policy change, forcing the company to switch strategies. Since it already had the hardware needed for cloud computing, it transitioned to AI infrastructure.
The company found success in its business transition. In 2024, sales hit $1.9 billion, an incredible 737% increase from the prior year's $228.9 million.
The growth came from capturing key customers like IBM, Facebook parent Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. In March of 2025, CoreWeave also added OpenAI as a customer.