The size of OpenAI's data center capacity purchase agreement with U.S. data center operator CoreWeave has expanded to a total of $22.4 billion (31.5616 trillion won). This follows several add-on agreements since the first deal in March and is seen as a strategy by both OpenAI and CoreWeave to reduce their reliance on Microsoft (MS).
CoreWeave on the 25th (local time) said it added up to $6.5 billion (9.1585 trillion won) to its existing agreement with OpenAI. OpenAI previously signed a first deal in March worth up to $11.9 billion, followed by an additional deal in May worth up to $4 billion.
OpenAI has used MS's Azure as a major cloud infrastructure partner, but recently has been pushing to diversify its infrastructure by signing large-scale computing resource agreements with multiple companies, including Oracle. OpenAI also signed a computing power deal with Oracle for 4.5 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to the capacity of more than four nuclear reactors.
CoreWeave also appears interested in reducing its reliance on MS. In the second quarter of this year (April–June), 71% of CoreWeave's total revenue came from MS.
CoreWeave belongs to the "neo-cloud" group of corporations that lease data centers equipped with advanced AI chips, and said it would support training of OpenAI's next-generation high-performance AI models through this agreement. OpenAI's vice president in charge of infrastructure and industrial computing said CoreWeave is establishing itself as a key infrastructure partner for the company.
Meanwhile, on the New York stock market that day, CoreWeave shares closed at $126.65, down 5.1% from the previous day. CoreWeave, which went public in March with an offering price of $40, saw its share price more than triple in six months.