CoreWeave, Inc.

AI Cloud ComputingFounded 2017- HQ today: Livingston, New Jersey, United States

Founders

Who Founded CoreWeave?

Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee · Founded 2017 · HQ today: Livingston, New Jersey, United States

Who founded CoreWeave?

CoreWeave was founded by Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee in 2017. It is now led by Michael Intrator.

Founders: Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee
Founded: 2017
Headquarters: Livingston, New Jersey, United States
Number of founders: 3
Current CEO: Michael Intrator (since 2017)

Where was CoreWeave founded?: CoreWeave was founded in Roseland, New Jersey in 2017.
When was CoreWeave founded?: CoreWeave was founded in 2017.
Who started CoreWeave?: CoreWeave was founded by Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee.
How old is CoreWeave?: CoreWeave is 9 years old as of 2026.

Founding Story

CoreWeave began in 2017 as Atlantic Crypto, an Ethereum mining operation started in New Jersey by commodities traders Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee, with Peter Salanki also counted as a co-founder. After the 2018 crypto crash the team renamed the company CoreWeave in 2019 and began renting its GPUs to customers for rendering, machine learning and other compute work, which positioned it for the generative AI boom that began in 2022.

Michael Intrator

Background

Before CoreWeave, Intrator worked in energy and commodities trading and co-founded Hudson Ridge Asset Management, a natural gas-focused hedge fund.

Role at CoreWeave, Inc.

Michael Intrator is co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of CoreWeave. A former natural gas trader and hedge fund manager, he led the company's pivot from crypto mining to GPU cloud in 2019, its GPU-backed debt financings, the March 2025 Nasdaq IPO, and multi-billion-dollar contracts with Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Brian Venturo

Background

Venturo worked in energy and commodities trading, including at Hudson Ridge Asset Management, before co-founding Atlantic Crypto in 2017.

Role at CoreWeave, Inc.

Brian Venturo is a co-founder of CoreWeave and its Chief Strategy Officer, having previously served as CTO. He was central to turning the company's GPU mining fleet into a cloud platform and to its relationships with NVIDIA and large AI customers. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Brannin McBee

Background

Former hedge fund trader and early cryptocurrency miner.

Role at CoreWeave, Inc.

Brannin McBee co-founded CoreWeave in 2017. Working alongside his co-founders, he helped build the company's initial business model: buying massive amounts of cheap GPUs to mine Ethereum. When the crypto market crashed in 2018, he was instrumental in pivoting the massive hardware infrastructure toward rendering and eventually AI computing, entirely reinventing the company. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

CoreWeave, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Nitin Agrawal

Chief Financial Officer

2024 – Present

As CFO, he manages the incredibly capital-intensive nature of building out massive, hyperscale data centers, preparing the company for a highly anticipated IPO.

Sachin Jain

Chief Operating Officer

2024 – Present

As Chief Operating Officer, he is responsible for physically deploying the billions of dollars worth of NVIDIA hardware across the globe on incredibly tight deadlines.

Michael Intrator

Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

2017 – Present

As Co-Founder and CEO, he aggressively transitioned the company from a scrappy crypto mining operation into a $19 billion AI cloud computing behemoth, securing massive debt financing backed by the GPUs themselves.

Brian Venturo

Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

2017 – Present

As Co-Founder and CTO, he ensures the company maintains its absolute technical edge in maximizing the performance and networking speed of NVIDIA's most advanced silicon.

Brannin McBee

Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer

2017 – Present

As Chief Strategy Officer, he navigates the incredibly complex supply chain politics of the AI boom, securing power and real estate for massive new data centers.

Peter Salanki

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer

2017 – Present

As VP of Engineering, he leads the highly specialized infrastructure teams required to keep CoreWeave's massive supercomputers running at absolute maximum utilization.

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Who Founded CoreWeave? FAQ

Who are the three co-founders of CoreWeave?

CoreWeave was founded in 2017 by Michael Intrator (Chief Executive Officer), Brian Venturo (Chief Technology Officer), and Brannin McBee (Chief Strategy Officer) in Livingston, New Jersey.

What was Atlantic Crypto and how did it give birth to CoreWeave?

Atlantic Crypto was the original company founded in 2017 by Intrator, Venturo, and McBee in a New Jersey pool house. They purchased dozens of consumer graphics cards to mine Ethereum, scaling into one of the largest GPU-based crypto mining operations in North America before pivoting into cloud computing.

What motivated the founders to pivot from cryptocurrency to cloud computing in 2019?

Recognizing that crypto mining was volatile and unsustainable, the founders realized their large hardware fleet and deep expertise in GPU cluster cooling, power management, and high-density networking could solve the looming compute shortage for visual effects rendering and machine learning.

How did the founders finance the company's earliest infrastructure expansion?

In the early days, the founders bootstrapped operations using crypto mining profits and personal savings before securing early asset-backed credit lines from Magnetar Capital, avoiding large equity dilution while building out enterprise-grade data centers.

What early competitive advantage did the founders gain in GPU cluster management?

Because the founders had built and operated tens of thousands of GPUs under extreme conditions during their mining days, they mastered hardware thermal dynamics, power distribution, and automated failure detection years before mainstream cloud providers began scaling AI clusters.

What was the significance of the 2020 rebrand to CoreWeave?

In 2020, the company officially rebranded from Atlantic Crypto to CoreWeave, reflecting its transformed mission: weaving together physical GPU computing cores, high-bandwidth optical fabrics, and bare-metal orchestration into a unified enterprise AI cloud.

Are all three co-founders still active in executive leadership at CoreWeave?

Yes, Michael Intrator (CEO), Brian Venturo (CTO), and Brannin McBee (CSO) continue to lead the company's executive strategy, technical engineering, and corporate growth.

What early institutional venture fund recognized the founders' vision?

Alternative asset manager Magnetar Capital recognized the founders' vision in 2021, leading early funding rounds and providing foundational capital that allowed CoreWeave to secure early, large-scale allocations of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs.

Who founded CoreWeave?

It was founded by Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, and Brannin McBee. They brilliantly recognized the "crypto winter" was coming in 2019 and forcefully pivoted their entire massive hardware fleet toward AI rendering and machine learning just as the AI boom started.

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Who founded CoreWeave?

Founding Story

Michael Intrator

Background

Role at CoreWeave, Inc.

Brian Venturo

Background

Role at CoreWeave, Inc.

Brannin McBee

Background

Role at CoreWeave, Inc.

CoreWeave, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Compare CoreWeave, Inc. Leadership With Competitors

Keep researching CoreWeave

Who Founded CoreWeave? FAQ

Who are the three co-founders of CoreWeave?

What was Atlantic Crypto and how did it give birth to CoreWeave?

What motivated the founders to pivot from cryptocurrency to cloud computing in 2019?

How did the founders finance the company's earliest infrastructure expansion?

What early competitive advantage did the founders gain in GPU cluster management?

What was the significance of the 2020 rebrand to CoreWeave?

Are all three co-founders still active in executive leadership at CoreWeave?

What early institutional venture fund recognized the founders' vision?

Who founded CoreWeave?

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