March 20 (Reuters) - CoreWeave said on Thursday it was

targeting a valuation of up to $26 billion in its U.S. initial

public offering, as the Nvidia ( NVDA )-backed startup bets on

strong demand for generative artificial intelligence.

The AI boom, which has powered super-sized gains for

chipmakers such as Nvidia ( NVDA ) and other big tech firms, has driven a

surge in global demand for infrastructure such as data centers

and high-powered servers.

The cloud services provider and some of its investors are

looking to sell 49 million shares priced between $47 and $55

each to raise as much as $2.7 billion in the offering. Reuters

was the first to report the terms on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, CoreWeave signed a five-year contract

worth $11.9 billion with generative AI pioneer OpenAI, which

gives the ChatGPT maker a stake in the company. CoreWeave will

issue shares worth $350 million to OpenAI through a private

placement at the time of its IPO.

The offering is expected to be a key test of appetite for

AI-focused companies after the launch of Chinese startup

DeepSeek's low-cost model and an analyst report Microsoft ( MSFT ) had

cut back on data-center leases tempered the once red-hot demand.

The U.S. IPO market has struggled to regain momentum after a

near three-year slump, with still high interest rates and

economic uncertainty keeping many companies on the sidelines.

While there have been a handful of high-profile listings,

analysts say a broad revival hinges on larger, buzzy debuts that

can reignite confidence and draw more firms to the public

markets.

CoreWeave, which provides access to data centers and

high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia ( NVDA ),

is aiming to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CRWV."

In its IPO filing earlier in March, CoreWeave reported

revenue of $1.92 billion in 2024, compared with $228.9 million a

year earlier. Its net loss widened to $863.4 million during the

same period, from $593.7 million in 2023.

Roughly two-thirds of its revenue came from Microsoft ( MSFT )

.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are leading a

syndicate of Wall Street banks underwriting the offering.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj

Kalluvila)