Former Ethereum miner CoreWeave raises $221M in Series B

On April 20, specialized cloud provider CoreWeave announced that it had secured $221 million in a Series B funding round, putting the company on track to expand operations and increase capacity in various emerging technologies. 

The raise was led by Magnetar Capital with contributions from NVIDIA and rounded out by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. In November 2021, CoreWeave secured a $50 million investment from Magnetar Capital. 

According to CoreWeave, the money will be used to expand its cloud infrastructure for computational workloads such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual effects, rendering, batch processing and pixel streaming. The firm’s CEO and co-founder, Michael Intrato, said NVIDIA’s support would help the company continue to scale. 

Founded in 2017, CoreWeave uses cloud technology to scale graphics processing unit (GPU) computational resources that the company claims are “35 times faster and 80% less expensive” than competitor solutions. The firm started as an Ethereum miner, utilizing GPUs to verify transactions on the former proof-of-work blockchain.

In September 2022, Ethereum completed its much-anticipated Merge upgrade, transitioning the network into proof-of-stake from the previous proof-of-work protocol. The move rendered the practice of Ethereum mining and, subsequently, Ethereum mining GPUs obsolete. That said, CoreWeave ceased its Ethereum mining operations long before the Merge was completed.

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