** Shares of CoreWeave CRWV.O, artificial intelligence startup backed by Nvidia NVDA.O, set to debut on the Nasdaq with ticker "CRWV" on Fri after hotly-anticipated IPO prices well below expectations

** Livingston, New Jersey-based co late Thurs announced 37.5 mln shares at $40 for total raise of $1.5 bln, and valuing co at roughly $23 bln

** Co and some of its existing shareholders had planned to sell 49 mln shares at $47-$55, or up to $2.7 bln

** Nvidia, which has ~6% stake, reportedly buying $250 mln worth of IPO shares

** Founded in 2017 as a crypto mining firm, CoreWeave provides access to data centers and high-powered chips for AI workloads, mainly supplied by Nvidia, and competes against cloud providers like Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS

** In 2024, CoreWeave's rev surged more than eightfold to $1.9 bln, though has been unprofitable. Microsoft MSFT.O, which is also a customer, accounted for nearly two-thirds of CoreWeave's rev last year

** Earlier this week, D.A. Davidson initiated coverage of CoreWeave at 'neutral', saying co is "the largest in the new neocloud category, but we see it mostly as a highly levered way for Microsoft to offload less desirable workloads and Nvidia to leverage a small investment into a very large customer”

** “This structure may continue to work as long as demand for AI continues to grow exponentially,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria wrote in note

** CoreWeave's IPO is seen as a critical barometer of investor appetite for new listings, and whether enthusiasm for AI-related names remains buoyant or has waned, especially since the launch of China's DeepSeek

** Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs leading an 18-firm underwriting group for the IPO

** The offering comes as markets have been roiled by President Donald Trump's tariff salvos and concerns of a slowing U.S. economy

** Through Thurs, the S&P 500 .SPX and Nasdaq .IXIC have lost 3% and ~8%, respectively, YTD. And chipmakers have been thumped, evidenced by ~11% drop in the Philadelphia semiconductor index .SOX this year, while Nvidia's stock has shed 17%

(Lance Tupper is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)

((lance.tupper@tr.com 1-646-279-6380))