What’s the Impact of CoreWeave’s IPO on Core Scientific? Analysts Debate

What to know:

CoreWeave, one of the hottest players in the artificial intelligence (AI) sphere, filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on March 3.

The company works closely with bitcoin (BTC) miner Core Scientific (CORZ); the two firms  have inked a multi-billion dollar deal  for Core Scientific to build hundreds of megawatts of infrastructure for CoreWeave to run its AI services. In fact, CoreWeave is by far Core Scientific’s largest client.

Which raises a question: How will CoreWeave’s IPO affect Core Scientific?

“CoreWeave’s IPO likely will have a correlating impact on Core Scientific,” Wolfie Zhao, head of research at TheMinerMag, told CoinDesk. “If CoreWeave’s public debut is successful and it sustains strong revenue growth in the coming years, it will reinforce Core Scientific’s position as a reliable infrastructure provider, ensuring a stable revenue stream from hosting CoreWeave’s GPUs.”

“However, if the AI market experiences a downturn or the demand for high-performance computing weakens, Core could face similar headwinds, as its business is increasingly tied to the broader AI ecosystem,” Zhao added.

The IPO may end up being less of a big deal than CoreWeave’s new $12 billion deal with AI heavyweight OpenAI, analysts at investment bank Canaccord Genuity suggested in a March 12 note. The deal will allow CoreWeave to diversify its revenue away from Microsoft, which currently contributes roughly two thirds of the firm’s revenue. That diversification should end up benefitting Core Scientific on account of the fact that CoreWeave is the firm’s biggest customer.

This quest for diversity is unlikely to hurt the relationship between CoreWeave and Core Scientific, analysts at investment firm H.C. Wainwright wrote on March 11. CoreWeave’s IPO is another sign that rumours that CoreWeave would seek to drop its contract with Core Scientific are untrue. “From the 20,000-foot level, how in the world would that make any sense for CoreWeave?” they wrote. Not only do the two firms have a long history of working together, but they regularly make agreements for Core Scientific to provide even more infrastructure to the AI Hyperscaler.

As for Core Scientific itself, the firm’s executive team is “thrilled” by the potential IPO, a spokesperson told CoinDesk. “We’re proud to be part of their journey toward becoming a public company and look forward to supporting their continued success. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing our customers grow, and we’re excited to continue scaling alongside them as they reach new milestones.