The specialised cloud provider CoreWeave announced that it secured $221 million in a Series B funding round on April 20 to expand its operations and increase capacity in various emerging technologies. The funding round was led by Magnetar Capital, with contributions from NVIDIA, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross. Previously, Magnetar Capital also invested $50 million in CoreWeave in November 2021.
CoreWeave plans to use the newly acquired funds to expand its cloud infrastructure for computational workloads, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual effects, rendering, batch processing, and pixel streaming. Michael Intrato, the CEO and co-founder of CoreWeave, expressed his appreciation for NVIDIA’s support, stating that it would help the company to scale further.
CoreWeave was founded in 2017 and uses cloud technology to scale graphics processing unit (GPU) computational resources. The company claims its resources are 35 times faster and 80% less expensive than competitor solutions. Initially, the firm started as an Ethereum miner, using GPUs to verify transactions on the former proof-of-work blockchain.
However, with the much-anticipated Merge upgrade completed in September 2022, Ethereum transitioned from the previous proof-of-work protocol to proof-of-stake. As a result, the practice of Ethereum mining and the use of Ethereum mining GPUs became obsolete.
Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that CoreWeave had ceased its Ethereum mining operations well before the Merge upgrade was completed.
