CoreWeave CEO pushes back against circular investment concerns

In a interview Wednesday with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator brushed off concerns that the company’s deals with other artificial intelligence giants are circular investments, saying such a narrative is “fundamentally flawed.”

“The reality of the situation is, really large, really important technology companies across the space are buying infrastructure to deliver it to their clients — Meta, Microsoft, you know, Amazon, Google,” Intrator said. “I mean, the largest tech companies in the world are purchasing this infrastructure because they have demand. There’s nothing circular about that.”

CoreWeave, which sells cloud infrastructure for AI, went public in March. It was the biggest U.S. tech IPO since 2021, managing to raise $1.5 billion in its share sell. The stock has soared since then as investors’ appetite for AI and the data centers continues to grow. It’s currently up more than 200% since its Wall Street debut.

CoreWeave is a major supplier to OpenAI, and it announced a $6.5 billion expansion of its current agreement with the ChatGPT maker late last month, bringing its total contracts with the outfit to $22.4 billion. Just days later, CoreWeave inked a $14.2 billion deal with Meta. Earlier in September, the company also disclosed an order worth at least $6.3 billion with chipmaker Nvidia, who is one of its key backers. Nvidia was already a major CoreWeave supplier, and the recent deal dictates that Nvidia “is obligated to purchase the residual unsold capacity” through April 2032.

Some on Wall Street are concerned that these deals — and a slew of others across Big Tech — are too circular, meaning money is passed around back and forth from one company to another.

But Intrator insisted that the deals represent a “fundamental infrastructure buildout.” He said that when there is such a massive infrastructure buildout, “it is not unusual to see partnerships as people try to serve infrastructure to the consumers,” adding that this dynamic occurs in other markets.

“This narrative around the circular investment — you know, it’s … of the day, but it will pass,” he said. “Because the fundamental drivers in the market are enormous.”

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Disclaimer The CNBC Investing Club owns shares of Nvidia and Meta.