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Michael Intrator, founder and CEO of CoreWeave Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, attends his company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 28, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Wall Street banks waited a long time for a billion dollar IPO from a U.S. tech company. They’re not making much money from the one they got.

The underwriting discount and commissions paid by artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which hit the Nasdaq on Friday, amounted to just 2.8% of the total proceeds, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That means that of the $1.5 billion raised in the offering, $42 million went to underwriters.

That’s on the low side historically. Since Facebook’s record-setting IPO in 2012, there have been 25 venture-backed offerings for tech-related U.S. companies that have raised at least $1 billion, with an average underwriting fee of 4%, according to data from FactSet analyzed by CNBC. Facebook, in raising $16 billion, paid out the lowest percentage at 1.1%.

Morgan Stanley, which led the Facebook IPO, had the coveted lead left spot on CoreWeave, followed by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The three banks are typically the leaders when it comes to tech IPOs. They’ve been counting on a revival in the market under President Donald Trump after a lull dating back to the end of 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates put a halt on new offerings.

But CoreWeave’s initial trading sessions aren’t providing much confidence in a rebound. After lowering its price to $40 from a range of $47 to $55, CoreWeave failed to notch any gains on Friday and fell 7% on Monday to $37.20.

Declines in the broader market have weighed on CoreWeave, but investors also have specific concerns about the company, including its reliance on Microsoft as a customer, its hefty level of debt and the sustainability of a business model built around reselling Nvidia’s technology.

CoreWeave is the first among venture-backed companies to raise $1 billion or more since Freshworks in September of 2021. Freshworks carried an underwriting fee of 5.3%, while UiPath, which hit the market a few months earlier, paid 5%. In April of that year, AppLovin carried a 2.6% fee, the last time a billion-dollar offering had a lower fee than CoreWeave’s.

Among the few more recent IPOs — which all raised less than $1 billion — the fees were much higher. For Instacart and Klaviyo in 2023 and Reddit, Astera Labs, Rubrik and ServiceTitan last year, payouts were all at least 5%.

As lead in the CoreWeave deal, Morgan Stanley was given the highest percentage allocation of shares for clients at 27%. JPMorgan received 25%, and Goldman Sachs got 15%.

Those percentage allocations typically correspond fairly closely to how much of the fees each bank receives, though with a slightly higher amount to the lead bank for the management fee piece.

David Golden, a partner at Revolution Ventures who previously led tech investment banking at JPMorgan, said “there’s a little ‘black box’ involved in the underwriting compensation” that’s not disclosed in the prospectus. Based on his experience with IPOs and the historical norm, Golden estimated that Morgan Stanley got at least $13 million for its work, amounting to just over 30% of the total payout, while the number for Goldman Sachs would be slightly above $6 million.

Representatives from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. A spokesperson for JPMorgan didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Cramer’s Mad Dash on CoreWeave

Cramer's Mad Dash: CoreWeave

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Here’s how fusion energy could power your home or an AI data center

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Here's how fusion energy could power your home or an AI data center

Clean Start: Fusion energy gets new look from startup Type One Energy

The artificial intelligence boom has sent energy demand soaring. Some of the supercomputers sucking up all that power are helping to find new energy sources.

Fusion energy is the process of forcing two hydrogen atoms to combine and form one helium atom, which releases huge amounts of power. It uses a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor invented in the 1950’s that produces heat.

Until now, the technology was too difficult to deploy commercially.

But this old concept has brand new potential. Type One Energy, a startup based in Tennessee, claims to have proven that fusion energy will be able to produce electricity in the next decade.

“It’s going to create heat that’s going to boil water, make steam, run a turbine and put fusion electrons on the power grid on a 24/7 reliable basis,” said Type One Christofer Mowry.

AI has made it all practical.

“Things have really accelerated remarkably over the last five or six years,” Mowry said. “The supercomputers have allowed industry, academia and large institutions to develop now and actually test at large scale the science machines that demonstrate the process.”

Dozens of other companies are working on different approaches to fusion energy, but Mowry said Type One is so far the only one with the proven stellarator technology to implement at existing power plants. It will soon be tested with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

TDK Ventures is betting that Mowry is right.

“With Type One Energy solutions, we expect outsized return potential,” said Nicola Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures. “Fusion is no longer science fiction, and Type One Energy’s technology is catching up fast to the vision of this low-cost, continuous green energy.”

Type One is also backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Centaurus Capital, GD1, Foxglove Capital, and SeaX Ventures, and has raised a total of $82.4 million.

Fusion energy is different from nuclear power, and there’s no risk of a nuclear accident. The power source has no long-term radioactive waste, and, according to Mowry, can’t be weaponized.

But for handling AI, it could be a critical solution. Fusion energy can be deployed anywhere, whether it’s next to a data center or near a large industrial park that needs clean, reliable energy.

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CoreWeave shares soar 19% after $2 billion debt offering

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CoreWeave shares soar 19% after  billion debt offering

Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, gestures during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025. 

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

CoreWeave shares popped 19% after announcing a $2 billion debt offering.

The renter of artificial intelligence data centers powered by Nvidia chips said it had priced the notes at 9.25%, with a June 2030 maturity date. The deal represents a $500 million increase from its initial announcement.

CoreWeave said it plans to use the capital to pay off outstanding debt. The company confirmed to CNBC that the debt offering was five times oversubscribed.

In its first-quarter earnings report last week, CoreWeave said that it raised a total of $17.2 billion in equity and debt “to support its strategy to drive the next generation of cloud computing for the future of AI.” The company topped revenues expectations but posted wider-than-expected net loss and said it plans to spend big on capital expenditures to support infrastructure demand.

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During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans after some investors cast doubt on its debt, and demand durability. He said the company is meeting “demand signals” from some of its major clients.

In a call with analysts, CoreWeave said it has no debt maturities until 2028 other than payments related to vendor financing and “self-amortizing debt through committed contract payments.” The company said it had about $3.8 billion in current debt and $4.9 billion in non-current debt at the end of the quarter.

A year ago, CoreWeave announced that it had raised $7.5 billion in debt, led by Blackstone and Magnetar, to more heavily invest in its cloud data centers. CoreWeave said in its IPO prospectus that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”

CoreWeave counts Nvidia and Microsoft among its biggest customers and has signed two seperate deals with OpenAI, totaling nearly $16 billion.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven’t dented consumer spending

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven't dented consumer spending

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.

“We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”

Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Rival retailer Walmart warned last week that consumers could start seeing price hikes from tariffs later this month and in June. Within days, that sparked the ire of Trump, who urged the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS.”

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Target said Wednesday it will likely need to hike prices on some items, while Home Depot said it expects to maintain its current pricing levels.

Jassy said last month the company made some “strategic forward inventory buys” to stock up on goods and is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices low for shoppers.

Some third-party sellers, which account for roughly 60% of products sold, have increased prices on certain items, while others have opted to keep prices steady, Jassy said on Wednesday.

“I think that the diversity and the size of our marketplace really helps customers have the best selection of the best prices,” Jassy said.

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