Microsoft continues to add! Sign AI computing power agreement with startup CoreWeave

Cailian News Agency, June 2nd (Editor Niu Zhanlin)The huge investment in OpenAI has enabled Microsoft to take the lead in this artificial intelligence (AI) competition. At the same time, this software giant is also trying to leverage other fields to drive the development of its artificial intelligence business.

On Thursday, according to insiders, Microsoft has signed an artificial intelligence computing power agreement with startup CoreWeave for cloud computing infrastructure, which could be worth billions of dollars.

CoreWeave announced on Wednesday that it has received $200 million in financing. Just over a month ago, the company received a valuation of $2 billion. CoreWeave announced on Wednesday that it has secured financing from hedge fund MagnetarCapital, a continuation of the $221 million raised in April. In addition, NVIDIA invested $100 million in the company's previous financing.

It is reported that CoreWeave was established in 2017 as an Ethereum mining enterprise and currently specializes in providing cloud computing services based on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). CoreWeave aims to lead artificial intelligence technology by innovating faster than ultra large enterprises, providing support for the booming industry.

In the wave of artificial intelligence, CoreWeave sells computing power to these AI companies and competes with cloud computing service providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon's AWS.

CoreWeave wrote on its website that the computing power provided by the company is "80% cheaper than traditional cloud providers", using a network technology called InfiniBand to connect computers together and build different data centers for artificial intelligence work.

In addition, CoreWeave also offers a cheaper NvidiaA40GPU, mainly used for visual computing, while the A100 is mainly aimed at artificial intelligence, data analysis, and high-performance computing.

Michael Intrator, CEO of CoreWeave, stated that the company's strategy of providing accelerated computing infrastructure for generative artificial intelligence, large-scale language models, and artificial intelligence factories will help bring the highest performance and most energy-efficient computing platform to each industry.

Insiders said that in order to ensure ChatGPT has sufficient computing power in the future, Microsoft signed an agreement with CoreWeave earlier this year. In addition to funding, OpenAI also relies on Microsoft's Azure cloud to meet computing needs.

Colette Kress, Chief Financial Officer of NVIDIA, stated during last week's earnings conference call that the growth trend of the company's performance is mainly driven by data centers, reflecting a sharp increase in demand related to generative artificial intelligence and large-scale language models. Kress also mentioned CoreWeave. In March, NVIDIA CEO Huang Renxun also mentioned this startup.

CoreWeave co-founder and Chief Strategic Officer Brannin McBee pointed out that his company maintains a close partnership with Nvidia, and in the current market where artificial intelligence chips are scarce, obtaining chip supply is crucial. CoreWeave used Nvidia's H100 chip earlier than many larger competitors.