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CoreWeave (CORW.PVT) is reportedly planning to cut the size of its initial public offering (IPO) to $1.5 billion: 37.5 million shares at $40 per share, down from its previous plan of 49 million shares at $47–55 per share. The company is set to go public on Friday, March 28.
Wealth host Brad Smith is joined by Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman to discuss the news and what it means for the IPO market.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Wealth here.
CoreWeave reportedly planning to cut the size of its IPO and the raise, specifically. This is going to come in at about $1.5 billion according to Bloomberg. They plan to offer investors 37.5 million shares at $40 a piece. That's down from 49 million shares at a range of $47 to $55 a piece. The company planning to go public Friday morning here. This is just one of the companies that we're waiting to perhaps kind of break into the public markets and perhaps set the tone for some others this year too.
There is so much attention on CoreWeave for two reasons. One, as a sort of a measure of the AI trade and two, as a measure of the IPO market, right? So on both of those fronts, this news is a bit disappointing if not entirely unexpected, right? There were investors who were saying, oh, this is not going to price how it originally was talked about. Nvidia is a big investor in this company. They own about 6% of it and according to reports from both Bloomberg and CNBC, Nvidia is going to anchor the IPO with an order for $250 million worth of stock. So increasing its stake there as the company goes public. You know, it is very interesting what we've heard recently about AI, you know, Microsoft, for example, has reportedly, according to some analysts, pulled back on its data center leases to some extent, although again, reportedly TD Cowen out with a note recently saying that others like Meta and Google have stepped in. We recently talked to Gil Loria over at DA Davidson who doesn't yet cover CoreWeave because it's not yet public, but he covers the likes of Microsoft and others, and he talked about what his expectations were, uh, when we talked to him recently about CoreWeave.
The deal may not even happen at these valuations because what we learned about CoreWeave from their first filing was that Microsoft was a 62% customer, and then they have another 15% customer, which is either Nvidia or Meta. That's spillover demand from Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia. That that not a type of revenue that investors typically want to put a very high multiple on.
And it's also incredibly concentrated revenue in just a few companies. So that's the AI part of it. And then, of course, there's the IPO part of it. As you know, everybody was all jazzed about the IPO market opening this year, and it hasn't really happened. And with each new high-profile company that prepares to come to market, it's like, is this the one? Is this the one? And the fact that it is now doing it at a lower valuation, maybe it's not going to be the one, but we'll see how it trades on the first day.
Absolutely. Well, Nvidia actually, to your point, adding a little bit of their own kind of throwing their hat in the ring, is actually a boat of confidence here, and that's not insignificant here. 1/6 of those shares essentially would be going to Nvidia if it were to come out at this type of raise, $1.5 billion, the $250 million that they had put forward.
One more thing to mention here is when they came out with their filing for the IPO, they said they had material weaknesses in their internal controls over financial reporting. That was where, I mean, every company has to disclose risks to their businesses and that filing they talked about there that they had insufficient IT controls over their applications supporting financial reporting. So that's something to keep an eye on, not necessarily something that investors want to see.
That's not something I want to hear from an AI company either. You should probably be pretty good at those. I don't know.