Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
Jordan Nove | CNBC
microsoft‘s massive investment in OpenAI put the company at the center of the artificial intelligence boom. But it’s not the only place the software giant is freeing up money to meet surging demand for his AI-powered services.
Microsoft has agreed to potentially spend billions of dollars over several years on cloud computing infrastructure for startup CoreWeave, according to a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. announced It announced on Wednesday that it had raised $200 million. The funding comes just over a month after the company was valued at $2 billion.
CoreWeave sells simplified access to NVIDIA’s Graphics processing units (GPUs) are considered the best available on the market for running AI models. Microsoft announced earlier this year that OpenAI, which runs the viral chatbot ChatGPT, would have enough computing power in the future, according to one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous to protect confidentiality. He said he signed the CoreWeave contract. OpenAI relies on Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure for its vast computing needs.
Both Microsoft and CoreWeave declined to comment.
The generative AI rush began late last year after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the public, demonstrating that AI can take human input and generate sophisticated responses. including many companies Google, has since rushed to add generative AI to its product. And Microsoft is hard at work releasing chatbots for its own services, including Bing and Windows.
With so much demand on infrastructure, Microsoft needs additional ways to take advantage of Nvidia’s GPUs. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator declined to comment on the partnership with Microsoft in an interview last month, but said revenue “increased many times from 2022 to 2023.”
Nvidia-backed startup Coreweave is based in Roseland, New Jersey and has 160 employees.
core weave
Funding from hedge fund Magnetar Capital, which CoreWeave announced Wednesday, $221 million round in April. NVIDIA invested $100 million in the last round of funding, according to Intratar. CoreWeave was founded by him in 2017 and has 160 employees.
Nvidia shares are up 170% this year. The company’s market capitalization briefly topped $1 trillion for the first time this week after it released its July-quarter guidance, which exceeded Wall Street expectations by more than 50%.
At last week’s earnings call, Nvidia’s chief financial officer Collette Kress said the company’s growth was “primarily driven by data centers, reflecting a surge in demand related to generative AI and large language models. ‘ said. His GPT-4 Large Language Model for OpenAI, Trained on Nvidia GPUs The core of ChatGPT for extensive online data.
Kress mentioned CoreWeave on a conference call, and in March, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang mentioned CoreWeave in a presentation at Nvidia’s GTC conference.
core weave website The company claims it can provide computing power “80% cheaper than traditional cloud providers.” Among other cards, CoreWeave offers his Nvidia’s A100 GPU. The developer AmazonGoogle and Microsoft clouds.
Additionally, CoreWeave offers a cheap Nvidia A40 GPU marketed for visual computing, while the A100 targets AI, data analytics and high-performance computing. Intrator said some CoreWeave customers struggle to get enough GPU power on large clouds. Occasionally, a prospective customer would request his Nvidia’s A100 or later his H100 GPU, but the company recommended his A40 GPU instead.
These “will do a great job at a very cost-effective price,” Intrater said.
Microsoft has been in talks with the following companies: Oracle Regarding the two companies renting servers from each other when additional capacity is needed, information It was reported earlier this month, citing an unidentified person.
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