The software and services space is rapidly evolving, and staying ahead of emerging trends and key players can be challenging for businesses. Gaining quality insights from customer perspectives and industry experts can be a critical resource for businesses to outperform the competition and enhance their technology market research.
AlphaSense, a leading market intelligence platform, offers an extensive expert transcript library that allows research professionals to leverage direct feedback from structured interviews with buyers, influencers, and decision-makers across the public and private sectors.
Through our Voice of Customer (VoC) transcripts, executive-level customers have offered key perspectives on emerging players within the cloud computing space. Notably, CoreWeave has emerged as a formidable player, particularly in the realm of graphics processing unit (GPU) providers. This cloud GPU startup has attracted significant investment and garnered a loyal customer base thanks to its unique offerings and strategic partnerships.
Below, we explore key insights from our VoC transcripts that offer customer perspectives on the emergence of CoreWeave as a market disruptor and the viability of its product potential in the cloud GPU landscape.
The Emergence of CoreWeave
CoreWeave is a cloud computing powerhouse specializing in GPU-accelerated workloads. Initially rooted in Ethereum mining, the company has successfully transitioned to offering high-performance cloud infrastructure tailored for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, visual effects, and rendering applications. At the heart of CoreWeave’s offering is its robust infrastructure built around NVIDIA‘s cutting-edge GPUs.
CoreWeave recently secured $1.1 billion in Series C funding, catapulting its valuation to $19 billion, an impressive leap from its previous $642 million secondary sale in December 2023.
CoreWeave has become a viable option for companies needing on-demand, high-performance computing resources and is set apart in the competitive cloud market by its customer-centric approach. Unlike larger hyperscalers, CoreWeave is able to provide fast and personalized customer service, which has been a deciding factor in buying for some C-suite customers.
While the strategic partnership with NVIDIA enhances CoreWeave’s product offerings, CoreWeave’s continued investment in improving platform stability and flexibility will be crucial in maintaining its competitive edge.
Customer Perspectives on CoreWeave
AlphaSense’s Voice of the Customer expert transcripts foreshadowed CoreWeave’s emergence in the cloud market. Below are firsthand perspectives from CoreWeave’s C-suite customers and their expert insights on this emerging player.
Strategic Partnership with NVIDIA and Cutting-Edge GPU Performance
A former chief technical officer (CTO) of a CoreWeave customer company believes that CoreWeave’s strategic partnership with NVIDIA and the inherent cost advantages over major cloud providers are unique selling points.
“Why we became a customer of CoreWeave was because we did research and found that compared to the big three cloud providers and any other options in the market, they provided better GPUs. We’re talking NVIDIA RTX A6000s or other high-end GPUs at the time.”
– Former CTO, Customer | Expert Transcript
One customer company’s chief operating officer (COO) believes CoreWeave excels in offering specialized GPU services for AI model running and inference, gaming applications, and supporting diverse GPU profiles. The COO cites CoreWeave’s partnership with NVIDIA as a strategic advantage because it enables CoreWeave to access cutting-edge GPUs.
“There’s a couple of things they have that are different. One, they have a really strong partnership with NVIDIA. That, in and of itself, means they’ve had access to some of the cutting-edge GPUs. They were one of the first providers to offer H100, which is really, really helpful. That partnership with NVIDIA has been pretty key.
The other thing that they offer that’s really great is, as we’re using their services, they offer a tremendous amount of support.”
– COO, Customer | Expert Transcript
GPU Expertise and Personalized Customer Service
The COO expressed that CoreWeave’s expertise and hands-on support are highly appreciated. In the expert’s opinion, CoreWeave’s role as a thought partner and the significant reduction in management overhead is beneficial.
“They are experts when it comes to GPUs and AI models. It’s been really great to have them as partners when new models come out, when we’re benchmarking, or trying to figure out how we could use a model, how good it is, all that kind of stuff, or what box we should run it on, what type of GPU.
They have experts internally where they’re giving lots of good feedback about that. They’re giving us benchmarking statistics. They’re often working with some of the base model providers who are putting these out. That expertise is really, really great to tap into.
That’s very different than, say, the main cloud providers who, frankly, don’t have those connections, are not giving you that white glove service. We found a pretty big gap between what CoreWeave has been able to provide and then what the cloud service providers can actually provide, even though they say that they’ll do all those things. It’s never as good as they say.”
– COO, Customer | Expert Transcript
Additionally, CoreWeave’s focus on a startup-friendly atmosphere and direct support mechanisms cater to the needs of modern, agile businesses that require responsive and personalized support. This approach has resonated well with its customer base, as evidenced by the positive feedback from company executives.
The CTO praised CoreWeave’s cost model and support system, which offers a pay-per-minute billing model that aligns with its customers’ need for financial efficiency and scalability. For example, the platform’s direct customer support through a dedicated Slack channel and its startup-friendly approach are key advantages that enhance the overall user experience.
“Probably the second best feature is how strong their support is. The company I was working for had a direct Slack channel open to CoreWeave. I know they don’t do this for every customer, but we did have a direct Slack channel open to them which was very helpful. We could just ping the engineers and we would sometimes get responses from their CTO or the head of engineering and they were very helpful.”
– Former CTO, Customer | Expert Transcript
Challenges in a Competitive Market and Future Outlook
The cloud computing environment has evolved into a hybridization of both cloud and edge devices. As generative AI (genAI) adoption grows, hybrid environments are expected to define the next phase of AI evolution.
The CTO noted the emergence of small-scale edge computing businesses as potential disruptors in the market and the need for global expansion of CoreWeave’s product.
“We keep a moderate eye out and our customers even often suggest to us other providers that we could use. There’s a growth of edge computing businesses that are emerging, they’re smaller scale, edge is more small data centers in a bigger range of geographic locations. Those kinds of providers could come along and disrupt CoreWeave, I would say, because they can offer the same hardware in more variance of regions with less overhead because they’ve got smaller data centers.”
– Former CTO, Customer | Expert Transcript
Explore more about the adoption of genAI applications for internet and software companies in our report, Generative AI: The Road To Revolution.
Identify Emerging Tech Players with VoC Transcripts
AlphaSense’s VoC transcripts allow you to leverage direct feedback from established players and industry disruptors across the public and private sectors within the technology, media, and telecom (TMT) industry to gain a competitive edge on market movers, emerging trends, and product stickiness.
Learn more about how to conduct effective tech market research.
Identify winners and losers in the tech landscape with AlphaSense VoC transcripts. Start your free trial today.
Content Marketing Specialist
Ees is a Content Marketing Specialist at AlphaSense and responsible for elevating the brand of Expert Insights, a unique content set of alternative data, through the power of storytelling. Previously, Ees has been a seasoned copywriter across various industries throughout his career and also authored “masala chai,” an illustrated poetry book capturing his journey as a South Asian minority in America.
Read all posts written by Ees Qureshi
