American business exceptionalism is enduring. Key elements of the American business culture are innovation, the quest for profit, and risk-taking. A neglected feature of the American business culture is second chances.
The CoreWeave story involves many of the elements of American exceptionalism.
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CoreWeave was founded in 2017 by three commodity traders. At first, CoreWeave was about cryptocurrency mining using Nvidia’s Graphics Processing Units, GPUs. But in the crypto recession of 2018, the company pivoted from crypto mining to become a cloud computing provider using their inventory of Nvidia GPUs. Financial markets gave CoreWeave a second chance and that second chance paid off, big time. CoreWeave then caught the wave of Artificial Intelligence, AI.
CoreWeave is a cloud computing company. It employs fewer than 1,000 people but it controls over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs. CoreWeave generates over $5 million in revenues per employee. The company manages 33 data centers in the U.S. and Europe. The value of CoreWeave’s GPUs ranges between $5-10 billion. Demand for cloud computing AI capacity is excellent.
CoreWeave rents out access to its Nvidia chips by the hour. The GPUs are preconfigured for fast networking to enable AI training and inference tasks. Even America’s hyper-scalers require surge capacity because demand for AI cloud capacity exceeds supply. CoreWeave’s customers include Microsoft, OpenAI, and even Nvidia. CoreWeave offers a bridge for the hyper-scalers to use as they build out permanent cloud computing infrastructure. Very importantly, CoreWeave has contracts for reliable energy to power its cloud computing capacity. AI is very energy-intensive. AI and energy go hand in hand.
CoreWeave came public on March 28, 2025 under the symbol CRWV. The stock started to trade at $40 a share. Market sentiment toward AI was subdued largely because of the shock of China’s DeepSeek AI inference model. In fact CoreWeave had to reduce the offering price of its initial public offering. But soon sentiment shifted. Equity markets are fickle.
Today, CoreWeave’s stock price is near $160, a fourfold increase from the March IPO price. The stock market values the company at around $75 billion.
Equity markets are again all aboard the AI train. Nvidia, the dominant company in the AI revolution traded below $100 a share a few months ago. The stock had been trading at around $150 before the sharp drop in price. But now Nvidia is trading near all time highs, around $159.
Demand for AI cloud computing assets, as well as reliable supplies of electricity, is so strong that CoreWeave just announced that it plans to acquire Core Scientific, a company that provides cloud computing infrastructure services. In addition, Core Scientific has firm long-term contracts for the energy required to power AI cloud computing systems. Core Scientific controls 1.3 gigawatts of energy. The AI sector has an inadequate supply of both data centers and the energy to power the centers. CoreWeave enjoys a competitive advantage because it owns accelerated computing GPUs and it has energy resources to power the AI GPUs. The acquisition of Core Scientific will increase this competitive advantage.
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But CoreWeave is not an investment for our grandparents. At the moment, the company is not profitable. It has a negative return on its equity. And CoreWeave is highly leveraged. CoreWeave will finance the acquisition of Core Scientific with its stock and not with cash. CoreWeave’s finances are too weak for it to pay cash for Core Scientific.
Arguably, only in the United States would a company with CoreWeave’s history and weak balance sheet thrive. American business believes in second chances. American business believes in innovation and is optimistic about the future. American business accepts risk. CoreWeave illustrates resilience, innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurialism. CoreWeave embodies American exceptionalism.
The writer does not own shares in either CoreWeave or Core Scientific. The writer owns shares in Nvidia.
James Rogan is a former U.S. foreign service officer who has worked in finance and law for 30 years. He writes a daily note on the markets, politics, and society. He can be followed on X here. He can be reached at [email protected]