The Wall Street Journal reports:

CoreWeave, the largest of a new breed of companies driving the artificial-intelligence boom, has watched $33 billion of value vaporize in six weeks.

The share-price plunge of 46% comes as investors worry about a possible AI bubble, the fallout from a failed merger and public criticism from high-profile short seller Jim Chanos, known for predicting the collapse of Enron.

But some of the high-tech company’s biggest problems began with a very low-tech nuisance: unexpectedly turbulent rainstorms in North Texas.

Over the summer, heavy rains and winds caused a roughly 60-day delay at a construction site in Denton, a small city north of Dallas, preventing contractors from pouring concrete for a major AI data-center complex, according to people familiar with the matter.

As a result, the completion date for the huge data-center cluster, consisting of about 260 megawatts of computing power that CoreWeave plans to lease to OpenAI, has been pushed back several months. There were additional delays caused by revisions to design plans for some of the data centers a partner is building for CoreWeave in Texas and elsewhere, according to filings.

The slowdown was compounded by mixed messaging from CoreWeave’s chief executive officer, Michael Intrator, which spooked investors and accelerated the company’s share-price decline at a particularly vulnerable moment for the AI trade.

CoreWeave’s business model involves using high-interest debt to buy thousands of advanced AI chips from Nvidia, installing them in server racks inside data centers that it leases from third-party landlords, then renting access to the chips to AI companies. [Continue reading…]