Axios House: Internal changes can protect against external forces, CoreWeave CEO says

DAVOS, Switzerland — Organizations and corporations should adapt to withstand shifting geopolitical headwinds and insulate themselves from the turbulence, CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Mike Intrator said at the World Economic Forum last week.

The big picture: As geopolitical uncertainty increases and alliances fray, top officials need to build business strategies that diversify portfolios and ensure long-term economic stability.

Axios' Ina Fried and Dave Lawler spoke to Intrator and Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates' founder and Dalio Family Office's founder and mentor. The conversations were sponsored by Mubadala Investment Company and MGX.

Driving the news: Chip developer Nvidia announced it would be investing $2 billion in CoreWeave, further solidifying the cloud company's central role in the AI boom.

What they're saying: "We are building our infrastructure in response to signed contracts with long-term demand," Intrator said.

• We look at "inference," Intrator explained — a signal that shows an AI model is being actively used — to confirm there's demand before moving forward.

Yes, but: "I'm not buying GPUs until Microsoft or Meta or Nvidia … comes and signs a contract with me," Intrator added.

• Relying on the creditworthiness of the organization helps "insulate my company" from pockets of risk, he said.

What's next: "The geopolitical order is changing," Dalio said.

• "Whoever wins the technology war will win the military [and] geopolitical war. They're going to win the economic war."

Content from the sponsor's segment:

In View from the Top conversations, Marc Antaki, Mubadala's deputy chief strategy and risk officer, and MGX CIO of artificial intelligence Ali Osman spoke to AI Leadership Lab moderator and host Ryan Heath.

• "Resilience at Mubadala comes from three things: a resilient strategy … a resilient portfolio … [and] resilient institutions," Antaki said.
• "Making sure that you have compute, the right geographies, the right scale, backed by the right hyperscalers, built by the right developers … is critical to the success of the industry," Osman told Heath.

Go deeper: Watch the full interviews on YouTube.