Microsoft has reportedly signed a deal with former Ethereum miner CoreWeave to use its cloud computing infrastructure to support its AI-powered services.
According to a June 1 report According to CNBC, citing “people with knowledge of the matter,” Microsoft is potentially willing to spend billions of dollars on the multi-year deal with CoreWeave.
One of CNBC’s sources claimed that the deal was signed earlier this year, like the popular Microsoft OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT.
ONLY IN:
Microsoft $MSFT just signed a deal for AI computing power with Nvidia-backed CoreWeave that could be worth billions
CoreWeave offers Nvidia $NVDA graphics cards that other companies rent
Nvidia invested $100 million in CoreWeave, which in April was valued at $2 billion – CNBC
— Evan (@StockMKTNewz) June 1, 2023
Amid the rapid growth of AI technology in the past 12 months, Microsoft has launched several AI-based services. A good example is the integration of GPT-4 with its Bing and Microsoft Edge web browsers, where the company recently removed the waiting list.
OpenAI also uses Microsoft’s own cloud computing infrastructure, Azure, to handle its considerable computing requirements.
CoreWeave initially started out as an Ethereum miner in 2017, using graphics processing units (GPUs) to verify transactions on Ethereum during its formative days as a proof-of-work blockchain.
The company began focusing on GPU cloud computing around 2019, after spotting a hole in the market for diverse, scalable, and competitively priced compute options, something that reclaimed legacy providers were not offering.
Notably, the Microsoft deal reports come just days after CoreWeave. Announced on May 31 that it had extended its $221 million Series B funding round from April to bring the total to $421 million.
Series B was led by Magnetar Capital, with participation from longtime strategic partner NVIDIA.
The firm stated in April that the capital would be used to expand its cloud infrastructure, which focuses on a wide range of computing workloads, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual effects and rendering, to name a few.
Related: This is how OpenAI plans to clean ChatGPT of false information
Commenting on the Microsoft deal via Twitter, Bitcoin advocate and Castle Island Ventures general partner Nic Carter highlighted the importance of the firm’s industry shift:
“People make fun of ‘crypto to AI pivots’ but CoreWeave went from mining ETH to using their fleet to do compute for AI and now they’re worth $2b+… one of the fastest growing companies in the world at the moment”.
ETH is what got them in business. curiously, they would not have been in business if the merger had been on time. Because the merger was so late, they were able to scale while they planned what was next.
— nic carter (@nic__carter) June 2, 2023
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