CoreWeave co-founder warns of an impending data center crunch fueled by AI

CoreWeave expects global demand for AI to drive strong growth in the data center market over the next five years.

The demand for data centers that the AI boom will create over the next five years is massively underestimated, according to Brian Venturo, co-founder of cloud computing company CoreWeave. Speaking at the Bloomberg Intelligence Summit in New York, he described the daily requests his company receives for computing resources as "absurd". Many customers are trying to book entire campuses for themselves.

The industry will face challenges as the market moves faster than supply chains. Venturo predicts more "mega-campuses" that will strain power grids and spark political battles. Older data centers are difficult to upgrade because the existing power infrastructure cannot support their expansion. Microsoft and other companies are already exploring the possibility of using small nuclear power plants to supply electricity.

Nvidia expects more than $250 billion to be spent on data centers

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts that $250 billion will soon be spent annually on data center technology. Amazon alone plans to invest nearly $150 billion in data centers over the next 15 years, and Microsoft is rumored to be planning a $100 billion Stargate mega-campus. By comparison, Europe's fastest supercomputer, Jupiter, is said to cost 500 million euros.

CoreWeave also stands to benefit from this development. The company is reportedly in talks for a funding round that would double its valuation to $16 billion.

"It's a sprint. It's a sprint that requires all the capital in the world," Venturo said.