Billionaire AI boss Michael Intrator just pulled off one of the fastest wealth surges in tech history. His cloud-computing firm, CoreWeave, limped out of the gates after its IPO earlier this year. But fresh deals with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia have catapulted it into Wall Street’s good graces. In the last two months alone, CoreWeave’s stock has tripled, minting new fortunes in the process.
Forget Apple, Amazon, or Microsoft — this year’s breakout tech stock belongs to a company few had heard of six months ago.
CoreWeave, once an obscure AI cloud startup, went public in March at a disappointing $40 per share. But in just the past two months, its stock has rocketed nearly 300% — and so has the fortune of shareholders like co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator.
The 56-year-old former hedge fund manager’s net worth has more than doubled in the past 12 days, soaring from $5 billion to $10 billion, according to Bloomberg. Reaching double-digit billionaire status typically takes about three years and four months on average; Intrator pulled it off roughly 101 times faster.
Despite the company’s sluggish start, Intrator always believed CoreWeave — and his own stake in it — would deliver immense rewards.
“I don’t really care where it is today or tomorrow or the day after, but I believe fundamentally, the business model that we have, the software solutions that we have, the capacity to build and deliver this and the demand we see in front of us will lead to enormous value to our clients over time,” Intrator previously told Fortune.
CoreWeave’s success has lifted more than just its CEO’s fortunes. Fellow cofounders have seen massive gains as well. Bloomberg reports that chief strategy officer Brian Venturo is now worth $6.4 billion, while Brannin McBee, the company’s chief development officer, holds a net worth of $4.7 billion.
Much of their newfound wealth stems from CoreWeave landing heavyweight clients and partners — including Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft — positioning itself as a crucial player in AI infrastructure.
And though CoreWeave is shaking up the tech landscape, none of its three founders originally came from the tech industry. All were finance professionals, a reminder that breaking into AI doesn’t always require a Silicon Valley pedigree.
Still, knowing the right people helps. CoreWeave brought in Nitin Agrawal last year as chief financial officer. Agrawal previously served as VP of finance at Google Cloud and held leadership roles at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft — experience that has helped steer the company through hyper-growth.
Yet, even amid this bullish momentum, CoreWeave’s future isn’t guaranteed. Intrator’s windfall echoes the meteoric — and fleeting — rise of other recent IPOs. For example, conservative media outlet Newsmax saw its stock soar 735% after its March IPO, briefly giving founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy a $3.3 billion fortune. But as the stock crashed, Ruddy lost his billionaire status almost as quickly as he gained it.
