The friends rush-ordered GPUs, also known as graphics chips, for same-day delivery from Amazon to start mining bitcoin while their enthusiasm ran hot. The powerful processors are prized for their ability to crunch the math of crypto-mining at high speeds. Over time, the hobby turned into a business called Atlantic Crypto, which filled a garage and later warehouses with GPUs. Some of the beefy chips were rented out via the cloud to armchair cryptocurrency miners.
Three senior executives met by phone one morning to decide how to avoid delaying the project. All happened to offer the same fix: Buy satellite internet through the convenient but not cheap Starlink service of Elon Musk’s SpaceX until the fiber provider showed up. It eliminated weeks of potential delay. “We have to be incredibly flexible,” Venturo says. Helter Skelter Lessons from early projects inform CoreWeave’s standard procedures today.