It’s easy to interpret CoreWeave’s lackluster IPO and muted first day of trading on Friday as bad news for the entire AI boom. But, as I’ll explain in a moment, that’s likely a mistake: many of CoreWeave’s problems are unique to CoreWeave.

CoreWeave co-founder Brian Venturo knows that three hedge fund guys, turned crypto miners, now running AI training infrastructure has been a wild ride.

CoreWeave will only receive the profits from the 36,590,000 it sells. That means CoreWeave potentially raised more than $1.46 billion in its IPO. At its $40 per share IPO price, CoreWeave has a fully diluted valuation of around $23 billion, according to Reuters.

CoreWeave in recent years found itself in something of an enviable position. Starting out in 2017, it bought GPUs to supply to the cryptocurrency mining industry, only to pivot to AI when that became the hot new trend. CoreWeave is fundamentally a picks and shovels business: It supplies GPUs to an industry that has desperately sought them.

CoreWeave’s debut onto the Nasdaq Friday was bound to be historic, given that it’s the first time a “pure play AI cloud startup” entered the public markets. But what was once viewed as the year’s buzziest IPO wobbled amid a volatile market that’s considerably chilled on artificial intelligence specifically,

The cloud computing company’s cofounder Brannin McBee spoke to Forbes about the “important milestone” as shares started trading Friday.

Concerns sparked by CoreWeave's debt pile and other financial challenges may weigh on retail investor enthusiasm as it prepares to go public after what analysts said was a poorly timed IPO.

CoreWeave's debut has been eagerly awaited by investors as a sign of the strength of the AI trade as well as the appetite for new IPOs.

CoreWeave received the most proceeds from a U.S. technology IPO since automation software maker UiPath went public in 2021.

CoreWeave is the Tinker Bell of the artificial intelligence trade. Like the fairy from "Peter Pan", it is capable of soaring flight, growing revenue eightfold last year to $1.9 billion. Yet as the story goes,