Podcast Summary: "CoreWeave, the Company Riding the AI Boom"
The Journal: The Wall Street Journal & Spotify Studios
Release Date: November 12, 2025
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza & Ryan Knutson
Featured Guests: Dan Gallagher (WSJ Tech Reporter), Michael Intrator (CoreWeave CEO)
Episode Overview
This episode examines CoreWeave, a rapidly emerging data center company at the heart of the AI boom. While tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI make headlines, CoreWeave's critical role in supplying infrastructure for advanced AI models has been largely under the radar. Hosts Jessica Mendoza and Ryan Knutson, along with WSJ tech reporter Dan Gallagher and CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator, explore CoreWeave’s dramatic rise, its centrality to the AI “gold rush,” financial risks, and the company's high-wire act between massive opportunity and volatility.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. The AI Boom’s Insatiable Appetite for Compute
- (00:05 – 01:14)
- In recent months, tech companies are pouring hundreds of billions into AI, driving unprecedented demand for the advanced chips required for training models.
- Companies like Nvidia, Amazon, and Anthropic are making staggering investments that have changed the competitive landscape, with CoreWeave becoming a critical supplier despite being a relatively unknown name.
- Dan Gallagher:
"Even though they're a small company relative to these really big ones, they are a major player in this particular realm of artificial intelligence, data center computing." (00:55)
2. CoreWeave’s Unlikely Origin Story
- (03:22 – 04:19)
- CoreWeave was founded in 2017 by Wall Street traders in New Jersey who invested in GPU chips (initially for crypto mining).
- Crypto’s bust in 2018–2019 led them to pivot, leveraging their GPU asset base for AI workloads.
- GPU Basics: GPUs (graphics processing units) accelerate certain types of computation, and when clustered, power large-scale AI models—making them essential to AI’s explosive growth.
3. Right Place, Right Time
- (05:02 – 05:52)
- The public release of ChatGPT in late 2022 ignited massive demand for AI infrastructure. Big tech bought up GPUs, but CoreWeave was uniquely stocked to supply them rapidly.
- Jessica Mendoza:
"So this was sort of a case of right place, right time for this company." (05:43) - Dan Gallagher:
"Oh, very much." (05:52)
4. Leasing Power to Giants
- (06:17 – 06:40)
- Now CoreWeave leases immense GPU power to Microsoft, Meta, and others—its investors include Nvidia (which also supplies its chips) and OpenAI.
- Michael Intrator:
"Anybody can run a GPU, but can you run a fleet of hundreds of thousands of them...to serve inference for the most incredibly demanding consumers of compute? And that's a very different proposition." (06:40)
5. The Business Model—and Its Risks
- (07:18 – 08:44)
- CoreWeave has secured $55 billion in sales contracts amid near-insatiable demand. But the AI sector’s interconnectedness, known as "circularity," introduces financial dependencies that can create systemic risk.
- Jessica Mendoza describes:
"They are partly owned by Nvidia, who also sells them chips. Nvidia also sells chips to Microsoft, which is Core Weave's biggest customer and is also an investor in OpenAI, which is also a Core Weave customer and a Core Weave shareholder..." (07:54) - Dan Gallagher:
"No, I would not call it normal. It's circular... you get in this world where... if there was a problem with one of these companies somewhere, does it... teeter the whole system?" (08:44; 09:46)
6. Managing ‘Circularity’ and Dependency
- (09:07 – 09:40)
- Michael Intrator:
"There is a component of which it is a team sport. Nobody can do it all. And so you're working together to deliver a size and scale of infrastructure that the world has never seen before." (09:07)
- Michael Intrator:
7. IPO and Market Volatility
- (11:05 – 11:56)
- CoreWeave went public in March; its stock has had volatile swings—sometimes dropping double-digits in a week—reflecting both the speculative excitement and risk surrounding AI infrastructure plays.
- Earnings report showed revenue set to double, but the next day the stock plunged 16%.
- Dan Gallagher:
"It's been a pretty volatile stock since it went public... it really swings a lot on things like sentiment about AI." (11:05)
8. Existential Bet: If AI Stumbles, So Does CoreWeave
- (12:32 – 13:23)
- CoreWeave’s business is nearly entirely dependent on AI sector’s continued explosive growth.
- Dan Gallagher:
"If AI demand really, really stumbled... they could be left. Because if you're Microsoft... all of a sudden you just don't need that from them. That's not good for CoreWeave." (12:46)
9. CEO Perspective: Managing Risk, Building Resilience
- (13:29 – 13:55; 17:01)
- Intrator is unfazed by bubble fears, citing risk management background, diversification, and structuring long-term deals as key strategies.
- Michael Intrator:
"It's very hard for me to worry about a bubble... when you have buyers of infrastructure that are changing the economics of their company, they're building the future." (13:29) - He points out recent deals with Meta and Nvidia, "We're diversifying... making the company more resilient, more scaled, and better able to withstand any type of slowdown." (13:55)
10. Debt as a Growth Lever
- (15:02 – 16:02)
- Unlike most tech companies, CoreWeave has used debt (common on Wall Street, rare in Silicon Valley) to rapidly scale its data center infrastructure.
- Michael Intrator:
"Debt is the correct way to do this. I realize I'm in Silicon Valley and maybe that doesn't get as much traction as it does in New York, but debt is the right way to do this." (15:10) - Dan Gallagher:
"To see a company come into... the tech space and be open about the fact that they're building up with debt... that's where it stands out." (15:39)
11. Looking to the Future—Bullish, Yet Realistic
- (17:44 – end)
- Intrator and most AI insiders are highly confident in future demand, but Gallagher notes “nobody has a crystal ball.”
- Dan Gallagher:
"What they're seeing is the exponential demand that things like ChatGPT have seen. They see the potential... but nobody can tell the future. They might be right, they might be wrong." (18:10)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
"CoreWeave is this company that to a lot of people kind of came out of nowhere... but they're actually this kind of major player."
— Dan Gallagher (00:44) -
"Anybody can run a GPU, but can you run a fleet of hundreds of thousands of them... for the most incredibly demanding consumers of compute?"
— Michael Intrator (06:40) -
"It's circular... if there was a problem with one of these companies somewhere, does it... teeter the whole system?"
— Dan Gallagher (09:46) -
"It's very hard for me to worry about a bubble... when you have buyers of infrastructure that are changing the economics of their company, they're building the future."
— Michael Intrator (13:29) -
"Debt is the correct way to do this. I realize I'm in Silicon Valley and maybe that doesn't get as much traction as it does in New York, but debt is the right way to do this."
— Michael Intrator (15:10)
Important Timestamps & Segments
- 00:05 – 01:40: Setting the scene—AI investment surge, introducing CoreWeave’s role
- 03:22 – 04:19: CoreWeave founders & pivot from crypto to AI
- 06:17 – 06:40: CEO Michael Intrator on scaling AI infrastructure
- 07:54 – 09:02: Industry ‘circularity’, intertwined deals
- 11:05 – 11:56: Stock market performance & volatility post-IPO
- 13:29 – 13:55: CoreWeave’s risk management and diversification
- 15:10 – 15:39: Debt as a unique business strategy in tech
- 17:01 – 18:10: CEO’s perspective on risk, industry confidence, and the unknowability of the future
Tone & Style
The conversation is direct, highly informed, and features a frank exchange about both opportunities and risks. CoreWeave’s leadership comes across as confident (almost unapologetically bold) yet pragmatic, while the hosts and Dan Gallagher push for clarity on both the business fundamentals and the speculative nature of the current AI “gold rush.”
In Summary
CoreWeave is a striking exemplar of the AI era’s ambitions—and hazards. Its story is one of shrewd positioning, high risk tolerance, and relentless growth fueled by an industry-wide bet that AI is about to revolutionize everything. But like other companies at the center of bubbles, its fate is closely tied to the fortunes of its complex web of partners and the broader trajectory of AI adoption, making it both a potential big winner—and a high-risk outlier—as the future of technology unfolds.