Microsoft Signs Deal with CoreWeave to Enhance AI Offerings
Microsoft AI
To support its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, Microsoft has signed a deal with CoreWeave, a supplier of cloud computing infrastructure and former Ethereum miner. It was reported on June 1, that Microsoft might spend billions of dollars on the deal with CoreWeave over the course of several years.
Microsoft’s rollout of many AI-powered services over the last year tracks closely with the meteoric rise of this technology. The queue for OpenAI’s GPT-4 integration with Bing and Microsoft Edge web browsers is a prime example of this.
Expanding Cloud Infrastructure
For its massive computational requirements, OpenAI also uses Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. As the Ethereum blockchain was first being developed as a proof-of-work system in 2017, CoreWeave started out as a miner, using GPUs to verify Ethereum transactions.
The firm started focusing more on cloud GPU computing around 2019 because it believed that conventional vendors were not meeting the need for affordable, scalable, and flexible compute options.
Moreover, CoreWeave said a week ago that it had received $421 million, almost double the value of its Series B investment round from April, which had garnered $221 million.
The Series B was driven by Magnetar Capital and included participation from long-time strategic partner Nvidia. In April, the business said that it will invest the money on expanding its cloud infrastructure to support artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), visual effects (VFX), and rendering.
