CoreWeave is moving quickly. Following a significant funding round that valued the GPU cloud company at a reported $19 billion, the New Jersey startup has expanded its operations by opening a London office, which will serve as its European headquarters.
In addition, Coreweave has announced plans to invest £1 billion ($1.25 billion) in opening two data centres in the U.K. this year. This marks their first venture outside of the U.S.
Established in 2017, CoreWeave is among the many cloud computing companies that have capitalised on the growing interest in AI, particularly the excitement surrounding OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its generative AI capabilities. CoreWeave provides access to cloud-based AI compute, which includes the necessary infrastructure and resources for performing computational tasks like data processing and running machine learning models.
AI application developers need access to GPUs, which can be difficult to set up, manage, and operate due to their typical one-time rental. CoreWeave offers on-demand and scalable processing power, providing a variety of Nvidia GPUs to meet the needs of developers in different scenarios.
Several players have entered this emerging space and are currently receiving funding. Lambda secured an impressive $320 million in funding not too long ago, while FlexAI, a French startup, recently came out of stealth mode with $30 million. FlexAI, on the other hand, differentiates itself by specializing in the deployment of AI models across various architectures, rather than solely relying on Nvidia.
CoreWeave is a leading player in the GPU cloud industry. Last week, the company announced that it had successfully raised $1.1 billion in funding, which significantly increased its valuation from the previously reported figure of $7 billion in December. The AI gold rush has been remarkable, with Nvidia’s market capitalization skyrocketing to over $2 trillion in just 12 months.
The U.K. and AI are intersecting
The U.K. holds a prominent position in AI R&D investment, trailing only the U.S. and China. DeepMind, a London-based company, and Microsoft have both made significant investments in the country’s AI infrastructure development. The consumer AI division of the Redmond, Washington-based company has recently established a presence in London, led by Jordan Hoffmann, a former scientist from Inflection and DeepMind.
The demand for AI talent will continue to grow in the upcoming years across the United Kingdom. CoreWeave, a company spokesperson, announced that its new headquarters will be located near Brick Lane in East London. The company plans to recruit approximately 30 employees for various positions, including software engineering, support engineering, operations, finance, and go-to-market roles.
Similar to cloud computing in general, establishing localized “compute” infrastructure can result in reduced latency and improved performance for companies in the region. Considering CoreWeave’s intention to establish two data centres in the U.K. before the year ends, it is likely that the company had already been working on these plans prior to the recent announcement.
By the end of 2024, CoreWeave will have 28 data centres operating globally. However, the company has not disclosed the current number of data centres it has. By the end of 2023, there were a total of 14, all located within the United States.
“The demand for AI infrastructure is at an all-time high, and London is a crucial AI hub that we are actively investing in,” stated Mike Intrator, CEO and co-founder of CoreWeave. “Expanding our presence in the U.K. is a significant milestone in the next phase of CoreWeave’s growth.”
