CoreWeave prices IPO at $40 a share, below expected range

CoreWeave on Thursday said it priced shares at $40 in the company’s IPO, raising $1.5 billion in the biggest U.S. tech offering since 2021.

The company, which provides access to Nvidia graphics processing units for artificial intelligence training and workloads, had planned to sell shares for between $47 and $55 each. At the top end of the range, that would’ve valued CoreWeave at about $26.5 billion, based on Class A and Class B shares outstanding.

The offering is down from 49 million shares to 37.5 million, CoreWeave said in a statement. Bloomberg was first to report on the $40 price. At that level, CoreWeave’s valuation will be closer to $19 billion, though the market cap will be higher on a fully diluted basis.

Earlier on Thursday, CNBC reported that Nvidia, one of CoreWeave’s largest shareholders, was targeting a $250 million order at $40 per share.

CoreWeave’s shares are set to start trading on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker symbol “CRWV.”

The IPO is a major test for tech startups and the venture capital market after an extended lull in new offerings dating back to the beginning of 2022, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. Other tech-related companies that have filed to go public in recent weeks include digital health startup Hinge Health, online lender Klarna and ticketing marketplace StubHub. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that chat app maker Discord is working on an IPO.

The last venture-backed tech company that raised at least $1 billion for a U.S. IPO was Freshworks in 2021. Last year Reddit and Rubrik each raised about $750 million in their offerings.

After Donald Trump’s election victory in November, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said he expected renewed IPO activity, but President Trump’s imposition of tariffs in recent weeks added uncertainty to economic forecasts and led to increased volatility to tech stocks.

CoreWeave counts Microsoft as its biggest customer by far. Other clients include Meta, IBM and Cohere. Revenue soared more than 700% last year to almost $2 billion, but the company recorded a net loss of $863 million. CoreWeave’s model is capital intensive, requiring hefty purchases of equipment and expenditures on real estate.

A week after filing to go public, CoreWeave announced a contract with OpenAI worth up to $11.9 billion over five years. OpenAI agreed to buy $350 million in CoreWeave stock as part of the deal.

CoreWeave is trying to compete with some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google, the three leading providers of public cloud infrastructure in the U.S.

WATCH: Nvidia will anchor CoreWeave deal at $40 per share with a $250 million order, sources say