Did Sam Altman Ink a $12 Billion Deal With CoreWeave… Just to Troll Microsoft?

A week ago, CoreWeave was looking like an episode of The Walking Dead. Microsoft had just ghosted them, backing out of a $10 billion deal that made up 62% of their revenue. Analysts were already sharpening their pencils to write obituaries for the company’s IPO dreams. It was supposed to be game over.

And then Sam “I don’t care about the money” Altman and OpenAI rolled in (probably in his multi-million dollar car), dropped $11.9 billion, and completely flipped the script on everyone.

Microsoft, which had been CoreWeave’s sugar daddy for most of 2024, decided they weren’t happy with delivery issues and backed out of their commitment to spend $10 billion on CoreWeave’s cloud services by 2030. That should have been a catastrophic death warrant… CoreWeave pulled in $1.92 billion in revenue last year, meaning Microsoft was singlehandedly keeping the lights on (probably actually paying the electric bill).

But instead of panicking, CoreWeave just found a bigger whale. OpenAI inked a five-year deal worth nearly $12 billion, not just filling the hole Microsoft left, but outspending them entirely. Oh, and as part of the deal, OpenAI also scooped up a $350 million equity stake in CoreWeave, meaning they now have skin in the game.

At this point, the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship is looking more dysfunctional than Bill and Hillary Clinton’s relationship. Microsoft invested over $10 billion in OpenAI, only to watch OpenAI slowly become more independent and start snuggling up to other partners.

First, OpenAI started sourcing cloud infrastructure from Oracle as part of their “Stargate” project, a $500 billion AI data center initiative. Then, CEO Sam Altman started complaining that OpenAI is “out of GPUs”... a direct shot at Microsoft’s ability to provide the computing power they need. Now, OpenAI has fully bypassed Microsoft to cut a direct check to CoreWeave.

And if that wasn’t enough, Microsoft has been busy cooking up its own OpenAI competitor. They just poached Mustafa Suleyman (co-founder of DeepMind) to lead Microsoft AI and are building their own AI models under the codename “MAI.” If you ever wondered what passive-aggressiveness looks like in the tech world, this is it.

CoreWeave was about to go into an IPO looking desperate, with 62% of its revenue tied to a single customer that just walked away.Now, they’re showing up with a brand-new $12 billion contract. 

Not to mention, they’re still backed by Nvidia, which owns a 6% stake in the company and has been feeding CoreWeave an unlimited amount of GPUs.

Sure, they’ve still got $7.9 billion in debt on the books, and the three founders have already cashed out a cool $488 million in shares. But now, instead of limping into an IPO, they’re about to pitch investors on the back of the hottest AI name in the game.

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Stock.News has positions in Microsoft.