CoreWeave has been rocked by dizzying stock swings—with its shares currently trading 52% below their post-IPO high—and it’s a frequent target of market commentators, but CEO Michael Intrator says the company’s move to the public markets has been “incredibly successful.” And he takes the public’s mixed reaction in stride, given the novelty of CoreWeave’s “neocloud” business, which competes with established cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud.
“When you introduce new models, introduce a new way of doing business, disrupt what has been a static environment, it’s going to take some people some time,” Intrator said Tuesday at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco. But, he added, more people are beginning to understand the CoreWeave business model.
“We came out into one of the most challenging environments,” Intrator said of CoreWeave’s March IPO, which occurred very close to President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. “In spite of the incredible headwinds, [we were] able to launch a successful IPO.”
CoreWeave, which priced its IPO at $40 per share, has experienced frequent severe up-and-down price swings in the eight months since its public market debut. At its closing price of $90.66 on Tuesday, the stock remains well above its IPO price.
