rewrite this title CoreWeave shares jump after it starts VC fund to invest in AI companies

CoreWeave shares jumped Tuesday on news that the cloud infrastructure company, which was one of the hottest IPOs of the year, launched a venture fund to invest in artificial intelligence startups.

CoreWeave, considered the largest publicly traded ‘neocloud’ name, offers cloud computing services specifically for AI workloads, such as providing Nvidia GPUs and high-performance storage to companies.

Its newly announced “CoreWeave Ventures” fund will offer founders an array of capital investment models, provide access to the CoreWeave cloud platform, and give insights on product and go-to-market strategies based on CoreWeave’s existing partnerships, the company said in a press release. CoreWeave Ventures has nine portfolio companies at launch and is in talks with others to scale soon, the company told CNBC.

Shares gained more than 5% in afternoon trading.

“Our aim with CoreWeave Ventures is to give other audacious, like-minded founders the support they need to drive technical advancements and bring to market the next class of innovation,” Brannin McBee, CoreWeave co-founder and chief development officer, said in the release.

CoreWeave, which itself is backed by Nvidia, is the latest example of a tech giant turning to the growing world of startups in an effort to gain more exposure to early-stage AI innovation. AI startups in the first half of the year alone raised $104.3 billion in the U.S., nearly matching all of 2024.

Shares of CoreWeave also got a lift earlier Tuesday after neocloud competitor Nebius closed a five-year deal with Microsoft worth $19.4 billion to supply computing power to the hyperscaler, suggesting demand for AI infrastructure remains strong.

CoreWeave has been a volatile stock. Shares went public at $40 a share in late March and then rallied to a high of $187 a share in June as retail traders clamored for a new AI name besides Nvidia to invest in. The stock has since pulled back and closed Monday at $93.55 a share. Shares are down roughly 38% year to date.