11:21 AM EDT, 05/17/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Blackstone (BX) and Magnetar are leading a $7.5 billion debt financing facility for privately held artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave, supporting the development of critical infrastructure key to AI adoption, according to a joint statement released Friday.

CoreWeave, a supplier of Nvidia's ( NVDA ) chips, has raised more than $12 billion from equity and debt investors over the past 12 months. The amount raised includes a $1.1 billion series C in May led by Coatue and a $2.3 billion debt financing facility led by Blackstone and Magnetar last August.

Magnetar is co-lead investor with Blackstone on the new debt facility, while Coatue is serving as a strategic participant, according to the announcement. Other participants include Carlyle (CG), CDPQ, DigitalBridge Credit, Eldridge Industries, and Great Elm Capital.

The financing will strengthen CoreWeave's market leadership in the cloud infrastructure space by further developing its ability to provide specialized graphics processing units that are key to supporting "today's explosive growth in AI," Blackstone Senior Managing Director Jasvinder Khaira and Managing Director John Watson said in a joint statement.

"AI and digital infrastructure are among our highest conviction themes at Blackstone and we are excited to leverage our global platform and flexible capital to support management as it rapidly deploys AI infrastructure at enormous scale," they said.

The new financing will enable CoreWeave to "execute existing contracts with leading enterprise customers and AI innovators," the companies said.

"The caliber of investors in this large debt financing round is a powerful testament to both the insatiable market appetite for AI infrastructure and their belief in CoreWeave's ability to deliver cutting edge innovation for the largest AI labs and innovators at scale," CoreWeave Chief Executive Michael Intrator said. "And we are really just getting started."

After more than quadrupling its data center presence to 14 in 2023, CoreWeave expects to double its data center footprint to 28 globally by the end of this year. The company recently announced a new European headquarters in London and commitment to invest $1.25 billion in the region.

"As the first institutional investor in CoreWeave, we have witnessed firsthand their remarkable evolution from a small startup to a go-to-market leader in advanced AI computing solutions," said David Snyderman, managing partner at Magnetar. "Given their already substantial and expanding AI infrastructure capabilities, coupled with enhanced institutional backing, CoreWeave is exceptionally well-positioned to deliver high performance compute."

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