CoreWeave has lowered the final price on its initial public offering (IPO) to $40 U.S. per share due to weak demand among investors.
The artificial intelligence (A.I.) start-up company had initially set the pricing for its IPO at $47 U.S. to $55 U.S. but dropped the price at the last minute as interest in the offering softened.
CoreWeave’s stock is set to begin start trading today (March 28) on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol “CRWV.”
The company, which provides access to Nvidia (NVDA) graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence training and workloads, will raise about $1.50 billion U.S. from the IPO.
Despite the lowered price, CoreWeave’s IPO is the biggest U.S. technology share sale since 2021.
In addition to dropping the price, CoreWeave decreased the number of shares for sale to 37.5 million from 49 million.
The new pricing values CoreWeave at $19 billion U.S., although its market capitalization will be higher on a fully diluted basis.
Nvidia, which was an early investor in CoreWeave, has placed a $250 million U.S. order for CRWV stock at the $40 U.S. per share IPO price, according to media reports.
CoreWeave counts Microsoft (MSFT) as its biggest customer. A week after filing to go public, CoreWeave announced a contract with OpenAI worth up to $11.90 billion U.S. over five years.
The company’s IPO is viewed as a test of U.S. capital markets, and technology start-up companies in particular.
The IPO market in the U.S. has been in a funk since the beginning of 2022 when a bear market occurred due to high inflation and rising interest rates.
However, there are signs that the IPO market is beginning to thaw. In recent weeks, online lender Klarna and ticket reseller StubHub have announced plans to go public.
Last year, social media company Reddit (RDDT) held its IPO, raising $750 million U.S. through the process.
