Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.27-174159/https://www.ft.com/content/1671684c-23a0-45e5-b6cf-16a210a7393c
Imagine this set-up for a new stock market listing. A transformational new technology has sparked an infrastructure spending boom. Entrepreneurs from outside the tech industry have spotted the opportunity to borrow heavily to build a new type of infrastructure company, narrowly focused on feeding the new demand. With Wall Street hungry for pure-play ways to invest in the new technology, the conditions for an IPO would seem opportune.
That could be a description of CoreWeave, the wholesaler of AI computing power. Its shares are set to start trading on Wall Street on Friday in a litmus test for the state of the AI capital spending boom.
But it could also describe Global Crossing, a hot telecom start-up from the late 1990s. At a time when the financial markets were transfixed by the potential of the early internet, Global Crossing amassed undersea fibre optic cables capable of handling a surge in traffic — much as CoreWeave has amassed banks of powerful graphics processing units made by Nvidia.