As filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 20, 2025.
Registration No. 333-285512
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
AMENDMENT NO. 2 TO
FORM S-1
REGISTRATION STATEMENT
UNDER
THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933
COREWEAVE, INC.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
Delaware | 7372 | 82-3060021 | ||
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) |
(Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification Number) |
290 W Mt. Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100
Livingston, NJ 07039
(973) 270-9737
(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrants principal executive offices)
Michael Intrator
Chief Executive Officer
290 W Mt. Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100
Livingston, NJ 07039
(973) 270-9737
(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)
Michael A. Brown Ran D. Ben-Tzur Jennifer J. Hitchcock Aman D. Singh Chance L. Goldberg Fenwick & West LLP (212) 430-2600 |
Kristen McVeety General Counsel Nisha Antony Deputy General Counsel CoreWeave, Inc. 290 W Mt.
Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100 (973) 270-9737 |
Richard A. Kline Keith L. Halverstam Salvatore Vanchieri Erica D. Kassman Latham & Watkins LLP 1271 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 (212) 906-1675 |
Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to the public:
As soon as practicable after the effective date of this registration statement.
If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or Securities Act, check the following box: ☐
If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of large accelerated filer, accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, and emerging growth company in Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
Large accelerated filer |
☐ |
Accelerated filer |
☐ | |||
Non-accelerated filer |
☒ |
Smaller reporting company |
☐ | |||
Emerging growth company |
☒ |
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act. ☐
The registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act or until the registration statement shall become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.
The information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed. We and the selling stockholders may not sell these securities until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This preliminary prospectus is not an offer to sell these securities and we and the selling stockholders are not soliciting offers to buy these securities in any jurisdiction where the offer or sale is not permitted.
SUBJECT TO COMPLETION, DATED MARCH 20, 2025
PRELIMINARY PROSPECTUS
49,000,000 Shares
CoreWeave, Inc.
Class A Common Stock
This is the initial public offering of shares of Class A common stock of CoreWeave, Inc. We are offering 47,178,660 shares of our Class A common stock and the selling stockholders identified in this prospectus are offering 1,821,340 shares of our Class A common stock in this offering.
Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock by any of the selling stockholders. We expect that the initial public offering price per share of our Class A common stock will be between $47.00 and $55.00 per share.
We have applied to list our Class A common stock on The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (Nasdaq) under the symbol CRWV. This offering is contingent upon final approval of our listing of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq.
Following this offering, we will have three series of authorized common stock, Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock. The rights of the holders of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock are identical, except with respect to voting and conversion rights. Each share of our Class A common stock is entitled to one vote per share. Each share of our Class B common stock is entitled to ten votes per share and, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions as described herein, is convertible into one share of our Class A common stock. Each share of Class C common stock will be entitled to no votes and, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions as described herein, is convertible into one share of our Class A common stock. Immediately following the completion of this offering, and assuming no exercise of the underwriters option to purchase additional shares to cover over-allotments, if any, Michael Intrator, our co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors, will hold approximately 37.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, Brian Venturo, our co-founder, Chief Strategy Officer and a member of our board of directors, will hold approximately 23.2% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, and Brannin McBee, our co-founder and Chief Development Officer, will hold approximately 18.7% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo, and Mr. McBee are our Co-Founders and collectively will hold approximately 79.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock immediately following the completion of this offering. As a result, following this offering, our Co-Founders, together, may have significant influence over the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of our directors and the approval of any change of control transaction.
We will be treated as an emerging growth company as defined under the federal securities laws for certain purposes until we complete this offering. As such, in this prospectus we have taken advantage of certain reduced disclosure obligations that apply to emerging growth companies.
Investing in our Class A common stock involves risks. See the section titled Risk Factors beginning on page 27 to read about factors you should consider before buying shares of our Class A common stock.
Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any other regulatory body has approved or disapproved of these securities or passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.
Per Share |
Total |
|||||||
Initial public offering price |
$ | $ | ||||||
Underwriting discounts and commissions(1) |
$ | $ | ||||||
Proceeds, before expenses, to us |
$ | $ | ||||||
Proceeds, before expenses, to Selling Stockholders |
$ | $ |
(1) | See the section titled Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest) for a description of the compensation payable to the underwriters. |
The underwriters have the option for a period of 30 days from the date of this prospectus to purchase up to an additional 7,350,000 shares of our Class A common stock from us to cover over-allotments, if any, at the initial public offering price less underwriting discounts and commissions.
At our request, the underwriters have reserved up to 2,450,000 shares of our Class A common stock, or 5% of the shares offered by this prospectus, for sale at the initial public offering price through a directed share program to our current employees, including management, other service providers, and other individuals and entities as determined by certain of our authorized officers. For more information on our directed share program, see the section titled Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest)Directed Share Program.
The underwriters expect to deliver the shares of our Class A common stock to purchasers on or about , 2025.
MORGAN STANLEY | J.P. MORGAN |
GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. LLC |
BARCLAYS | CITIGROUP | MUFG | ||||||
DEUTSCHE BANK SECURITIES | JEFFERIES |
MIZUHO |
WELLS FARGO SECURITIES | BOFA SECURITIES |
GUGGENHEIM SECURITIES | M. KLEIN & COMPANY | MACQUARIE CAPITAL |
NEEDHAM & COMPANY | SANTANDER | STIFEL | GALAXY DIGITAL |
Prospectus dated , 2025
Page | ||||
ii | ||||
1 | ||||
27 | ||||
86 | ||||
88 | ||||
89 | ||||
90 | ||||
91 | ||||
94 | ||||
MANAGEMENTS DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS |
97 | |||
132 | ||||
166 | ||||
178 | ||||
190 | ||||
201 |
Page | ||||
207 | ||||
216 | ||||
227 | ||||
MATERIAL U.S. FEDERAL INCOME TAX CONSIDERATIONS FOR NON-U.S. HOLDERS OF OUR CLASS A COMMON STOCK |
235 | |||
240 | ||||
257 | ||||
258 | ||||
259 | ||||
259 | ||||
260 | ||||
F-1 |
Through and including , 2025 (the 25th day after the date of this prospectus), all dealers effecting transactions in these securities, whether or not participating in this offering, may be required to deliver a prospectus. This is in addition to a dealers obligation to deliver a prospectus when acting as an underwriter and with respect to an unsold allotment or subscription.
Neither we, the selling stockholders, nor the underwriters have authorized anyone to provide any information or to make any representations other than those contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectuses filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Neither we, the selling stockholders, nor any of the underwriters take any responsibility for, and can provide no assurance as to the reliability of, any other information that others may give you. This prospectus is an offer to sell only the shares offered hereby, but only under circumstances and in jurisdictions where it is lawful to do so. We and the selling stockholders are offering to sell, and seeking offers to buy, shares of our Class A common stock only in jurisdictions where offers and sales are permitted. The information contained in this prospectus is accurate only as of the date of this prospectus, regardless of the time of delivery of this prospectus or of any sale of the shares of our Class A common stock. Our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may have changed since that date.
For investors outside the United States: Neither we, the selling stockholders, nor any of the underwriters have taken any action that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. You are required to inform yourselves about and to observe any restrictions relating to this offering and the distribution of this prospectus.
Unless otherwise indicated, the terms CoreWeave, the Company, we, us, and our refer to CoreWeave, Inc. and our subsidiaries.
i
Abstraction. The process of reducing complexity to simplify the way a developer or user interacts with an underlying system, component, or particular layer of a technology stack. OpenAIs ChatGPT API is an example of an abstraction layer as it allows organizations to integrate conversational AI capabilities into their applications without requiring developers to build and fine-tune the underlying model or manage its computing resources.
Artificial Intelligence (AI). A technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and autonomy.
AI Enterprises. Large companies whose business and product are not AI, but are being driven by AI. These include Fortune 500 companies and other large enterprises with business models that are increasingly AI-enabled through their own development efforts and/or that leverage AI directly to drive internal efficiency gains.
AI infrastructure. The combination of high-performance computing, networking, and storage components that collectively enables the development and deployment of AI models.
AI Natives. Organizations whose core competency and singular focus is AI. These companies serve as important layers of abstraction for the market and enable end customers across industries to unlock the power of AI, typically by building and delivering access to their own foundational models or by providing solutions to make AI adoption easier.
Application Programming Interface (API). A set of protocols and tools that enable different software systems to communicate and share data, often to abstract complex functionality into simpler commands.
Bare Metal. Computing nodes that have removed the virtualization layer to provide direct access to resources to run training, inference, and experimentation with maximum performance and low latency.
Burn-in. The testing process where hardware components, such as processors or servers, are operated continuously for an extended period under stress conditions to identify potential failures or defects before deployment.
CoreWeave Kubernetes Service (CKS). A fully managed, cloud-based container management deployment framework and orchestration solution with automated processes specialized for handling AI workloads.
Central Processing Unit (CPU). The primary processor of a computer that performs general-purpose tasks by executing the instructions of a computer program.
Chips. Integrated circuits or processors such as GPUs and CPUs that are designed to perform specific computational tasks or general-purpose processing.
Compute. The processing power required to execute software tasks and applications, such as running AI workloads, and typically provided by GPUs, CPUs, or other specialized chips.
Containerized. Applications or processes that are packaged in a container. A container is an abstract, stand-alone unit of software that has everything needed to execute a specific task, including the code, runtime, system tools, and system libraries. Containers may be scaled across computer nodes using orchestration tools and run independently from one another, isolating AI models and their dependencies from others on the same machine.
CoreWeave Cloud Platform. Our integrated and proprietary software solution that enables the provisioning of cloud AI infrastructure, the orchestration of AI workloads, and the monitoring of our hardware fleet that is deployed in active purpose-built data centers.
ii
Cluster. A collection of interconnected servers or nodes working together as a unified system on a single task simultaneously, distributing the workload across the system to improve computational efficiency.
Data centers. References to our data centers refer to a data center, or portion of a data center, that we may lease or own, for which we are receiving active power.
Data Processing Unit (DPU). A specialized processor designed to handle data-intensive tasks such as network processing, storage management, and security. DPUs are becoming increasingly critical in high-performance computing settings where they are used to offload data-intensive tasks, which frees up GPU and CPU resources for more critical compute tasks.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Tools and policies designed to prevent sensitive data from being leaked, stolen, or accidentally shared outside of an organization.
Fleet LifeCycle Controller (FLCC). An observability solution in the Mission Control suite that automates node provisioning, testing, and monitoring to validate nodes and systems for Day 1 operations and beyond.
Floating Point Operations per Second (FLOPS). A metric commonly used by industry participants to measure the computer performance of computing, calculated as the number of floating point operations (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) that can be calculated in a single second.
Foundational models. AI models designed for broad applicability, including large language models (LLMs), which are a subset of foundational models that are trained on massive data sets and designed to process and generate human-like language.
Generalized clouds. Cloud computing platforms that offer a range of services (including compute, storage, and networking) not tailored to a specific purpose. These platforms were designed to excel at general purpose, CPU-based use cases such as e-commerce, web hosting, and databases.
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). A type of processor optimized for parallel data processing, widely used in graphics rendering and high-performance computing tasks. GPUs are built on underlying design architectures that define how the GPU will operate, including its processing cores, memory systems, data pathways, and features. NVIDIA A100s and H100s are examples of GPUs that are based on the Ampere and Hopper architectures, respectively.
Hyperscaler. A cloud provider or technology company that is capable of delivering computing infrastructure and services at massive scale, typically through large data centers and geographically distributed networks.
Inference. The process of using a trained AI model to generate predictions or outputs based on new input data.
Instances. Virtualized computing environments or virtual machines that run on cloud infrastructure and can be scaled up or down based on usage need. In high-performance cloud computing settings, instances can include a specific allocation of GPU resources, memory, and storage allowing users to rent hardware resources that map to a node, part of a node, or multiple nodes, depending on the configuration.
ISO 27001. An international standard for managing information security, which outlines best practices for protecting sensitive data through a structured framework of processes, policies, and controls.
Kubernetes. A container orchestration platform designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes is extensively used for inference workloads given its ability to scale and effectively handle dynamic, real time or batch requests across containers.
iii
Liquid cooling. A method of heat removal being applied in high-performance computing data centers that uses liquid, such as water or a coolant, to absorb and transfer heat away from critical hardware components. Liquid cooling is generally considered superior to air cooling in high-performance compute settings because liquid cooling allows for more efficient heat transfer due to greater cooling capacity that can support higher heat loads, and generally supports high compute densities due to less reliance on bulky airflow management infrastructure.
Mission Control. A proprietary suite of software and operational services designed to ensure optimal setup and functionality of infrastructure components throughout their entire lifecycle, preventing and rapidly remediating issues and enhancing performance. This includes our Observability solution, which provides access to a rich collection of node and system-level metrics that help prevent or quickly identify system faults and restore system-level performance.
MLPerf. An industry-standard benchmark suite to fairly evaluate AI and machine learning system performance across both hardware and software.
Model FLOPS utilization (MFU). A metric commonly used by industry participants that measures how efficiently a model is using the computational power of the hardware it is running on by dividing the observed throughput by the theoretical system maximum if it operates at peak FLOPs.
Networking technology. The hardware and protocols that enable communication and data exchange between devices, systems, or servers.
Nimbus. A control and data-plane software service running on DPUs inside Bare Metal instances, performing the typical role of a hypervisor in enabling security, flexibility, and performance.
Nodes. Individual computing devices or units within a distributed compute system, often part of a cluster or network. Nodes typically contain one or more processors along with memory, storage, and a high-speed network connection to communicate with other nodes.
Node LifeCycle Controller (NLCC). An observability solution in the Mission Control suite that proactively assesses ongoing node health and performance to ensure problematic nodes are replaced with healthy ones before they cause failures.
Non-Volatile Memory Express Solid-State Drives (NVMe SSDs). High-performance storage devices that are designed to deliver ultra-low latency and high throughput, making them ideal for high-performance computing workloads. They use the NVMe protocol to access flash memory via the PCI-Express interface.
Observability. Tools and practices used to understand the state of a system by collecting and analyzing metrics, data logs, and health indicators to monitor performance and detect issues.
Orchestration. Refers to the automated coordination, management, and optimization of containers, services, or complex workloads across distributed computing environments to efficiently run AI applications.
PCI-Express (PCIe). A high-speed interface standard used to connect hardware components like GPUs, NVMe SSDs, and network cards directly to a systems motherboard. It has a scalable architecture that allows for significant bandwidth, making it highly effective for data intensive tasks such as AI training.
Provisioning. The act of allocating and configuring computing resources such as GPUs to meet the needs of an application. This entails activities such as defining the type and quantity of compute resources needed based on the workload, installing the required operating system and necessary software frameworks, setting up networking rules and access permissions, and configuring firewalls and authentication protocols.
iv
Rack. A standardized enclosure used in data centers to house servers, networking devices, and other hardware.
Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO). The aggregate total of our committed contract obligations that are yet to be delivered to our customers, inclusive of both billed and unbilled amounts.
Serving models. Providing access to deployed models in a production environment where they fulfill or serve real-time or batch processing of user requests.
Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (Slurm). An open-source workload manager used in high-performance computing environments to allocate resources and schedule tasks across clusters. Slurm is particularly effective for model training, where large-scale parallelized computations need to be efficiently scheduled and distributed across compute nodes.
Service Organization Control 2 (SOC2). A cybersecurity compliance framework that ensures third-party service providers securely store and process client data.
Slurm on Kubernetes (SUNK). A proprietary offering that optimizes workload fungibility and enables greater resource flexibility by allowing customers to run Slurm jobs on Kubernetes and colocate jobs on the same cluster.
Take-or-pay. Contract arrangements where the customer commits to paying for a minimum specified amount of services or usage, regardless of whether they fully utilize those services.
Technology stack. The totality of the infrastructure hardware, software, and services that together support the operation of a system.
Tensorizer. A training and inference optimization solution that loads a model rapidly from storage directly into GPU memory from a variety of different endpoints.
Training. The iterative process of optimizing an AI models algorithm by exposing it to data and adjusting parameters to improve its accuracy or performance.
Validation. The process of confirming that a system or component, such as GPU node, meets predefined requirements and functions correctly under specified conditions.
Virtualization. The creation of virtual instances of computing resources (e.g., servers or storage) that operate independently of the underlying physical hardware.
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). A private, isolated network hosted within a public cloud, allowing organizations to manage and secure their resources with the flexibility of cloud computing while maintaining control over access and traffic.
Workloads. The computational tasks or applications, such as training AI models or running inference, that consume resources like GPU, memory, and storage in a computing environment.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR). A security tool that combines and analyzes data from multiple sources to detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats in an integrated manner.
v
This summary highlights selected information that is presented in greater detail elsewhere in this prospectus. This summary does not contain all of the information you should consider before investing in our Class A common stock. This summary contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. You should carefully read this prospectus in its entirety before investing in our Class A common stock, including the sections titled Risk Factors, Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements, and our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes included elsewhere in this prospectus before making an investment decision.
Overview
CoreWeave powers the creation and delivery of the intelligence that drives innovation.
We are the AI HyperscalerTM driving the AI revolution.1 Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform consists of our proprietary software and cloud services that deliver the software and software intelligence needed to manage complex AI infrastructure at scale. Our platform supports the development and use of ground-breaking models and the delivery of the next generation of AI applications that are changing the way we live and work across the globeour platform is trusted by some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises, including Cohere Inc. (Cohere), International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta), Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft), Mistral AI SAS (Mistral), NVIDIA Corporation (NVIDIA), and OpenAI OpCo, LLC (OpenAI).
We believe AI is the next frontier for innovation in technology, driving productivity and efficiency gains and enabling new business models in nearly every industry and organization. According to IDC, AI will generate a cumulative global economic impact of $20 trillion, or 3.5% of global GDP, by 2030. The generalized cloud infrastructure that drove the cloud revolution beginning in the 2000s was built to host websites, databases, and SaaS apps that have fundamentally different needs than the high performance requirements of AI. As workloads and technologies evolve, so too must the infrastructure and cloud software and services that power them. We believe we are at the start of a new cloud era that will drive the AI revolution. The opportunity for a purpose-built AI cloud platform, including the infrastructure and integrated software, is massive. Based on market research from Bloomberg Intelligence, total spending on AI inference/fine-tuning, AI workload monitoring, and training infrastructure, including AI servers, AI storage, training compute, cloud workloads, and networking, will reach approximately $399 billion by 2028. For AI to reach its full potential, it needs a purpose-built AI cloud platform with infrastructure and managed cloud services that are delivered in an efficient, automated, and highly performant way. Enter CoreWeave, the AI HyperscalerTM.
We purpose-built our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to be the infrastructure and application platform for AI. Our platform manages the complexity of engineering, assembling, running, and monitoring state-of-the-art infrastructure at a massive scale to deliver high performance and efficiency to AI workloads. Through our proprietary software capabilities, we enable our customers to achieve substantially higher total system performance and more favorable uptime relative to other AI offerings within existing infrastructure cloud environments and unlock speed at scale. By delivering more compute cycles to AI workloads and thereby reducing the time required to train models, our capabilities can significantly accelerate the time to solution for customers in the ongoing hyper-competitive race to build the next bleeding-edge AI models. For example, in June 2023, our NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU training cluster completed the MLPerf benchmark test (which
1 | Based on our exclusive focus on AI cloud computing at the scale and with the capabilities of our platform, solutions, and services as compared to competing hyperscalers and our customer relationships with leading AI labs and AI enterprises, which position us to be among the first to experience and solve the challenges facing the AI cloud computing industry at scale. |
1
benchmarks how quickly a system can train a model from scratch) in eleven minutesa record and 29 times faster than the next best competitor at the time of the benchmark test.
These efficiencies also extend from training to inference use cases, as our CoreWeave Cloud Platform significantly improves both run-time efficiency for inference workloads and enables overall higher AI application uptime. These performance gains help to ensure lower performance-adjusted costs and a superior end-user experience. The supercomputers we build to power our platform are optimized to support many types of AI workloads, and they are augmented by our suite of cloud services to deliver meaningful time and cost savings to customers through our orchestration, automation, and monitoring capabilities.
Our multidisciplinary, customer-centric team has a proven ability to conceptualize, design, and implement solutions to solve the most complex engineering challenges in the pursuit of furthering AI. We hire individuals who help contribute to and maintain a culture centered around solving the most complex AI infrastructure scaling, performance, and reliability challenges.
Customers utilize our platform through a set of cloud services comprising Infrastructure Services, Managed Software Services, and Application Software Services, all augmented by our Mission Control and Observability software. Our comprehensive and integrated cloud services work together as a suite to deliver state-of-the-art compute, networking, and storage. These services enable the provisioning of infrastructure, the orchestration of workloads, and the proactive monitoring of our customers training and inference environments to increase performance and minimize interruptions.
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is hosted in our distributed network of active purpose-built data centers that are interconnected using low latency connections to major metropolitan areas, and incorporate state-of-the-art data center networking equipment, enhanced access to power and, where appropriate, the latest liquid cooling technologies. As of December 31, 2024, our 32 data centers were running more than 250,000 GPUs in total, and were supported by more than 360 MW of active power. Our total contracted power extends to approximately 1.3 GW as of December 31, 2024, which we expect to roll out over the coming years.
We benefit from robust collaborations with leading chipmakers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and software providers to supply us with infrastructure components and other products. We have a proven track record of rapidly expanding our power capacity to support the growth of our data center footprint along with our collection of managed cloud services. We deploy a sophisticated financing strategy and have efficiently financed the development of additional compute capacity through the use of asset-backed debt, having raised total commitments of $12.9 billion in debt through December 31, 2024 to support the development of our platform.
Our customers include some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprisesthe builders and integrators of AIwho depend on our platform for their core products and most promising innovations. We deliver significant benefits to our customers in terms of overall performance, time to market, and reduced cost of ownership, which results in our customers making large, long-term initial commitments and expanding those commitments with us over time. The vast majority of our revenue today is from multi-year committed contracts, whereby a customer purchases access to our platform over the contract term on a take-or-pay basis. We also sell access to our platform on an on-demand basis through a pay-as-you-go model. As of December 31, 2024, we had $15.1 billion of remaining performance obligations reflecting an increase of 53%, from $9.9 billion as of December 31, 2023. Microsoft, our largest customer for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, will represent less than 50% of our expected future committed contract revenues when combining our RPO balance of $15.1 billion as of December 31, 2024 and up to $11.55 billion of future revenue from our recently signed Master Services Agreement with OpenAI, as described herein.
2
Our ability to abstract away the complexity our customers would face in assembling, managing, and deploying this infrastructure themselves establishes us as a critical partner and leads to long-term, durable relationships that have the potential to expand over time. As evidence of this, three of our top five committed contract customers by total contract value (TCV) as of December 31, 2024 signed agreements for additional capacity within 12 months of their respective initial purchase dates. These agreements, measured during each respective 12-month period from the initial date of signing, represent a cumulative increase of approximately $7.8 billion in committed spend and a multiple of approximately 4x on initial contract value. Our deep relationships with customers are a competitive advantage, and our first-to-market track record with highly performant technology gives customers confidence in choosing CoreWeave.
Some of the most ambitious compute-intensive projects in the world are powered by our platform, and our business has grown rapidly since our inception. Our revenue was $16 million, $229 million, and $1.9 billion for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 1,346% and 737%, respectively. During these periods, we continued to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a result, our net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $31 million, $594 million, and $863 million, respectively. Our adjusted net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $27 million, $45 million, and $65 million, respectively. See the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsNon-GAAP Financial Measures for information regarding our use of adjusted net (loss) income and a reconciliation of net loss to adjusted net (loss) income.
Industry Background
AI represents the next major evolution of technology, and its impact is potentially greater than the transformational shifts of the past. It is akin to a new industrial revolution delivering significant productivity gains, enabling new products that are poised to radically reshape and transform industries, and helping organizations become far more efficient.
Demand and Supply Side Factors Enabling AI
A combination of demand and supply side factors is enabling the massive and unprecedented growth of AI and powering the new industrial revolution.
Demand Side Factors
| AI has advanced significantly. |
| AI is significantly improving outcomes for businesses and individuals. |
| AI is a strategic priority for organizations. |
Supply Side Factors
| Foundational models are pervasive and effective. |
| The amount of data has grown rapidly. |
| Infrastructure has evolved to enable AI workloads. |
Infrastructure is the Key Enabler of AI
We believe that specialized compute infrastructure is the key enabler that AI labs and AI enterprises need to train models, perform inference faster at scale, and accelerate their time to market. It has become generally
3
accepted that there is a direct relationship between compute resources (FLOPs, training, and testing time) and model output quality. There has been a dramatic increase in the computational resources dedicated to training and hosting state-of-the-art AI models, with top models released by OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta AI generally requiring exponentially greater quantities of compute compared to prior model generations to unlock performance gains. This principle applies for both training and inference: it states that the more compute power available, the better both the models and applications built on top of them become. To achieve greater compute capabilities and succeed in AI, AI labs and AI enterprises require specialized compute platforms that run at superior performance and efficiency and maximize the utilization of the underlying infrastructure.
Delivering Performant AI Infrastructure is Immensely Challenging
The highly specialized infrastructure that is required to unlock the potential of AI is immensely challenging to build and operate, especially at scale. The scale of the required infrastructure is staggering, with tens of thousands of GPUs, thousands of miles of high-speed networking cables, and hundreds of thousands of interconnects coming together to create superclusters for training and serving AI models, as well as hundreds of MW of power and petabytes of total storage. Depending on the configuration of the data center, a single 32,000-GPU cluster may require the deployment of approximately 600 miles of fiber cables and around 80,000 fiber connections. Acquiring the necessary high-performance components requires managing a complex global supply chain, and the data centers themselves need to be specifically designed for high-performance compute.
Software is Critical to Unlocking the Performance and Efficiency of AI Infrastructure
AI supercomputers are some of the most complex computing machines to have ever been created, requiring purpose-built software to unlock performance and efficiency at massive scale. These supercomputers require software to test and validate each component and to provision the infrastructure so that compute-intensive workloads can run with minimal downtime. Moreover, AI supercomputers often require multiple specialized orchestration frameworks to schedule complex workloads, which frequently need to be paired with substantial engineering resources. Once operational, these AI workloads put enormous pressure on infrastructure, frequently leading to high rates of component failures that cause training and inference jobs to fail, and thus require constant monitoring to manage and reduce failures and downtime.
AI Infrastructure Suffers from an MFU Efficiency Gap
Model FLOPS utilization is a measure of the observed throughput compared to the theoretical system maximum if it operates at peak FLOPs. The complexity of managing AI infrastructure means that a majority of the compute capacity embedded in GPUs is lost to system inefficiencies, with empirical evidence suggesting observed levels of performance within the 35% to 45% range. Minimizing the efficiency gap between the approximately 35% and the theoretical 100% represents a significant opportunity for unlocking AI infrastructure performance potential and therefore the improvement in quality of AI overall.
4
AI Requires a Purpose-Built Cloud
Generalized clouds operated by hyperscalers were not built to serve the specific requirements of AI. These clouds were created over a decade ago and were designed for general purpose use cases such as search, e-commerce, generalized web-hosting, and databases, and relied on CPU-based web-scale compute, and thus are not optimal for the high compute intensity requirements of AI.
Organizations need access to a fundamentally different GPU-based compute infrastructure that is built from the ground-up for AI and proven to perform at the scale and efficiency required to deliver AI. Cloud platforms therefore need to be fundamentally reimagined and purpose-built to deliver the capacity, performance, storage, and scalability requirements of AI workloads and increase the MFU of the underlying infrastructure.
Requirements of the AI Cloud
We believe the AI cloud requires a first-principles reimagining of how infrastructure is built, with the following requirements:
| Superior infrastructure performance and efficiency. The AI cloud should deliver a combination of performance and resiliency to ensure maximum AI training and inference uptime. |
| Maximize performance. The AI cloud should run the latest and highest performance components and leverage an optimized technology stack that reduces latency and overhead to increase performance. |
| Minimize downtime and failure rates. The AI cloud should be able to identify and rapidly solve performance issues and prevent failures before they occur. |
| Rapid access to the latest advancements in infrastructure. AI advancement is limited by the infrastructure that supports it. Bleeding-edge AI training workloads today benefit from running on the latest GPUs, CPUs, and DPUs, from the most advanced storage, networking, and memory, and from high-density liquid-cooled data center racks to maximize performance and efficiency. |
5
| Immediate out-of-the-box functionality. The AI cloud should deliver an autonomous, self-service approach with seamless deployment and automation, enabling developers and researchers to focus on delivering cutting-edge AI innovations. It should be built to minimize delays and resource intensity and work out-of-the-box at scale. |
| Ability to run and dynamically balance all types of AI workloads. The AI cloud should incorporate dynamic workload scheduling that allows customers to host a wide variety of AI workloads such as training and inference on the same clusters concurrently and seamlessly. |
| Flexibility and customization with a specialized technology stack. The AI cloud should be built to enable maximum composability, offering customers the freedom to tailor infrastructure and operational setup around their unique set of design requirements. Customers need a trusted partner with a track record of delivering performant and efficient AI cloud services at massive scale. |
| Lower performance-adjusted cost. The AI cloud should deliver superior value by prioritizing performance and efficiency to help ensure that customers get the maximum utilization out of their infrastructure investments. |
We believe the AI revolution requires a cloud that is performant, efficient, resilient, and purpose-built for AI. Todays leading AI labs and AI enterprises demand high-performance and cost-efficient compute, storage, networking, and managed software services integrated into a cloud platform that enables them to bring their innovations to market faster by maximizing the utilization of their infrastructure and training and deploying models seamlessly and out-of-the box.
Our Solution
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is an integrated solution that is purpose-built for running AI workloads such as model training and inference at maximum performance and efficiency. It includes Infrastructure Services, Managed Software Services, and Application Software Services, all of which are augmented by our Mission Control and Observability software. Our proprietary software enables the provisioning of infrastructure, the orchestration of workloads, and the monitoring of our customers training and inference environments to enable high availability and minimize downtime. Built on a microservices-based architecture, the components of our platform are fully fungible and composable. Customers can configure their use of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to best fit their needs. For instance, they can choose to bring their own storage or managed software services or run our respective solutions and choose the type and scale of deployment that best suits their workloads. This flexibility allows our customers to customize their use of our platform without compromising performance or efficiency. We have designed security as a fundamental component across our platform and technology stack. We leverage advanced security capabilities such as XDR and DLP, adhere to industry leading security standards such as SOC2 and ISO 27001, and employ our in-house information security teams to ensure that our customers operate in a secure environment.
The following is a summary of our Layered Architecture Stack.
6
CoreWeaves Layered Architecture Stack
Infrastructure Services provide our customers with access to advanced GPU and CPU compute, highly performant networking (supported by DPUs), and storage.
Managed Software Services include CKS (a purpose-built-for-AI managed Kubernetes environment with a focus on efficiency, performance and ease of use), our flexible Virtual Private Cloud offering, and our Bare Metal service that runs Kubernetes directly on high-performance servers for maximum performance and efficiency.
Application Software Services build on top of our infrastructure and managed software services, integrating additional tools to further accelerate and improve training and inference for our customers. This includes SUNK, which allows customers to run Slurm-based workloads on top of Kubernetes and colocate jobsincluding training and inference workloadson a single cluster; CoreWeave Tensorizer, which significantly increases the efficiency of model checkpointing and enables high-speed model loading; and our inference optimization services. Our recently announced acquisition of Weights and Biases, Inc. (Weights & Biases) positions us to extend our application software following closing of the acquisition with an end-to-end, fully managed software platform and to accelerate development of our Application Software Services to target AI developers who are building, fine-tuning, and experimenting with AI models in order to deploy them to support production applications.
7
Our purpose-built technology stack is augmented by our lifecycle management and monitoring software, Mission Control and Observability, and our advanced cluster validation, proactive health checking capabilities, and observability capabilities. Our AI cloud runs in a distributed network of 32 active purpose-built data centers, which are specifically engineered to support high intensity AI workloads with features including enhanced power, liquid cooling, and networking components, reinforcing the robustness of our entire technology stack. Our Third-Party Tooling and Solutions further enhance this flexibility by providing a composable architecture that allows customers to customize their solution by integrating additional third-party tools.
CoreWeaves Data Center Network
Key Benefits to Customers
Through our CoreWeave Cloud Platform, we offer the following key benefits to customers:
| Highly efficient infrastructure. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform delivers more optimized MFU than the cloud infrastructure provided by generalized hyperscalers through performance optimizations throughout our cloud services stack. Based on internal testing, our CoreWeave Cloud Platform offers up to approximately 20% improvement in system MFU over comparative benchmark MFU performance. |
| Performance at scale. Our infrastructure is optimized to run AI workloads, delivering cutting-edge performance to AI model training and inference use cases. Our capabilities, such as Bare Metal GPU nodes, operate with highly performant system technologies, a scale-out network with one of the industrys leading effective network speeds, storage services with data read speeds of up to 2GB per second per GPU, and software optimizations to efficiently utilize infrastructure performance. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform has broken performance records, including setting an MLPerf record that was 29 times faster than competitors in 2023. |
| Reliability and Resilience. Our Mission Control suite of capabilities help deliver and maintain vetted cloud infrastructure and provide observability into the health and performance of the entire solution. This helps ensure that our customers clusters continue to operate at ideal performance, quickly recover from any hardware events, and ultimately get better value by using our cloud solution. |
8
CoreWeave Helps Bridge the MFU Gap
(1) | Based on internal testing |
| Faster access to latest AI infrastructure advancements. Our customers benefit from faster access to the latest AI infrastructure advancements, including our access to the latest GPU technologies at scale. We have a track record of being among the first to market with cutting-edge infrastructure technology. For instance, we were among the first to deliver NVIDIA H100, H200, and GH200 clusters into production at AI scale, and the first cloud provider to make NVIDIA GB200 NVL72-based instances generally available. We are able to deploy the newest chips in our infrastructure and provide the compute capacity to customers in as little as two weeks from receipt from our OEM partners such as Dell and Super Micro. |
| Highly performant on day 1. Our full-featured managed software services make the consumption of infrastructure seamless. Automated provisioning and node validation remove the need for manual burn-in testing and ensure our highly-performant CoreWeave Cloud Platform is up and running for new customers and ready for consumption in a matter of hours from customer acceptance. This shifts the burden of infrastructure management away from customers, significantly reducing costs and accelerating their time to solution. |
| Efficient GPU fleet utilization. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is architected to support all types of AI workloads across the same cluster simultaneously, enabled by our industry-leading Slurm integration, SUNK. Running different types of jobs on the same cluster at the same time increases the utilization of a customers AI infrastructure. |
| Flexible technology stack. We adapt to our customers needs, enabling our customers to obtain the platform most ideal for their AI applications to run on. Our team is committed to moving quickly and solving problems for our customers that have never been addressed before as they develop and serve the next generation of foundational models. |
9
| Lower performance-adjusted cost. We deliver significantly improved infrastructure efficiency and higher MFU, which translates to lower costs relative to solutions provided by other cloud service providers for demanding AI workloads. |
Competitive Strengths
Our key competitive strengths, which we believe set us apart from the generalized cloud providers in the industry, include:
| We are purpose-built for AI. Our platform is fundamentally architected from the ground up to deliver cutting-edge performance for AI workloads. We have reimagined the traditional cloud architecture to deliver the infrastructure and technology stack required for AI, optimizing it to remove services such as the hypervisor layer and other unnecessary managed services that would otherwise cause performance leakage. Our Managed Software Services, which include our orchestration solution, CKS, and our application services, are optimized for complex AI workloads. Our infrastructure is built on cutting-edge components, including the latest-generation GPUs, networking, and high-performance storage, all working cohesively to deliver unprecedented performance to our customers. Importantly, our data centers are also designed with our no compromise philosophy centered around AI, with our current builds incorporating liquid cooling where possible to maximize rack density and drive higher utilization of our data center footprint. |
| We live at the bleeding-edge of technology. We are fearless in facing and overcoming complex engineering challenges, and we hire individuals who help contribute to and maintain a culture centered around this philosophy. We have demonstrated this in our ability to create some of the largest and most performant GPU clusters assembled to date, deliver against an accelerated data center build schedule, and consistently be among the first to market with cutting-edge infrastructure components. |
| We operate at scale. We benefit from a network of 32 active purpose-built data centers that together ran more than 250,000 GPUs as of December 31, 2024. Our specialization in deploying AI infrastructure at massive scale enables us to serve some of the worlds leading providers of AI who require massive deployments, benefit from clear economies of scale, and detect issues and derive insights from across our AI infrastructure sooner than our competitors. |
| We have a proven track record of securing power. Power is a key enabler of the AI revolution and an asset that we have managed to secure at scale, as demonstrated by our agreement with Core Scientific for more than 500 MW of capacity as of December 31, 2024. As of December 31, 2024, we had more than 360 MW of active power and approximately 1.3 GW of total contracted power. This provides us with a durable, multi-year runway in power capacity. We relentlessly and creatively explore additional opportunities to add power capacity. |
| We have demonstrated unique financing capabilities. We have pioneered GPU infrastructure-backed lending, and to date, we have raised over $14.5 billion in debt and equity across 12 financings. Our recent raise of $7.6 billion in committed GPU infrastructure-backed debt led by Blackstone and Magnetar represents one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud. |
| We maintain robust ecosystem relationships. We benefit from strong, mutually beneficial relationships with our suppliers and customers that strengthen our solution and market position. We work with NVIDIA to deploy the latest GPU technologies at scale. In turn, we are a partner to NVIDIA in that our proprietary software and purpose-built infrastructure help to minimize the efficiency gap between the observed GPU cluster performance and the theoretical maximum GPU cluster performance, help to diversify their customer base, and help to get their technology in the hands of end |
10
customers faster. Our relationships with some of the worlds leading and most discerning AI labs and AI enterprises, including Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI, further position us as a cornerstone of the evolving AI ecosystem. |
We serve some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises, which fosters a reinforcing cycle of continued innovation, as we are the first to experience and solve the challenges of the most compute intensive AI training and inference workloads. This data is a critical input into our engineering process and strengthens our technological differentiation as we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in computing. This economy of AI leadership ensures we can continuously improve our CoreWeave Cloud Platform over time in a positive feedback loop, by enabling us to learn from any issues or misconfigurations detected across our large infrastructure base and apply those learnings to all our clusters, which in turn positions us as a leading-edge provider of choice for new customers.
Our Market Opportunity
The impact of AI will be immense for organizations of all sizes across all sectors, which will realize significant productivity gains and time and cost-efficiencies by deploying AI technologies. IDC estimates that AI will add nearly $20 trillion to global GDP by 2030.
We believe that CoreWeave will be one of the most sought-after platforms for the worlds AI workloads. We have estimated our total addressable market opportunity by evaluating the size of the large and rapidly growing AI compute software and infrastructure market that we are pioneering. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the market for AI inference/fine-tuning, AI workload monitoring, and training infrastructure, including AI servers, AI storage, training compute, cloud workloads, and networking, will increase by over $300 billion from 2023 to 2028, growing at a CAGR of 38% from approximately $79 billion in 2023 to approximately $399 billion by 2028. This market opportunity is expected to include $330 billion related to training infrastructure, which includes AI servers, AI storage, training compute, LLM licensing revenue, cloud workloads, and networking; $49 billion related to inference infrastructure; and $20 billion related to workload monitoring, all of which are supportable by CoreWeave.
The AI compute market is centered on training the latest generations of models and increasingly leveraging those models to perform inference, including intensive inference workloads tied to complex reasoning tasks. In the long-term, as enterprise adoption of production workloads accelerates, we expect there to be an acceleration
11
of inference workloads with varying levels of complexity and performance requirements. Our platform is ideally situated to capture all these workloads. Over time, as our geographically distributed compute base grows and includes older generations of infrastructure as current generations roll off existing contracts, we believe that the mix of hardware across generations that is optimized for different use cases in our compute base will ensure that we are optimally situated to capture all workload types, both inference and training.
Growth Strategies
Our principal growth strategies include:
| Extend our product leadership and innovation by delivering new solutions and optimizing our technology stack to deliver substantial performance and efficiency gains for AI workloads at scale. |
| Continue capturing additional workloads from existing customers by focusing on some of the most powerful AI labs and AI enterprises that are building AI products today to achieve natural growth across this customer segment as AI continues to become ubiquitous. |
| Extend into broader enterprise customers across new industries and verticals, including regulated industries like banks, high-frequency trading, and pharmaceutical companies, as they begin to develop and build their own dedicated AI solutions. We anticipate that new industries and use cases will arise to take advantage of developing AI capabilities as AI models become more accessible and cheaper, presenting additional growth opportunities for our platform. We believe that our recently announced acquisition of Weights & Biases will enable us to improve our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to address the needs of customers who are researching, building, and deploying AI models and applications. Following closing of the acquisition, we plan to integrate Weights & Biases capabilities as a new entry point for customers to access our CoreWeave Cloud platform and take advantage of the differentiated infrastructure and managed software services that we offer. |
| Expand internationally to capitalize on growing demand for AI applications and solutions across the globe, driven by customers desire to build their AI applications locally, and minimize latency. |
| Increase our vertical integration. |
| Verticalize up the stack by innovating and adding to our software offerings to drive customer engagement and value. We believe our announced acquisition of Weights & Biases will help to accelerate the expansion of our developer tools for both fine-tuning and training models, as well as building AI applications, and reinforces our ability to continue adding functionality up the stack following closing of the acquisition. |
| Verticalize down the stack by enhancing our data center capabilities to bolster our access to data center capacity, future-proof our solutions, and drive further operational efficiency. |
| Maximize the economic life of our infrastructure by monetizing the infrastructure underlying expired contracts through either another contract for the remainder of its economic life or through an on-demand consumption pool. |
Our Customers
Our customers today are segmented into two key verticals: AI Natives and AI Enterprises. Companies within these verticals include the builders of AI, the integrators of AI, and those that have business models whose success largely hinges on deploying AI capabilities in their core products and technology stack. We believe we are in the early stages of the AI revolution and, as a result, a substantial portion of our revenue is currently driven by a limited number of customers, which represent some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises. We recognized an aggregate of approximately 41% and 73% of our revenue from our top three customers for the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, respectively. We recognized an aggregate of approximately 77% of our revenue from our top two customers for the year ended December 31, 2024. None of
12
our other customers represented 10% or more of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024. For the year ended December 31, 2022, our largest customer accounted for 16% of our revenue. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, our largest customer was Microsoft, which accounted for 35% and 62% of our revenue, respectively.
In addition to the AI Natives and AI Enterprises who we sell to directly, there is a large segment of the market that uses our platform, solutions, and services indirectly. This includes the tens of thousands of enterprises that have not yet built in-house AI models or systems, but who use solutions developed by AI Natives. As AI continues to find product market fit, we expect these enterprises to grow their indirect consumption of our platform through AI labs. Furthermore, as these enterprises increase their consumption and our product roadmap evolves and verticalizes up-the-stack, we expect that we will serve more of these enterprise customers directly through our dedicated solutions and partnerships.
Risk Factors Summary
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties of which you should be aware before making a decision to invest in our Class A common stock. These risks are more fully described in the section titled Risk Factors immediately following this prospectus summary. These risks, among others, include the following:
| Our recent growth may not be indicative of our future growth, and if we do not effectively manage our future growth, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be adversely affected. |
| We have a limited number of suppliers for significant components of the equipment we use to build and operate our platform and provide our solutions and services. Any disruption in the availability of these components could delay our ability to expand or increase the capacity of our infrastructure or replace defective equipment. |
| Our business would be harmed if we were not able to access sufficient power or by increased costs to procure power, prolonged power outages, shortages, or capacity constraints. |
| If our data center providers fail to meet the requirements of our business, or if the data center facilities experience damage, interruption, or a security breach, our ability to provide access to our infrastructure and maintain the performance of our network could be negatively impacted. |
| A substantial portion of our revenue is driven by a limited number of our customers, and the loss of, or a significant reduction in, spend from one or a few of our top customers would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. |
| If we fail to efficiently enhance our platform and develop and sell new solutions and services and respond effectively to rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, changing regulations, and changing customer needs, requirements, or preferences, our platform may become less competitive. |
| The broader adoption, use, and commercialization of AI technology, and the continued rapid pace of developments in the AI field, are inherently uncertain. Failure by our customers to continue to use our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to support AI use cases in their systems, or our ability to keep up with evolving AI technology requirements and regulatory frameworks, could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. |
| Our operations require substantial capital expenditures, and we will require additional capital to fund our business and support our growth, and any inability to generate or obtain such capital on acceptable terms, if at all, or to lower our total cost of capital, may adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. |
13
| Our operating results may fluctuate significantly, which could make our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results to fall below expectations. |
| We face intense competition and could lose market share to our competitors, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. |
| We have a history of generating net losses as a result of the substantial investments we have made to grow our business and develop our platform, anticipate increases in our operating expenses in the future, and may not achieve or, if achieved, sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and, if achieved, sustain profitability, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects will be adversely affected. |
| We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. If our remediation of such material weaknesses is not effective, or if we experience additional material weaknesses in the future or otherwise fail to develop and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable laws and regulations could be impaired. |
| Our substantial indebtedness could materially adversely affect our financial condition, our ability to raise additional capital to fund our operations, our ability to operate our business, our ability to react to changes in the economy or our industry, our ability to meet our obligations under our outstanding indebtedness and could divert our cash flow from operations for debt payments, and we may still incur substantially more indebtedness in the future. |
| No public market for our Class A common stock currently exists, and an active public trading market may not develop or be sustained following this offering. |
| The multi-class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting power with our Co-Founders, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions, including a change in control. |
If we are unable to adequately address these or the other risks we face, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected.
Channels for Disclosure of Information
Following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, we intend to announce material information to the public through filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), the investor relations page on our website (www.coreweave.com), press releases, public conference calls, public webcasts, our X account (@CoreWeave), and our LinkedIn page. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, these channels is not a part of this prospectus. Investors should not rely on any such information in deciding whether to purchase our Class A common stock.
The information disclosed in the foregoing channels could be deemed to be material information. As such, we encourage investors, the media, and others to follow the channels listed above and to review the information disclosed through such channels.
Any updates to the list of disclosure channels through which we will announce information will be posted on the investor relations page on our website.
Corporate Information
We were formed in September 2017 as a Delaware limited liability company under the name The Atlantic Crypto Corporation LLC and converted to a Delaware corporation in September 2018 under the name Atlantic Crypto Corporation. In December 2019, we changed our name to CoreWeave, Inc. Our principal executive
14
offices are located at 290 W Mt. Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100, Livingston, NJ 07039. Our telephone number is (973) 270-9737. Our website address is www.coreweave.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not a part of this prospectus. Investors should not rely on any such information in deciding whether to purchase shares of our Class A common stock.
CoreWeave, the CoreWeave logo, and other registered or common law trade names, trademarks, or service marks of CoreWeave appearing in this prospectus are the property of CoreWeave, Inc. This prospectus contains additional trade names, trademarks, logos, and service marks of ours and of other companies. We do not intend our use or display of other companies trade names, trademarks, logos, or service marks to imply a relationship with these other companies, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by these other companies. Other trademarks appearing in this prospectus are the property of their respective holders. Solely for convenience, our trade names, trademarks, logos, and service marks referred to in this prospectus may appear without the ® and symbols, but those references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights, or the right of the applicable licensor, to these trademarks, trade names, and service marks.
Director Nomination Process
In May 2024, we entered into a letter agreement (the Director Nomination Letter) with funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar Financial LLC (collectively, the Magnetar DNL Parties), pursuant to which, during the period beginning at the closing of this offering until the earlier of the date on which (i) no shares of our Class B common stock are outstanding and (ii) the Magnetar DNL Parties and their affiliates collectively no longer beneficially own at least 4,976,240 shares of our capital stock, if a designee or affiliate of the Magnetar DNL Parties is not then a member of our board of directors, the Magnetar DNL Parties have the collective right to nominate one individual for consideration to serve as a member of our board of directors. See the section titled ManagementDirector Nomination Letter for more information on the Director Nomination Letter.
Implications of Being an Emerging Growth Company
We will be treated as an emerging growth company, as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the JOBS Act) for certain purposes until the earlier of the date on which we complete this offering or December 31, 2025. As such, in this prospectus we have elected to take advantage of certain reduced disclosure obligations that apply to emerging growth companies.
We may take advantage of these exemptions until such time that we are no longer treated as an emerging growth company. Accordingly, the information contained herein may be different from the information you receive from other public companies. Further, pursuant to Section 107 of the JOBS Act, we have elected to take advantage of the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. As a result, our operating results and financial statements may not be comparable to the operating results and financial statements of other companies who have adopted the new or revised accounting standards. It is possible that some investors will find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, which may result in a less active trading market for our Class A common stock and higher volatility in our stock price.
15
THE OFFERING
Class A common stock offered by us |
47,178,660 shares. | |
Class A common stock offered by the selling stockholders |
1,821,340 shares. | |
Underwriters over-allotment option to purchase shares of Class A common stock |
The underwriters have the option for a period of 30 days from the date of this prospectus to purchase up to an additional 7,350,000 shares of our Class A common stock from us to cover over-allotments, if any, at the initial public offering price less underwriting discounts and commissions. | |
Class A common stock offered by us in a concurrent share issuance |
Immediately subsequent to the closing of this offering, we will issue to OpenAI, in accordance with the terms of our master services agreement with OpenAI and pursuant to a stock issuance agreement with OpenAI, a number of shares of our Class A common stock equal to $350.0 million valued at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price. Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the estimated offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, this would be 6,862,745 shares. We will not receive any proceeds from the issuance of these shares to OpenAI. The issuance of the shares in the private placement is contingent upon the completion of this offering. The issuance of these shares to OpenAI will not be registered in this offering and will be subject to a market standoff agreement with us for a period of up to 180 days after the date of this prospectus and lock-up agreement with the underwriters for a period of up to 180 days after the date of this prospectus. See Shares Eligible for Future SaleLock-Up and Market Standoff Agreements for additional information regarding such restrictions. We refer to the private placement of these shares of our Class A common stock as the concurrent share issuance. For additional information regarding our master services agreement with OpenAI, see the section titled BusinessOur Customers. | |
Class A common stock to be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance |
355,378,891 shares (or 362,728,891 shares if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full). | |
Class B common stock to be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance |
118,102,040 shares. | |
Class C common stock to be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance |
None. |
16
Total Class A, Class B, and Class C common stock to be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance |
473,480,931 shares (or 480,830,931 shares if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full). | |
Use of proceeds |
We estimate that the net proceeds from the sale of shares of our Class A common stock in this offering will be approximately $2.3 billion (or approximately $2.7 billion if the underwriters over-allotment option is exercised in full), based upon the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.
The principal purposes of this offering are to create a public market for our Class A common stock, increase our visibility in the marketplace, obtain additional capital, and increase our financial flexibility. We primarily intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes, which may include product development, general and administrative matters, and capital expenditures. We intend to use approximately $1.0 billion of the net proceeds from this offering to repay the entire outstanding amount under our 2024 Term Loan Facility (as defined herein). We also intend to use approximately $12 million of the net proceeds to satisfy the anticipated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the RSU Net Settlement (as defined below). In addition, approximately $500 million of the net proceeds from this offering will be held as restricted cash in escrow to secure our obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility (as defined below). We may also use a portion of the net proceeds for the acquisition of, or investment in, technologies, solutions, or businesses that complement our business. We will have broad discretion in the way that we use the net proceeds of this offering. See the section titled Use of Proceeds for additional information.
We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of our Class A common stock in this offering by the selling stockholders. | |
Voting rights |
Holders of shares of our Class A common stock are entitled to one vote per share. Holders of shares of our Class B common stock are entitled to ten votes per share. Holders of shares of our Class C common stock are entitled to no votes per share, except as otherwise required by law. |
17
Holders of shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock will generally vote together as a single class, unless otherwise required by law or our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering. Each share of our Class B common stock is convertible into one share of our Class A common stock at any time at the election of the holders and will convert automatically upon certain transfers and upon the earlier of (i) a date that is fixed by our board of directors that is no more than 61 days following the seventh anniversary of this offering, (ii) the date specified by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the outstanding voting power of the Class B common stock, or (iii) no more than 61 days following Michael Intrators Service Termination (as defined herein) (such conversion, the Class B Automatic Conversion). Immediately following the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, and assuming no exercise of the underwriters over-allotment option, Michael Intrator, our co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors, will hold approximately 37.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, Brian Venturo, our co-founder, Chief Strategy Officer and a member of our board of directors, will hold approximately 23.2% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, and Brannin McBee, our co-founder and Chief Development Officer, will hold approximately 18.7% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo, and Mr. McBee are our Co-Founders and collectively will hold approximately 79.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock immediately following the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, which voting power may increase over time upon the exercise or settlement and exchange of equity awards held by our Co-Founders pursuant to their Equity Exchange Rights (as defined below).
If all stock options outstanding as of December 31, 2024 to purchase shares of our Class A common stock held by our Co-Founders were exercised and exchanged for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights, then immediately following the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo, and Mr. McBee would hold approximately 38.2%, 25.6%, and 19.4%, respectively, of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. |
18
As a result, our Co-Founders may have significant influence over the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of our directors and the approval of any change of control transaction. These risks are more fully described in the section titled Risk Factors. Additional information can be found in the sections titled Principal and Selling Stockholders and Description of Capital Stock. | ||
Conflicts of Interest |
Because an affiliate of each of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. is a lender under our 2024 Term Loan Facility (as defined herein) and will receive 5% or more of the net proceeds of this offering due to the repayment of borrowings under the 2024 Term Loan Facility, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and MUFG Securities Americas Inc., each an underwriter in this offering, is deemed to have a conflict of interest under Rule 5121 (Rule 5121) of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA). Accordingly, this offering will be conducted in compliance with the requirements of Rule 5121, which requires, among other things, that a qualified independent underwriter participate in the preparation of, and exercise the usual standards of due diligence with respect to, the registration statement and this prospectus. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC has agreed to act as a qualified independent underwriter for this offering and to undertake the legal responsibilities and liabilities of an underwriter under the Securities Act, specifically including those inherent in Section 11 thereof. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC will not receive any additional fees for serving as a qualified independent underwriter in connection with this offering. We have agreed to indemnify Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC against liabilities incurred in connection with acting as a qualified independent underwriter, including liabilities under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act). See the sections titled Use of Proceeds and Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest) for additional information. | |
Risk factors |
See the section titled Risk Factors and other information included in this prospectus for a discussion of some of the factors you should consider before deciding to purchase shares of our Class A common stock. | |
Directed share program |
At our request, the underwriters have reserved up to 5% of the shares of our Class A common stock |
19
offered hereby, at the initial public offering price, to offer to our current employees, including management, other service providers, and other individuals and entities as determined by certain of our authorized officers. The sales will be made at our direction by Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and its affiliates through a directed share program. The number of shares of our Class A common stock available for sale to the general public will be reduced to the extent these individuals purchase such reserved shares. Any reserved shares that are not so purchased will be offered by the underwriters to the general public on the same basis as the other shares offered by this prospectus. Except for any shares acquired by our directors and officers, shares purchased pursuant to the directed share program will not be subject to lock-up agreements with the underwriters. See the section titled Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest) for additional information. | ||
Proposed Nasdaq trading symbol |
CRWV | |
Dividend policy |
Following the consummation of this offering, we currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not have current plans to pay any dividends on our capital stock in the foreseeable future, with the exception of any final dividend payment payable on our Series C redeemable preferred stock upon the consummation of this offering. Additionally, our ability to pay dividends or make distributions is currently restricted by the terms of our Credit Facilities (as defined herein) and may be further restricted by any further indebtedness we incur. For additional information regarding our Credit Facilities, see the section titled Description of Material Indebtedness. Any future determination to declare dividends will be made at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend, among other things, on our financial condition, operating results, capital requirements, general business conditions, restrictions in our debt instruments, and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. See the section titled Dividend Policy for additional information. |
The number of shares of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock that will be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance is based on 301,337,486 shares of our Class A common stock outstanding, 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding, and no shares of our Class C common stock outstanding, in each case as of December 31, 2024 (after giving effect to the
20
Capital Stock Conversion, the Class B Conversion, the Option Exercise, and the RSU Net Settlement (each as defined below)), and excludes:
| 45,897,500 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024 under our 2019 Stock Option Plan (the 2019 Plan), with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.76 per share (after giving effect to the Option Exercise), of which 9,109,000 shares will be exchangeable for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock at the election of our Co-Founders upon exercise pursuant to their Equity Exchange Rights; |
| 14,982,220 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of restricted stock units (RSUs) outstanding as of December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan for which the service-based vesting condition was not satisfied as of December 31, 2024 and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied in connection with this offering (we expect that the satisfaction of the service-based vesting condition of certain of these RSUs through March 27, 2025 will result in the net issuance of 227,635 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with this offering, after withholding an aggregate of 210,125 shares of Class A common stock to satisfy the associated estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations (based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate)); |
| 8,753,320 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of RSUs granted after December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan; |
| 12,144,668 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of warrants to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024, of which 7,807,282 had an exercise price of $0.0005 per share and 4,337,386 had an exercise price equal to the Regular Warrants Exercise Price (as defined herein); |
| 63,750,480 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans, consisting of (i) 3,750,480 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2019 Plan as of December 31, 2024 (which reserve does not reflect the stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock and RSUs settleable for shares of our Class A common stock granted after December 31, 2024), (ii) 50,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the 2025 Plan), which will become effective on the date immediately prior to the date of this prospectus, and (iii) 10,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 Employee Stock Purchase Plan (the 2025 ESPP), which will become effective on the date of this prospectus; and |
| approximately 21,874,544 shares of our Class A common stock that are issuable upon the closing of our acquisition of Weights & Biases, based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. |
On the date of this prospectus, any remaining shares of our Class A common stock available for issuance under our 2019 Plan will be added to the shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 Plan, and we will cease granting awards under the 2019 Plan. Our 2025 Plan and 2025 ESPP also provide for automatic annual increases in the number of shares reserved thereunder. See the section titled Executive CompensationEmployee Benefit and Stock Plans for additional information.
Pursuant to certain equity exchange agreements entered into between us and each Co-Founder, each Co-Founder has a right (but not an obligation) to require us to exchange, for shares of our Class B common stock, any shares of our Class A common stock received by him upon the exercise or settlement of equity awards (the Equity Exchange Rights). The Equity Exchange Rights apply to equity awards granted to our Co-Founders prior to September 2024. As of December 31, 2024, there were 9,109,000 shares of our Class A common stock subject to outstanding stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock held by our Co-Founders
21
and that may be exchanged, upon exercise, for an equivalent number of shares of our Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights.
Unless otherwise noted, the information in this prospectus reflects and assumes the following:
| a 20-for-1 forward split of our capital stock, which became effective on March 14, 2025; |
| the automatic conversion of (i) our Series Seed, A, B, and B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024 on a one for one basis into shares of our Class A common stock and (ii) our Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024 into an aggregate of 184,985,766 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with the closing of this offering pursuant to the terms of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as currently in effect (the Capital Stock Conversion); |
| the conversion of 96,380 shares of our Class B common stock into 96,380 shares of our Class A common stock by certain holders of our Class B common stock upon certain transfers by the holders thereof (the Class B Conversion); |
| the cash exercise of stock options to purchase 1,321,080 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with this offering by certain selling stockholders, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.37 per share, for total gross proceeds to us of approximately $2 million, by certain selling stockholders in connection with the sale of all or a portion of such shares by such selling stockholders in this offering, as described in Principal and Selling Stockholders (the Option Exercise); |
| the net issuance of 245,700 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with the vesting and settlement of certain RSUs outstanding as of December 31, 2024, for which the service-based vesting condition was satisfied as of December 31, 2024 and the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied in connection with this offering (the IPO Vesting RSUs), after giving effect to the withholding of 226,800 shares of Class A Common Stock to satisfy the estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations (based on the assumed initial offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate) (the RSU Net Settlement); |
| the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and the effectiveness of our amended and restated bylaws, each of which will occur immediately prior to the completion of this offering; |
| no exercise of outstanding stock options or warrants or settlement of outstanding RSUs subsequent to December 31, 2024, except for the Option Exercise and RSU Net Settlement, as described above; |
| no exercise by the underwriters of their over-allotment option to purchase 7,350,000 additional shares of our Class A common stock in this offering; and |
| the issuance of approximately 6,862,745 shares of our Class A common stock to OpenAI upon the closing of the concurrent share issuance to OpenAI immediately subsequent to the closing of this offering, based upon the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. |
The assumed 48% tax withholding rate used in this prospectus is an assumed blended withholding rate for the IPO Vesting RSUs that are subject to withholding in the RSU Net Settlement. The estimates in this prospectus relating to the RSU Net Settlement and related share withholding may differ from actual results due to, among other things, the actual initial public offering price and other terms of this offering determined at pricing, actual forfeitures through the date of this prospectus, and actual tax withholding rates.
22
SUMMARY CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA
The following tables summarize our consolidated financial data as of the dates and for the periods indicated. We derived our summary consolidated statements of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (except for pro forma basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders and weighted-average shares used in computing pro forma basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders) and our summary consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2024 from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results to be expected in any other period in the future.
You should read the following summary consolidated financial data in conjunction with the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, and our consolidated financial statements, the accompanying notes, and other financial information included elsewhere in this prospectus. The summary consolidated financial data in this section are not intended to replace our consolidated financial statements and the related notes and are qualified in their entirety by our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus.
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(in thousands, except per share data) |
||||||||||||
Consolidated Statements of Operations Data: |
||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating expenses: |
||||||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) |
12,122 | 68,780 | 493,350 | |||||||||
Technology and infrastructure(1) |
18,106 | 131,855 | 960,685 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) |
2,481 | 12,917 | 18,389 | |||||||||
General and administrative(1) |
6,001 | 29,842 | 118,644 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total operating expenses |
38,710 | 243,394 | 1,591,068 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating income (loss) |
(22,880 | ) | (14,451 | ) | 324,358 | |||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
(2,884 | ) | (533,952 | ) | (755,929 | ) | ||||||
Interest expense, net |
(9,444 | ) | (28,404 | ) | (360,824 | ) | ||||||
Other income, net |
192 | 18,760 | 48,194 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(35,016 | ) | (558,047 | ) | (744,201 | ) | ||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(4,150 | ) | 35,701 | 119,247 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from continuing operations |
$ | (30,866 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from discontinued operations, net of tax |
$ | (189 | ) | $ | | $ | | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(2) |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (937,765 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from continuing operations per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (0.17 | ) | $ | (3.09 | ) | $ | (4.30 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from discontinued operations per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | 0.00 | $ | | $ | | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(2) |
$ | (0.17 | ) | $ | (3.09 | ) | $ | (4.30 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
23
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(in thousands, except per share data) |
||||||||||||
Weighted-average shares used in computing net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(2) |
180,632 | 192,164 | 217,854 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
(1) | Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows: |
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 133 | $ | 694 | $ | 1,307 | ||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
624 | 7,100 | 10,137 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing |
74 | 1,740 | 3,408 | |||||||||
General and administrative |
659 | 5,620 | 16,635 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total stock-based compensation expense |
$ | 1,490 | $ | 15,154 | $ | 31,487 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
(2) | See Notes 1 and 13 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for an explanation of the method used to calculate basic and diluted net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders and the weighted-average number of shares used in the computation of the per share amounts. |
The following table sets forth the computation of unaudited pro forma basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders for the periods presented:
Year Ended December 31, 2024 |
||||
(in thousands, except per share data) |
||||
Numerator: |
||||
Net loss attributable to common stockholders |
$ | (937,765 | ) | |
Pro forma adjustment to reverse the deemed dividend and accretion on Series C redeemable convertible preferred common stock |
74,317 | |||
Pro forma adjustment to record stock-based compensation expense related to RSUs for which the service-based and performance-based vesting conditions will be satisfied in connection with this offering |
(77,817 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Pro forma net loss attributable to common stockholders |
$ | (941,265 | ) | |
|
|
|||
Denominator: |
||||
Weighted-average shares used to compute net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
217,854 | |||
Pro forma adjustment to reflect the Capital Stock Conversion as if the conversion occurred on January 1, 2024 |
184,986 | |||
Pro forma adjustment to reflect the Option Exercise |
1,321 | |||
Pro forma adjustment to reflect the RSU Net Settlement |
246 | |||
|
|
|||
Weighted-average shares used to compute pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
404,407 | |||
|
|
|||
Pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(1) |
$ | (2.33 | ) | |
|
|
(1) | Basic and diluted pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders for the year ended December 31, 2024, gives effect to (i) the Capital Stock Conversion as though the conversion had occurred as of the beginning of the period, (ii) the Class B Conversion, |
24
(iii) the Option Exercise, and (iv) the issuance of 245,700 shares of Class A common stock in connection with the RSU Net Settlement, after withholding 226,800 shares to satisfy the estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations of $12 million (based on the assumed initial offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate). |
As of December 31, 2024 | ||||||||||||
Actual | Pro Forma(1) | Pro Forma, As Adjusted(2)(3) |
||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data: |
||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 1,361,083 | $ | 1,362,899 | $ | 2,166,817 | ||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
37,394 | 37,394 | 537,394 | |||||||||
Working capital(4) |
(3,046,332 | ) | (3,056,083 | ) | (757,709 | ) | ||||||
Property and equipment, net |
11,914,774 | 11,914,774 | 11,914,774 | |||||||||
Total assets |
17,832,599 | 17,834,415 | 19,478,046 | |||||||||
Debt, non-current |
5,457,915 | 5,457,915 | 5,457,915 | |||||||||
Deferred revenue, non-current |
3,294,977 | 3,294,977 | 3,294,977 | |||||||||
Total liabilities |
16,524,086 | 16,535,653 | 15,530,910 | |||||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock |
1,722,111 | | | |||||||||
Redeemable Class A common stock |
| 1,163,130 | 1,163,130 | |||||||||
Total stockholders equity (deficit) |
(413,598 | ) | 135,632 | 2,784,006 |
(1) | The pro forma column above reflects (i) the Capital Stock Conversion as if such conversion had occurred on December 31, 2024, (ii) the Class B Conversion, (iii) the Option Exercise and the receipt by us of gross proceeds of approximately $2 million in connection with the Option Exercise, (iv) the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering, (v) an increase to additional paid-in capital and accumulated deficit related to stock based compensation of $78 million related to RSUs subject to the RSU Net Settlement, (vi) the net issuance of 245,700 shares of Class A common stock in connection with the RSU Net Settlement, after withholding 226,800 shares to satisfy estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations of $12 million (based on the initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate), and (vii) the increase in accrued liabilities and an equivalent decrease in additional paid-in capital of $12 million in connection with the estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the RSU Net Settlement. |
(2) | The pro forma as adjusted column above gives effect to (i) the pro forma adjustments set forth in footnote (1) above, (ii) the sale and issuance of 47,178,660 shares of our Class A common stock in this offering and the concurrent share issuance at an assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us, (iii) the application of approximately $1.0 billion of the net proceeds that we receive from this offering to repay the entire outstanding amount under our 2024 Term Loan Facility, (iv) the use of a portion of the net proceeds from this offering, together with existing cash and cash equivalents, if necessary, to satisfy the estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the RSU Net Settlement, and (v) an increase in other non-current assets and additional paid-in capital of $350 million in connection with the concurrent share issuance to OpenAI, for which any revenue recognized under the OpenAI Master Service Agreement will be offset by the value of these shares. In addition, approximately $500 million of the net proceeds from this offering will be held as restricted cash in escrow to secure our obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility. |
(3) | Each $1.00 increase or decrease in the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase or decrease the amount of our pro forma as adjusted cash and cash equivalents, working capital, total assets, additional paid-in capital, and total stockholders (deficit) equity by $46 million, assuming that the number of shares of our Class A common stock offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, an increase or decrease of 1.0 million shares in the number of shares offered by us would increase or decrease, as applicable, the amount of our pro forma as adjusted cash and cash equivalents, working capital, total assets, additional paid-in capital, and total stockholders (deficit) equity by $50 million, assuming the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. |
(4) | Working capital is defined as current assets less current liabilities. |
25
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
To supplement our consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), we use adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating income (loss) and adjusted operating income (loss) margin, and adjusted net income (loss) and adjusted net income (loss) margin, collectively, to help us evaluate our business. We use such non-GAAP financial measures to make strategic decisions, establish business plans and forecasts, identify trends affecting our business, and evaluate operating performance. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures, when taken collectively, may be helpful to investors because they allow for greater transparency into what measures we use in operating our business and measuring our performance and enable comparison of financial trends and results between periods where items may vary independent of business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are presented for supplemental informational purposes only, should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP, and may be different from similarly titled non-GAAP measures used by other companies. See the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsNon-GAAP Financial Measures for additional information and reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) |
||||||||||||
Adjusted EBITDA |
$ | (9,884 | ) | $ | 103,913 | $ | 1,219,258 | |||||
Net loss margin |
(196 | )% | (259 | )% | (45 | )% | ||||||
Adjusted EBITDA margin |
(62 | )% | 45 | % | 64 | % | ||||||
Adjusted operating income (loss) |
$ | (21,390 | ) | $ | 703 | $ | 355,845 | |||||
Operating income (loss) margin |
(145 | )% | (6 | )% | 17 | % | ||||||
Adjusted operating income (loss) margin |
(135 | )% | | % | 19 | % | ||||||
Adjusted net loss |
$ | (26,681 | ) | $ | (44,642 | ) | $ | (64,908 | ) | |||
Adjusted net loss margin |
(169 | )% | (19 | )% | (3 | )% |
26
Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this prospectus, before making a decision to invest in our Class A common stock. If any of the following risks occur, our business, operating results, financial condition and future prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you could lose all or a part of your investment. This prospectus also contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of specific factors, including the risks and uncertainties described below. See the section titled Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements for more information.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
Our recent growth may not be indicative of our future growth, and if we do not effectively manage our future growth, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be adversely affected.
We were founded in September 2017 and launched our CoreWeave Cloud Platform in 2020 and have experienced significant growth in a short period of time. Our revenue was $16 million, $229 million, and $1.9 billion for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively. Investors should not rely on the revenue growth of any prior quarterly or annual period as an indication of our future performance. Even if our revenue continues to increase, our revenue growth rate is expected to decline in the future as a result of a variety of factors, including the maturation of our business. Overall growth of our revenue will depend on a number of factors, including but not limited to our ability to:
| operate our cloud infrastructure, including due to supply chain limitations and data center or power availability; |
| compete with other companies in our industry, including those with greater financial, technical, marketing, sales, and other resources; |
| continue to develop new solutions and services and new functionality for our platform and successfully further optimize our existing infrastructure, solutions, and services; |
| retain existing customers and increase sales to existing customers, as well as attract new customers and grow our customer base; |
| successfully expand our business domestically and internationally; |
| generate sufficient cash flow from operations and raise additional capital, including through indebtedness, to support continued investments in our platform to maintain our technological leadership and the security of our platform; |
| strategically expand our direct sales force and leverage our existing sales capacity; |
| introduce and sell our solutions and services to new markets and verticals; |
| recruit, hire, train, and manage additional qualified personnel for our research and development activities; |
| maintain our existing, and enter into new, more cost-efficient, financing structures; and |
| successfully identify and acquire or invest in businesses, products, or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our platform. |
In addition to the factors discussed above, our revenue growth may also be impacted by industry-specific factors, particularly the continued development of AI, including advancements in AI technology that may lead to further compute efficiencies, the broader adoption, use, and commercialization of AI and any impacts of the developing AI regulatory environment.
27
As many of these factors are beyond our control, it is difficult for us to accurately forecast our future operating results. If the assumptions that we use to plan our business are incorrect or change in reaction to changes in our market, we may be unable to maintain consistent revenue or revenue growth, the value of our stock could be volatile, and it may be difficult to achieve and, if achieved, maintain profitability. In addition, changes in the macroeconomic environment, including actual or perceived global banking and finance related issues, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, volatile interest rates and inflation, spending environments, geopolitical instability, warfare and uncertainty, including the effects of the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan, weak economic conditions in certain regions, or a reduction in AI spending regardless of macroeconomic conditions may impact our growth.
In addition, as we have grown, our number of customers has also increased, and we have increasingly managed more complex deployments of our infrastructure in more complex computing environments. The rapid growth and expansion of our business places a significant strain on our management, operational, engineering, and financial resources. To manage any future growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our infrastructure, including information technology (IT) and financial infrastructure, our operating and administrative systems and controls, and our ability to manage headcount, capital, and processes in an efficient manner. If we do not manage future growth effectively, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects would be harmed.
If we continue to experience rapid growth, we may not be able to successfully implement or scale improvements to our systems, processes, and controls in an efficient, timely, or cost-effective manner. As we grow, our existing systems, processes, and controls may not prevent or detect all errors, omissions, or fraud. Any future growth will continue to add complexity to our organization and require effective coordination throughout our organization. Failure to manage any future growth effectively could result in increased costs, cause difficulty or delays in deploying our platform to new and existing customers, reduce demand for our platform, and cause difficulties in introducing new solutions and services or other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We have a limited number of suppliers for significant components of the equipment we use to build and operate our platform and provide our solutions and services. Any disruption in the availability of these components could delay our ability to expand or increase the capacity of our infrastructure or replace defective equipment.
We do not manufacture the components we use to build the technology infrastructure underlying our platform. We have a limited number of suppliers that we use to procure and configure significant components of the technology infrastructure that we use to operate our platform and provide our solutions and services to our customers. For example, as a result of our obligations in our current customer contracts, all of the GPUs used in our infrastructure today are NVIDIA GPUs. Additionally, for the year ended December 31, 2022, three suppliers accounted for 23%, 16%, and 10% of total purchases, for the year ended December 31, 2023, three suppliers accounted for 57%, 22%, and 11% of total purchases, and for the year ended December 31, 2024, three suppliers accounted for 46%, 16%, and 14% of total purchases. Utilizing a limited number of suppliers of the components for our technology infrastructure exposes us to risks, including:
| asymmetry between component availability and contractual performance obligations, including where specified components are required; |
| shifts in market-leading technologies away from those offered by our current suppliers that could impact our ability to offer our customers the solutions and services that they are seeking; |
| reduced control over production costs and constraints based on the then current availability, terms, and pricing of these components, including any delays in our supply chain (such as the recent delays associated with NVIDIAs Blackwell GPUs); |
| limited ability to control aspects of the quality, performance, quantity, and cost of our infrastructure or of its components; |
28
| the potential for binding price or purchase commitments with our suppliers at higher than market rates; |
| reliance on our suppliers to keep up with technological advancements at the same pace as our business and customer demands, including their ability to continue to deliver next generation components that are substantially better than the prior generation; |
| consolidation among suppliers in our industry, which may harm our ability to negotiate and obtain favorable terms from our suppliers and the third-party suppliers that our suppliers rely on; |
| labor and political unrest at facilities we do not operate or own; |
| geopolitical disputes disrupting our or any of our suppliers supply chains; |
| business, legal compliance, litigation, and financial concerns affecting our suppliers or their ability to manufacture and ship components in the quantities, quality, and manner we require; |
| impacts on our supply chain from adverse public health developments, including outbreaks of contagious diseases or pandemics; and |
| disruptions due to floods, earthquakes, storms, and other natural disasters, particularly in countries with limited infrastructure and disaster recovery resources, or regional conflicts. |
Our technology infrastructure components suppliers fulfill our supply requirements on the basis of individual purchase orders, which we often place on a just-in-time basis. We currently have no long-term contracts or arrangements with our suppliers that guarantee capacity or the continuation of any particular payment terms. Accordingly, our suppliers are not obligated to continue to fulfill our supply requirements, and the prices we are charged for their products and, if applicable, services could be increased on short notice. Further, because we often submit purchase orders to our suppliers on a just-in-time basis, any delay from our suppliers may result in our inability to provide our infrastructure and platform to our customers on a timely basis and fulfill our contractual requirements under our customer contracts. Additionally, our current customers have contractually specified our use of NVIDIA GPUs. If we are required to change suppliers, our ability to meet our obligations to our customers, including scheduled compute access, could be adversely affected and our solutions may not be as performant, which could cause the loss of sales from existing or potential customers, delayed revenue, or an increase in our costs, which could adversely affect our margins. Any production or shipping interruptions for any reason, such as a natural disaster, epidemics, pandemics, capacity shortages, quality problems, or strike or other labor disruption at one of our supplier locations or at shipping ports or locations, could adversely affect sales of our solution and services offerings.
In addition, we are continually working to expand and enhance our infrastructure features, technology, and network and other technologies to accommodate substantial increases in the computing power required by more compute-intensive workloads on our platform, the amount of data we host, and our overall number of total customers. We may be unable to project accurately the rate or timing of these increases or to allocate resources successfully to address such increases and may underestimate the data center capacity needed to address such increases. Our limited number of suppliers, in turn, may not be able to quickly respond to our needs, which would have a negative impact on customer experience and contractual performance. In the future, we may be required to allocate additional resources, including spending substantial amounts, to build, purchase, or lease or license data centers and equipment and upgrade our technology and network infrastructure in order to handle increased customer usage, and our suppliers may not be able to satisfy such requirements. In addition, our network or our suppliers networks might be unable to achieve or maintain data transmission capacity high enough to effectively deliver our services. We may also face constraints on our ability to deliver our platform, solutions, and services if there is limited power supply. Our failure, or our suppliers failure, to achieve or maintain high data transmission capacity and sufficient electrical services would impact our ability to meet customer needs and could significantly reduce consumer demand for our services. Such reduced demand and resulting loss of compute, cost increases, or failure to upgrade our equipment or adapt to new technologies would harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
29
Moreover, our suppliers themselves rely on a complex network of third-party suppliers for semiconductor manufacturing, hardware components, and other critical inputs, which introduces additional risks to our supply chain. For example, NVIDIA relies on suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company for semiconductor fabrication and other manufacturers for compute and networking components. Any disruption in the operations of these upstream suppliers, whether due to equipment failures, geopolitical factors such as the potential for military conflict between China and Taiwan, or supply chain constraints, could affect our suppliers ability to supply the significant components of the equipment we use to operate our platform and provide our solutions and services to our customers, which would, in turn, affect the availability of our solutions and services, as well as lead times.
In addition, to the extent any of our suppliers businesses are impacted by business, legal compliance, litigation, and financial concerns, including regulatory scrutiny and export controls, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be adversely affected. For example, increasing use of tariffs, economic sanctions and export controls has impacted and may in the future impact the availability and cost of GPUs and other components of our platform. The current U.S. presidential administration has discussed imposing broad-based tariffs on imported goods, which, if implemented on components of our infrastructure and other products we use, could increase our costs. Further, the former U.S. presidential administration had released new export controls targeting semiconductor manufacturing equipment and other items related to advanced integrated circuits. It is possible that these and additional restrictions could impede the supply chain in this industry. Additional export restrictions imposed on components of our technologies by the U.S. government may also provoke responses from foreign governments that negatively impact our supply chain, increase the costs for affected imported goods, or limit our ability to obtain additional hardware components, which would also substantially reduce our ability to provide or develop our platform, solutions, and services.
In the event of a supplier unavailability, component shortage, or supply interruption, we may not be able to secure alternate sources in a timely manner. Securing alternate sources of supply for these components or services may be time-consuming, difficult, and costly and we may not be able to source these components or services on terms that are acceptable to us, or at all, which may undermine our ability to fill our orders in a timely manner. Any interruption or delay in the supply of any of these components or services, or the inability to obtain these components or services from alternate sources at acceptable prices and within a reasonable amount of time, would harm our ability to meet the demand of our customers, which in turn would have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our business would be harmed if we were not able to access sufficient power or by increased costs to procure power, prolonged power outages, shortages, or capacity constraints.
We depend on being able to secure power, which powers our data center facilities, in a cost-effective manner. Our inability to secure sufficient power or any power outages, shortages, supply chain issues, capacity constraints, or significant increases in the cost of securing power could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We rely on third parties, third-party infrastructure, governments, and global suppliers to provide a sufficient amount of power to maintain our leased or licensed data center facilities and meet the needs of our current and future customers. We have in the past experienced, and we may in the future experience, insufficient power to service a customers project. Any limitation on the delivered energy supply would limit our ability to operate our platform. These limitations would have a negative impact on a given data center or limit our ability to grow our business which could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Limitations on generation, transmission, and distribution may also limit our ability to obtain sufficient power capacity for potential expansion sites in new or existing markets. Power providers, other participants in the power market, and those entities that regulate it may impose onerous operating conditions to any approval or provision of power or we may experience significant delays and substantial increased costs to provide the level of electrical
30
service required by our current or future leased or licensed data centers, or any data centers we may choose to construct in the future. Our ability to find appropriate sites for expansion, including existing sites to lease or license, will also be limited by access to power.
Our data center facilities are affected by problems accessing electricity sources, such as planned or unplanned power outages and limitations on transmission or distribution of power. Unplanned power outages, including, but not limited to those relating to large storms, earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, cyberattacks, physical attacks on utility infrastructure, war, and any failures of electrical power grids more generally, and planned power outages by public utilities, such as Pacific Gas and Electric Companys practice of planned outages in California to minimize fire risks, could harm our customers and our business. Further, our data center facilities are located in leased buildings where, depending upon the lease requirements and number of tenants involved, we may or may not control some or all of the infrastructure, including generators and fuel tanks. As a result, in the event of a power outage, we could be dependent upon the landlord, as well as the utility company, to restore the power. Even if we attempt to limit our exposure to system downtime by using backup generators, which are in turn supported by onsite fuel storage and through contracts with fuel suppliers, these measures may not always prevent downtime or solve for long-term or large-scale outages. Any outage or supply disruption could adversely affect our customer experience, as well as our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
The global energy market is currently experiencing inflation and volatility pressures. Various macroeconomic and geopolitical factors are contributing to the instability and global power shortage, including the war in Ukraine, severe weather events, governmental regulations, government relations, and inflation. We expect the cost for power to continue to be volatile and unpredictable and subject to inflationary pressures, which could materially affect our financial forecasting, business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
If our data center providers fail to meet the requirements of our business, or if the data center facilities experience damage, interruption, or a security breach, our ability to provide access to our infrastructure and maintain the performance of our network could be negatively impacted.
We lease space in or otherwise license use of third-party data centers located in the United States, Europe and United Kingdom. Our business is reliant on these data center facilities. Given that we lease or license use of this data center space, we do not control the operation of these third-party facilities. Consequently, we could be subject to service disruptions as well as failures to provide adequate support for reasons that are outside of our direct control. Our data center facilities and network infrastructure are vulnerable to damage or interruption from a variety of sources including earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, system failures, computer and other cybersecurity vulnerabilities, physical or electronic break-ins, human error, malfeasance or interference, including by employees, former employees, or contractors, as well terrorist acts and other catastrophic events. We and the data center facilities we lease space in or license use of have experienced, and may in the future experience, disruptions, outages, and other performance problems due to a variety of factors, including availability or sufficiency of power, infrastructure changes, and capacity constraints, occasionally due to an overwhelming number of customers accessing our infrastructure simultaneously. Our third-party data centers and network infrastructure may also be subject to cybersecurity attacks, including supply chain attacks, due to the actions of outside parties or human error, malfeasance, insider threats, system errors or vulnerabilities, insufficient cybersecurity controls, a combination of these, or otherwise, which may cause service outages and otherwise impact our ability to provide our solutions and services. While we review the security measures of our third-party data centers, we cannot ensure that these measures will be sufficient to prevent a cybersecurity attack or to protect the continued operation of our platform in the event of a cybersecurity attack, and any impact to our solutions and services may also impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Data center facilities housing our network infrastructure may also be subject to local administrative actions, changes to legal or permitting requirements, labor disputes, litigation to stop, limit, or delay operations, and other legal challenges, including local government agencies seeking to gain access to customer accounts for law
31
enforcement or other reasons. In addition, while we have entered into various agreements for the lease of data center space, equipment, maintenance, and other services, those third parties could fail to deliver on their contractual obligations under those agreements, including agreements to provide us with certain data, equipment, and utilities information required to run our business. Furthermore, we may require the data centers we lease to have certain highly specific attributes in order to effectively run our business. For example, our state-of-the art data centers may also require networking equipment, high-speed interconnects, enhanced access to power, and liquid cooling infrastructure. In some cases, these third-party data centers are required to undergo extensive retrofitting and improvement efforts, including to incorporate novel developments in our industry, which are time consuming, expensive, and less efficient than if we were to lease from spaces already designed for our operations, and which may not ultimately be successful in meeting all of our requirements. If third parties fail to successfully deliver on such performance requirements, our ability to maintain the performance of our network would be negatively impacted.
Other factors, many of which are beyond our control, that can affect the delivery, performance, and availability of our platform include:
| the development, maintenance, and functioning of the infrastructure of the internet as a whole; |
| the performance and availability of third-party telecommunications services with the necessary speed, data capacity, and security for providing reliable internet access and services; |
| the success or failure of our redundancy systems; |
| the success or failure of our disaster recovery and business continuity plans; |
| decisions by the owners and operators of the data center facilities where our infrastructure is installed or by global telecommunications service provider partners who provide us with network bandwidth to terminate our contracts, discontinue services to us, shut down operations or facilities, increase prices, change service levels, limit bandwidth, declare bankruptcy, breach their contracts with us, or prioritize the traffic of other parties; |
| our ability to enter into data center agreements and leases according to our business needs and on terms and with counterparties acceptable to us; and |
| changing sentiment by government regulators relating to data center development, including in response to public concerns regarding environmental impact and development, which may result in restrictive government regulation or otherwise impact the future construction of additional data centers. |
In addition, many of the leases we have entered into for third-party data centers have multi-year terms and fixed capacity. If we do not accurately anticipate the data center capacity required by our customers, including if they use less or more of our infrastructure than expected, we would incur additional costs due to leasing more capacity than is used and paid for by our customers or, alternatively, in seeking additional data center capacity to fulfill unexpected demand on terms that may not be economically reasonable or acceptable to us, if we are able to lease additional capacity at all. We may also need to seek additional data center capacity in the event any leases with third parties are terminated or not renewed, which we may be unable to do on reasonable terms or at all.
The occurrence of any of these factors, or our inability to efficiently and cost-effectively fix such errors or other problems that may be identified, could damage our reputation, negatively impact our relationship with our customers, or otherwise materially harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
In the future, we may develop our own data centers, rather than relying on third parties and, because of our limited experience in this area, we could experience unforeseen difficulties. For example, any potential expansion of our data center infrastructure would be complex, and unanticipated delays in the completion of those projects or availability of components may lead to increased project costs, operational inefficiencies, or interruptions in the delivery or degradation of the quality of our platform. In addition, there may be issues related
32
to this infrastructure that are not identified during the testing phases of design and implementation, which may only become evident after we have started to fully utilize the underlying equipment, that could further degrade our platform or increase our costs.
A substantial portion of our revenue is driven by a limited number of our customers, and the loss of, or a significant reduction in, spend from one or a few of our top customers would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
A substantial portion of our revenue is driven by a limited number of customers. We recognized an aggregate of approximately 41% and 73% of our revenue from our top three customers for the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, respectively. We recognized an aggregate of approximately 77% of our revenue from our top two customers for the year ended December 31, 2024. None of our other customers represented 10% or more of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024. For the year ended December 31, 2022, our largest customer accounted for 16% of our revenue. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, our largest customer was Microsoft, which accounted for 35% and 62% of our revenue, respectively. Any negative changes in demand from Microsoft, in Microsofts ability or willingness to perform under its contracts with us, in laws or regulations applicable to Microsoft or the regions in which it operates, or in our broader strategic relationship with Microsoft would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Following December 31, 2024, we entered into a master services agreement with OpenAI as described in the section titled BusinessOur Customers that, as of March 2025, provided for payments to us of up to approximately $11.9 billion through October 2030, subject to satisfaction of delivery and availability of service requirements. As a result, we expect OpenAI to be a significant customer in future periods.
We anticipate that we will continue to derive a significant portion of our revenue from a limited number of customers for the foreseeable future, and in some cases, the portion of our revenue attributable to certain customers may increase in the future. The composition of our customer base, including our top customers, may fluctuate from period to period given that our customer composition has evolved and is expected to continue to evolve significantly as our business continues to evolve and scale and as the use cases for AI continue to develop. However, we may not be able to maintain or increase revenue from our top customers for a variety of reasons, including the following:
| customers may develop their own infrastructure that may compete with our services; |
| some of our customers may redesign their systems to require fewer of our services with limited notice to us and may choose not to renew or increase their purchases of our platform, solutions, and services; and |
| our customers may have pre-existing or concurrent relationships with, or may be, current or potential competitors that may affect such customers decisions to purchase our platform, solutions, and services. |
Customer relationships often require us to continually improve our platform, which may involve significant technological and design challenges, and our customers may place considerable pressure on us to meet tight development and capacity availability schedules. Accordingly, we may have to devote a substantial amount of our resources to our strategic relationships, which could detract from or delay our completion of other important development projects. Delays in making capacity available could impair our relationships with our customers and negatively impact forecasted sales of the services under development. Moreover, it is possible that our customers may develop their own infrastructure that may compete with our services or adopt a competitors infrastructure for services that they currently buy from us. If that happens, our revenue would be adversely impacted and our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects would be materially and adversely affected.
33
If we fail to efficiently enhance our platform and develop and sell new solutions and services and respond effectively to rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, changing regulations, and changing customer needs, requirements, or preferences, our platform may become less competitive.
The market in which we compete is relatively new and subject to rapid technological change, evolving industry standards and regulatory changes, as well as changing customer needs, requirements, and preferences. The success of our business will depend, in part, on our ability to, predict, adapt, and respond effectively to these changes on a timely basis. If we are unable to develop and sell new solutions and services that satisfy and are adopted by new and existing customers and provide enhancements, new features, and capabilities to our infrastructure that keep pace with rapid technological and industry change, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected. Further, prospective or existing customers may influence our product roadmap by requiring features optimal for their particular use case. If we are unable to adapt to meet customers requirements, they may use competitive offerings or internal solutions that eliminate reliance on third-party providers, and our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected. Moreover, prioritizing development of such features may require significant engineering resources and may not be compatible with the requirements of other customers, which could impact overall adoption of our platform. If new technologies emerge that limit or eliminate reliance on AI cloud platform providers like us, or that enable our competitors to deliver competitive services at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently, or more securely, such technologies could adversely impact our ability to compete. If our solutions do not allow us or our customers to comply with the latest regulatory requirements, sales of our platform, solutions, and services to existing customers may decrease and new customers will be less likely to adopt our platform.
Our future growth is dependent upon our ability to continue to meet the needs of new customers and the expanding needs of our existing customers as their use of our platform, solutions, and services grows. As sales of our platform grow, we will need to devote additional resources to expanding, improving, and maintaining our infrastructure and integrating with third-party applications. In addition, we will need to appropriately scale our internal business systems and our services organization, including customer support, to serve our growing customer base, and to improve our IT and financial infrastructure, operating and administrative systems, and our ability to effectively manage headcount, capital and processes, including by reducing costs and inefficiencies. Any failure of, or delay in, these efforts could result in impaired system performance and reduced customer satisfaction, which would negatively impact our revenue growth and our reputation. We may not be successful in developing or implementing these technologies. In addition, it takes a significant amount of time to plan, develop, and test improvements to our technologies and infrastructure, and we may not be able to accurately forecast demand or predict the results we will realize from such improvements. In some circumstances, we may also determine to scale our technology through the acquisition of complementary businesses and technologies rather than through internal development, which may divert managements time and resources. To the extent that we do not effectively scale our operations to meet the needs of our growing customer base and to maintain performance as our customers expand their use of our services, we will not be able to grow as quickly as we anticipate, our customers may reduce or terminate use of our platform and we will be unable to compete as effectively and our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects will be adversely affected.
We continually work to upgrade and enhance our platform, solutions, and services in response to customer demand and to keep up with technological changes. Part of this process entails cycling out outdated components of our infrastructure and replacing them with the latest technology available. This requires us to make certain estimates with respect to the useful life of the components of our infrastructure and to maximize the value of the components of our infrastructure, including our GPUs, to the fullest extent possible. We cannot guarantee that our estimates will be accurate or that our attempts at maximizing value will be successful. Any changes to the significant assumptions underlying our estimates or to the estimates of our components useful lives, or any inability to redeploy components of our existing infrastructure to extend past their contracted life could significantly affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
34
Our platform must also integrate with a variety of network, hardware, storage, and software technologies, and we need to continuously modify and enhance the capabilities of our platform to adapt to changes and innovation in these technologies. If our customers widely adopt new technologies, we may need to redesign parts of our platform to work with those new technologies. These development efforts may require significant engineering, marketing, and sales resources, all of which would affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Any failure of our infrastructures capabilities to operate effectively with future technologies and software platforms could reduce the demand for our platform. If we are unable to respond to these changes in a cost-effective manner, our platform may become less marketable and less competitive or obsolete, and our business may be harmed.
In addition, we must also continue to effectively manage our capital expenditures by maintaining and expanding our data center capacity, servers and equipment, grow in geographies where we currently have limited or no presence, and ensure that the performance, features, and reliability of our services and our customer service remain competitive in a rapidly changing technological environment. If we fail to manage our growth, the quality of our platform may suffer, which could negatively affect our brand and reputation and harm our ability to retain and attract customers and employees.
The broader adoption, use, and commercialization of AI technology, and the continued rapid pace of developments in the AI field, are inherently uncertain. Failure by our customers to continue to use our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to support AI use cases in their systems, or our ability to keep up with evolving AI technology requirements and regulatory frameworks, could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
As part of our growth strategy, we seek to attract and acquire customers requiring high-performance computing, such as AI, machine learning, and automated decision-making technologies, including proprietary AI algorithms and models (collectively, AI Technologies).
AI has been developing at a rapid pace, and continues to evolve and change. As demand continues for AI services, AI providers, including our customers, have sought increased compute capacity to enable advancements in their AI models and service the demands of end users. We cannot predict whether additional computing power will continue to be required to develop larger, more powerful AI models, or if the practical limits of AI technology will plateau in the future regardless of available compute capacity. Further, there have been recent advancements in AI technology, including open-source AI models, that may lead to compute and other efficiencies that may impact the demand for AI services, including our platform, solutions, and services, which may adversely impact our revenue and profitability. In the event that existing scaling laws do not continue to apply as they have in the past, demand by our customers for compute resources, including our solutions and services, may not continue to increase over time, or may decrease if overall demand for AI is impacted by a lack of further technological development. If we are unable to keep up with the changing AI landscape or in developing services to meet our customers evolving AI needs, or if the AI landscape does not develop to the extent we or our customers expect, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be adversely impacted.
Additionally, we may incur significant costs and experience significant delays in developing new solutions and services or enhancing our current platform to adapt to the changing AI landscape, and may not achieve a return on investment or capitalize on the opportunities presented by demand for AI solutions. Moreover, while AI adoption is likely to continue and may accelerate, the long-term trajectory of this technological trend is uncertain. Further, market acceptance, understanding, and valuation of solutions and services that incorporate AI Technologies are uncertain and the perceived value of AI Technologies used and/or provided by our customers could be inaccurate. If AI is not broadly adopted by enterprises to the extent we expect, or if new use cases do not arise, then our opportunity may be smaller than we expect. Further, if the consumer perception and perceived value of AI Technologies is inaccurate this could have a material adverse effect on our customers, which in turn could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
35
Concerns relating to the responsible use by our customers of new and evolving technologies, such as AI, which are supported by our platform, may result in collateral reputational harm to us. AI may pose emerging ethical issues and if our platform enables customer solutions that draw controversy due to their perceived or actual impact on society, we may experience brand or reputational harm, competitive harm, or legal liability.
Furthermore, the rapid pace of innovation in the field of AI has led to developing and evolving regulatory frameworks globally, which are expected to become increasingly complex as AI continues to evolve. Regulators and lawmakers around the world have started proposing and adopting, or are currently considering, regulations and guidance specifically on the use of AI. Regulations related to AI Technologies have been introduced in the United States at the federal level and are also enacted and advancing at the state level. Additional regulations may impact our customers ability to develop, use and commercialize AI Technologies, which would impact demand for our platform, solutions, and services and may affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
AI and related industries, including cloud services, are under increasing scrutiny from regulators due to their concerns about market concentration, anti-competitive practices, and the pace of partnerships and acquisitions involving generative AI startups. As the industry continues to grow, transactions and business conduct will likely continue to draw scrutiny from regulators. Our customers may become subject to further AI regulations, including any restrictions on the total consumption of compute technology, which could cause a delay or impediment to the commercialization of AI technology and could lead to a decrease in demand for our customers AI infrastructure, and may adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our operations require substantial capital expenditures, and we will require additional capital to fund our business and support our growth, and any inability to generate or obtain such capital on acceptable terms, if at all, or to lower our total cost of capital, may adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We require substantial capital expenditures to support our growth and respond to business challenges. We have made significant financial investments in our business, and we intend to continue to make such investments in the future, including expenditures to procure components for, maintain, upgrade, and enhance our platform, including costs related to obtaining third-party chips and leasing and maintaining, enhancing, and expanding our data centers. While we have historically been able to fund capital expenditures from cash generated from operations, equity and debt financings, and borrowings under our term loan facilities, factors outside of our control, including those described in this Risk Factors section, and particularly those under Risks Related to Our Indebtedness, could materially reduce the cash available from operations, impede our ability to raise additional capital, or significantly increase our capital expenditure requirements, which may result in our inability to fund the necessary level of capital expenditures to maintain and expand our operations. This could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Additional financing may not be available on terms favorable to us, if at all. If adequate financing is not available on acceptable terms, we may be unable to invest in future growth opportunities, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. If we raise additional funds through equity or convertible debt issuances, our existing stockholders may suffer significant dilution and these securities could have rights, preferences, and privileges that are superior to those of holders of our Class A common stock. If we obtain additional funds through debt financing, we may not be able to obtain such financing on terms favorable to us. Further, the current global macroeconomic environment could make it more difficult to raise additional capital on favorable terms, if at all. Such terms may involve restrictive covenants making it difficult to engage in capital raising activities and pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. The trading prices of recently-public companies have been highly volatile as a result of multiple factors including, the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan, inflation, interest rate volatility, actual or perceived instability in the banking system, and market downturns, which may reduce our ability to access capital on favorable terms or at all. In addition, a recession, depression, or other sustained adverse market event
36
could adversely affect our business and the value of our Class A common stock. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth and to respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired and our business may be adversely affected, requiring us to delay, reduce, or eliminate some or all of our operations. Even if we are able to raise such capital, we cannot guarantee that we will deploy it in such a fashion that allows us to achieve better operating results or grow our business.
Moreover, in order to fund investments in our infrastructure, we have pioneered and scaled innovative financing structures that have enabled us to grow our business through timely and flexible access to capital. While we expect our cost of capital to continue declining as we benefit from economies of scale and access new forms of financing, including asset backed securitizations and rated parent-level debt, our ability to lower our cost of capital depends upon a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control, including broader macroeconomic conditions. If we are unable to continue lowering our cost of capital, our ability to effectively compete, especially with larger competitors that have greater financial and other resources, as well as our operating results, financial condition, and business, may be adversely impacted.
Our operating results may fluctuate significantly, which could make our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results to fall below expectations.
Our operating results have varied significantly from period to period in the past, and we expect that our operating results will continue to vary significantly in the future such that period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. In addition, in future periods, we may experience fluctuations in remaining performance obligations, given the nature of our committed contract business, the size of those contracts, and period-to-period variation in new business signed and revenue recognized from existing contracts. This could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Accordingly, our financial results in any one quarter should not be relied upon as indicative of future performance. Fluctuations in quarterly results may negatively impact the trading price of our Class A common stock. Our quarterly financial results may fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, many of which are outside of our control and may be difficult to predict, including, without limitation:
| the amount and timing of operating costs and capital expenditures related to the expansion of our business; |
| any power outages, shortages, supply chain issues, capacity constraints, or significant increases in the cost of securing power; |
| general global macroeconomic and political conditions, both domestically and in our foreign markets that could impact some or all regions where we operate, including global economic slowdowns, actual or perceived global banking and finance related issues, increased risk of inflation, potential uncertainty with respect to the federal debt ceiling and budget and potential government shutdowns related thereto, interest rate volatility, supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, increases in energy costs and potential global recession; |
| the impact of natural or man-made global events on our business, including wars and other armed conflict, such as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan; |
| changes in our legal or regulatory environment, including developments in regulations relating to AI and machine learning; |
| our ability to attract new and retain existing customers, increase sales of our platform, or sell additional solutions and services to existing customers; |
| the budgeting cycles, seasonal buying patterns, and purchasing practices of customers; |
| the timing and length of our sales cycles; |
| changes in customer requirements or market needs; |
37
| changes in the growth rate of the cloud infrastructure market generally; |
| the timing and success of new solution and service introductions by us or our competitors or any other competitive developments, including consolidation among our customers or competitors; |
| any disruption in our strategic relationships; |
| our ability to successfully expand our business domestically and internationally; |
| equity or debt financings and the capital markets environment, including interest rate changes; |
| our ability to reduce our cost of capital over time; |
| decisions by organizations to purchase specialized AI cloud infrastructure from larger, more established vendors; |
| our ability to successfully and timely deliver our solutions and services to customers under our committed contracts, including due to data center lead times; |
| our ability to successfully and timely deploy launches of additional data centers; |
| the timing and success of the integration of new infrastructure, including new GPU generations, into our platform; |
| changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors; |
| insolvency or credit difficulties confronting our customers, including bankruptcy or liquidation, due to individual, macroeconomic, and regulatory factors, including those specifically impacting early-stage AI ventures, affecting their ability to purchase or pay for our platform; |
| significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with, or interruptions to, the use of our platform or other cybersecurity incidents; |
| extraordinary expenses such as litigation or other dispute-related settlement payments or outcomes, taxes, regulatory fines or penalties; |
| the timing of revenue recognition and revenue deferrals; |
| future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies or practices; |
| negative media coverage or publicity; and |
| increases or decreases in our expenses caused by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. |
Any of the above factors, individually or in the aggregate, could result in significant fluctuations in our financial condition, cash flows, and other operating results from period to period.
We face intense competition and could lose market share to our competitors, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
The market for AI cloud infrastructure and software is intensely competitive and is rapidly evolving, characterized by changes in technology, customer requirements, industry standards, regulatory developments, and frequent introductions of new or improved solutions and services. Key competitors that offer general purpose cloud computing as part of a broader, diversified product portfolio include Amazon (AWS), Google (Google Cloud Platform), IBM, Microsoft (Azure), and Oracle, a number of which are also our current customers. We also compete with smaller cloud service providers focused on AI, including Crusoe and Lambda. We expect to continue to face intense competition from current competitors, including as our competitors complete strategic acquisitions or form cooperative relationships and/or customer requirements evolve, as well as from new entrants into the market. If we are unable to anticipate or react to these challenges, our competitive position could weaken, and we would experience a decline in revenue or reduced revenue growth, and loss of market share that could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
38
Our ability to compete effectively depends upon numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control, including, but not limited to:
| changes in customer or market needs, requirements, and preferences and our ability to fulfill those needs, requirements, and preferences; |
| our ability to expand and augment our platform, including through infrastructure and new technologies, or increase sales of our platform; |
| any power outages, shortages, supply chain issues, capacity constraints, or significant increases in the cost of securing power; |
| our ability to attract, train, retain, and motivate talented employees; |
| our ability to retain existing customers and increase sales to existing customers, as well as attract and retain new customers; |
| the budgeting cycles, seasonal buying patterns, and purchasing practices of our customers, including any slowdown in technology spending due to U.S. and general global macroeconomic conditions; |
| price competition; |
| stagnation in the adoption rate or changes in the growth rate of AI and AI cloud infrastructure sectors, including due to emerging AI technologies, which may lead to further compute efficiencies; |
| the timing and success of new solution and service introductions by us or our competitors, including new competing technologies that may displace cloud infrastructure, or any other change in the competitive landscape of our industry, including consolidation among our competitors or customers and strategic partnerships entered into by and between our competitors; |
| changes in our mix of solution and services sold, including changes in the average contracted usage of our platform; |
| our ability to successfully and continuously expand our business domestically and internationally; |
| our ability to secure necessary funding; |
| deferral of orders from customers in anticipation of new or enhanced solutions and services announced by us or our competitors; |
| significant security breaches or, technical difficulties with, or interruptions to the use of our platform, including data security; |
| the timing and costs related to the development or acquisition of technologies or businesses or entry into strategic partnerships; |
| our ability to execute, complete, or efficiently integrate any acquisitions that we may undertake; |
| increased expenses, unforeseen liabilities, or write-downs and any impact on our operating results from any acquisitions we consummate; |
| our ability to increase the size and productivity of our sales teams; |
| decisions by potential customers to purchase cloud infrastructure and associated services from larger, more established technology companies; |
| insolvency or credit difficulties confronting our customers, which could increase due to U.S. and global macroeconomic issues and which would adversely affect our customers ability to purchase or pay for our platform in a timely manner or at all; |
| the cost and potential outcomes of litigation, regulatory investigations or actions, or other proceedings, which could have a material adverse effect on our business; |
| future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies; |
39
| increases or decreases in our expenses caused by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; |
| our ability to comply with applicable domestic and international regulations and laws and to obtain the necessary licenses to conduct our business; |
| general global macroeconomic and political conditions, both domestically and in our foreign markets that could impact some or all regions where we operate, including global economic slowdowns, actual or perceived global banking and finance related issues, increased risk of inflation, potential uncertainty with respect to the federal debt ceiling and budget and potential government shutdowns related thereto, interest rate volatility, supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and potential global recession; and |
| the impact of natural or man-made global events on our business, including outbreaks of contagious diseases or pandemics and wars and other armed conflicts, such as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and the tensions between China and Taiwan. |
Many of our competitors have greater financial, technical, marketing, sales, and other resources, greater name recognition, longer operating histories, and a larger base of customers than we do. Our competitors may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, and sale of their solutions and services than we can, and they may offer lower pricing than we do or bundle certain competing solutions and services at lower prices. Our competitors may also have greater resources for research and development of new technologies, customer support, and to pursue acquisitions, and they have other financial, technical, or other resource advantages. Our larger competitors have substantially broader and more diverse solution and service offerings and more mature distribution and go-to-market strategies, which allows them to leverage their existing customer relationships and any distributor relationships to gain business in a manner that discourages potential customers from purchasing our platform. Further, our current and future competitors may include our customers and suppliers, if any of these customers or suppliers were to cease purchasing services from us or supplying us with components as a result, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected.
Conditions in our market could change rapidly and significantly as a result of technological advancements, including but not limited to increased advancements and proliferation in the use of AI and machine learning, partnerships between or acquisitions by our competitors, or continuing market consolidation, including consolidation of potential or existing customers with our competitors. Some of our competitors have recently made or could make acquisitions of businesses or have established cooperative relationships that may allow them to offer more directly competitive and comprehensive solutions and services than were previously offered and adapt more quickly to new technologies and customer needs. These competitive pressures in our market or our failure to compete effectively may result in price reductions, fewer orders, reduced revenue and operating margin, increased net losses, and loss of market share.
Even if there is significant demand for specialized AI cloud infrastructure like ours, if our competitors include functionality that is, or is perceived to be, equivalent to or better than ours in legacy solutions and services that are already generally accepted as necessary components of an organizations operational architecture, we may have difficulty increasing the market penetration of our platform. Furthermore, even if the functionality offered by other cloud infrastructure providers is different and more limited than the functionality of our platform, organizations may elect to accept such limited functionality in lieu of purchasing our solutions and services. If we are unable to compete successfully, or if competing successfully requires us to take aggressive action with respect to pricing or other actions, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects would be adversely affected.
A network or data security incident against us, or our third-party providers, whether actual, alleged, or perceived, could harm our reputation, create liability and regulatory exposure, and adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Companies are subject to an increasing number, and wide variety, of attacks on their networks on an ongoing basis. Traditional computer hackers, malicious code (such as viruses and worms), phishing attempts,
40
ransomware, account takeover, business email compromise, employee fraud or bad actors, theft or misuse, denial of service attacks, misconfigurations, bugs, or other vulnerabilities in commercial software that is integrated into our (or our suppliers or service providers) IT systems, and sophisticated nation-state sponsored actors engage in cyber intrusions and attacks that create risks for our infrastructure and the data, including personal information, which it hosts and transmits. State-supported and geopolitical-related cyberattacks may rise in connection with regional geopolitical conflicts such as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan. Moreover, the ongoing war in Ukraine and associated activities in Russia as well as in the Middle East, have increased the risk of cyberattacks on various types of infrastructure and operations. Additionally, bad actors are beginning to utilize AI-based tools to execute attacks, creating unprecedented cybersecurity challenges. We may be a valuable target for cyberattacks given the critical data which we host and transmit.
Although we have implemented security measures designed to prevent such attacks, including a review of our third-party providers measures, we cannot guarantee that such measures will operate effectively to protect our and our third-party providers infrastructure, systems, networks, and physical facilities from breach due to the actions of outside parties or human error, malfeasance, insider threats, system errors or vulnerabilities, insufficient cybersecurity controls, a combination of the foregoing, or otherwise, and as a result, an unauthorized party may obtain access to our, our third-party providers or our customers systems, networks, or data. The techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to systems or sabotage systems, or disable or degrade services, change frequently and are often unrecognizable until launched against a target, and therefore we may be unable to anticipate these techniques and implement adequate preventative measures. Our servers may be vulnerable to computer viruses or physical or electronic break-ins that our security measures may not detect. Protecting our own assets has become more expensive and these costs may increase as the threat landscape increases, including as a result of use by bad actors of AI. We may face difficulties or delays in identifying or otherwise responding to any attacks or actual or potential security breaches or threats. These risks are exacerbated by developments in generative AI. A breach in our or our third-party providers data security or an attack against our platform could and have impacted our infrastructure and systems, creating system disruptions or slowdowns and providing access to malicious parties to information hosted and transmitted by our infrastructure, resulting in data, including the data of our customers, being publicly disclosed, misused, altered, lost, or stolen, which could subject us to liability and reputational harm and adversely affect our financial condition. While to date no incidents have had a material impact on our operations or financial results, we cannot guarantee that material incidents will not occur in the future. If compromised, our own systems could be used to facilitate or magnify an attack. Further, the increase in remote work by companies and individuals in recent years has generally increased the attack surface available to bad actors for exploitation, and as such, the risk of a cybersecurity incident potentially occurring has increased. Finally, we have acquired and expect to continue to acquire companies with cybersecurity vulnerabilities or unsophisticated security measures, which exposes us to significant cybersecurity, operational and financial risks.
Any actual, alleged, or perceived security breach in our third-party providers or partners systems or networks, or any other actual, alleged or perceived data security breach that we or our third-party providers or partners suffer, could result in damage to our reputation, negative publicity, loss of customers and sales, loss of competitive advantages over our competitors, increased costs to remedy any problems and otherwise respond to any incident, regulatory investigations and enforcement actions, fines and penalties, costly litigation (including class actions), and other liability. We would also be exposed to a risk of loss or litigation and potential liability under laws, regulations, and contracts that protect the privacy and security of personal information. For a description of the privacy and security laws, regulations and other industry requirements to which our business is subject, see the risk factor below We are subject to laws, regulations, and industry requirements related to data privacy, data protection and information security, and user protection across different markets where we conduct our business and such laws, regulations, and industry requirements are constantly evolving and changing. Any actual or perceived failure to comply with such laws, regulations, and industry requirements, or our privacy policies, could harm our business.
Due to concerns about data security and integrity, a growing number of legislative and regulatory bodies have adopted breach notification and other requirements in the event that information subject to such laws is
41
accessed by unauthorized persons and additional regulations regarding security of such data are possible. We may need to notify governmental authorities and affected individuals with respect to such incidents. For example, laws in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States may require businesses to provide notice to individuals whose personal information has been disclosed as a result of a data security breach. Complying with such numerous and complex regulations in the event of a data security breach can be expensive and difficult, and failure to comply with these regulations could subject us to regulatory scrutiny and additional liability. In addition, certain of our customer agreements, as well as privacy laws, may require us to promptly report security incidents involving our systems or those of our third-party partners that compromise the security, confidentiality, or integrity of certain processed customer data. Regardless of our contractual protections, these mandatory disclosures could be costly, result in litigation, harm our reputation, erode customer trust, and require significant resources to mitigate issues stemming from actual or perceived security breaches.
Although we maintain cybersecurity insurance, there can be no guarantee that any or all costs or losses incurred will be partially or fully recouped from such insurance or that applicable insurance in the future will be available on economically reasonable terms or at all.
We may also incur significant financial and operational costs to investigate, remediate, eliminate, and put in place additional tools and devices designed to prevent actual or perceived security breaches and other security incidents, as well as costs to comply with any notification obligations resulting from any security incidents. Any of these negative outcomes could adversely affect the market perception of infrastructure and customer and investor confidence in our company, and would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Further, from time to time, government entities (including law enforcement bodies) may in the future seek our assistance with obtaining access to our customers data. Although we strive to protect the privacy of our customers, we may be required from time to time to provide access to customer data to government entities. In light of our privacy commitments, although we may legally challenge law enforcement requests to provide access to our systems or other customer content, we may nevertheless face complaints that we have provided information improperly to law enforcement or in response to non-meritorious third-party complaints. We may experience adverse political, business, and reputational consequences, to the extent that we do not provide assistance to or comply with requests from government entities in the manner requested or challenge those requests publicly or in court or provide, or are perceived as providing, assistance to government entities that exceeds our legal obligations. Any such disclosure could significantly and adversely impact our business and reputation.
We have a history of generating net losses as a result of the substantial investments we have made to grow our business and develop our platform, anticipate increases in our operating expenses in the future, and may not achieve or, if achieved, sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and, if achieved, sustain profitability, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects will be adversely affected.
We incurred net losses of $31 million, $594 million, and $863 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively, and we may not achieve or, if achieved, sustain profitability in the future. As of December 31, 2024, we had an accumulated deficit of $1.5 billion. While we have historically experienced significant growth in revenue over the last two years, we cannot predict whether we will maintain this level of growth or when we will achieve profitability. We also expect our operating expenses to increase in the future, including our general and administrative expenses as a result of increased costs associated with operating as a public company and as we continue to invest for our future growth, including expanding our research and development function to drive further development of our platform, continuing to invest in the technology infrastructure underlying our platform and data center expansion, expanding our sales and marketing activities, developing the functionality to expand into adjacent markets, and reaching customers in new geographic locations and new verticals, which will negatively affect our operating results if our total revenue does not increase.
42
Following the completion of this offering, the stock-based compensation expense related to our RSUs will result in increases in our expenses in future periods, in particular in the quarter in which this offering is completed for RSUs for which the time condition has been satisfied and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon completion of this offering. Additionally, we may expend substantial funds in connection with the tax withholding and remittance obligations that arise upon the settlement of certain of our RSUs.
Our operating efficiencies may decrease as we scale, and our revenue growth may slow as we grow. Our revenue could also decline for a number of other reasons, including reduced demand for our offerings, increased competition, a decrease in the growth or reduction in size of our overall market, or if we cannot capitalize on growth opportunities, including acquisitions and through new and enhanced solutions and services. Furthermore, to the extent our anticipated cash payback period is longer than we expect, or if we fail to maintain or increase our revenue to offset increases in our operating expenses or manage our costs as we invest in our business, including if we do not maintain or improve our operating efficiencies, we may not achieve or sustain profitability, and if we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects will be adversely affected.
We make substantial investments in our technology and infrastructure and unsuccessful investments could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
The industry in which we compete is characterized by rapid technological change, changes in customer requirements, frequent new product and service introductions and enhancements, short product cycles, and evolving industry standards. In order to remain competitive, we have made, and expect to continue to make, significant investments in our technology and infrastructure. For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, technology and infrastructure expenses were $18 million, $132 million, and $961 million, respectively. If we fail to further develop our platform or develop new and enhanced solutions, services, and technologies, if we focus on technologies that do not become widely adopted, or if new competitive technologies or industry standards that we do not support become widely accepted, demand for our solutions and services may be reduced. Increased investments in technology and infrastructure or unsuccessful improvement efforts could cause our cost structure to fall out of alignment with demand for our solutions and services, which would have a negative impact on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our platform is complex and performance problems or defects associated with our platform may adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
It may become increasingly difficult to maintain and improve our platform performance, especially during peak demand spikes and as our customer base grows and our platform becomes more complex. If our platform is unavailable or if our customers are unable to access our platform within a reasonable amount of time or at all, we could experience a loss of customers, lost or delayed market acceptance of our platform, delays in payment to us by customers or issuance of credits to impacted customers, injury to our reputation and brand, warranty and legal claims against us, significant cost of remedying these problems, and the diversion of our resources. For example, in the past, we have experienced, and we may in the future experience, insufficient power to service a customers project and have been required to provide service credits to that customer due to resulting performance issues. In addition, to the extent that we do not effectively address capacity constraints, upgrade our systems as needed, and continually develop our technology and network architecture to accommodate actual and anticipated changes in technology, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects, as well as our reputation, may be adversely affected.
Further, the hardware and software technology underlying our platform is inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors, particularly when new solutions and services are first introduced or when new features or capabilities are released. We have from time to time found defects or errors in our platform, and new defects or errors may be detected in the future by us or our customers. We cannot ensure that our platform, including any new solutions and services that we release, will not contain defects. Any real or perceived errors,
43
failures, vulnerabilities, or bugs in our platform could result in negative publicity or lead to data security, access, retention, or other performance issues, all of which could harm our business. We also rely on third-party suppliers for the most significant components of the equipment we use to operate our infrastructure. These third-party suppliers may also experience defects or errors in the products that we utilize in our platform, which would impact our platform and may result in performance problems or service interruptions. The costs incurred in correcting any such defects or errors, including those in third-party components, may be substantial and could harm our business. Moreover, the harm to our reputation and legal liability related to such defects or errors may be substantial and could similarly harm our business.
In addition, most of our customer agreements and terms of service contain service level commitments. If we are unable to meet the stated service level commitments due to performance problems or defects, we may be contractually obligated to provide the affected customers with service credits or refunds, which could significantly affect our revenue in the periods in which any issues occur and the credits or refunds are applied. As a result of degradation of service and interruptions to our platform, we have provided, and may continue to provide, service credits and/or refunds to certain of our affected customers with whom we had service level commitments. We could also face customer terminations with refunds of prepaid amounts, which could significantly affect both our current and future revenues. Any service level failures could harm our business.
Any failure of our IT systems or those of one or more of our IT service providers, business partners, vendors, suppliers, or other third-party service providers, or any other failure by such third parties to provide services to us may negatively impact our relationships with customers and harm our business.
Our business depends on various IT systems and outsourced IT services. We rely on third-party IT service providers, business partners, vendors, and suppliers to provide critical IT systems, corporate infrastructure, and other services and are, by necessity, dependent on them to adequately address cybersecurity threats to, and other vulnerabilities, defects, or deficiencies of or in their own systems. This includes infrastructure such as electronic communications, finance, marketing, and recruiting platforms and services such as IT network development and network monitoring, and third-party data center hosting of our systems for our internal and customer use. We do not own or control the operation of the third-party facilities or equipment used to provide such services. Our third-party vendors and service providers have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, including with respect to service levels and cost, or at all, we may be required to transition to a new provider, and we may incur significant costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so. In addition, such service providers could decide to close their facilities or change or suspend their service offerings without adequate notice to us. Moreover, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy, faced by such vendors, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict, may harm our business. Since we cannot easily switch vendors without making other business trade-offs, any disruption with respect to our current providers would impact our operations and our business may be harmed. Furthermore, our disaster recovery systems and those of such third parties may not function as intended or may fail to adequately protect our business information in the event of a significant business interruption, Any termination, failure, or other disruption of any of such systems or services of our third-party IT providers, business partners, vendors, and suppliers could lead to operating inefficiencies or disruptions, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We have a limited operating history at our current scale, which makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects and increases the risks associated with investment in our Class A common stock.
We have a relatively short history operating our business at our current scale and have grown rapidly during that time. We were founded in September 2017 and launched our CoreWeave Cloud Platform in 2020. Moreover, prior to 2022, we had limited revenue, most of which was derived from our crypto mining offerings, which we have discontinued. Our limited operating history, including our limited history of selling our cloud infrastructure offering, the dynamic and rapidly evolving market in which we sell our platform, and the concentration of our revenue from a limited number of customers, as well as numerous other factors beyond our control, may make it
44
difficult to evaluate our current business, future prospects and other trends. We have encountered, and will continue to encounter, risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries and sectors, such as the risks and uncertainties described herein. Any predictions about our future revenue and expenses may not be as accurate as they would be if we had a longer operating history or operated in a more predictable or established market. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties are incorrect or change due to fluctuations in our markets, any material reduction in AI or machine learning spending, changes in demand for specialized AI cloud infrastructure, or otherwise, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations and our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects would be adversely affected. We cannot ensure that we will be successful in addressing these and other challenges we may face in the future. The risks associated with having a limited operating history may be exacerbated by current macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions discussed herein.
We have a limited history selling access to our platform under our current business model and are continuing to scale our operations and evolve our go-to-market strategy, which may make it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects and increase the risks associated with an investment in our Class A common stock.
We have a limited history selling access to our AI infrastructure and proprietary managed software and application services through our CoreWeave Cloud Platform under our current business model and we are continuing to scale our operations and evolve our go-to-market strategy. We currently sell access to our platform either through committed contracts, which are take-or-pay, or on-demand, which are pay-as-you-go. For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, committed contracts accounted for 20%, 88%, and 96% of our revenue, respectively. There is no guarantee that in the future customers will continue to be willing to enter into, and that the industry will continue to support, a take-or-pay model, and any move towards a pay-as-you-go model will impact our ability to forecast our expected cash flows and operating results, impact our margins, and affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Moreover, our committed contracts typically include a prepayment from our customers prior to them receiving any of our services. As of December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, the weighted-average prepayment across all our active contracts was 15% to 25% of the TCV. The level of prepayments we receive from customers may fluctuate over time as we continue to scale our operations and evolve our go-to-market strategy, customer base, and the use cases for our platform. Moreover, any changes in the timing or level of customer payments, including prepayments, would impact our cash flows. Furthermore, scaling our operations and evolving our go-to-market strategy may take more time and require more effort to implement than anticipated and may have results that are difficult to predict which could result in decreased revenue from our customers. Our business and pricing models have not been fully proven, and we have only a limited operating history with our current business and pricing models to evaluate our business and future prospects, which subjects us to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and model future growth. Moreover, our historical revenue growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance.
If we are unable to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and/or expand sales of our platform, solutions, and services to such customers, we may not achieve the growth we expect, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
In order to grow our business, we must continue to attract new customers in a cost-effective manner and enable these customers to realize the benefits associated with our platform. We may experience difficulties demonstrating to customers the value of our platform and any new solutions and services that we offer. As we develop and introduce new solutions and services and add new and upgraded components of our platform (such as next-generation NVIDIA GPUs), we face the risk that customers may not value or be willing to adopt these newer offerings, and may forgo adopting one or more newer generations of our existing offerings. Regardless of the improved features or superior performance of the newer offerings, customers may be unwilling to adopt our platform due to design or pricing constraints, among other reasons. Even if customers choose to adopt our platform or new solutions and services that we develop, they may be slow to do so. Because of the extensive time
45
and resources that we invest in research and development, if we are unable to sell new solutions and services, our revenue may decline and our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be negatively affected. Historically, we have used an internal sales team that is focused on responding to inbound inquiries, outbound prospecting targeting specific customers, expanding sales of our platform to existing customers, and expanding our revenue in specific markets to drive revenue growth. If our sales team is not successful at growing our customer base, our future growth will be impacted.
In addition, we must persuade potential customers that our platform offers significant advantages over those of our competitors. As our market matures, our solutions and services evolve, and competitors introduce lower cost and/or differentiated solutions or services that are perceived to compete with our platform, our ability to maintain or expand sales of our platform, solutions, and services could be impaired. Even if we do attract new customers, the cost of new customer acquisition, implementation of our platform, and ongoing customer support may prove higher than anticipated, thereby adversely impacting our profitability.
Other factors, many of which are out of our control, may now or in the future impact our ability to retain existing customers, attract new customers, and expand sales of our platform, solutions, and services to such customers in a cost-effective manner, including:
| potential customers commitments to existing solutions or services or greater familiarity or comfort with other solutions or services; |
| our ability to secure sufficient power for our platform and solutions; |
| decreased spending on specialized AI cloud infrastructure or AI or machine learning development generally; |
| deteriorating general economic and geopolitical conditions; |
| future governmental regulation, which could adversely impact growth of the AI sector; |
| negative media, industry, or financial analyst commentary regarding our platform, AI, and the identities and activities of some of our customers; |
| our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our sales, customer success, cloud operations, and marketing personnel; |
| our ability to obtain or maintain industry security certifications for our platform; |
| the perceived risk, commencement, or outcome of litigation; and |
| increased expenses associated with being a public company following this offering. |
Some of our customer contracts are on-demand and based on our terms of service, which do not require our customers to commit to a specific contractual period, and which permit the customer to terminate their contracts or decrease usage of our services with limited notice. Any service terminations could cause our operating results to fluctuate from quarter to quarter. Our customer retention may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including our customers satisfaction with the security, performance, and reliability of our platform, our prices and usage plans, our customers AI development and use and related budgetary restrictions, the perception that competitive solutions and services provide better or less expensive options, negative public perception of us or our customers, and deteriorating general economic conditions.
Our future financial performance also depends in part on our ability to expand sales of our platform, solutions, and services to our existing customers. In order to expand our commercial relationship with our customers, existing customers must decide that the increased cost associated with additional purchases of our platform, solutions, and services is justified by the additional functionality. Our customers decision whether to increase their purchase is driven by a number of factors, including customer satisfaction with the security, performance, and reliability of our platform, the functionality of any new solutions and services we may offer,
46
general economic conditions, and customer reaction to our pricing model. If our efforts to expand our relationship with our existing customers are not successful, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may materially suffer.
If we are unable to successfully build, expand, and deploy our sales organization in a timely manner, or at all, or to successfully hire, retain, train, and motivate our sales personnel, our growth and long-term success could be adversely impacted.
We have grown, and may continue to grow, our direct sales force and our sales efforts have historically depended on the significant direct involvement of our senior management team, including Michael Intrator, our Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors. The successful execution of our strategy to increase our sales to existing customers, identify new potential customers, expand our customer base, and enter new U.S. and non-U.S. markets will depend, among other things, on our ability to successfully build and expand our sales organization and operations. We have and plan to continue to dedicate significant resources to sales and marketing programs and to expand our sales and marketing capabilities to target additional potential customers and achieve broader market adoption of our platform, but there is no guarantee that we will be successful in attracting and maintaining additional customers. Moreover, identifying, recruiting, training, and managing sales personnel requires significant time, expense, and attention, including from our senior management and other key personnel, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects in the short and long term.
In order to successfully scale our current top-down sales model and as AI use cases expand, we may need to increase the size of our direct sales force, both in the United States and outside of the United States, while preserving the cultural and mission-oriented elements of our company. If we do not hire a sufficient number of qualified sales personnel, our future revenue growth and business could be adversely impacted. It may take a significant period of time before our sales personnel are fully trained and productive, particularly in light of our current sales model, and there is no guarantee we will be successful in adequately training and effectively deploying our sales personnel. In addition, we have invested, and may need to continue investing, significant resources in our sales operations to enable our sales organization to run effectively and efficiently, including supporting sales strategy planning, sales process optimization, data analytics and reporting, and administering incentive compensation arrangements. Furthermore, hiring personnel in new countries requires additional setup and upfront costs that we may not recover if those personnel fail to achieve full productivity in a timely manner. Our business would be adversely affected if our efforts to build, expand, train, and manage our sales organization are not successful. We periodically make adjustments to our sales organization in response to market opportunities, competitive threats, management changes, product introductions or enhancements, acquisitions, sales performance, increases in sales headcount, cost levels, and other internal and external considerations. Any future sales organization changes may result in a temporary reduction of productivity, which could negatively affect our rate of growth. In addition, any significant change to the way we structure and implement the compensation of our sales organization may be disruptive or may not be effective and may affect our revenue growth. If we are unable to attract, hire, develop, retain, and motivate qualified sales personnel, if our new sales personnel are unable to achieve sufficient sales productivity levels in a reasonable period of time or at all, if our marketing programs are not effective or if we are unable to effectively build, expand, and manage our sales organization and operations, our sales and revenue may grow more slowly than expected or materially decline, and our business, operating results, financing condition, and future prospects may be significantly harmed.
If we do not or cannot maintain the compatibility of our platform with our customers existing technology, including third-party technologies that our customers use in their businesses, our business may be adversely affected.
The functionality and popularity of our platform depend, in part, on our ability to integrate our platform with our customers existing technology, including other third-party technologies that our customers use in their businesses. Our customers, or the third parties whose solutions and services our customers utilize, may change
47
the features of their technologies, restrict our access to their technologies, or alter the terms governing use of their technologies in a manner that makes our platform incompatible with their technologies, and which would adversely impact our ability to service our customers. Such changes could functionally limit or prevent our ability to use these third-party technologies in conjunction with our platform, which would negatively affect adoption of our platform and harm our business. If we fail to integrate our platform with our customers technologies and with third-party technologies that our customers use, we may not be able to offer the functionality that our customers want or need, which could adversely impact our business.
If we are not able to maintain and enhance our brand, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be adversely affected.
We believe that maintaining and enhancing our brand and our reputation is critical to continued market acceptance of our platform, our relationship with our existing customers and our ability to attract new customers. The successful promotion of our brand will depend on a number of factors, including our ability to continue to provide reliable solutions and services that continue to meet the needs of our customers at competitive prices, our ability to successfully differentiate our platform from those of competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. Further, industry standards continue to evolve and there is no consensus around performance benchmarks applied to us and our competitors, which may impact our ability to promote our platform and our brand. Although we believe it is important for our growth, our brand promotion activities may not be successful or yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incur in building our brand. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be harmed.
In addition, independent industry and research firms often evaluate our offerings and provide reviews of our platform, as well as the solutions and services of our competitors, and perception of our platform in the marketplace may be significantly influenced by these reviews. If these reviews are negative, or less positive as compared to those of our competitors solutions and services, our brand may be adversely affected. Our offerings may experience capacity and operational issues for a number of reasons that may or may not be related to the efficacy of our offerings in real world environments. To the extent potential customers, industry analysts, or research firms believe that the occurrence of capacity or computing issues is a flaw or indicates that our platform does not provide significant value, we may lose such potential customer opportunities, and our reputation, business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be harmed.
As we expand our customer base, we may become further subject to counterparty credit risk, which would adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Although we currently generate the majority of our revenue from large, established customers in the AI industry, we intend to increase the number of our customers over time, including customers in their early stages and/or private companies who may have increased risk of insolvency, bankruptcy, or other issues impacting their creditworthiness. For example, in March 2025, we entered into a master services agreement with OpenAI, a private company, pursuant to which OpenAI has committed to pay us up to approximately $11.9 billion through October 2030. Our business is, and may in the future be, subject to the risks of non-payment and non-performance by these customers, which risk is heightened given that a substantial portion of our revenue is currently, and is expected for the foreseeable future to be, driven by a limited number of customers. We manage our exposure to credit risk through receipt of prepayments under our committed contracts, credit analysis and monitoring procedures, and may use letters of credit, prepayments, and guarantees. However, these procedures and policies cannot fully eliminate customer credit risk, and to the extent our policies and procedures prove to be inadequate, it could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. In addition, some of our customers may be highly leveraged and subject to their own operating and regulatory risks and, even if our credit review and analysis mechanisms work properly, we may experience risks of non-payment and non-performance in our dealings with such parties. In such event, we may remain responsible for expenditures for components, infrastructure, and data center leases and build-outs, as well as related financing that we have undertaken for which we may not receive corresponding revenue. We do not currently maintain
48
credit insurance to insure against customer credit risk. If our customers fail to fulfill their contractual obligations, it may have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our long-term success depends, in part, on our ability to expand the sale of our platform to customers located outside of the United States and our current, and any further, expansion of our international operations exposes us to risks that could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We generate a small portion of our revenue outside of the United States, and conduct our business activities in various foreign countries, where we have limited experience, where the challenges of conducting our business can be significantly different from those we have faced in more developed markets and where business practices may create internal control risks including:
| slower than anticipated demand for AI and machine learning solutions offered by existing and potential customers outside the United States and slower than anticipated adoption of specialized AI cloud-based infrastructures by international businesses; |
| fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, which could add volatility to our operating results; |
| limitations within our debt agreements that may restrict our ability to make investments in our foreign subsidiaries; |
| new, or changes in, regulatory requirements, including with respect to AI; |
| tariffs, export and import restrictions, restrictions on foreign investments, sanctions, and other trade barriers or protection measures; |
| exposure to numerous, increasing, stringent (particularly in the European Union), and potentially inconsistent laws and regulations relating to privacy, data protection, and information security; |
| costs of localizing our platform; |
| lack of acceptance of localized solutions and services; |
| the need to make significant investments in people, solutions, and infrastructure, typically well in advance of revenue generation; |
| challenges inherent in efficiently managing an increased number of employees over large geographic distances, including the need to implement appropriate systems, policies, benefits, and compliance programs; |
| difficulties in maintaining our corporate culture with a dispersed and distant workforce; |
| treatment of revenue from international sources, evolving domestic and international tax environments, and other potential tax issues, including with respect to our corporate operating structure and intercompany arrangements; |
| different or weaker protection of our intellectual property, including increased risk of theft of our proprietary technology and other intellectual property; |
| economic weakness or currency-related disparities or crises; |
| compliance with multiple, conflicting, ambiguous or evolving governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, data privacy, anti-corruption, import/export, antitrust, data transfer, storage and protection, and industry-specific laws and regulations, including regulations related to AI; |
| generally longer payment cycles and greater difficulty in collecting accounts receivable; |
| our ability to adapt to sales practices and customer requirements in different cultures; |
| the lack of reference customers and other marketing assets in regional markets that are new or developing for us, as well as other adaptations in our market generation efforts that we may be slow to identify and implement; |
49
| dependence on certain third parties, including third-party data center facility providers; |
| natural disasters, acts of war, terrorism, or pandemics, including the armed conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan; |
| actual or perceived instability in the global banking system; |
| cybersecurity incidents; |
| corporate espionage; and |
| political instability and security risks in the countries where we are doing business and changes in the public perception of governments in the countries where we operate or plan to operate. |
Our sales cycles can be long and unpredictable, and our sales efforts require considerable time and expense.
Our go-to-market approach currently focuses on a top-down sales model to drive demand and pipeline from the large AI labs and AI enterprises. Sales to such customers involves longer and more unpredictable sales cycles. Customers often view the purchase of our platform as a significant strategic decision and, as a result, frequently require considerable time to evaluate, test, and qualify our platform prior to entering into or expanding a relationship with us. Large enterprises in particular, often undertake a significant evaluation process that further lengthens our sales cycle.
Our direct sales team develops relationships with our customers, and works on account penetration, account coordination, sales, and overall market development. We spend substantial time and resources on our sales efforts without any assurance that our efforts will produce a sale. Cloud infrastructure capacity purchases are frequently subject to budget constraints, multiple approvals, and unanticipated administrative, processing, and other delays. As a result, it is difficult to predict whether and when a sale will be completed. The failure of our efforts to secure sales after investing resources in a lengthy sales process would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
The sales prices of our offerings may decrease, which may reduce our margins and adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We have limited experience with respect to determining the optimal prices for our platform. As the market for cloud infrastructure and AI and machine learning solutions mature, or as new competitors introduce new infrastructure solutions or services that are similar to or compete with ours, we may be unable to effectively optimize our prices through increases or decreases or attract new customers at our offered prices or based on the same pricing model as we have used historically. Further, competition continues to increase in the market segments in which we participate, and we expect competition to further increase in the future, thereby leading to increased pricing pressures. Larger competitors with more diverse offerings may reduce the price of any offerings that compete with ours or may bundle them with other solutions and services. This could lead customers to demand greater price concessions or additional functionality at the same price levels. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices or provide more features and services without corresponding increases in price, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Existing and future acquisitions, strategic investments, partnerships, or alliances could be difficult to identify and integrate, divert the attention of key management personnel, disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value, and adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
As part of our business strategy, we have in the past and expect to continue to make investments in and/or acquire complementary companies, services, products, technologies, or talent. We have also invested, including in the form of providing computing services, in certain privately held companies, and we may not realize a return on these investments. All of our acquisitions and venture investments are subject to a risk of partial or total loss
50
of investment capital. Our ability as an organization to acquire and integrate other companies, services, or technologies in a successful manner is not guaranteed.
In the future, we may not be able to find suitable acquisition candidates, and we may not be able to complete such acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. Our due diligence efforts may fail to identify all of the challenges, problems, liabilities, or other shortcomings involved in an acquisition. Further, current and future changes to the U.S. and foreign regulatory approval process and requirements related to acquisitions may cause approvals to take longer than anticipated, not be forthcoming or contain burdensome conditions, which may prevent the transaction or jeopardize, delay or reduce the anticipated benefits of the transaction, and impede the execution of our business strategy. If we do complete acquisitions, we may not ultimately strengthen our competitive position or ability to achieve our business objectives, and any acquisitions we announce or complete could be viewed negatively by our customers or investors. For example, in February 2025, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weights & Biases, an AI developer platform. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that any or all such approvals will be obtained. We will not control Weights & Biases until completion of the acquisition, and the business and results of operations of Weights & Biases may be adversely affected by events that are outside of our control during the interim period.
In addition, if we are unsuccessful at integrating existing and future acquisitions, or the technologies and personnel associated with such acquisitions, including our pending acquisition of Weights & Biases, into our company, the business, operating results, financing condition, and future prospects of the combined company could be adversely affected. Any integration process may require significant time and resources, and we may not be able to manage the process successfully. We may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology or personnel, or accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition transaction, causing unanticipated write-offs or accounting (including goodwill) charges. Additionally, integrations could take longer than expected, or if we move too quickly in trying to integrate an acquisition, strategic investment, partnership, or other alliance, we may fail to achieve the desired efficiencies.
We have, and may in the future have, to pay cash, incur debt, issue equity securities or provide computing services, to pay for any such acquisition, each of which could adversely affect our financial condition and the market price of our Class A common stock. The sale of equity or issuance of debt to finance any such acquisitions could result in dilution to our stockholders, which, depending on the size of the acquisition, may be significant. The incurrence of indebtedness would result in increased fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would impede our ability to manage our operations.
Furthermore, our ability to make acquisitions and finance acquisitions through the sale of equity or issuance of debt is limited by certain restrictions contained in our debt agreements.
Additional risks we may face in connection with acquisitions include:
| diversion of managements time and focus from operating our business to addressing acquisition integration challenges; |
| the inability to coordinate research and development and sales and marketing functions; |
| the inability to integrate solution and service offerings; |
| retention of key employees from the acquired company; |
| changes in relationships with strategic partners or the loss of any key customers or partners as a result of acquisitions or strategic positioning resulting from the acquisition; |
| cultural challenges associated with integrating employees from the acquired company into our organization; |
| integration of the acquired companys accounting, customer relationship management, management information, human resources, and other administrative systems; |
51
| the need to implement or improve controls, procedures, and policies at a business that prior to the acquisition may have lacked sufficiently effective controls, procedures, and policies; |
| unexpected security risks or higher than expected costs to improve the security posture of the acquired company; |
| higher than expected costs to bring the acquired companys IT infrastructure up to our standards; |
| additional legal, regulatory, or compliance requirements; |
| financial reporting, revenue recognition, or other financial or control deficiencies of the acquired company that we do not adequately address and that cause our reported results to be incorrect; |
| liability for activities of the acquired company before the acquisition, including intellectual property infringement claims, violations of laws, commercial disputes, tax liabilities, and other known and unknown liabilities; |
| failing to achieve the expected benefits of the acquisition or investment; and |
| litigation or other claims in connection with the acquired company, including claims from or against terminated employees, customers, current and former stockholders, or other third parties. |
Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with acquisitions and investments could cause us to fail to realize the anticipated benefits of these acquisitions or investments, cause us to incur unanticipated liabilities, and harm our business generally.
Our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus may prove to be inaccurate, and even if the markets in which we compete achieve the forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all.
The estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus may prove to be inaccurate. Market opportunity estimates and growth forecasts included in this prospectus, including those we have generated ourselves, are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate, including the risks described herein. Even if the markets in which we compete achieve the forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all. Further, if AI is not broadly adopted by enterprises to the extent we expect, or if new use cases do not arise, then our opportunity may be smaller than we expect.
The variables that go into the calculation of our market opportunity are subject to change over time, and there is no guarantee that any particular number or percentage of addressable customers covered by our market opportunity estimates will purchase our platform at all or generate any particular level of revenue for us. Any expansion in the markets in which we operate depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with our platform and those of our competitors. Even if the markets in which we compete meet the size estimates and growth forecast, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all. Our growth is subject to many factors, including our success in implementing our business strategy, which is subject to many risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, our forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus should not be taken as indicative of our future growth.
We have in the past, and may in the future, enter into collaborations or strategic alliances with third parties. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining strategic relationships with these third parties or if these third parties fail to deliver certain operational services, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected.
We have in the past, and may in the future, enter into collaborations or strategic alliances with third parties in connection with the development, operation, and enhancements to our platform and the provision of our solutions and services. Identifying strategic relationships with third parties, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, may be time-consuming and complex and may distract management. Moreover, we may be delayed, or may not be successful, in achieving the objectives that we anticipate as a result of such strategic
52
relationships. In evaluating counterparties in connection with collaborations or strategic alliances, we consider a wide range of economic, legal, and regulatory criteria depending on the nature of such relationship, including the counterparties reputation, operating results, and financial condition, operational ability to satisfy our and our customers needs in a timely manner, efficiency and reliability of systems, certifications costs to us or to our customers, and licensure and compliance status. Despite this evaluation, third parties may still not meet our or our customers needs which may adversely affect our ability to deliver solutions and services to customers and may adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Counterparties to any strategic relationship may have economic or business interests or goals that are, or that may become, inconsistent with our business interests or goals, and may subject us to additional risks to the extent such third party becomes the subject of negative publicity, faces its own litigation or regulatory challenges, or faces other adverse circumstances. Conflicts may arise with our strategic partners, such as the interpretation of significant terms under any agreement, which may result in litigation or arbitration which would increase our expenses and divert the attention of our management. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining strategic relationships with third parties, our ability to compete or to grow our revenue could be impaired and our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected.
The anticipated benefits of potential joint ventures may not be fully realized or take longer to realize than expected. In addition, our joint venture investments could expose us to risks and liabilities in connection with the formation of the new joint ventures, the operation of such joint ventures without sole decision-making authority, and our reliance on joint venture partners who may have economic and business interests that are inconsistent with our business interests.
We may enter into joint ventures in the future, including to develop and operate data centers. Certain sites that are intended to be utilized in joint ventures require investment for development. The success of these joint ventures will also depend, in part, on the successful development of the data center sites, and we may not realize all of the anticipated benefits. Such development may be more difficult, time-consuming, or costly than expected and could result in increased costs, decreases in the amount of expected revenues, and diversion of managements time and energy, which could materially impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Additionally, if it is determined these sites are no longer desirable for the joint ventures, we would need to adapt such sites for other purposes.
The success of any joint ventures will depend, in part, on the successful relationship between us and our joint venture partners. A failure to successfully partner, or a failure to realize our expectations for the joint ventures, including any contemplated exit strategy from a joint venture, could materially impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. These joint ventures could also be negatively impacted by inflation, supply chain issues, an inability to obtain financing on favorable terms or at all, an inability to fill the data center sites with customers as planned, and development and construction delays.
Further, in the future, we may co-invest with other third parties through partnerships, joint ventures, or other entities in the future. These joint ventures could result in our acquisition of non-controlling interests in, or shared responsibility for, managing the affairs of a property or portfolio of properties, partnership, joint venture, or other entity. We may be subject to additional risks, including:
| we may not have the right to exercise sole decision-making authority regarding the properties, partnership, joint venture, or other entity; |
| if our partners become bankrupt or fail to fund their share of required capital contributions, we may choose to or be required to contribute such capital; |
| our partners may have economic, tax, or other business interests or goals which are inconsistent with our business interests or goals, and may be in a position to take actions contrary to our interests or objectives; |
| our joint venture partners may take actions that are not within our control, which could require us to dispose of the joint venture asset or purchase the partners interests or assets at an above-market price; |
53
| our joint venture partners may take actions unrelated to our business agreement but which reflect poorly on us because of our joint venture relationship; |
| disputes between us and our partners may result in litigation or arbitration that would increase our expenses and prevent our management from focusing their time and effort on our day-to-day business; |
| we may in certain circumstances be liable for the actions of our third-party partners or guarantee all or a portion of the joint ventures liabilities, which may require us to pay an amount greater than its investment in the joint venture; |
| we may need to change the structure of an established joint venture or create new complex structures to meet our business needs or the needs of our partners which could prove challenging; and |
| a joint venture partners decision to exit the joint venture may not be at an opportune time for us or in our business interests. |
Each of these factors may result in returns on these investments being less than we expect or in losses, and business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be adversely affected.
Future acquisitions could include real property and subject us to the general risks associated with the ownership of real property.
We currently lease all of our data centers and office locations. However, we could in the future make acquisitions that include real property, which would most likely be one or more data centers. As a result of any such acquisition, we would directly own real property and become subject to the general risks associated with the ownership of real property, including:
| changes in governmental laws and regulations, including the Americans with Disabilities Act and zoning ordinances, and the related costs of compliance; |
| increased upfront costs of purchasing real property; |
| the ongoing need for repair, maintenance and capital improvements; |
| natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, and acts of war or terrorism; |
| general liability, property and casualty losses, some of which may be uninsured; |
| liabilities for clean-up of undisclosed environmental contamination; and |
| liabilities incurred in the ordinary course of business. |
If negative publicity arises with respect to us, our employees, our third-party suppliers, service providers, or our partners, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be adversely affected, regardless of whether the negative publicity is true.
Negative publicity about our company or our platform, solutions, or services, even if inaccurate or untrue, could adversely affect our reputation and the confidence in our platform, solutions, or services, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Harm to our reputation can also arise from many other sources, including employee misconduct, which we have experienced in the past, and misconduct by our partners, consultants, suppliers, and outsourced service providers. Additionally, negative publicity with respect to our partners or service providers could also affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects to the extent that we rely on these partners or if our customers or prospective customers associate our company with these partners.
54
Our ability to maintain customer satisfaction depends in part on the quality of our customer support and cloud operations services. Our failure to maintain high-quality customer support and cloud operations services could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We believe that the successful use of our platform requires a high level of support and engagement for many of our customers. In order to deliver appropriate customer support and engagement, we must successfully assist our customers in deploying and continuing to use our platform, resolve performance issues, address interoperability challenges with the customers existing IT infrastructure, and respond to security threats and cyber-attacks and performance and reliability problems that may arise from time to time. Increased demand for customer support and cloud operations services, without corresponding increases in revenue, could increase our costs and adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Furthermore, there can be no assurance that we will be able to hire sufficient support personnel as and when needed, particularly if our sales exceed our internal forecasts. We expect to increase the number of our customers, and that growth may put additional pressure on our customer support and cloud operations services teams. Our customer support and cloud operations services teams may need additional personnel to respond to customer demand. We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-term increases in customer demand for services. To the extent that we are unsuccessful in hiring, training, and retaining adequate support resources, our ability to provide high-quality and timely support to our customers will be negatively impacted, and our customers satisfaction and their purchase of our infrastructure could be adversely affected.
In addition, as we continue to grow our operations and expand outside of the United States, we need to be able to provide efficient services that meet our customers needs globally at scale, and our customer support and cloud operations services teams may face additional challenges, including those associated with operating the platforms and delivering support, training, and documentation in languages other than English and providing services across expanded time-zones. If we are unable to provide efficient customer support services globally at scale, our ability to grow our operations may be harmed, and we may need to hire additional services personnel which could increase our expenses, and negatively impact our business, financial condition, operating results, and future prospects.
Risks Related to our People
We rely on our management team and other key employees and will need additional personnel to grow our business, and the loss of one or more key employees or our inability to attract and retain qualified personnel, including members of our board of directors, could harm our business.
Our future success is dependent, in part, on our ability to hire, integrate, train, manage, retain, and motivate the members of our management team and other key employees throughout our organization as well as members of our board of directors. The loss of key personnel, particularly Michael Intrator, our Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors, Brian Venturo, our Chief Strategy Officer, and Brannin McBee, our Chief Development Officer, as well as certain of our key marketing, sales, finance, support, network development, people team, or technology personnel, could disrupt our operations and have an adverse effect on our ability to grow our business.
Competition for highly skilled personnel is intense, especially in the New York City, San Francisco Bay, and Seattle areas where we have a substantial presence and need for highly skilled personnel, and we may not be successful in hiring or retaining qualified personnel to fulfill our current or future needs. More generally, the technology industry, and the cloud infrastructure industry more specifically, is also subject to substantial and continuous competition for engineers with high levels of experience in designing, developing, and managing infrastructure and related services. Moreover, the industry in which we operate generally experiences high employee attrition. We have, from time to time, experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications. For example, in recent years, recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees with expertise in the AI computing industry has become increasingly difficult as the demand for AI computing infrastructure has increased as a result of the increase in AI and
55
machine learning development, deployment, and demand. We may be required to provide more training to our personnel than we currently anticipate. Further, labor is subject to external factors that are beyond our control, including our industrys highly competitive market for skilled workers and leaders, cost inflation, overall macroeconomics, and workforce participation rates. Should our competitors recruit our employees, our level of expertise and ability to execute our business plan would be negatively impacted.
Additionally, many of our key personnel are, or will soon be, vested in a substantial number of shares of our common stock, RSUs, or stock options. Employees may be more likely to terminate their employment with us if the shares they own or the shares underlying their vested RSUs or options have significantly appreciated in value relative to the original purchase prices of the shares, exercise price of the options, or grant date values of the RSUs, or, conversely, if the exercise price of the options that they hold are significantly above the trading price of our Class A common stock.
Moreover, many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. Our competitors also may be successful in recruiting and hiring members of our management team, sales team, or other key employees, and it may be difficult for us to find suitable replacements on a timely basis, on competitive terms, or at all. We have in the past, and may in the future, be subject to allegations that employees we hire have been improperly solicited, or that they have divulged proprietary or other confidential information or that their former employers own such employees inventions or other work product, or that they have been hired in violation of non-compete provisions or non-solicitation provisions.
In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the value of the equity awards and other compensation they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our compensatory package declines or is subject to significant value fluctuations, it may adversely affect our ability to attract and retain highly skilled employees. We may also change the composition of our compensation package to employees, including the amount or ratio of cash and equity compensation. Any increases to the amount of cash compensation will increase our cash expenditures, which may impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Further, our competitors may be successful in recruiting and hiring members of our management team or other key employees as well as directors, and it may be difficult for us to find suitable replacements on a timely basis, on competitive terms, or at all. In recent years, the increased availability of hybrid or remote working arrangements has expanded the pool of companies that can compete for our employees and employment candidates. We have entered into offer letters with certain of our key employees, however these agreements are on an at-will basis, meaning they are able to terminate their employment with us at any time and we do not have employment agreements with all of our key employees. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects would be severely harmed.
We believe that our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, creativity, and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.
We believe that our corporate culture has been, and will continue to be, a key contributor to our success. If we do not continue to maintain our corporate culture, which includes our focus on our customers, as we grow and evolve, including as we continue to grow in headcount, it could harm our ability to foster the drive, innovation, inclusion, creativity, and teamwork that we believe is important to support our growth. As we implement more complex organizational structures, we may find it increasingly difficult to maintain the beneficial aspects of our corporate culture, which could negatively impact our future success.
56
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
Failure to obtain, maintain, protect, or enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights could enable others to copy or use aspects of our platform without compensating us, which could harm our brand, business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We rely on a combination of trademark, copyright, trade secret, patent, unfair competition, and other related laws in the United States and internationally, as well as confidentiality agreements and contractual provisions with our customers, third-party manufacturing partners, joint venture partners, employees, and consultants to protect our technology and intellectual property rights. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our platform or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. In particular, we are unable to predict or assure that:
| our intellectual property rights will not lapse or be invalidated, circumvented, challenged, or, in the case of third-party intellectual property rights licensed to us, be licensed to others; |
| our intellectual property rights will provide competitive advantages to us; |
| rights previously granted by third parties to intellectual property licensed or assigned to us, including portfolio cross-licenses, will not hamper our ability to assert our intellectual property rights or hinder the settlement of currently pending or future disputes; |
| any of our pending or future trademark or patent applications will be issued or have the coverage originally sought; |
| we will be able to enforce our intellectual property rights in certain jurisdictions where competition is intense or where legal protection may be weak; or |
| we have sufficient intellectual property rights to protect our solutions and services or our business. |
We customarily enter into confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, consultants, vendors, and customers, and make significant efforts to limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information. However, such agreements may not be enforceable in full or in part in all jurisdictions and any breach could negatively affect our business and our remedy for such breach may be limited. The contractual provisions that we enter into may not prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights. Lastly, the measures we employ to limit the access and distribution of our proprietary information may not prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property. As such, we cannot guarantee that the steps taken by us will prevent infringement, violation, or misappropriation of our technology.
We pursue the registration of our trademarks, service marks, patents, and domain names in the United States and in certain foreign jurisdictions. These processes are expensive and may not be successful in all jurisdictions or for every such application, and we may not pursue such protections in all jurisdictions that may be relevant, for all our goods or services or in every class of goods and services in which we operate. As such, policing unauthorized use of our technology or platform is difficult. Additionally, we may not be able to obtain, maintain, protect, exploit, defend, or enforce our intellectual property rights in every foreign jurisdiction in which we operate. For example, effective trade secret protection may not be available in every country in which our platform is available or where we have employees or independent contractors. The loss of trade secret protection could make it easier for third parties to compete with our platform by copying functionality. Any changes in, or unexpected interpretations of, the trade secret and employment laws in any country in which we operate may compromise our ability to enforce our trade secret and intellectual property rights. In addition, we believe that the protection of our trademark rights is an important factor in product recognition, protecting our brand and maintaining goodwill and if we do not adequately protect our rights in trademarks from infringement, any goodwill that we have developed in those trademarks could be lost or impaired, which could harm our brand and our business. The legal systems of certain countries do not favor the enforcement of trademarks trade secrets, and
57
other intellectual property and proprietary protection, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement, misappropriation, dilution, or other violation of our intellectual property or marketing of competing platforms, solutions, or services in violation of our intellectual property rights generally. Any changes in, or unexpected interpretations of, intellectual property laws may compromise our ability to enforce our intellectual property rights. If we fail to maintain, protect and enhance our intellectual property rights, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects may be harmed.
In addition, defending our intellectual property rights through litigation might entail significant expense. Such litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights, we could find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who need not incur the additional expense, time, and effort required to create our platform and other innovative offerings that have enabled us to be successful to date. Moreover, we may need to expend additional resources to defend our intellectual property rights in foreign countries, and our inability to do so could impair our business or adversely affect our international expansion.
Third parties may claim that our platform infringes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates their intellectual property rights, and such claims could be time-consuming or costly to defend or settle, result in the loss of significant rights, or harm our relationships with our customers or reputation in the industry.
Third parties have claimed, and may in the future claim, that our current or future offerings infringe their intellectual property rights, and such claims may result in legal claims against us, our third-party partners, and our customers. These claims may be time consuming, costly to defend or settle, damage our brand and reputation, harm our customer relationships, and create liability for us. Contractually, we are expected to indemnify our partners and customers for these types of claims. We expect the number of such claims (whether warranted or not) to increase, particularly as a public company with an increased profile and visibility, as the level of competition in our market grows, as the functionality of our offerings overlap with that of other cloud infrastructure companies, and as the volume of issued hardware and software patents and patent applications continues to increase. We generally agree in our customer and partner contracts to indemnify customers for certain expenses or liabilities they incur as a result of third-party intellectual property infringement claims associated with our platform. To the extent that any claim arises as a result of third-party technology we have licensed for use in our platform, we may be unable to recover from the appropriate third party any expenses or other liabilities that we incur.
Companies in the cloud infrastructure and technology industries, including some of our current and potential competitors, may own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets and frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. In addition, many of these companies have the capability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property rights and to defend claims that may be brought against them. Furthermore, patent holding companies, non-practicing entities, and other adverse patent owners that are not deterred by our existing intellectual property protections have sought, and may in the future seek, to assert patent claims against us. From time to time, third parties, including certain of these leading companies, have invited us to license their patents and may, in the future, assert patent, copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights against us, our third-party partners, or our customers. We may in the future receive notices that claim we have misappropriated, misused, or infringed other parties intellectual property rights, and, to the extent we gain greater market visibility, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims.
There may be third-party intellectual property rights that cover significant aspects of our technologies or business methods and assets. In the event that we engage software engineers or other personnel who were previously engaged by competitors or other third parties, we may be subject to claims that those personnel inadvertently or deliberately incorporate proprietary technology of third parties into our platform or have improperly used or disclosed trade secrets or other proprietary information. We may also in the future be subject
58
to claims by our third-party manufacturing partners, employees, or contractors asserting an ownership right in our intellectual property as a result of the work they performed on our behalf. In addition, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel. A loss of key personnel or their work product could hamper or prevent our ability to develop, market, and support potential offerings and platform enhancements, which could severely harm our business.
Any intellectual property claims, with or without merit, could be very time-consuming, could be expensive to settle or litigate, and could divert our managements attention and other resources. These claims could also subject us to significant liability for damages, potentially including treble damages if we are found to have willfully infringed patents or copyrights, and may require us to indemnify our customers for liabilities they incur as a result of such claims. These claims could also result in our having to stop using technology found to be in violation of a third partys rights. We might be required to seek a license for the intellectual property, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all. Even if a license were available, we could be required to pay significant royalties, which would increase our operating expenses. Alternatively, we could be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology, which could require significant time, effort, and expense, and may affect the performance or features of our platform. If we cannot license or develop alternative non-infringing substitutes for any infringing technology used in any aspect of our business, we would be forced to limit or stop sales of our platform and may be unable to compete effectively. Moreover, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments, and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Any of these results would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We license technology from third parties for the development of our solutions, and our inability to maintain those licenses could harm our business.
We currently incorporate, and will in the future incorporate, technology that we license from third parties, including software, into our offerings. If we are unable to continue to use or license these technologies on reasonable terms, or if these technologies become unreliable, unavailable, or fail to operate properly, we may not be able to secure adequate alternatives in a timely manner or at all, and our ability to offer our solutions and remain competitive in our market would be harmed. Further, licensing technologies from third parties exposes us to increased risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement and vulnerabilities due to, among other things, our lower level of visibility into the development process with respect to such technology and the care taken to safeguard against risks. We cannot be certain that our licensors do not or will not infringe on the intellectual property rights of third parties or that our licensors have or will have sufficient rights to the licensed intellectual property in all jurisdictions in which we may sell our platform. Some of our agreements with our licensors may be terminated by them for convenience, or otherwise provide for a limited term. If we are unable to continue to license technology because of intellectual property infringement claims brought by third parties against our licensors or against us, or if we are unable to continue our license agreements or enter into new licenses on commercially reasonable terms, our ability to develop and sell our platform containing or dependent on that technology would be limited, and our business, including our financial condition, cash flows, and operating results could be harmed.
Additionally, if we are unable to license technology from third parties, we may be forced to acquire or develop alternative technology, which we may be unable to do in a commercially feasible manner, or at all, and may require us to use alternative technology of lower quality or performance standards. This could limit or delay our ability to offer new or competitive offerings and increase our costs. Third-party software we rely on may be updated infrequently, unsupported, or subject to vulnerabilities that may not be resolved in a timely manner, any of which may expose our solutions to vulnerabilities. Any impairment of the technologies or of our relationship with these third parties could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
59
Some of our technology incorporates open-source software, and failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open-source software licenses could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and future prospects.
We use open-source software in our solutions and services and may continue to use open-source software in the future. Certain open-source licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create. If we combine our proprietary software with open-source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open-source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public on unfavorable terms or at no cost. Any actual or claimed requirement to disclose our proprietary source code or pay damages for breach of contract may allow our competitors to create similar products with lower development effort and time and, ultimately, could result in a loss of sales for us.
The use and distribution of open-source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open-source licensors generally do not provide support, warranties, indemnification or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code, which they are not typically required to maintain and update, and they can change the license terms on which they offer the open-source software. Although we believe that we have complied with our obligations under the applicable licenses for open-source software, it is possible that we may not be aware of all instances where open-source software has been incorporated into our proprietary software or used in connection with our solutions or our corresponding obligations under open-source. We take steps to monitor our use of open-source software in an effort both to comply with the terms of the applicable open-source licenses and to avoid subjecting our platform to conditions we do not intend, but there are risks associated with use of open-source software that cannot be eliminated and could negatively affect our business. We rely on multiple software programmers to design our proprietary software and, while we take steps to vet software before it is incorporated into our proprietary software and monitor the software incorporated into our proprietary software, we cannot be certain that our programmers have not incorporated open-source software into our proprietary software that we intend to maintain as confidential or that they will not do so in the future. In addition, the wide availability of source code used in our offerings could expose us to security vulnerabilities. Such use, under certain circumstances, could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects, as well as our reputation, including if we are required to take remedial action that may divert resources away from our development efforts.
On occasion, companies that use open-source software have faced claims challenging their use of open-source software or compliance with open-source license terms. There is evolving legal precedent for interpreting the terms of certain open-source licenses, including the determination of which works are subject to the terms of such licenses. The terms of many open-source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in ways that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize any offerings incorporating such software. Moreover, we cannot ensure that our processes for controlling our use of open-source software in our platform will be effective. From time to time, we may face claims from third parties asserting ownership of, or demanding release of, the open-source software or derivative works that we developed using such software (which could include our proprietary source code), or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open-source license. These claims, regardless of validity, could result in time consuming and costly litigation, divert managements time and attention away from developing the business, expose us to customer indemnity claims, or force us to disclose source code. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, result in paying damages, entering into unfavorable licenses, have a negative effect on our business, operating results. financial condition, and future prospects, or cause delays by requiring us to devote additional research and development resources to change our solution.
60
Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Matters
We are subject to laws and regulations, including governmental export and import controls, sanctions, and anti-corruption laws, that could impair our ability to compete in our markets and subject us to liability if we are not in full compliance with applicable laws.
We are subject to laws and regulations, including governmental export and import controls, that could subject us to liability or impair our ability to compete in our markets. Our platform and related technology are subject to U.S. export controls, including the U.S. Department of Commerces Export Administration Regulations (also known as EAR), and we and our employees, representatives, contractors, agents, intermediaries, and other third parties are also subject to various economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control and other U.S. government agencies. Changes to sanctions and export or import restrictions in the jurisdictions in which we operate could further impact our ability to do business in certain parts of the world and to do business with certain persons and entities, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. In particular, we are continuing to monitor recent and forthcoming developments in export controls with respect to the semiconductor industry and their impact on our sourcing of equipment for our computing infrastructure. In addition, we are monitoring the January 29, 2024 proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which if implemented as proposed, would impose requirements on Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers and their foreign resellers to verify the identity and beneficial ownership of foreign person customers and to perform related reporting to BIS, as well as provide BIS authority to restrict certain IaaS transactions with foreign persons. While we have implemented certain procedures to facilitate compliance with applicable laws and regulations, we cannot ensure that these procedures are fully effective or that we, or third parties who we do not control, have complied with all laws or regulations in this regard. Failure by our employees, representatives, contractors, partners, agents, intermediaries, or other third parties to comply with applicable laws and regulations also could have negative consequences to us, including reputational harm, government investigations, loss of export privileges and penalties. Changes in our platform, and changes in or promulgation of new export and import regulations, may create delays in the introduction of our platform into international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our platform globally or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our platform to certain countries, governments, or persons altogether. Any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions, or related legislation, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons, or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased sales of our platform, solutions, and services, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our platform, to existing or potential customers with international operations. Any decreased sales of our platform, solutions, and services or limitation on our ability to export or sell our platform would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We are also subject to the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (FCPA), the United Kingdom Bribery Act 2010 (the Bribery Act), and other anti-corruption, sanctions, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering, and similar laws in the United States and other countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws, which have been enforced aggressively and are interpreted broadly, prohibit companies and their employees, agents, intermediaries, and other third parties from promising, authorizing, making, or offering improper payments or other benefits to government officials and others in the public, and in certain cases, private sector. We leverage third parties, including intermediaries and agents, to conduct our business in the United States and abroad, to sell our platform. We and these third parties may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities and we may be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party business partners and intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, partners, agents, intermediaries, and other third parties, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities. We cannot ensure that our policies and procedures to address compliance with FCPA, the Bribery Act, and other anti-corruption, sanctions, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering, and similar laws, will be effective, or that all of our employees, representatives, contractors, partners, agents, intermediaries, or other third parties have not taken, or will not take actions, in violation of our policies and applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible. As we increase our international sales and
61
business, our risks under these laws may increase. Noncompliance with these laws could subject us to investigations, severe criminal or civil sanctions, settlements, prosecution, loss of export privileges, suspension or debarment from U.S. government contracts, other enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, significant fines, damages, other civil and criminal penalties or injunctions, whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage, and other consequences. Any investigations, actions, or sanctions could harm our reputation, business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We are subject to laws, regulations, and industry requirements related to data privacy, data protection and information security, and user protection across different markets where we conduct our business and such laws, regulations, and industry requirements are constantly evolving and changing. Any actual or perceived failure to comply with such laws, regulations, and industry requirements, or our privacy policies, could harm our business.
Various local, state, federal, and international laws, directives, and regulations apply to our collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer, and processing of personal information. These data protection and privacy laws and regulations are subject to uncertainty and continue to evolve in ways that could adversely impact our business. These laws have a substantial impact on our operations both in the United States and internationally and compliance with new and existing laws may result in significant costs due to implementation of new processes, which could ultimately hinder our ability to grow our business by extracting value from our data assets.
In the United States, state and federal lawmakers and regulatory authorities have increased their attention on the collection and use of user data. For example, in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (as amended, the CCPA) requires companies that hit certain broad revenue or data processing related thresholds to, among other things, provide new disclosures to California users, and affords such users new privacy rights such as the ability to opt-out of certain processing of personal information and expanded rights to access and require deletion of their personal information, opt out of certain personal information sharing, and receive detailed information about how their personal information is collected, used, and shared. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for security breaches that may increase security breach litigation. In addition, other states have enacted laws that contain obligations similar to the CCPA that have taken effect or will take effect in coming years and many others continue to propose similar laws, or are considering proposing similar laws. We cannot fully predict the impact of recently proposed or enacted laws or regulations on our business or operations, but compliance may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies incurring costs and expense. Further, to the extent multiple state-level laws are introduced with inconsistent or conflicting standards, it may require costly and difficult efforts to achieve compliance with such laws. Our failure or perceived failure to comply with state or federal privacy laws or regulations passed in the future could have a material adverse effect on our business, including how we use personal information, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects and could expose us to regulatory investigations or possible fines.
Additionally, many foreign countries and governmental bodies, including the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, and other jurisdictions in which we operate or conduct our business, have laws and regulations concerning the collection, use, processing, storage, and deletion of personal data obtained from their residents or by businesses operating within their jurisdiction. These laws and regulations often are more restrictive than those in the United States. Such laws and regulations may require companies to implement new privacy and security policies, permit individuals to access, correct, and delete personal information stored or maintained by such companies, inform individuals of security breaches that affect their personal information, require that certain types of data be retained on local servers within these jurisdictions, and, in some cases, obtain individuals affirmative opt-in consent to collect and use personal information for certain purposes. The increased focus on data sovereignty and data localization requirements around the world could also impact our business model with respect to the storage, management, and transfer of data.
62
We are subject to the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation and the United Kingdoms General Data Protection Regulation (collectively, the GDPR), which comprehensively regulate our use of personal data, including cross-border transfers of personal data out of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the U.K. The GDPR imposes stringent privacy and data protection requirements, and could increase the risk of non-compliance and the costs of providing our services in a compliant manner. A breach of the GDPR could result in regulatory investigations, reputational damage, fines and sanctions, orders to cease or change our processing of our data, enforcement notices, or assessment notices (for a compulsory audit). For example, if regulators assert that we have failed to comply with the GDPR, we may be subject to fines. Since we are subject to the supervision of relevant data protection authorities under multiple legal regimes (including separately in both the EU and the UK), we could be fined under those regimes independently in respect of the same breach. We may also face civil claims including representative actions and other class action type litigation (where individuals have suffered harm), potentially amounting to significant compensation or damages liabilities, as well as associated costs, diversion of internal resources, and reputational harm.
The GDPR prohibits transfers of personal data from the EEA or U.K. to countries not formally deemed adequate by the European Commission or the U.K. Information Commission Office, respectively, including the United States, unless a particular compliance mechanism (and, if necessary, certain safeguards) is implemented. The mechanisms that we and many other companies, including our customers, rely upon for European and U.K. data transfers (for example, Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) are the subject of legal challenge, regulatory interpretation, and judicial decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The suitability of Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfer in some scenarios has recently been the subject of legal challenge, and while the United States and the European Union reached agreement on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (and similar agreements were reached with respect to the U.K.), there are legal challenges to that data transfer mechanism as well. We expect the legal complexity and uncertainty regarding international personal data transfers to continue, and as the regulatory guidance and enforcement landscape in relation to data transfers continues to develop, we could suffer additional costs, complaints, and/or regulatory investigations or fines; we may have to stop using certain tools and vendors and make other operational changes; we may have to implement alternative data transfer mechanisms under the GDPR and/or take additional compliance and operational measures; and/or it could otherwise affect the manner in which we provide our services, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We are also subject to evolving U.S., E.U., and UK privacy laws governing cookies, tracking technologies, and e-marketing. In the United States, plaintiffs are increasingly making use of existing laws such as the California Invasion of Privacy Act to litigate use of tracking technologies. In the European Union, regulators are increasingly focusing on compliance with requirements in the online behavioral advertising ecosystem. In the European Union, informed consent, including a prohibition on pre-checked consents and a requirement to ensure separate consents for each cookie, is required for the placement of a non-essential cookie or similar technologies on a users device and for direct electronic marketing. As regulators start to enforce the strict approach in recent guidance, this could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, negatively impact our efforts to understand users, adversely affect our margins, increase costs, and subject us to additional liabilities.
There is a risk that as we expand, we may assume liabilities for breaches experienced by the companies we acquire. Additionally, there are potentially inconsistent world-wide government regulations pertaining to data protection and privacy. Despite our efforts to comply with applicable laws, regulations and other obligations relating to privacy, data protection, and information security, it is possible that our practices, offerings, or platform could fail, or be alleged to fail to meet applicable requirements. For instance, there are changes in the regulatory landscape relating to new and evolving technologies, such as generative AI. Changes to existing regulations, their interpretation or implementation, or new regulations could impede any potential use or development of AI Technologies, which could impair our competitive position and result in an adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. Our failure, or the failure by our third-party providers or partners, to comply with applicable laws or regulations and to prevent unauthorized access to,
63
or use or release of personal information, or the perception that any of the foregoing types of failure has occurred, even if unfounded, could subject us to audits, inquiries, whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage, investigations, severe criminal, or civil sanctions, damage our reputation, or result in fines or proceedings by governmental agencies and private claims and litigation, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our business is subject to a wide range of laws and regulations, and our failure to comply with those laws and regulations could harm our business.
Our business is subject to regulation by various federal, state, local, and foreign governmental agencies, including agencies responsible for monitoring and enforcing employment and labor laws, workplace safety and environmental laws, including those related to energy usage and energy efficiency requirements, privacy and data protection laws, AI, financial services laws, anti-bribery laws, sanctions, national security, import and export controls, anti-boycott, federal securities laws, and tax laws and regulations.
For example, governmental authorities have in the past sought to restrict data center development based on environmental considerations and have imposed moratoria on data center development, citing concerns about energy usage, requiring new data centers to meet energy efficiency requirements. We may face higher costs from any laws requiring enhanced energy efficiency measures, changes to cooling systems, caps on energy usage, land use restrictions, limitations on back-up power sources, or other environmental requirements.
In certain foreign jurisdictions, these regulatory requirements may be more stringent than those in the United States. These laws and regulations are subject to change over time and thus we must continue to monitor and dedicate resources to ensure continued compliance. In particular, the global AI regulatory environment continues to evolve as regulators and lawmakers have started proposing and adopting, or are currently considering, regulations and guidance specifically on the use of AI. Non-compliance with applicable regulations or requirements could subject us to investigations, sanctions, mandatory product recalls, enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, fines, damages, civil and criminal penalties, or injunctions and jail time for responsible employees and managers. If any governmental sanctions are imposed, or if we do not prevail in any possible civil or criminal litigation, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be materially adversely affected. In addition, responding to any action will likely result in a significant diversion of managements attention and resources and an increase in professional fees. Enforcement actions and sanctions could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We may become involved in litigation that may adversely affect us.
From time to time, we may be subject to claims, suits, and other proceedings. Regardless of the outcome, legal proceedings can have an adverse impact on us because of legal costs and diversion of management attention and resources, and could cause us to incur significant expenses or liability, adversely affect our brand recognition, or require us to change our business practices. The expense of litigation and the timing of this expense from period to period are difficult to estimate, subject to change, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. It is possible that a resolution of one or more such proceedings could result in substantial damages, settlement costs, fines, and penalties that would adversely affect our business, consolidated financial condition, operating results, or cash flows in a particular period. These proceedings could also result in reputational harm, sanctions, consent decrees, or orders requiring a change in our business practices. Because of the potential risks, expenses, and uncertainties of litigation, we may, from time to time, settle disputes, even where we have meritorious claims or defenses, by agreeing to settlement agreements. Because litigation is inherently unpredictable, we cannot ensure that the results of any of these actions will not have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects. Any of these consequences could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
64
Risks Related to Financial and Accounting Matters
We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. If our remediation of such material weaknesses is not effective, or if we experience additional material weaknesses in the future or otherwise fail to develop and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable laws and regulations could be impaired.
As a public company, we will be subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the rules and regulations of the applicable listing standards of Nasdaq. We expect that the requirements of these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting, and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming, and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems, and resources.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures, and internal control, over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls, internal control over financial reporting, and other procedures that are designed to ensure information required to be disclosed by us in our financial statements and in the reports that we will file with the SEC is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms, and information required to be disclosed in reports under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our principal executive and financial officers. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our internal controls and procedures, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources, including accounting-related costs and significant management oversight.
As a public company, we will be required to maintain internal control over financial reporting and to evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. Beginning with our second annual report following this offering, we will be required to provide a management report on internal control over financial reporting, as well as an attestation of our independent registered public accounting firm. Neither we nor our independent registered public accounting firm were required to, and therefore did not, perform an evaluation of our internal control over financial reporting as of or for any period included in our financial statements, nor any period subsequent in accordance with the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. However, while preparing the financial statements that are included in this prospectus, we identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
The material weaknesses identified pertained to the lack of effectively designed, implemented, and maintained IT general controls over applications that support our financial reporting processes, insufficient segregation of duties across financially relevant functions, and lack of sufficient number of qualified personnel within our accounting, finance, and operations functions who possessed an appropriate level of expertise to provide reasonable assurance that transactions were being appropriately recorded and disclosed. We have concluded that these material weaknesses existed because we did not have the necessary business processes, systems, personnel, and related internal controls.
During the year ended December 31, 2024, management completed the following remedial actions to help address these material weaknesses:
| consulted with experts on technical accounting matters, internal controls, and in the preparation of our financial statements; |
| performed a risk assessment over the organization and IT systems used as part of financial reporting and business processes, including the various layers of technology; and |
| hired additional accounting, finance, and operations resources, including critical leadership roles with public company and internal control experience responsible for designing, implementing, and monitoring our internal controls, including the Chief Accounting Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Information Officer. |
65
While management has made improvements to our control environment and business processes to support and scale with our growing operations, the identified material weaknesses remain un-remediated. We expect our remediation efforts to continue to take place in 2025 and 2026, and to include the following:
| designing, developing, and deploying an enhanced IT General Controls (ITGC) framework, including the implementation of a number of systems, processes, and tools to enable the effectiveness and consistent execution of these controls; |
| continuing to implement ITGCs to manage access and program changes within our IT environment and to support the evaluation, monitoring, and ongoing effectiveness of key application controls and key reports; |
| continuing to implement processes and controls to better manage and monitor our segregation of duties, including enhancing the usage of technology and tools for segregation of duties within the Companys systems, applications, and tools; and |
| continuing to expand our resources with the appropriate level of expertise within our accounting, finance, and operations functions; to implement, monitor, and maintain business processes and ITGCs. |
We may not be able to fully remediate these material weaknesses until these steps have been completed and the internal controls have been operating effectively for a sufficient period of time. This evaluation process, including testing the effectiveness of the remediation efforts, is expected to extend into 2026. Additionally, as stated above, we have not performed an evaluation of our internal control over financial reporting; accordingly, we cannot ensure that we have identified all, or that we will not in the future have additional, material weaknesses. Material weaknesses may still exist when we report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as required under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, beginning with our second annual report after the completion of this offering.
The process of designing and implementing internal control over financial reporting required to comply with the disclosure and attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will be time consuming and costly. If during the evaluation and testing process we identify additional material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting or determine that existing material weaknesses have not been remediated, our management will be unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective. Even if our management concludes that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, our independent registered public accounting firm may conclude that there are material weaknesses with respect to our internal control over financial reporting. If we are unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or when required in the future, if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an unqualified opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our stock could be adversely affected and we could become subject to litigation or investigations by the stock exchange on which our securities are listed, the SEC, or other regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources.
Further, upon becoming a public company, significant resources and management oversight will be required. As a result, managements attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We will incur significant increased costs and management resources as a result of operating as a public company.
As a public company, we will incur significant legal, accounting, compliance, and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. Our management and other personnel will need to devote a substantial amount of time and incur significant expense in connection with compliance initiatives. For example, in anticipation of becoming a public company, we will adopt additional internal controls and disclosure controls and
66
procedures, retain a transfer agent, and adopt an insider trading policy. As a public company, we will bear all of the internal and external costs of preparing and distributing periodic public reports in compliance with our obligations under the securities laws.
In addition, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the related rules and regulations implemented by the SEC have increased legal and financial compliance costs and will make some compliance activities more time-consuming. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations, and standards, and this investment will result in increased general and administrative expenses and may divert managements time and attention from our other business activities. If our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations, and standards differ from the activities intended by regulatory or governing bodies due to ambiguities related to practice, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us, and our business may be harmed. In connection with this offering, we intend to increase our directors and officers insurance coverage, which will increase our insurance cost. In the future, it may be more expensive or more difficult for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain and maintain the same or similar coverage. These factors would also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified members of our board of directors, particularly to serve on our audit committee and compensation committee, and qualified executive officers.
We may be required to repurchase a significant number of our outstanding shares of Class A common stock for cash upon the exercise of the holders put rights, which would affect our financial condition and our ability to operate our business, as well as divert our cash flow from operations for such repurchases.
29,874,066 shares of our Class A common stock that will be issued to holders of our Series C convertible preferred stock in connection with the Capital Stock Conversion (the Put Shares) are subject to a right to be put to us (the Put Right) on the first trading day immediately after the earlier to occur of (i) August 15, 2029 and (ii) the second anniversary of the closing of this offering (such earlier date, the Public Sale Date). Upon exercise of the Put Right, holders of the Put Shares would be entitled to receive from us an amount in cash equal to the original issue price per share of the Series C convertible preferred stock, of $38.95 (the Series C OIP), representing an aggregate payment of $1.2 billion. There will be no accrued and unpaid dividends with respect to the shares of Series C convertible preferred stock following the date of closing of this offering. The Put Right will automatically terminate (on a share by share basis) on the date on which (i) such share is assigned, sold or transferred publicly or (ii) our Class A common stock has a 20 day volume-weighted average price in any consecutive 30 trading day period of at least 175% of the Series C OIP at any point following this offering and on or prior to the Public Sale Date during which Coatue Management, L.L.C. is not subject to a contractual lock-up agreement (clauses (i) and (ii) collectively, an Exercise Termination Event). If (i) there is a sale of the Company prior to the Public Sale Date and (ii) there has not yet occurred an Exercise Termination Event, the Class A common stockholders still holding Put Shares shall be entitled in such sale transaction to receive the greater of (x) the consideration received per share the holders of our Class A Common Stock are entitled to receive in such sale transaction and (y) an amount in cash equal to the Series C OIP per share. See Description of Capital StockSeries C Preferred Stock Put Right for additional information regarding the Put Shares and Put Right.
We may not have enough available cash at the time we are required to repurchase the Put Shares, and we may be required to adopt one or more alternatives, such as selling assets, restructuring debt or obtaining additional equity or debt capital on terms that may be onerous or highly dilutive in order to make these repurchases. Further, any payments of cash used to repurchase the Put Shares will divert our cash flow from our business operations and could impact our business initiatives. Any significant repurchase of the Put Shares would adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We could be subject to additional tax liabilities and United States federal and global income tax reform could adversely affect us.
We are subject to U.S. federal, state, and local income taxes, sales, and other taxes in the United States and income taxes, withholding taxes, transaction taxes and other taxes in numerous foreign jurisdictions. Significant
67
judgment is required in evaluating our tax positions and our worldwide provision for income taxes. During the ordinary course of business, there are many activities and transactions for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. In addition, our future income tax obligations could be adversely affected by changes in, or interpretations of, tax laws in the United States or in other jurisdictions in which we operate.
For example, the United States tax law legislation commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 significantly reformed the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Internal Revenue Code), reducing U.S. federal tax rates, making sweeping changes to rules governing international business operations, and imposing significant additional limitations on tax benefits, including the deductibility of interest and the use of net operating loss (NOL) carryforwards. Effective for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2022, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also required capitalization of research and certain software development expenses and amortization of such expenses over a period of five years if incurred in the United States and fifteen years if incurred outside the United States. On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (the IRA) into law. The IRA contains certain tax measures, including a corporate alternative minimum tax of 15% on some large corporations and an excise tax of 1% on certain corporate stock buy-backs taking place after December 31, 2022. In addition, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Inclusive Framework of 137 jurisdictions have joined a two-pillar plan to reform international taxation rules. The first pillar is focused on the allocation of taxing rights between countries for in-scope multinational enterprises that sell goods and services into countries with little or no local physical presence and is intended to apply to multinational enterprises with global turnover above 20 billion. The second pillar is focused on developing a global minimum tax rate of at least 15% applicable to in-scope multinational enterprises and is intended to apply to multinational enterprises with annual consolidated group revenue in excess of 750 million. We are still evaluating the impact of the OECD pillar one and pillar two rules as they continue to be refined by the OECD and implemented by various national governments. However, it is possible that the OECD pillar one and pillar two rules, as implemented by various national governments, could adversely affect our effective tax rate or result in higher cash tax liabilities.
Due to the expanding scale of our international business activities, these types of changes to the taxation of our activities could impact the tax treatment of our foreign earnings, increase our worldwide effective tax rate, increase the amount of taxes imposed on our business, and harm our financial position. Such changes may also apply retroactively to our historical operations and result in taxes greater than the amounts estimated and recorded in our financial statements.
Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.
As of December 31, 2024, we had aggregate U.S. federal and state NOL carryforwards of $3.6 billion and $61 million, respectively, which may be available to offset future taxable income for U.S. income tax purposes. As of December 31, 2024, we had $3.6 billion in federal NOL carryforwards, almost all of which can be carried forward indefinitely. As of December 31, 2024, we had state NOL carryforwards of $61 million, of which $30 million can be carried forward indefinitely. If the NOL carryforwards are not utilized, $31 million will expire in varying amounts between the years 2032 and 2044. As of December 31, 2024, we had foreign NOL carryforwards of $5 million that can be carried forward indefinitely. Realization of these net operating loss and research and development credit carryforwards depends on our future taxable income, and there is a risk that certain of our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code, if a corporation undergoes an ownership change, generally defined as a greater than 50% cumulative change (by value) in ownership by 5 percent shareholders over a rolling three-year period, the corporations ability to use its pre-change NOLs and other pre-change tax attributes, such as research and development credits, to offset its post-change income or taxes may be limited. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, ownership changes as a result of shifts in our stock ownership. As a result, if we earn net taxable income, our ability to use our pre-change U.S.
68
NOL carryforwards and other tax attributes to offset U.S. federal taxable income may be subject to limitations, which could potentially result in increased future tax liability to us. In addition, we may undergo additional ownership changes in the future, including as a result of the offering, which could further limit our ability to use our NOLs and other pre-change tax attributes. Similar provisions of state tax law may also apply to limit our use of accumulated state tax NOLs. In addition, at the state level, there may be periods during which the use of NOLs is suspended or otherwise limited, which could accelerate or permanently increase our state income tax liabilities. As a result of the foregoing, even if we attain profitability, we may be unable to use all or a material portion of our net operating losses and other tax attributes, which could adversely affect our future cash flows.
We could be required to collect additional sales, use, value added, digital services, or other similar taxes or be subject to other liabilities with respect to past or future sales, that may increase the costs our customers would have to pay for our solutions and adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We do not collect sales and use, value added, or similar taxes in all jurisdictions in which we have sales because we have determined in consultation with our advisors that our sales in certain jurisdictions are not subject to such taxes. Sales and use, value added, and similar tax laws and rates vary greatly by jurisdiction and the application of such laws is subject to uncertainty. Jurisdictions in which we do not collect such taxes may assert that such taxes apply to our sales and seek to impose incremental or new sales, use, value added, digital services, or assert other tax collection obligations on us, which could result in tax assessments, penalties, and interest, to us or our customers for past sales, and we may be required to collect such taxes in the future. If we are unsuccessful in collecting such taxes from our customers, we could be held liable for such costs, which may adversely affect our operating results.
Further, an increasing number of U.S. states have considered or adopted laws that attempt to impose tax collection obligations on out-of-state companies. A successful assertion by one or more U.S. states requiring us to collect taxes where we presently do not do so, or to collect more taxes in a jurisdiction in which we currently collect such taxes, could result in substantial liabilities, including taxes on past sales, as well as interest and penalties. Furthermore, certain jurisdictions, such as the U.K., France, and Canada, have enacted a digital services tax, which is generally a tax on gross revenue generated from users or customers located in those jurisdictions, and other jurisdictions are considering enacting similar laws. A successful assertion by a U.S. state or local government or a foreign jurisdiction that we should have been or should be collecting additional sales, use, value added, digital services, or other similar taxes could, among other things, result in substantial tax payments, create significant administrative burdens for us, discourage potential customers from using our platform due to the incremental cost of any such sales or other related taxes, or otherwise harm our business.
Our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements are subject to the tax laws of various jurisdictions, and we could be obligated to pay additional taxes, which would harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
We are expanding our international operations and staff to support our business and growth in international markets. We generally conduct our international operations through wholly-owned subsidiaries and are or may be required to report our taxable income in various jurisdictions worldwide based upon our business operations in those jurisdictions. Our corporate structure and associated transfer pricing policies contemplate future growth in international markets, and consider the functions, risks, and assets of the various entities involved in intercompany transactions. Furthermore, increases in tax rates, new or revised tax laws, and new interpretations of existing tax laws and policies by taxing authorities and courts in various jurisdictions, could result in an increase in our overall tax obligations which could adversely affect our business. Our intercompany relationships and intercompany transactions are subject to complex transfer pricing rules administered by taxing authorities in various jurisdictions in which we operate with potentially divergent tax laws. The amount of taxes we pay in different jurisdictions will depend on the application of the tax laws of the various jurisdictions, including the
69
United States, to our intercompany transactions, international business activities, changes in tax rates, new or revised tax laws or interpretations of existing tax laws (which may have retroactive effect) and policies by taxing authorities and courts in various jurisdictions, and our ability to operate our business in a manner consistent with our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements.
It is not uncommon for tax authorities in different countries to have conflicting views, for instance, with respect to, among other things, the manner in which the arms length standard is applied for transfer pricing purposes, the transfer pricing and charges for intercompany services and other intercompany transactions, or with respect to the valuation of our intellectual property and the manner in which our intellectual property is utilized within our group. If taxing authorities in any of the jurisdictions in which we conduct our international operations were to successfully challenge our transfer pricing, we could be required to reallocate part or all of our income to reflect transfer pricing adjustments, which could result in an increased tax liability to us. In such circumstances, if the country from where the income was reallocated did not agree to the reallocation, we could become subject to tax on the same income in both countries, resulting in double taxation. Furthermore, the relevant taxing authorities may disagree with our determinations as to the income and expenses attributable to specific jurisdictions. We believe that our tax and financial accounting positions are reasonable and our tax reserves are adequate to cover any potential liability. We also believe that our assumptions, judgments, and estimates are reasonable and that our transfer pricing for these intercompany transactions are on arms-length terms. However, the relevant tax authorities may disagree with our tax positions, including any assumptions, judgments, or estimates used for these transfer pricing matters and intercompany transactions. If any of these tax authorities determine that our transfer pricing for these intercompany transactions do not meet arms-length criteria, and were successful in challenging our positions, we could be required to pay additional taxes, interest, and penalties related thereto, which could be in excess of any reserves established therefore, and which could result in higher effective tax rates, reduced cash flows, and lower overall profitability of our operations. Our financial statements could fail to reflect adequate reserves to cover such a contingency.
We may be audited in various jurisdictions, including in jurisdictions in which we are not currently filing, and such jurisdictions may assess new or additional taxes, sales taxes, and value added taxes against us. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, the final determination of any tax audits or litigation could be materially different from our historical tax provisions and accruals, which could have an adverse effect on our operating results or cash flows in the period or periods for which a determination is made.
If our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies prove to be incorrect or financial reporting standards or interpretations change, our operating results could be adversely affected.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, as discussed in the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsCritical Accounting Estimates. The results of these estimates form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities and equity, and the amount of revenue and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Significant assumptions and estimates used in preparing our consolidated financial statements include but are not limited to those related to the identification of performance obligations in revenue recognition, the valuation of stock-based awards, the valuation of derivatives and warrants, and accounting for leases, property and equipment, income taxes and variable interest entities. Our operating results may be adversely affected if our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our operating results to fall below the expectations of industry or financial analysts and investors, resulting in a potential decline in the market price of our Class A common stock.
Additionally, we regularly monitor our compliance with applicable financial reporting standards and review new pronouncements and drafts thereof that are relevant to us. As a result of new standards, changes to existing standards, and changes in their interpretation, we might be required to change our accounting policies, alter our operational policies, and implement new or enhance existing systems so that they reflect new or amended
70
financial reporting standards, or we may be required to restate our published financial statements. For example, SEC proposals on climate-related disclosures may require us to update our accounting or operational policies, processes, or systems to reflect new or amended financial reporting standards. Such changes to existing standards or changes in their interpretation may have an adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition, and profit, or cause an adverse deviation from our revenue and operating profit target, which may adversely affect our financial results.
We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates, which could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our sales contracts are primarily denominated in U.S. dollars, and therefore a majority of our revenue is not subject to foreign currency risk. However, strengthening of the U.S. dollar increases the real cost of our platform to our customers outside of the United States, which could lead to delays in the purchase of our platform and the lengthening of our sales cycle. If the U.S. dollar continues to strengthen, this could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects. In addition, increased international sales in the future, including through continued international expansion, could result in foreign currency denominated sales, which would increase our foreign currency risk.
Our operating expenses incurred outside the United States and denominated in foreign currencies are increasing and are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. These expenses are denominated in foreign currencies and are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. We do not currently hedge against the risks associated with currency fluctuations but may do so, or use other derivative instruments, in the future.
Risks Related to Our Indebtedness
Our substantial indebtedness could materially adversely affect our financial condition, our ability to raise additional capital to fund our operations, our ability to operate our business, our ability to react to changes in the economy or our industry, our ability to meet our obligations under our outstanding indebtedness and could divert our cash flow from operations for debt payments, and we may still incur substantially more indebtedness in the future.
We have a substantial amount of debt, which requires significant interest and principal payments. As of December 31, 2024, our total indebtedness was $8.0 billion and we had an aggregate of $4.4 billion of undrawn availability under our Revolving Credit Facility and DDTL 2.0 Facility (each as defined below). In July 2023, CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. II, LLC, our direct, wholly owned subsidiary, entered into a delayed draw term loan facility (as amended, the DDTL 1.0 Facility) providing for up to $2.3 billion in delayed draw term loans. In May 2024, CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. IV, LLC, our direct, wholly owned subsidiary, entered into a delayed draw term loan facility (as amended, the DDTL 2.0 Facility) providing for up to $7.6 billion in delayed draw terms loans. All obligations under the DDTL 1.0 Facility and the DDTL 2.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by us. In October 2024, we amended our revolving credit facility (as amended, the Revolving Credit Facility) to provide for a $650 million revolving credit facility. In December 2024, we entered into a credit agreement providing for a $1.0 billion term loan facility (the 2024 Term Loan Facility). In March 2025, we entered into a credit agreement (the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement) providing for a $300 million unsecured term loan facility (the 2025 Term Loan Facility, and together with the Revolving Credit Facility, the DDTL 1.0 Facility, the DDTL 2.0 Facility, and the 2024 Term Loan Facility, the Credit Facilities). Between February and December 2024, we entered into various agreements with an OEM and obtained financing for certain equipment with an aggregate notional balance of $1.3 billion as of December 31, 2024. In addition to our substantial debt, we lease all of our data centers and certain equipment under lease agreements, some of which are accounted for as operating leases. As of December 31, 2024, we recorded operating lease liabilities of $2.6 billion, which represents our obligation to make lease payments under those lease arrangements. Subject to the limits contained in the credit agreements that govern our Credit Facilities, we may be able to incur substantial
71
additional debt from time to time to finance working capital, capital expenditures, investments or acquisitions, or for other purposes. If we do so, the risks related to our high level of debt could increase. Specifically, our high level of debt could have important consequences, including the following:
| it may be difficult for us to satisfy our obligations, including debt service requirements under our outstanding debt; |
| our ability to obtain additional financing for working capital, capital expenditures, debt service requirements, acquisitions, or other general corporate purposes may be impaired; |
| a substantial portion of cash flow from operations are required to be dedicated to the payment of principal and interest on our indebtedness, therefore reducing our ability to use our cash flow to fund our operations, capital expenditures, future business opportunities, and other purposes; |
| we could be more vulnerable to economic downturns and adverse industry conditions and our flexibility to plan for, or react to, changes in our business or industry is more limited; |
| our ability to capitalize on business opportunities and to react to competitive pressures, as compared to our competitors, may be compromised due to our high level of debt and the restrictive covenants in the credit agreements that govern our Credit Facilities; |
| our ability to borrow additional funds or to refinance debt may be limited; and |
| it may cause potential or existing customers to not contract with us due to concerns over our ability to meet our financial obligations under such contracts. |
Our ability to make scheduled payments on and to refinance our indebtedness depends on and is subject to our financial and operating performance, which in turn is affected by general and regional economic, financial, competitive, business and other factors, all of which are beyond our control, including the availability of financing in the international banking and capital markets. We cannot ensure that our business will generate sufficient cash flow from operations or that future borrowings will be available to us in an amount sufficient to enable us to service our debt, to refinance our debt or to fund our other liquidity needs. For the year ended December 31, 2024, our cash flows dedicated for debt service requirements totaled $941 million, which includes principal payments of $588 million and interest payments of $353 million, inclusive of $169 million related to capitalized interest. For the year ended December 31, 2024, our net cash provided by operating activities was $2.7 billion, which includes interest paid, net of capitalized amounts, of $184 million. As such, our cash flows from operating activities, before giving effect to the payment of interest, net of capitalized amounts, was $2.9 billion. For the year ended December 31, 2024, approximately 32% of our net cash provided by operating activities, before giving effect to the payment of interest, net of capitalized amounts, was dedicated to debt service, both principal and interest. If our cash flows and capital resources are insufficient to fund our debt service obligations, we could face substantial liquidity problems and could be forced to reduce or delay investments and capital expenditures or to dispose of material assets or operations, seek additional debt or equity capital or restructure or refinance our indebtedness. Further, any refinancing or restructuring of our indebtedness could be at higher interest rates, may cause us to incur debt extinguishment costs, and may require us to comply with more onerous covenants that could further restrict our business operations. Moreover, in the event of a default, the holders of our indebtedness could elect to declare such indebtedness be due and payable and/or elect to exercise other rights, such as the lenders under our Revolving Credit Facility terminating their commitments thereunder and ceasing to make further loans or the lenders under our DDTL 1.0 Facility and DDTL 2.0 Facility instituting foreclosure proceedings against their collateral, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Further, financing through debt has historically been an important source of additional capital for us, and we intend to continue to use debt as a source of financing in the future. As such, we and our subsidiaries are able to incur additional debt and may be able to incur substantial additional debt in the future, subject to the restrictions contained in our debt instruments, some of which may be secured debt. Our existing debt agreements restrict our
72
ability to incur additional indebtedness, including secured indebtedness, but if those restrictions are waived, or the facilities mature or are repaid, we may not be subject to such restrictions under the terms of any subsequent indebtedness.
Furthermore, all of the debt under our Credit Facilities bears interest at variable rates. If interest rates associated with our floating rate debt (e.g., the Secured Oversight Financing Rate (SOFR)) increase, our debt service obligations on our Credit Facilities would increase even though the amount borrowed remained the same, and our net income and cash flows, including cash available for servicing our indebtedness, would correspondingly decrease. In addition, an increase in such interest rates could adversely affect our future ability to obtain financing or materially increase the cost of any additional financing.
In addition, we have issued letters of credit in favor of several of our third-party data center providers as a requirement to enter into leases for these facilities. These letters of credit are cash collateralized, these funds are reflected as restricted cash on our consolidated balance sheet, and we are limited in our ability to use these funds for our business operations.
Certain of our debt agreements impose significant operating and financial restrictions on us and our subsidiaries, which may prevent us from capitalizing on business opportunities.
The credit agreements that govern our Credit Facilities, as well as the related parent guarantees, impose significant operating and financial restrictions on us. These restrictions will limit our ability and/or the ability of our subsidiaries to, among other things:
| incur or guarantee additional debt or issue disqualified stock or preferred stock; |
| pay dividends and make other distributions on, or redeem or repurchase, capital stock; |
| make certain investments or acquisitions; |
| incur certain liens; |
| enter into transactions with affiliates; |
| merge or consolidate; |
| enter into agreements that restrict the ability of restricted subsidiaries to make dividends or other payments to the lenders; |
| prepay, redeem or repurchase any subordinated indebtedness or enter into amendments to certain subordinated indebtedness in a manner materially adverse to the lenders; |
| designate restricted subsidiaries as unrestricted subsidiaries; and |
| transfer or sell assets. |
In addition, we are required to maintain specified financial covenant ratios and satisfy other financial condition tests under the credit agreements governing our Credit Facilities. As a result of these restrictions, we are limited as to how we conduct our business, and we may be unable to raise additional debt or equity financing to compete effectively or to take advantage of new business opportunities. The terms of any future indebtedness we may incur could include similar or more restrictive covenants. We cannot ensure that we will be able to maintain compliance with these covenants in the future and, if we fail to do so, that we will be able to obtain waivers from the lenders and/or amend the covenants. Our failure to comply with the restrictive or financial covenants described above as well as the terms of any future indebtedness could result in an event of default, which, if not cured or waived, could result in us being required to repay these borrowings before their due date. If we are forced to refinance these borrowings on less favorable terms or are unable to refinance these borrowings, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be materially adversely affected.
73
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock and this Offering
The market price of our Class A common stock may be volatile, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
We cannot predict the prices at which our Class A common stock will trade. The initial public offering price of our Class A common stock will be determined by negotiations between us and the underwriters and may not bear any relationship to the market price at which our Class A common stock will trade after this offering or to any other established criteria of the value of our business and prospects and the market price of our Class A common stock following this offering may fluctuate substantially and may be lower than the initial public offering price. The market price of our Class A common stock following this offering will depend on a number of factors, including those described in this Risk Factors section, many of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance. In addition, the limited public float of our Class A common stock following this offering will tend to increase the volatility of the trading price of our Class A common stock. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our Class A common stock, since you might not be able to sell your shares at or above the price you paid in this offering. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the market price of our Class A common stock include, but are not limited to, the following:
| actual or anticipated changes or fluctuations in our operating results; |
| our incurrence of any additional indebtedness or any fluctuations in interest rates impacting our existing indebtedness; |
| the exercise by holders of our Series C convertible preferred stock of the Put Right; |
| our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements; |
| the financial projections we may provide to the public, any changes in these projections, or our failure to meet these projections; |
| announcements by us or our competitors of new offerings or new or terminated significant contracts, commercial relationships, acquisitions, or capital commitments; |
| industry or financial analyst or investor reaction to our press releases, other public announcements and filings with the SEC; |
| rumors and market speculation involving us or other companies in our industry; |
| price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market from time to time; |
| the overall performance of the stock market or technology companies; |
| the expiration of market standoff or contractual lock-up agreements and sales of shares of our Class A common stock by us or our stockholders; |
| failure of industry or financial analysts to maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by any analysts who follow our company, or our failure to meet these estimates or the expectations of investors; |
| actual or anticipated developments in our business or our competitors businesses or the competitive landscape generally; |
| litigation or other proceedings involving us, our industry or both, or investigations by regulators into our operations or those of our competitors; |
| developments or disputes concerning our intellectual property rights or our solutions, or third-party proprietary rights; |
| new laws or regulations or new interpretations of existing laws or regulations applicable to our business; |
| any major changes in our management or our board of directors; |
74
| the global political, economic, and macroeconomic climate, including but not limited to, actual or perceived instability in the banking industry, potential uncertainty with respect to the federal debt ceiling and budget and potential government shutdowns related thereto, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, potential recession, inflation, and rising interest rates; |
| other events or factors, including those resulting from war, armed conflict, including the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan, incidents of terrorism, or responses to these events; and |
| cybersecurity incidents. |
In addition, the stock market in general, and the market for technology companies in particular, has experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies, particularly during the current period of global macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. These economic, political, regulatory, and market conditions have and may continue to negatively impact the market price of our Class A common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. In addition, in the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market prices of a particular companys securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against that company. Securities litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and divert our managements attention and resources from our business. This could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
No public market for our Class A common stock currently exists, and an active public trading market may not develop or be sustained following this offering.
Prior to this offering, there has been no public market or active private market for our Class A common stock. We have applied to list our Class A common stock on Nasdaq. However, an active trading market may not develop following the completion of this offering or, if developed, may not be sustained. The lack of an active market may impair your ability to sell your shares at the time you wish to sell them or at a price that you consider reasonable. The lack of an active market may also reduce the market price of your shares of Class A common stock. An inactive market may also impair our ability to raise capital by selling shares and may impair our ability to acquire other companies or technologies by using our shares as consideration.
Sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that they might occur, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock into the public market, particularly sales by our directors, executive officers, and principal stockholders, or the perception that these sales might occur, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
All of the shares of Class A common stock sold in this offering will be freely tradable without restrictions or further registration under the Securities Act, except that any shares held by our affiliates, as defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act, would only be able to be sold in compliance with Rule 144 and any applicable lock-up agreements described below.
In connection with this offering, all of our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other holders that together represent approximately 84.0% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to lock-up agreements with the underwriters pursuant to which they have agreed, subject to certain exceptions, that without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC (Morgan Stanley), on behalf of the underwriters, and Magnetar, they will not, in accordance with the terms of such agreements during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the close of trading on the second trading day after the date that we publicly announce earnings for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are
75
included in this prospectus, and (ii) 180 days after the date of this prospectus (such period, the Lock-up Period):
(1) | offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, lend, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock; |
(2) | enter into any swap, hedging transaction, or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of our Class A common stock, whether any such transaction described above is to be settled by delivery of our Class A common stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise; |
(3) | publicly disclose the intention to take any of the actions restricted by clause (1) or (2) above; or |
(4) | make any demand for, or exercise any right with respect to, the registration of any shares of our Class A common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our Class A common stock. |
Furthermore, an additional approximately 14.3% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to market standoff provisions, pursuant to which such holders agreed to not lend, offer, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our Class A common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our Class A common stock held immediately prior to the effectiveness of this registration statement, or enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of such Class A common stock during the Lock-up Period. The forms and specific restrictive provisions within these market standoff provisions vary among security holders. For example, although some of these market standoff agreements do not specifically restrict hedging transactions and others may be subject to different interpretations between us and security holders as to whether they restrict hedging, our insider trading policy prohibits hedging by all of our current directors, officers, employees, contractors, and consultants. Sales, short sales, or hedging transactions involving our equity securities, whether before or after this offering and whether or not we believe them to be prohibited, could adversely affect the price of our Class A common stock.
As a result of the foregoing, substantially all of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to a lock-up agreement or market standoff provisions during the Lock-up Period. We have agreed to enforce all such market standoff restrictions on behalf of the underwriters and not to amend or waive any such market standoff provisions during the Lock-up Period without the prior consent of Magnetar Financial LLC (Magnetar) and Morgan Stanley, on behalf of the underwriters, provided that we may release shares from such restrictions to the extent such shares would be entitled to release under the form of lock-up agreement with the underwriters entered into by our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other holders of our securities as described herein.
Certain of our security holders that are not bound by market standoff restrictions or lock-up agreements could enter into transactions with respect to those shares of our Class A common stock that negatively impact our stock price. In addition, a security holder who is neither subject to market standoff restrictions with us nor a lock-up agreement with the underwriters may be able to sell, short sell, transfer, pledge, or otherwise dispose of or attempt to sell, short sell, transfer, hedge, pledge, or otherwise dispose of their equity interests at any time, subject to our insider trading policy, as applicable.
In addition, pursuant to certain exceptions to the lock-up agreements and market standoff agreements, up to approximately 727,342 shares of our Class A common stock will be eligible for sale in the open market during the Lock-up Period in sell-to-cover transactions in order to satisfy tax withholding obligations.
76
Furthermore, as further described and subject to the conditions set forth in the sections titled Shares Eligible for Future Sale and Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest), at the close of trading of the second trading day after the date that we publicly announce earnings for the first quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus (the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date), if the closing price per share of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq for any five trading days out of the ten consecutive trading day period including at least one day occurring after the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date is at least 25% greater than the initial public offering price of our Class A common stock set forth on the cover of this prospectus, up to approximately 963,140 shares of Class A common stock held by our current employees and service providers (excluding our Co-Founders and directors) will be immediately available for sale in the public market.
When the Lock-up Period expires, we and our securityholders subject to a lock-up agreement or market stand-off agreement will be able to sell our shares in the public market. In addition, Morgan Stanley may release all or some portion of the shares subject to lock-up agreements prior to the expiration of the Lock-up Period, subject to the prior written consent of Magnetar. See the section titled Shares Eligible for Future Sale for more information. Sales of a substantial number of such shares upon expiration of the lock-up and market stand-off agreements, or the perception that such sales may occur, or early release of these agreements, could cause our market price to fall or make it more difficult for you to sell your Class A common stock at a time and price that you deem appropriate.
In addition to the lock-up agreement with the underwriters, all of Mike Intrator, Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee and Peter Salanki (each a Management Holder) have entered into a lock-up agreement with Magnetar (a Founder Lock-up Agreement) that provides that each Management Holder and their permitted affiliates (as defined in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as is currently in effect) will not (i) lend, offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or any directly, any shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable (directly or indirectly) for our common stock held by each Management Holder and all permitted affiliates of such Management Holder on the effective date of this registration statement or (ii) enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of such securities, whether any such transaction described above in (i) or (ii) is to be settled by delivery of our securities, in cash, or otherwise, during the period commencing on the effective date of this registration statement and ending on the twelve-month anniversary thereto.
The Founder Lock-Up Agreement is subject to certain exceptions, including (a) the sale of shares to the underwriters pursuant to the underwriting agreement, (b) the transfer of any shares to any permitted affiliates for the direct or indirect benefit of the Management Holder or the immediate family of the Management Holder, provided that any such transfer shall not involve a disposition for value, or (c) the sales of up to 2.5% of the securities held by such Management Holder and all of such Management Holders permitted affiliates, in the aggregate, on the effective date of this registration statement, if, following the expiration of the lock-up agreement entered into with the underwriters in this offering, the closing price per share of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq imputes a market capitalization to us of $150 billion or greater for at least five trading days in any ten-day consecutive trading day period occurring after the expiration of the lock-up agreement entered into with the underwriters in this offering.
Notwithstanding the above, the Founder Lock-up Agreement shall be of no further force and effect with respect to a Management Holder in the event that such Management Holder has entered into a lock-up agreement with the underwriters, does not participate as a selling stockholder in this offering and does not engage in a concurrent private sale in connection with this offering.
In addition, we may, from time to time, enter into separate lock-up agreements with some of the investors in this offering. These separate lock-up agreements may provide for a restricted period that is longer than the period
77
described above that is applicable to existing stockholders other than the Management Holders. If there is a separate lock-up agreement on certain shares sold in this offering, our shares available for sale in the public market will be reduced during the term of these lock-up agreements.
In addition, as of December 31, 2024, we had options to purchase 47,218,580 shares of our Class A common stock outstanding and 15,454,720 RSUs outstanding that, if fully exercised or vested and settled, as applicable, would result in the issuance of 47,218,580 shares of Class A common stock and 15,454,720 shares of Class A common stock, respectively, a portion of which are expected to be exercised or settled for shares of Class A common stock that will be sold by certain selling stockholders in connection with this offering, and we also had outstanding warrants exercisable for the purchase of 12,144,668 shares of Class A common stock. All of the shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise or settlement of stock options, warrants, or RSUs, and the shares reserved for future issuance under our equity incentive plans, will be registered for public resale under the Securities Act. Accordingly, these shares will be able to be freely sold in the public market upon issuance subject to existing lock-up or market standoff agreements and applicable vesting requirements.
Immediately following this offering, the holders of 375,927,734 shares of our Class A common stock will have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements for the public resale of the Class A common stock issuable upon conversion of such shares or to include such shares in registration statements that we may file for us or other stockholders.
We may also issue our shares of common stock or securities convertible into shares of our common stock from time to time in connection with a financing, acquisition, investment, or otherwise. Any further issuance could result in substantial dilution to our existing stockholders and cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
The multi-class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting power with our Co-Founders, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions, including a change in control.
Our Class B common stock has ten votes per share, our Class A common stock has one vote per share, and our Class C common stock has no votes per share.
Following this offering and the concurrent share issuance of our Class A common stock, our Co-Founders will collectively hold all of the issued and outstanding shares of our Class B common stock. Accordingly, upon the closing of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, and assuming no exercise of the underwriters option to purchase additional shares, Michael Intrator, our Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors, will hold approximately 37.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock (or 38.2% of the voting power assuming all of Mr. Intrators options held as of December 31, 2024 to purchase 3,003,000 shares of Class A common stock are exchanged for shares of Class B common stock), Brian Venturo, our Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and a member of our board of directors, will hold approximately 23.2% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock (or 25.6% of the voting power assuming all of Mr. Venturos options held as of December 31, 2024 to purchase 4,903,000 shares of Class A common stock are exchanged for shares of Class B common stock), and Brannin McBee, our Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer, will hold approximately 18.7% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock (or 19.4% of the voting power assuming all of Mr. McBees options held as of December 31, 2024 to purchase 1,203,000 shares of Class A common stock are exchanged for shares of Class B common stock), and together our Co-Founders will hold approximately 79.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock (or 83.3% of the voting power assuming all of our Co-Founders options held as of December 31, 2024 to purchase 9,109,000 shares of Class A common stock are exchanged for shares of Class B common stock), which voting power may increase over time upon the exercise or settlement and exchange of equity awards held by our Co-Founders pursuant to their Equity Exchange Rights which provide each Co-Founder with the right (but not obligation) to require us to exchange, for shares of our Class B common stock, any shares of our Class A common stock
78
received by him upon the exercise or settlement of equity awards for shares of our Class A common stock granted prior to September 2024. See the section titled Certain Relationships and Related Party TransactionsOther TransactionsEquity Exchange Right Agreements for more information on the Equity Exchange Rights. Therefore, our Co-Founders, individually or together, will be able to significantly influence matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors, amendments of our organizational documents and any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or other major corporate transactions. Our Co-Founders, individually or together, may have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a way with which you disagree and which may be adverse to your interests. This concentrated control may have the effect of delaying, preventing, or deterring a change in control of our company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their capital stock as part of a sale of our company and might ultimately affect the market price of our Class A common stock.
Future transfers by the holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting into shares of Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for estate planning or charitable purposes. In addition, each share of Class B common stock will convert automatically into one share of Class A common stock upon the earlier of (i) a date that is fixed by our board of directors that is no more than 61 days following the seventh anniversary of this offering, (ii) the date specified by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the outstanding voting power of the Class B common stock, or (iii) no more than 61 days following Michael Intrators Service Termination (as defined herein).
Additionally, future issuances of our Class C common stock may further concentrate the voting power of our Co-Founders by prolonging the duration of their control and/or by giving them an opportunity to achieve liquidity without diminishing their voting power. See Any future issuance of our Class C common stock may have the effect of further concentrating voting control in our Class B common stock, may discourage potential acquisitions of our business, and could have an adverse effect on the market price of our Class A common stock. For information about our multi-class structure, see the section titled Description of Capital Stock. If we are unable to effectively manage these risks, our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects could be adversely affected.
The multi-class structure of our common stock may adversely affect the trading market for our Class A common stock.
We cannot predict whether our multi-class structure will result in a lower or more volatile market price of our Class A common stock, adverse publicity, or other adverse consequences. Certain stock index providers exclude or limit the ability of companies with multi-class share structures from being added to certain of their indices. In addition, several stockholder advisory firms and large institutional investors oppose the use of multiple class structures. As a result, the multi-class structure of our common stock may make us ineligible for inclusion in certain indices and may discourage such indices from selecting us for inclusion, notwithstanding our automatic termination provision, may cause stockholder advisory firms to publish negative commentary about our corporate governance practices or otherwise seek to cause us to change our capital structure, and may result in large institutional investors not purchasing shares of our Class A common stock. Given the sustained flow of investment funds into passive strategies that seek to track certain indices, any exclusion from certain stock indices could result in less demand for our Class A common stock. Any actions or publications by stockholder advisory firms or institutional investors critical of our corporate governance practices or capital structure could also adversely affect the value of our Class A common stock.
If financial analysts issue inaccurate or unfavorable research regarding, or do not or cease to cover, our Class A common stock, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our Class A common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that financial analysts publish about us, our business, our market and our competitors. We do not control these analysts or the content and opinions included in their reports. As a new public company, the analysts who publish information about our
79
Class A common stock will have had relatively little experience with our company, which could affect their ability to accurately forecast our results and make it more likely that we fail to meet their estimates. If any of the analysts who cover us issues an inaccurate or unfavorable opinion regarding our stock price, our stock price would likely decline. In addition, the stock prices of many companies in the technology industry have declined significantly after those companies have failed to meet, or significantly exceed, the financial guidance publicly announced by the companies or the expectations of analysts. If our financial results fail to meet, or significantly exceed, our announced guidance, if any, or the expectations of analysts or public investors, analysts could downgrade our Class A common stock or publish unfavorable research about us. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our Class A common stock or fail to publish reports on us regularly, our visibility in the financial markets could decrease, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.
We will have broad discretion in the use of the net proceeds to us from this offering and may not use them effectively.
We will have broad discretion in the application of the net proceeds to us from this offering, including for any of the purposes described in the section titled Use of Proceeds, and you will not have the opportunity as part of your investment decision to assess whether the net proceeds are being used appropriately. Because of the number and variability of factors that will determine our use of the net proceeds from this offering, their ultimate use may vary substantially from their currently intended use. If we do not use the net proceeds that we receive in this offering effectively, our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects could be harmed, and the market price of our Class A common stock could decline. Pending their use, we may invest the net proceeds from this offering in short-term, investment-grade interest-bearing securities such as money market accounts, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, and guaranteed obligations of the U.S. government that may not generate a high yield for our stockholders. These investments may not yield a favorable return to our investors.
We do not intend to pay dividends in the foreseeable future. As a result, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our Class A common stock.
Following the consummation of this offering, we currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not anticipate paying any dividends on our capital stock in the foreseeable future, with the exception of any final dividend payment payable on our Series C redeemable preferred stock upon the consummation of this offering. Additionally, our ability to pay dividends or make distributions is limited by certain restrictions contained in our Credit Facilities. Any future determination to declare dividends will be made at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on our financial condition, operating results, capital requirements, general business conditions, restrictions in our debt instruments and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. Accordingly, investors must rely on sales of their Class A common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investments.
Because the initial public offering price of our Class A common stock will be substantially higher than the pro forma net tangible book value per share of our outstanding common stock following this offering and the concurrent share issuance, new investors will experience immediate and substantial dilution.
The initial public offering price is substantially higher than the pro forma net tangible book value per share of our Class A common stock immediately following this offering and the concurrent share issuance based on the total value of our tangible assets less our total liabilities. Therefore, if you purchase shares of our Class A common stock in this offering, based on the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and the issuance of 47,178,660 shares of Class A common stock in this offering and the concurrent share issuance, you will experience immediate dilution of $45.87 per share, the difference between the price per share you pay for our Class A common stock and its pro forma net tangible book value per share as of December 31, 2024 after giving effect to the issuance of shares of our Class A common stock in this offering and the concurrent share issuance, the RSU Net Settlement, and the Option Exercise. Furthermore, if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full, current or future outstanding warrants or
80
equity awards are settled in shares of our capital stock, or if we otherwise issue additional shares of our capital stock, you could experience further dilution. See the section titled Dilution for additional information.
Although we will cease to be an emerging growth company prior to this offering, we will continue to be treated as an emerging growth company for certain purposes through the completion of this offering and have decided to take advantage of certain reduced disclosure requirements in the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, which may make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors.
We will cease to be an emerging growth company, as defined in the JOBS Act, on December 31, 2024. However, because we will cease to be an emerging growth company on a date after we confidentially submit our draft registration statement related to this offering to the SEC, we will continue to be treated as an emerging growth company for certain purposes until the earlier of the date on which we complete this offering or December 31, 2025. As such, we have decided to take advantage of certain exemptions that allow us to comply with reduced disclosure obligations in the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part that are not available to non-emerging growth companies. We cannot predict if investors will find our Class A common stock less attractive because we have relied on these exemptions. If some investors find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, there may be less demand for our Class A common stock, and the market price of our Class A common stock may fall.
Provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of us, which may be beneficial to our stockholders, more difficult and may limit attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management and members of our board of directors.
Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws that will be in effect immediately prior to the completion of this offering may have the effect of delaying or preventing a merger, acquisition or other change of control of the Company that the stockholders may consider favorable. In addition, because our board of directors is responsible for appointing the members of our management team, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors. Among other things, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions that:
| provide that our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors with staggered three-year terms; |
| permit our board of directors to establish the number of directors and fill any vacancies and newly created directorships; |
| require supermajority voting to amend some provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws; |
| authorize the issuance of blank check preferred stock that our board of directors could use to implement a stockholder rights plan; |
| provide that only the chairman of our board of directors, our chief executive officer, our lead independent director, or a majority of our board of directors will be authorized to call a special meeting of stockholders; |
| eliminate the ability of our stockholders to call special meetings of stockholders; |
| do not provide for cumulative voting; |
| provide that directors may only be removed for cause and only with the approval of two-thirds of our stockholders; |
| provide for a multi-class common stock structure in which holders of our Class B common stock may have the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even if they own |
81
significantly less than a majority of the outstanding shares of our common stock, including the election of directors and other significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets; |
| prohibit stockholder action by written consent, which requires all stockholder actions to be taken at a meeting of our stockholders; provided that stockholder action by written consent of a majority of the voting power of all then-outstanding shares of our capital stock is permitted so long as the voting power of all then-outstanding shares of Class B common stock represents greater than a majority of the combined voting power of all then-outstanding shares of our capital stock; |
| provide that our board of directors is expressly authorized to make, alter, or repeal our amended and restated bylaws; and |
| establish advance notice requirements for nominations for election to our board of directors or for proposing matters that can be acted upon by stockholders at annual stockholder meetings. |
Moreover, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL), may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control of our company. Section 203 imposes certain restrictions on mergers, business combinations, and other transactions between us and holders of 15% or more of our common stock.
Our amended and restated bylaws will contain exclusive forum provisions for certain claims, which may limit our stockholders ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees.
Our amended and restated bylaws that will be in effect immediately prior to the completion of this offering will provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware, to the fullest extent permitted by law, will be the exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty, any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the DGCL, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, or our amended and restated bylaws, or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine or asserting an internal corporate claim as defined in the DGCL.
Moreover, Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. Our amended and restated bylaws will provide that the federal district courts of the United States will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act (Federal Forum Provision). Our decision to adopt a Federal Forum Provision followed a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware holding that such provisions are facially valid under Delaware law. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow the holding of the Delaware Supreme Court or determine that the Federal Forum Provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of the Federal Forum Provision means that suits brought by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court.
Section 27 of the Exchange Act creates exclusive federal jurisdiction over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. In addition, the Federal Forum Provision applies to suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Accordingly, actions by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder must be brought in federal court.
Our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in any of our securities shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to our exclusive forum provisions, including the Federal Forum
82
Provision. These provisions may limit a stockholders ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum of their choosing for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers, and employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Any future issuance of our Class C common stock may have the effect of further concentrating voting control in our Class B common stock, may discourage potential acquisitions of our business, and could have an adverse effect on the market price of our Class A common stock.
Under our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, which will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering, we will be authorized to issue up to 200,000,000 shares of our Class C common stock. We do not have current plans to issue any shares of our Class C common stock. However, any future issuance of our Class C common stock may have the effect of further concentrating voting control in our Class B common stock, may discourage potential acquisitions of our business, and could have an adverse effect on the market price of our Class A common stock. Although we have no current plans to issue any shares of our Class C common stock, we may in the future issue shares of our Class C common stock for a variety of corporate purposes, including financings, acquisitions, investments, and equity incentives to our employees, consultants, and directors. Our authorized but unissued shares of Class C common stock are available for issuance with the approval of our board of directors without stockholder approval, except as may be required by the listing rules of Nasdaq. Because our Class C common stock carries no voting rights (except as otherwise required by law) and is not listed for trading on an exchange or registered for sale with the SEC, shares of our Class C common stock may be less liquid and less attractive to any future recipients of these shares than shares of our Class A common stock, although we may seek to list our Class C common stock for trading and register shares of our Class C common stock for sale in the future. Further, we could issue shares of Class C common stock to our Co-Founders and, in that event, they would be able to sell such shares of Class C common stock and achieve liquidity in their holdings without diminishing their voting power. In addition, because our Class C common stock carries no voting rights (except as otherwise required by law), if we issue shares of our Class C common stock in the future, the holders of our Class B common stock may be able to hold significant voting control over most matters submitted to a vote of our stockholders for a longer period of time than would be the case if we issued our Class A common stock rather than our Class C common stock in such transactions. In addition, each share of our Class C common stock will automatically convert into one share of our Class A common stock following both (i) the earliest of (a) the conversion or exchange of all then-outstanding shares of our Class B common stock into or for shares of our Class A common stock, (b) the Class B Automatic Conversion, and (c) the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class B common stock and upon (ii) the date and time or occurrence of an event specified by the vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class A common stock. If we issue shares of our Class C common stock in the future, such issuances would have a dilutive effect on the economic interests of our Class A and Class B common stock. Any such issuance of our Class C common stock could also cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
General Risk Factors
Adverse global macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical risks, or reduced spending on AI and machine learning or on cloud infrastructure could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Our business depends on the overall demand for and adoption of AI and machine learning and cloud infrastructure and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. In addition, the purchase of our platform is often discretionary and may involve a significant commitment of capital and other resources. Weak global and regional economic conditions, including United States and global macroeconomic issues, actual or perceived global banking and finance related issues, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, rising interest
83
rates and inflation, spending environments, geopolitical instability, warfare and uncertainty, including the effects of the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and tensions between China and Taiwan, weak economic conditions in certain regions or a reduction in business spending, including spending on developing AI and machine learning capabilities and on cloud infrastructure, regardless of macroeconomic conditions, could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects, including resulting in longer sales cycles, a negative impact on our ability to attract and retain new customers, increase sales of our platform, or sell additional solutions and services to our existing customers, lower prices for our solutions and services, and slower or declining growth. Deterioration in economic conditions in any of the countries in which we do business could also cause slower or impaired collections on accounts receivable, which may adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects.
Geopolitical risks, including those arising from trade tension and/or the imposition of trade tariffs, terrorist activity, or acts of civil or international hostility, are increasing. Similarly, the potential for military conflict between China and Taiwan could have negative impacts on the global economy, including by affecting the supply of semiconductors from Taiwan, contributing to higher energy prices and creating uncertainty in the global capital markets. While we do not currently have employees or direct operations in Taiwan, our suppliers rely heavily on semiconductors supplied by Taiwan which are an important component of our platform and any reduction in that supply could materially disrupt our operations.
We may be adversely affected by natural disasters, pandemics, and other catastrophic events, and by man-made problems such as war and regional geopolitical conflicts around the world, that could disrupt our business operations, and our business continuity and disaster recovery plans may not adequately protect us from a serious disaster.
Natural disasters or other catastrophic events may cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce, and the global economy, and thus could have an adverse effect on us. Our business operations are also subject to interruption by fire, power shortages, flooding, and other events beyond our control. In addition, our global operations expose us to risks associated with public health crises, such as pandemics and epidemics, which could harm our business and cause our operating results to suffer. Further, acts of war, armed conflict, terrorism and other geopolitical unrest, such as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan, could cause disruptions in our business or the businesses of our partners or the economy as a whole.
In the event of a natural disaster, including a major earthquake, blizzard, or hurricane, or a catastrophic event such as a fire, power loss, cyberattack, or telecommunications failure, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in development of our platform, lengthy interruptions in service, breaches of data security, and loss of critical data, all of which could have an adverse effect on our future operating results. Climate change could result in an increase in the frequency or severity of such natural disasters. Moreover, any of our office locations or data centers may be vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. For example, certain of our corporate offices and data centers are located in California, a state that frequently experiences earthquakes, wildfires, and resultant air quality impacts and power shutoffs associated with wildfire prevention, heatwaves, and droughts. These events can, in turn, have impacts on inflation risk, food security, water security, and on our employees health and well-being. Additionally, all the aforementioned risks will be further increased if we do not implement an effective disaster recovery plan or our partners disaster recovery plans prove to be inadequate.
Investors expectations of our performance relating to environmental, social, and governance factors may impose additional costs and expose us to new risks.
There is an increasing focus from certain regulators, investors, employees, users, and other stakeholders concerning corporate responsibility, specifically related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters both in the United States and internationally. Some investors may use these non-financial performance factors to guide their investment strategies and, in some cases, may choose not to invest in us if they believe our
84
policies and actions relating to corporate responsibility are inadequate. Further, there is particular focus on concerns relating to AI and its impact on the environment, including the power-intensive nature of the industry, high consumption of water, and reliance on critical minerals and rare elements, and we are focused on sustainability goals and initiatives to mitigate the environmental impacts of our operations. We may experience heightened scrutiny from our stakeholders and potential investors around these issues. We may also face reputational damage in the event that we do not meet the ESG standards set by various constituencies or fail, or are perceived to fail, in our achievement of our sustainability goals, initiatives, or commitments.
Our sustainability initiatives, goals, or commitments could be difficult to achieve or costly to implement. Moreover, compliance with recently adopted and potential upcoming ESG requirements, including California legislation that requires various climate-related disclosures, the European Unions Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and the United Kingdoms Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting framework will require the dedication of significant time and resources. In addition, we may also be required to comply with the SECs comprehensive climate change disclosure rules, which have been stayed pending judicial review. Additionally, if our competitors corporate social responsibility performance is perceived to be better than ours, potential, or current investors may elect to invest with our competitors instead. Our business may face increased scrutiny related to these activities and our related disclosures, including from the investment community, and our failure to achieve progress or manage the dynamic public sentiment and legal landscape in these areas on a timely basis, or at all, could adversely affect our reputation, business, and financial performance.
We could be subject to securities class action litigation.
In the past, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against companies following periods of volatility in the market price of a companys securities. This type of litigation, if instituted, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of managements attention and resources, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, or financial condition. Additionally, the dramatic increase in the cost of directors and officers liability insurance may cause us to opt for lower overall policy limits and coverage or to forgo insurance that we may otherwise rely on to cover significant defense costs, settlements, and damages awarded to plaintiffs, or incur substantially higher costs to maintain the same or similar coverage. These factors could make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified executive officers and members of our board of directors.
85
SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This prospectus contains forward-looking statements about us and our industry that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements contained in this prospectus other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding our future operating results and financial condition, our business strategy and plans, market growth, and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements. The words believe, may, will, potentially, estimate, continue, anticipate, intend, could, would, project, target, plan, expect, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus include, but are not limited to, statements about:
| our future financial performance, including our expectations regarding our revenue, cost of revenue, operating margin, operating expenses, including changes in operating expenses, and our ability to achieve and maintain future profitability; |
| our business plan and our ability to effectively manage our growth and maintain our corporate culture; |
| our total market opportunity; |
| anticipated trends, growth rates, and challenges in our business and in the markets in which we operate; |
| market acceptance of our platform, solutions, and services; |
| beliefs and objectives for future operations; |
| our ability to successfully retain and expand usage of our existing customers and attract new customers; |
| the percentages of remaining performance obligations that we expect to recognize as revenue over respective future periods; |
| our ability to develop and introduce new products and solutions and bring them to market in a timely manner; |
| the expected timing for completion, benefits, and impacts of our proposed acquisition of Weights & Biases; |
| our expectations concerning relationships with third parties, including IT service providers, business partners, vendors, suppliers, and cloud-based service providers; |
| our ability to maintain, protect, and enhance our intellectual property rights; |
| our ability to expand internationally; |
| the effects of increased competition in our markets and our ability to compete effectively; |
| our ability to identify, recruit, hire, and retain skilled personnel, including key members of senior management; |
| our intention to continue to make investments in talent and our platform infrastructure; |
| our ability to raise additional capital, including our ability to enter into new efficient financing structures; |
| future acquisitions or investments in complementary companies or products; |
| our ability to stay in compliance with laws and regulations that currently apply or may become applicable to our business both in the United States and internationally; |
| our ability to maintain the security and availability of our platform and protect against data breaches and other security incidents; |
| economic and industry trends, projected growth, or trend analysis, particularly as it relates to AI compute; |
| general economic conditions in the United States and globally, including the effects of global geopolitical conflicts, inflation, interest rates, any instability in the global banking sector, and foreign currency exchange rates; |
86
| our ability to operate and grow our business in light of macroeconomic uncertainty; |
| our ability to remediate our material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting; |
| increased expenses associated with being a public company; and |
| other statements regarding our future operations, financial condition, and prospects and business strategies. |
We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, operating results, business strategy, and short-term and long-term business operations and objectives. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, including those described in the section titled Risk Factors and elsewhere in this prospectus. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment, and new risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this prospectus may not occur, and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur. We undertake no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this prospectus or to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures, or investments.
In addition, statements that we believe and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based on information available to us as of the date of this prospectus. While we believe such information provides a reasonable basis for these statements, such information may be limited or incomplete. Our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain, and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on these statements.
You should read this prospectus and the documents that we reference in this prospectus and have filed with the SEC as exhibits to the registration statement of which this prospectus is a part with the understanding that our actual future results, performance, and events and circumstances may be materially different from what we expect.
87
Unless otherwise indicated, information contained in this prospectus concerning our industry and the markets in which we operate, including our general expectations, market position, market opportunity, and market size, is based on information from various sources, including our own estimates, as well as assumptions that we have made that are based on such data and other similar sources and on our knowledge of the markets for our products. This information involves important assumptions and limitations, and you are cautioned not to give undue weight to such estimates. Although we are responsible for all of the disclosure contained in this prospectus and we believe the third-party market position, market opportunity, and market size data included in this prospectus are reliable, we have not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of this third-party data. In addition, projections, assumptions, and estimates of our future performance and the future performance of the industry in which we operate is necessarily subject to a high degree of uncertainty and risk due to a variety of factors, including those described in the sections titled Risk Factors and Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements, as well as elsewhere in this prospectus. These and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the estimates made by the independent parties and by us.
This prospectus contains statistical data, estimates, and forecasts that are based on publications or reports generated by third parties, or other publicly available information, as well as other information based on our internal sources.
The sources of certain statistical data, estimates, and forecasts contained in this prospectus are provided below:
| Bloomberg Intelligence, Interactive Calculator: Generative AI Market Opportunity, accessed November 15, 2024. |
| The Global Impact of AI on the Economy and Jobs AI will Steer 3.5 percent of GDP in 2030, IDC, Aug 2024. |
| Kaplan, Jared et al. Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models. ArXiv abs/2001.08361 (2020): n. pag. |
| Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered AI, The AI Index 2023 Annual Report, April 2023. |
88
We estimate that the net proceeds from the sale of shares of our Class A common stock in this offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, will be approximately $2.3 billion, or $2.7 billion if the underwriters over-allotment option is exercised in full. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of Class A common stock by the selling stockholders.
A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us from this offering by approximately $46 million, assuming the number of shares of our Class A common stock offered by us remains the same and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1.0 million shares in the number of shares of our Class A common stock offered would increase (decrease) the net proceeds from this offering by approximately $50 million, assuming that the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.
The principal purposes of this offering are to create a public market for our Class A common stock, increase our visibility in the marketplace, obtain additional capital, increase our financial flexibility, and facilitate an orderly distribution of shares for the selling stockholders. We primarily intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes, which may include product development, general and administrative matters, and capital expenditures. In addition, we may use a portion of the net proceeds for the acquisition of, or investment in, technologies, solutions, or businesses that complement our business. We also intend to use approximately $1.0 billion of the net proceeds from this offering to repay the entire outstanding amount under our 2024 Term Loan Facility. As of December 31, 2024, amounts borrowed under our 2024 Term Loan Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to 9.65%. The 2024 Term Loan Facility will mature on December 16, 2025. For a further description of our 2024 Term Loan Facility see the section titled Description of Material Indebtedness.
We also intend to use a portion of the net proceeds together with existing cash and cash equivalents, if necessary, to satisfy our anticipated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the RSU Net Settlement. After withholding an aggregate of 226,800 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with the RSU Net Settlement, based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share of Class A common stock, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and using a 48% employer tax rate for all RSUs that are expected to vest upon the completion of this offering, we would use approximately $12 million to satisfy our tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the vesting of such RSUs.
In addition, approximately $500 million of the net proceeds from this offering will be held as restricted cash in escrow to secure our obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility.
We will have broad discretion over the uses of the net proceeds of this offering. We cannot specify with certainty all of the particular uses for the remaining net proceeds to us from this offering. Pending their use as described above, we intend to invest a portion of net proceeds from this offering in one or more capital-preservation investments, which may include short-term, investment-grade interest-bearing securities, such as money market funds, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, and guaranteed obligations of the U.S. government.
89
Following the consummation of this offering, we currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not have current plans to pay any dividends on our capital stock in the foreseeable future, with the exception of any final dividend payment payable on our Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock upon the consummation of this offering. Additionally, our ability to pay dividends or make distributions is currently restricted by the terms of our Credit Facilities and may be further restricted by any further indebtedness we incur. For additional information regarding our Credit Facilities, see the section titled Description of Material Indebtedness.
Any future determination to declare dividends will be made at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend, among other things, on our financial condition, operating results, capital requirements, general business conditions, restrictions in our debt instruments, and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant.
90
The following table sets forth our cash and cash equivalents and our capitalization as of December 31, 2024, on:
| an actual basis; |
| a pro forma basis, giving effect to (i) the Capital Stock Conversion as if such conversion had occurred on December 31, 2024, (ii) the Class B Conversion, (iii) the Option Exercise and the receipt by us of gross proceeds of approximately $2 million in connection with the Option Exercise, (iv) the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering, (v) an increase to additional paid-in capital and accumulated deficit related to stock based compensation of $78 million related to RSUs subject to the RSU Net Settlement, (vi) the net issuance of shares of Class A common stock in connection with the RSU Net Settlement, after withholding shares to satisfy estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations of $12 million (based on the initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate), and (vii) the increase in accrued liabilities and an equivalent decrease in additional paid-in capital of $12 million in connection with the estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the RSU Net Settlement; and |
| a pro forma as adjusted basis, giving effect to (i) the pro forma adjustments set forth above, (ii) the sale and issuance of 47,178,660 shares of our Class A common stock in this offering and the concurrent share issuance at an assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us, (iii) the application of approximately $1.0 billion of the net proceeds that we receive from this offering to repay the entire outstanding amount under our 2024 Term Loan Facility, (iv) the use of a portion of the net proceeds from this offering, together with existing cash and cash equivalents, if necessary, to satisfy the estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the RSU Net Settlement, and (v) an increase in other non-current assets and additional paid-in capital of $350 million in connection with the concurrent share issuance to OpenAI, for which any revenue recognized under the OpenAI Master Service Agreement will be offset by the value of these shares. In addition, approximately $500 million of the net proceeds from this offering will be held as restricted cash in escrow to secure our obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility. |
The information below is illustrative only, and our capitalization following this offering and the concurrent share issuance will be adjusted based on, among other things, the actual initial public offering price and other terms of this offering determined at pricing, the actual tax withholding rates, as well as the actual amount of RSUs settled in connection with this offering. You should read this table together with our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes, and the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, that are included elsewhere in this prospectus.
As of December 31, 2024 | ||||||||||||
Actual | Pro Forma | Pro Forma as Adjusted(1) |
||||||||||
(in thousands, except per share data) | ||||||||||||
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data: |
||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 1,361,083 | $ | 1,362,899 | $ | 2,166,817 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
$ | 37,394 | $ | 37,394 | $ | 537,394 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Debt, including current and long term: |
||||||||||||
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 1.0(2) |
$ | 1,976,265 | $ | 1,976,265 | $ | 1,976,265 | ||||||
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 2.0(3) |
3,787,692 | 3,787,692 | 3,787,692 | |||||||||
2024 Term Loan Facility(4) |
985,225 | 985,225 | | |||||||||
Original Equipment Manufacturer financing arrangements |
1,177,158 | 1,177,158 | 1,177,158 | |||||||||
Revolving credit facility |
| | | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total debt(5) |
$ | 7,926,340 | $ | 7,926,340 | $ | 6,941,115 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
91
As of December 31, 2024 | ||||||||||||
Actual | Pro Forma | Pro Forma as Adjusted(1) |
||||||||||
(in thousands, except per share data) | ||||||||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock, $0.000005 par value per share; 206,169 shares authorized, 184,635 shares issued and outstanding, actual; no shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma and pro forma as adjusted |
1,722,111 | | | |||||||||
Redeemable Class A common stock, $0.000005 par value per share; no shares issued and outstanding, actual; 29,874 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma, and pro forma as adjusted |
| 1,163,130 | 1,163,130 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Stockholders (deficit) equity: |
||||||||||||
Class A common stock; $0.000005 par value per share; 540,680 shares authorized, 114,689 shares issued and outstanding, actual; 3,000,000 shares authorized, 271,463 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma; 3,000,000 shares authorized, 325,505 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma as adjusted |
1 | 2 | 7 | |||||||||
Class B common stock; $0.000005 par value per share; 150,000 shares authorized, 118,198 shares issued and outstanding, actual; 200,000 shares authorized, 118,102 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma; 200,000 shares authorized, 118,102 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma as adjusted |
| | | |||||||||
Class C common stock; $0.000005 par value per share; no shares authorized, issued or outstanding, actual; 200,000 shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma, and pro forma as adjusted |
| | | |||||||||
Treasury stock, at cost, 6,588 shares, actual; 6,588 shares, shares pro forma; 6,588 shares pro forma as adjusted |
(33,524 | ) | (33,524 | ) | (33,524 | ) | ||||||
Preferred stock; $0.000005 par value per share; no shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, actual; 100,000 shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma, and pro forma as adjusted |
| | | |||||||||
Additional paid-in capital |
1,096,160 | 1,723,206 | 4,386,350 | |||||||||
Accumulated deficit |
(1,476,235 | ) | (1,554,052 | ) | (1,568,827 | ) | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total stockholders (deficit) equity |
(413,598 | ) | 135,632 | 2,784,006 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total capitalization |
$ | 9,234,853 | $ | 9,225,102 | $ | 10,888,251 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
(1) | Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) our pro forma as adjusted cash and cash equivalents, additional paid-in capital, total stockholders (deficit) equity, and total capitalization by $46 million, assuming that the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1.0 million shares in the number of shares of our Class A common stock offered by us would increase (decrease) the amount of our pro forma as adjusted cash and cash equivalents, additional paid-in capital, total stockholders (deficit) equity, and total capitalization by $50 million, assuming that the assumed initial public offering price remains the same, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. If the underwriters over-allotment option is exercised in full, the pro forma as adjusted amount of each of cash and cash equivalents, additional paid-in capital, total stockholders (deficit) equity, and total capitalization would increase by $364 million, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions, and we would have 362,728,891 shares of our Class A common stock issued and outstanding, pro forma as adjusted. |
(2) | Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 1.0 consists of $2.0 billion of principal, net of unamortized debt discount and issuance costs of $36 million. |
(3) | Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 2.0 consists of $3.8 billion of principal, net of unamortized debt discount and issuance costs of $56 million. |
(4) | 2024 Term Loan Facility consists of $1.0 billion of principal, net of unamortized debt discount and issuance costs of $15 million. |
92
(5) | On March 7, 2025, we entered into the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement providing for a $300.0 million unsecured term loan facility. As of the date of this prospectus, there have been no borrowings under the 2025 Term Loan Facility. All unfunded commitments of the lenders under the 2025 Term Loan Facility shall terminate upon the earlier to occur of (i) April 7, 2025 and (ii) the closing of this offering. |
The number of shares of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock that will be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance is based on 301,337,486 shares of our Class A common stock outstanding, 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding, and no shares of our Class C common stock outstanding, in each case as of December 31, 2024 (after giving effect to the Capital Stock Conversion, the Class B Conversion, the Option Exercise, and the RSU Net Settlement), and excludes:
| 45,897,500 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.76 per share (after giving effect to the Option Exercise), of which 9,109,000 shares will be exchangeable for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock at the election of our Co-Founders upon exercise pursuant to their Equity Exchange Rights; |
| 14,982,220 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of RSUs outstanding as of December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan for which the service-based vesting condition was not satisfied as of December 31, 2024 and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied in connection with this offering (we expect that the satisfaction of the service-based vesting condition of certain of these RSUs through March 27, 2025 will result in the net issuance of 227,635 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with this offering, after withholding an aggregate of 210,125 shares of Class A common stock to satisfy the associated estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations (based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate)); |
| 8,753,320 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of RSUs granted after December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan; |
| 12,144,668 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of warrants to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024, of which 7,807,282 had an exercise price of $0.0005 per share and 4,337,386 had an exercise price equal to the Regular Warrants Exercise Price; |
| 63,750,480 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans, consisting of (i) 3,750,480 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2019 Plan as of December 31, 2024 (which reserve does not reflect the stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock and RSUs settleable for shares of our Class A common stock granted after December 31, 2024), (ii) 50,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2025 Plan, which will become effective on the date immediately prior to the date of this prospectus, and (iii) 10,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 ESPP, which will become effective on the date of this prospectus; and |
| approximately 21,874,544 shares of our Class A common stock that are issuable upon the closing of our acquisition of Weights & Biases, based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. |
On the date of this prospectus, any remaining shares of our Class A common stock available for issuance under our 2019 Plan will be added to the shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 Plan, and we will cease granting awards under the 2019 Plan. Our 2025 Plan and 2025 ESPP also provide for automatic annual increases in the number of shares reserved thereunder. See the section titled Executive CompensationEmployee Benefit and Stock Plans for additional information.
93
If you invest in our Class A common stock in this offering, your ownership interest will be immediately diluted to the extent of the difference between the initial public offering price per share of our Class A common stock and the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of our Class A common stock immediately after this offering and the concurrent share issuance.
As of December 31, 2024, our pro forma net tangible book value was $101 million, or $0.24 per share of our common stock. Our pro forma net tangible book value per share represents the amount of our total tangible assets reduced by the amount of our total liabilities and redeemable convertible preferred stock, divided by the total number of shares of our common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024, after giving effect to (i) the Capital Stock Conversion, (ii) the Class B Conversion, (iii) the Option Exercise and the receipt by us of gross proceeds of approximately $2 million in connection with the Option Exercise, (iv) the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering, and (v) the net issuance of 245,700 shares of Class A common stock in connection with the RSU Net Settlement, after withholding 226,800 shares to satisfy estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations of $12 million (based on the initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate).
After giving effect to (i) the sale and issuance of 47,178,660 shares of our Class A common stock in this offering and the concurrent share issuance at an assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us and (ii) the application of the net proceeds therefrom as described in the section titled Use of Proceeds, our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value as of December 31, 2024 would have been $2.4 billion, or $5.13 per share. This represents an immediate increase in pro forma net tangible book value of $4.89 per share to our existing stockholders and an immediate dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value of $45.87 per share to investors purchasing shares of our Class A common stock in this offering and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance at the assumed initial public offering price.
The following table illustrates this dilution on a per share basis to new investors and the concurrent share issuance investors:
Assumed initial public offering price per share |
$ | 51.00 | ||||||
Pro forma net tangible book value per share as of December 31, 2024 before giving effect to this offering and the concurrent share issuance |
$ | 0.24 | ||||||
Increase in pro forma net tangible book value per share attributable to new investors purchasing Class A common stock in this offering and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance |
$ | 4.89 | ||||||
|
|
|||||||
Pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share immediately after this offering and the concurrent share issuance |
$ | 5.13 | ||||||
|
|
|||||||
Dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share to new investors in this offering and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance |
$ | 45.87 | ||||||
|
|
The dilution information discussed above is illustrative only and will change based on, among other things, the actual initial offering price and other terms of this offering determined at pricing, the actual tax withholding rates, as well as the actual amount of RSUs settled in connection with this offering. A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering by $0.10 per share and would increase (decrease) the dilution per share to new investors in this offering and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance by $0.10 per
94
share, assuming the number of shares of our Class A common stock offered, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1.0 million shares in the number of shares of our Class A common stock offered would increase (decrease) the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering and the concurrent share issuance by $0.09 per share and would increase (decrease) the dilution to new investors and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance by $0.09 per share, assuming the assumed initial public offering price, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.
If the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full, the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of our Class A common stock after giving effect to this offering and the concurrent share issuance would be $0.68 per share, and the dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share to investors and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance in this offering would be $0.68 per share.
The following table summarizes, on a pro forma as adjusted basis as of December 31, 2024, after giving effect to the pro forma adjustments described above, the difference between existing stockholders, new investors purchasing shares of our Class A common stock in this offering with respect to the number of shares purchased from us and investors being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance, the total consideration paid to us, and the average price per share paid by our existing stockholders or to be paid by investors purchasing shares in this offering or being issued shares in the concurrent share issuance at an assumed offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, before deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses:
Shares Purchased | Total Consideration | Average Price Per Share |
||||||||||||||||||
Number | Percent | Amount | Percent | |||||||||||||||||
Existing stockholders |
301,337,486 | 85 | % | $ | 1,635,749,074 | 40 | % | $ | 5.43 | |||||||||||
New public investors |
47,178,660 | 13 | % | 2,406,111,660 | 60 | % | $ | 51.00 | ||||||||||||
Concurrent share issuance investors |
6,862,745 | 2 | % | | 0 | % | N/A | |||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total |
355,378,891 | 100 | % | $ | 4,041,860,734 | 100 | % | |||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sales by the selling stockholders in this offering will cause the number of shares held by existing stockholders before this offering to be reduced to 299,516,146 shares, or 84% of the total number of shares of our Class A common stock outstanding immediately after the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, and will increase the number of shares held by new investors to 49,000,000 shares, or 14% of the total number of shares of our common stock outstanding immediately after the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance.
A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) total consideration paid by new investors and total consideration paid by all stockholders by approximately $47 million, assuming that the number of shares offered by us and the selling stockholders, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus remains the same and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.
Except as otherwise indicated, the above discussion and tables assume no exercise of the underwriters option to purchase additional shares. If the underwriters over-allotment option is exercised in full, our existing stockholders would own 83%, our new public investors would own 15%, and our concurrent share issuance investors would own 2% of the total number of shares of our Class A common stock outstanding upon completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance.
95
In addition, to the extent we issue any additional stock options or RSUs or any outstanding stock options are exercised or outstanding RSUs vest and settle, or we issue any other securities or convertible debt in the future, investors will experience further dilution.
The number of shares of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock that will be outstanding after this offering and the concurrent share issuance is based on 301,337,486 shares of our Class A common stock outstanding, 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding, and no shares of our Class C common stock outstanding, in each case as of December 31, 2024 (after giving effect to the Capital Stock Conversion, the Class B Conversion, the Option Exercise, and the RSU Net Settlement), and excludes:
| 45,897,500 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.76 per share (after giving effect to the Option Exercise), of which 9,109,000 shares will be exchangeable for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock at the election of our Co-Founders upon exercise pursuant to their Equity Exchange Rights; |
| 14,982,220 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of RSUs outstanding as of December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan for which the service-based vesting condition was not satisfied as of December 31, 2024 and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied in connection with this offering (we expect that the satisfaction of the service-based vesting condition of certain of these RSUs through March 27, 2025 will result in the net issuance of 227,635 shares of our Class A common stock in connection with this offering, after withholding an aggregate of 210,125 shares of Class A common stock to satisfy the associated estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations (based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and an assumed 48% tax withholding rate)); |
| 8,753,320 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of RSUs granted after December 31, 2024 under the 2019 Plan; |
| 12,144,668 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of warrants to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024, of which 7,807,282 had an exercise price of $0.0005 per share and 4,337,386 had an exercise price equal to the Regular Warrants Exercise Price; |
| 63,750,480 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans, consisting of (i) 3,750,480 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2019 Plan, as of December 31, 2024 (which reserve does not reflect the stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock and RSUs settleable for shares of our Class A common stock granted after December 31, 2024), (ii) 50,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2025 Plan, which will become effective on the date immediately prior to the date of this prospectus, and (iii) 10,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 ESPP, which will become effective on the date of this prospectus; and |
| approximately 21,874,544 shares of our Class A common stock that are issuable upon the closing of our acquisition of Weights & Biases, based on the assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. |
On the date of this prospectus, any remaining shares of our Class A common stock available for issuance under our 2019 Plan will be added to the shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 Plan, and we will cease granting awards under the 2019 Plan. Our 2025 Plan and 2025 ESPP also provide for automatic annual increases in the number of shares reserved thereunder. See the section titled Executive CompensationEmployee Benefit and Stock Plans for additional information.
96
MANAGEMENTS DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
The following discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations should be read together with our consolidated financial statements and related notes, and other financial information, included elsewhere in this prospectus. In addition to our historical results of operations and financial position, this discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in or implied by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the section titled Risk Factors. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results to be expected for any period in the future, and results for any interim period should not be construed as an inference of what our results would be for any full year or future period.
Overview
CoreWeave powers the creation and delivery of the intelligence that drives innovation.
We are the AI HyperscalerTM driving the AI revolution. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform consists of our proprietary software and cloud services that deliver the software and software intelligence needed to manage complex AI infrastructure at scale. Our platform supports the development and use of ground-breaking models and the delivery of the next generation of AI applications that are changing the way we live and work across the globeour platform is trusted by some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises, including Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, NVIDIA, and OpenAI.
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform includes:
| Infrastructure Services. A fully-managed AI infrastructure layer that provides our customers with access to advanced GPU and CPU compute and highly performant networking, supported by DPUs, and storage. |
| Managed Software Services. Our proprietary compute orchestration and management layer that includes CKS, which schedules and orchestrates complex AI workloads, VPC, which provides a flexible, secure, and isolated private cloud, and our Bare Metal service, which runs Kubernetes directly on bare metal instances. |
| Application Software Services. Our dedicated software tools such as SUNK and Tensorizer, which allow customers to run Slurm-based workloads on top of Kubernetes, colocate training and inference jobs, and achieve high-speed model loading through efficient model checkpointing. Our recently announced acquisition of Weights & Biases positions us to extend our application software services offering to include additional developer-focused capabilities for the training of models and development of AI applications following closing of our acquisition. |
| Mission Control and Observability Software. Our lifecycle management and monitoring software that delivers advanced cluster validation, proactive health checking capabilities, and comprehensive observability capabilities through a customer-centric dashboard experience. |
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is hosted in our distributed network of active purpose-built data centers and gives customers access to the latest AI infrastructure, which includes the latest and most advanced high-performance GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, networking, and storage components that collectively enable the development and deployment of AI models. Our customers often make large infrastructure commitments to us structured as take-or-pay contracts with terms that are typically two to five years in length. These commitments provide us with highly visible, recurring revenue, and demonstrate the rapid adoption of our platform as customers recognize our differentiated capabilities and performance advantages. As of December 31, 2024, we had $15.1 billion of remaining performance obligations, reflecting an increase of 53%, from $9.9 billion as of December 31, 2023. Microsoft, our largest customer for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, will represent less than 50% of our expected future committed contract revenues when combining our RPO balance of $15.1 billion as of December 31, 2024 and up to $11.55 billion of future revenue from our recently signed Master Services Agreement with OpenAI, as described herein.
97
Some of the most ambitious compute-intensive projects in the world are powered by our platform, and our business has grown rapidly since our inception. Our revenue was $16 million, $229 million, and $1.9 billion for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 1,346% and 737%, respectively. During these periods, we continued to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a result, our net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $31 million, $594 million, and $863 million, respectively. Our adjusted net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $27 million, $45 million, and $65 million, respectively. See the section titled Non-GAAP Financial Measures for information regarding our use of adjusted net loss and a reconciliation of net loss to adjusted net loss.
Key Milestones Since Launching our CoreWeave Cloud Platform
Since we launched our CoreWeave Cloud Platform in 2020, we have achieved multiple milestones in scaling our infrastructure, breaking performance records for AI workloads, significantly growing our revenue and remaining performance obligations, and raising capital to finance our expansion. The timeline that follows summarizes select milestones we have achieved since we launched our CoreWeave Cloud Platform.
98
99
Our Business Model
We generate revenue by selling access to our AI infrastructure and proprietary managed software and application services through our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. Access to our platform, including compute, networking, managed software services, and application software services, is currently priced on a per GPU per hour basis. Storage is sold separately on a per gigabyte per month basis.
Ways Our Customers Buy from CoreWeave
Our customers purchase our CoreWeave Cloud Platform services through either committed contracts or on-demand.
Committed Contracts
| We generate substantially all of our revenue from committed long-term contracts. Revenue from committed contracts is derived from sales of access to our CoreWeave Cloud Platform where customers reserve capacity over the contract length, typically two to five years, on a take-or-pay basis. For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, committed contracts accounted for 20%, 88%, and 96% of our revenue, respectively. Our committed contract customers are AI labs and AI enterprises who require massive volumes of specialized compute at scale for high-intensity AI workloads. The vast majority of our committed contracts revenue is from contracts with customers with investment grade ratings, giving us confidence in the expected cash flows from these contracts. |
| Committed contracts are generally structured as take-or-pay arrangements whereby a customer is provided reserved capacity access to our platform over the contract term. For these arrangements, revenue is generally recognized ratably throughout the contract duration based on the customers reserved and committed use of capacity. Committed contracts generally have a fixed price for their duration, which is measured on a dollar per contracted GPU per hour basis, and are billed monthly based on the customers reserved usage commitments. Committed contracts generally have a predetermined term and start either on a fixed date or when we deliver the capacity specified in the contract. As of December 31, 2024, our committed contracts had a weighted-average contract duration of approximately four years. In the event we deliver GPU capacity to a customer prior to the specified start date for a contract, we typically bill on a per hour basis at the contracted price for the subset of systems that are delivered in advance of the commencement date. |
| Our committed contracts generally follow a contract to cash cycle that can be broken into three main phases: (1) contract signing, (2) infrastructure purchase and installation, and (3) go-live. |
| Contract signing. When we execute a committed contract, we typically receive a prepayment from our customer. The prepayment generally offsets customer payments due at the end of the contract. Upon receipt of the prepayment, we record the cash received as an asset and recognize a corresponding liability for deferred revenue. As of December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, the weighted-average prepayment across all our active contracts was 15% to 25% of the TCV. We expect that this percentage will continue to fluctuate over time, as we continue to scale our operations and evolve our go-to-market strategy, customer base, and the use cases for our platform. |
| Infrastructure purchase and installation. Generally, we enter into a purchase order for new infrastructure components from our suppliers concurrently with entering into a customer contract, thereby avoiding unutilized capacity. We leverage our strong supplier relationships to secure access to the latest AI technologies for our customers, including GPUs. We pay our suppliers upon delivery of these systems. We then install the systems, which typically occurs over a three-month period. During the installation phase, certain costs for installation are capitalized. |
| Go-live. Once installation is complete, the contract goes live, and we start to recognize revenue. Revenue is recognized ratably throughout the contract duration, and we bill our customers on a |
100
monthly basis in arrears. Generally, in the final months of the contract, the initial customer prepayment is credited against amounts that would otherwise be billed, and no additional cash is collected by us. In certain instances, the initial prepayment is applied to amounts that would have otherwise been billed in the beginning months of the go-live phase of the contract. |
| Once a contract concludes, we seek to maximize the value of our associated GPU capacity. We do this by monetizing the infrastructure underlying the previously expired contract to other committed contract customers for the remainder of its economic life or to a consumption pool to be monetized on-demand. For example, we have successfully deployed former generation A100 GPUs into new contracts with the same or new counterparties, maintaining high utilization rates and extending their economic life. |
On-Demand
| We also sell on-demand access to our platform. On-demand access is billed monthly in arrears on a pay-as-you-go basis for the hourly usage of our platform. We recognize revenue from these arrangements at time of usage. Historically, a majority of our revenue from on-demand access to our platform has been from customers who have committed contracts with us and needed short-term access to additional compute capacity that they can scale up and down as needed to serve burst workloads. |
The Scale of Our Platform Technology and Infrastructure
We invest in our platform through capital investments in our AI infrastructure and research and development spend on our software that automates, manages, and orchestrates our platform. We believe the scale of our platform provides a strong and durable competitive advantage for us. Of our total deployed GPUs, which exceeded 250,000 as of December 31, 2024, a majority were NVIDIA Hopper models, representing one of the worlds largest next generation GPU fleets. Additionally, we were among the first cloud providers to deploy high-performance infrastructure with NVIDIA H100, H200, and GH200, and the first cloud provider to make NVIDIA GB200 NVL72-based instances generally available demonstrating our ability to provide our customers with market-leading access to the latest cutting-edge technology. Our investments in our software engineering capabilities that drive our managed software and application services as well as our Mission Control and Observability software are key to our ability to deliver some of the worlds largest and most performant compute clusters. These investments unlock the performance of our GPU clusters, and we continue to release additional updates to our cloud software services to further enhance the capabilities of our infrastructure. For example, in the last two years we have released major products including CKS, Mission Control, Object Storage, and SUNK, all of which accelerate the ability of our customers to train models and run inference.
Attractive Unit Economics
We benefit from attractive unit economics underpinned by committed multi-year customer contracts and the long estimated economic life of our infrastructure. The initial prepayments from our customers and the investment grade credit ratings of some of our largest customers provide us with a high degree of confidence in our expected cash flows from signed contracts.
Additionally, we benefit from rapid time-to-value on our infrastructure investments. Using committed contracts that were in effect as of December 31, 2024 as a basis, we anticipate that our average cash payback period, including prepayments from customers, will be approximately 2.5 years. Our cash payback period is the time we anticipate it would take to break-even on our investment in GPUs and other property and equipment through adjusted EBITDA. The cash payback period reflects how efficiently we monetize our compute resources, providing a measure of the speed at which capital invested is expected to generate returns. The calculation is performed on a per-GPU basis, starting with the estimated cash spent on property and equipment (calculated as change in total property and equipment excluding the change in construction in progress) during the quarter, divided by the number of GPUs that went into service in the period. This investment is then adjusted for any
101
prepayments received from customers under committed contracts, resulting in the net cash outlay on a per-GPU basis. This net figure is then divided by the product of our adjusted EBITDA margin and the average annualized committed contract revenue per GPU for the period. Given contract lengths generally range between two to five years, and the economic life of our infrastructure assets exceeds the typical contract length according to our estimates, our business model can generate attractive returns by creating opportunities to re-contract infrastructure after a customers initial contract expires. We closely monitor our unit economics to ensure that we continue to generate the highest possible return on invested capital at scale.
Customers and Go-to-Market Strategy
Our sales organization is focused on a direct named account strategy to drive demand from the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises. We supplement this with a product-led growth (PLG) motion serving individual users and developers working at AI labs and AI enterprises. We intend to further invest in sales and marketing to target broader enterprise customers on a direct basis over time, leveraging partnerships with other participants in the data infrastructure and AI ecosystem to extend our customer reach, and further penetrate our total addressable market opportunity. We expect that the announced acquisition of Weights & Biases, which, following closing of the acquisition, allows us to expand our customer acquisition capabilities, will accelerate our planned investment in sales and marketing. The successful execution of our sales and marketing strategy will depend, among other things, on our ability to successfully build and expand our sales organization and operations and identify, recruit, train, and manage sales personnel which may require significant time, expense, and attention, including from our senior management and other key personnel. These risks are more fully described in the section titled Risk Factors.
We believe that enterprises of all sizes will need to integrate AI into their businesses in order to preserve and grow their competitive advantages. We have initially targeted a small cohort of massive enterprises and well-funded AI labs, such as Cohere, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, NVIDIA, and OpenAI, that are consuming vast amounts of compute to train the next generation of foundational models, providing AI inference to customer or consumer queries, developing new AI-native products, incorporating AI into their existing products, and performing engineering development and research. Often, our target customers act as the means through which our CoreWeave Cloud Platform powers a downstream set of AI applications for a broad base of organizations, developers, and consumers.
We partner closely with our customers so that we can help them achieve their commercial objectives, which has positioned us as at the cornerstone of the evolving AI ecosystem. In addition, our customer focus has allowed us to scale rapidly and benefit from the advantages of operating at scale in this market, and has enabled us to evolve our platform in lockstep with the most cutting-edge foundational models, thereby strengthening our engineering advantage. Over time, as AI model training and inference broadens to a larger group of organizations, we intend to broaden our reach to a larger base of enterprises that are deploying AI.
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is mission critical to our customers. Our ability to deliver high-performance AI infrastructure has established us as a critical partner to our customers and has allowed us to create long-term, durable relationships that expand over time. As evidence of this, three of our top five committed contract customers by TCV as of December 31, 2024 signed agreements for additional capacity within 12 months of their respective initial purchase dates. These agreements, measured during each respective 12-month period from the initial date of signing, represent a cumulative increase of approximately $7.8 billion in committed spend and a multiple of approximately 4x on initial contract value. Our deep relationships with customers are a competitive advantage, and our first-to-market track record with highly performant technology gives customers confidence in choosing CoreWeave.
Robust Supply Chain Relationships
We believe that success as a leading AI cloud platform is driven by, and dependent upon, deep, entrenched relationships with other pioneering AI ecosystem innovation leaders and access to a resilient and reliable supply
102
of cutting-edge AI infrastructure such as GPUs, and data center equipment such as high-speed interconnects and liquid cooling systems. It also requires having optimized data center space (location, size, technical design, capacity ramp timelines, and the right unit costs) as well as the necessary power supply. We believe that access to power is, and will remain, a major bottleneck to the development of AI and will necessitate novel and creative power solutions. We have, and will continue to, relentlessly and creatively explore additional opportunities to add power capacity, as demonstrated by our agreement with Core Scientific for more than 500 MW of capacity as of December 31, 2024.
Today, the majority of our data center footprint is leased from leading data center providers where we pay all or our proportional share of the operating expenses in addition to rent, including real estate taxes, building insurance, maintenance, water, and power expenses. Our team has a depth of experience in hedging and risk managing power costs.
Our physical technology infrastructure is an essential component of our differentiation. We integrate cutting-edge design standards into our data centers, which incorporate specific design features customized for the performance requirements of AI workloads. This involves working with the data center owners from whom we lease data centers to expand and modify existing infrastructure and accommodate features such as high-density power distribution units, liquid cooling, and high-performance networking with thousands of miles of fiber cables. Furthermore, we work to ensure there is inter-data center connectivity including ring redundancy and dark fiber connectivity. Additionally, we have developed close relationships with leading chipmakers and OEMs, which, together with our dedicated infrastructure management and orchestration software, have helped enhance our ability to deliver the fastest, at-scale deployments of their hardware in a highly performant and reliable manner.
The capital expenditures for these components of our supply chain are significant and are reflected on our balance sheet as property and equipment once they are installed and operational. Some of these investments, namely the systems that we acquire, are classified on our balance sheet as Construction in Progress (CIP), which is part of property and equipment, when first acquired, and, once placed in service, are reclassified to Equipment within property and equipment and begin depreciating. The time between when systems are purchased and when they are installed is typically three months. We believe it is important to track our property and equipment, net of CIP, as this represents the effective compute from our infrastructure base that is in production and actively contributing to operations.
Over time, we may own data centers in addition to leasing them. While this would significantly increase our upfront capital expenditures, it would allow us to exert more control over our data center delivery timeline and we expect it would reduce our operating costs. It would also increase our ability to more directly manage data center design to ensure we can build in the required configurations for highly performant networking and power infrastructure and liquid cooling systems, which enable greater rack density and power efficiency.
Just-In-Time Funding Model
One of the largest cash expenses in our business is the purchase of AI infrastructure components to power our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. We utilize a combination of debt and equity financing as well as cash flow from operations to fund the cost of infrastructure components.
| We typically do not submit purchase orders for systems without having a committed contract that matches the level of compute generated by such systems. We generally submit purchase orders for systems on a just-in-time basis at the time of contract signing. This ensures that, generally, we provide infrastructure to customers as needed, versus making large investments without certainty of payback. |
| Additionally, we have a proven track record of securing large asset-backed debt facilities to enable rapid scaling of our business model. These facilities consist of amortizing delayed draw term loans (DDTLs) that are collateralized with the assets underlying the contributed contracts and the pledged |
103
contractual cash flows, generally from investment grade counterparties. They are drawn as we build infrastructure to support customer requirements, and amortize over time as contracted cash flows are generated in a regular and predictable manner, with excess cash made available to us. As we have scaled, we have managed to drive lower cost of capital across our financings. |
As of December 31, 2024, we had secured a cumulative $9.9 billion in financing commitments through our DDTLs. We secured $2.3 billion through the DDTL 1.0 Facility in July 2023 and subsequently secured $7.6 billion of commitments through the DDTL 2.0 Facility that was first announced in May 2024. In addition to our DDTLs, we have capitalized our business through other financing arrangements including a $650 million revolving credit facility, a $1.0 billion term loan facility, and an aggregate notional amount of $1.3 billion of equipment financing as of December 31, 2024. We plan to continue to look for the most efficient financing strategies to enable us to scale our business with greater access to capital at lower costs.
Key Factors Impacting Our Performance
We believe the growth and success of our business depends on a number of key factors. These factors each present significant opportunities for our business, but also pose challenges that we must address in order to sustain our rapid growth and ensure the durability of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform.
Adoption of AI in Society
The development and early adoption of AI models and the products built on top of them have contributed to our growth to date and our future success will depend in part on the continued adoption of AI. We believe AI is still in the early stages of its commercialization and that demand for model training and inference will continue to scale as organizations embrace new use cases for AI and experience the productivity and efficiency gains associated with deploying AI products. The infrastructure that supports the use cases for AI is expected to continue improving as new generations of AI technologies are released and their performance continues to improve. Moreover, the volume of data on which models are trained is expected to continue to increase as more data is produced and becomes accessible to foundational models. As AI becomes more widespread, chip technology continues to improve, the amount of available data for training grows and companies continue to invest in infrastructure for AI, we believe that the adoption of AI will scale significantly.
Securing Sufficient Power Capacity
We believe the data center installed base will need to scale significantly over the course of the coming years in terms of both space and power to keep pace with demand for AI products and high-performance compute. As of December 31, 2022, we had three data centers running more than 17,000 GPUs in total and supported by approximately 10 MW of active power, which grew to 10 data centers running more than 53,000 GPUs in total and supported by more than 70 MW of active power as of December 31, 2023, and grew further to 32 data centers running more than 250,000 GPUs in total and supported by more than 360 MW of active power as of December 31, 2024. Our total contracted power extends to approximately 1.3 GW as of December 31, 2024, which we expect to roll out over the coming years. Importantly, our power capacity is available in large individual deployments that are capable of serving large infrastructure clusters, which is critical for our larger customers. We plan to continue to build out our access to power capacity and explore alternative energy solutions to support our growing capacity needs, including, but not limited to non-emitting sources of power. We believe that limited access to power will favor platforms like ours that are purpose-built to deliver maximum performance from a constrained pool of resources.
Maintaining a Robust Supply Chain to Service AI and High-Performance Compute Requirements
Our future success depends in part on our access to the latest generation of high-performance chips and ancillary hardware, including GPUs, and other high-performance networking and storage equipment required to
104
run our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. We have established close relationships with chipmakers and OEMs over time to secure our supply of hardware components and continue to strengthen these relationships through our demonstrated ability to deliver leading-edge compute at unparalleled scale and speed. Our future success also depends on our ability to access components such as chillers and HVAC systems for liquid cooling to maintain our data center infrastructure. We work actively with our suppliers on future capacity to ensure that our future resource needs are met while continuing to develop our relationships with leading component providers to incorporate the latest hardware innovations and assemble highly performant AI compute solutions for our customers.
Investing in Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain the competitive advantage of our solution and to bring the latest GPUs to market faster than our competition. We pioneered2 the AI Hyperscaler and have been able to nurture a unique technological differentiation across our CoreWeave Cloud Platform and a specialization in serving AI workloads. We have built a highly differentiated full stack solution for running AI training and inference workloads at maximum performance and efficiency, which we intend to continue to adapt and evolve with the support of our AI specific expertise. We plan to maintain our prioritization of investments in our engineering and product teams to continue to extend our technology leadership in AI infrastructure. Our engineering-led culture, coupled with our teams embedded philosophy of embracing complex technical challenges, will be a critical factor to our future performance and in our ability to continue innovating.
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is a critical part of the daily operations of the AI developers and providers of AI products and services that rely on our platform to train and inference their models. We remain committed to investing in and growing our business through continued technology leadership and expansion of our software suite to further optimize and enhance AI compute.
Driving More Workloads from Existing Customers
We have strategically aligned with some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises that are building the next generation of foundational models and providing AI capabilities to organizations across the world. These AI leaders are the primary channel through which many non AI-native organizations access the benefits of AI today, given that they deliver AI-powered products and services that leverage our infrastructure to users without requiring them to build and run their own models. We are focused on continuing to capture AI cloud spend across these organizations as they train new models and build new AI capabilities for businesses and individuals, and focused on enabling them to maintain their innovation edge and accelerate the speed to market of their next generation of models. The significant benefits we deliver to these customers in terms of overall performance, efficiency, and reduced cost of ownership results in them making large initial commitments and expanding those commitments with us over time. As of December 31, 2024, we had $15.1 billion of remaining performance obligations, reflecting an increase of 53%, from $9.9 billion as of December 31, 2023. Microsoft, our largest customer for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, will represent less than 50% of our expected future committed contract revenues when combining our RPO balance of $15.1 billion as of December 31, 2024 and up to $11.55 billion of future revenue from our recently signed Master Services Agreement with OpenAI, as described herein.
Driving the continued retention and expansion of our customers will depend on our ability to handle the scale, performance, and efficiency required to accelerate their path to market and enable them to produce better
2 | Based on the capabilities of our platform, solutions, and services as compared to competing hyperscalers, our track record of being among the first to deliver bleeding-edge infrastructure and technology, and our collaboration with leading data center providers and AI labs and AI enterprises to accelerate innovative technology and infrastructure in the AI cloud computing industry. |
105
AI products and services. Given the large initial commitments customers make for access to our CoreWeave Cloud Platform, we expect the growth of our remaining performance obligations to be in steps, which may include periods of decline, versus a smooth linear trajectory.
Increasing Customer Adoption of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform
We expect to see increasing adoption of AI globally as both existing industries innovate with AI and new industries arise. We anticipate that AI will expand beyond first movers to a broader set of enterprises that will utilize AI to drive internal efficiencies and implement AI into their products and services. These organizations are in their early stages of adopting the latest innovations in AI such as Generative AI, and are currently focused on running proof-of-concepts, adapting foundational models to optimize them for their specific use-cases and infusing them with their proprietary data for a broad range of vertical applications, from high frequency trading to drug discovery. As AI model capabilities grow and become more accessible and cheaper, we also expect to see the birth of new industries and use cases, which we may not be able to precisely anticipate today. Over time, as more non-AI-native organizations across a broader spectrum of industries run training and inference workloads on their own proprietary models, and as new industries with additional workload demands emerge, we believe we will be uniquely positioned to capture those workloads on our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. Our globally distributed and elastic infrastructure, which is optimized for performance and low latency, and our software stack, which makes it easy to deploy, manage, and monitor, are ideally suited to run and scale these workloads seamlessly. Successful acquisitions of new customers across these organizations will depend upon our ability to continue evolving our go-to-market organization and strategy, sufficient demand for AI compute, demand from end users of AI-enabled products and services, and overall pricing and competition. Our recently announced acquisition of Weights & Biases positions us to accelerate our customer acquisition through broader exposure to the developer community and through the expansion of our application software services offering. We expect that, following closing of the acquisition, the integration of Weights & Biases sales personnel and technology roadmap will increase our sales and marketing spend and technology and infrastructure spend respectively. Lastly, if AI is not broadly adopted by the enterprises to the extent we expect, or if new use cases do not arise, then our opportunity may be smaller than we expect.
Improving our Cost of Capital
Our business is driven by investments in infrastructure that is foundational to our platform. In order to fund these investments, we have pioneered and scaled innovative financing structures that have enabled us to grow our business at a rapid pace through timely and flexible access to capital. These include our use of DDTLs that are collateralized by contractual cash flows and infrastructure assets. These structures have allowed us to leverage the valuable infrastructure underpinning our contracts, the strong credit quality of many of our customers, and high visibility of our customer payments to drive down our cost of capital. We have also incorporated features such as investment grade tranches, as in the case of the DDTL 2.0 Facility, to further reduce our cost of capital. We expect to continue to incur indebtedness and that our cost of capital to continue declining as we benefit from economies of scale and access new forms of financing including asset backed securitizations and rated parent level debt. We expect this trajectory towards a lower cost of capital to enable us to accelerate growth at the pace of innovation and help drive continued investments in the most cutting-edge technology. However, our ability to lower our cost of capital depends upon a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control, including broader macroeconomic conditions. If we are unable to continue lowering our cost of capital, our ability to effectively compete, especially with larger competitors that have greater financial and other resources, as well as our operating results, financial condition, and business, may be adversely impacted.
106
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue by providing our customers with cloud computing services, including compute enabled by our software and infrastructure optimized for AI and high-performance computing. Our customers purchase our CoreWeave Cloud Platform services through either committed contracts or on-demand. Our revenue primarily comes from committed contracts.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of direct costs for data centers, including costs associated with our facilities, such as rent, utilities including power, personnel costs for employees involved in data center operations and customer success, including salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and other related expenses and depreciation and amortization, including depreciation of power installation and distribution systems.
We expect our cost of revenue to increase in absolute dollar terms as we continue to grow our platform and expand our customer base. However, we anticipate that cost of revenue may fluctuate as a percentage of revenue in the future due to the timing of when we achieve economies of scale and operational efficiencies.
Technology and Infrastructure
Technology and infrastructure expense consists of costs associated with our infrastructure, such as depreciation and amortization related to our servers, switches, networking equipment and internally developed software, personnel costs for employees associated with research and development of new and existing products and services or with maintaining our computing infrastructure, such as salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock-based compensation expense, travel expenses, and other related expenses, and costs related to software subscriptions.
We expect our technology and infrastructure expense to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to focus on growth and innovation. However, we anticipate technology and infrastructure may fluctuate as a percentage of revenue in the future due to the timing of investments in our platform, as well as when we achieve economies of scale and operational efficiencies.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists of personnel costs associated with selling and marketing our CoreWeave Cloud Platform, such as salaries, stock-based compensation expense, commissions, bonuses, travel expenses, and other related expenses, third-party professional services costs, and advertising costs associated with marketing programs.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists of costs associated with corporate functions including our finance, legal, human resources, IT, and facilities. These costs include personnel costs, such as salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and other related expenses, third-party professional services costs, such as legal, accounting, and audit services, corporate facilities, depreciation for equipment, furniture, and fixtures, and other costs necessary to operate our corporate functions, including expenses for non-income taxes, insurance, and office rental.
We expect to incur additional expenses as a result of operating as a public company, including expenses to comply with the rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a national securities exchange, expenses related to compliance and reporting obligations pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC, as well as higher expenses for general and director and officer insurance, investor relations, and professional services.
107
Loss on Fair Value Adjustments
Loss on fair value adjustments consists of gains and losses as a result of recording our derivative and warrant liabilities at fair value at the end of each reporting period, as well as recording our warrants and embedded derivatives prior to settlement of the associated instruments.
Interest Expense, Net
Interest expense, net consists of interest associated with our finance leases, notes, and loans, and amortization of discount, debt issuance costs associated with our debt obligations and undrawn fees. Interest expense, net is reflected net of capitalized interest. We expect to continue to enter into debt financing arrangements.
Other Income, Net
Other income, net consists of investment income, gain (loss) on extinguishment of debt, interest income, and other non-operating gains and losses.
Provision for (benefit from) Income Taxes
The provision for (benefit from) income taxes consists primarily of income taxes in certain federal, state, local and foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. Foreign jurisdictions typically have different statutory tax rates from those in the United States. Accordingly, our effective tax rates may vary depending on the impact of the valuation allowance and nondeductible fair value adjustments to derivatives, as well as the relative proportion of foreign income to domestic income, generation of tax credits, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, and changes in tax laws.
Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating expenses: |
||||||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) |
12,122 | 68,780 | 493,350 | |||||||||
Technology and infrastructure(1) |
18,106 | 131,855 | 960,685 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) |
2,481 | 12,917 | 18,389 | |||||||||
General and administrative(1) |
6,001 | 29,842 | 118,644 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total operating expenses |
38,710 | 243,394 | 1,591,068 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating income (loss) |
(22,880 | ) | (14,451 | ) | 324,358 | |||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
(2,884 | ) | (533,952 | ) | (755,929 | ) | ||||||
Interest expense, net |
(9,444 | ) | (28,404 | ) | (360,824 | ) | ||||||
Other income, net |
192 | 18,760 | 48,194 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(35,016 | ) | (558,047 | ) | (744,201 | ) | ||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(4,150 | ) | 35,701 | 119,247 | ||||||||
Net loss from continuing operations |
$ | (30,866 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from discontinued operations, net of tax |
$ | (189 | ) | $ | | $ | | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
(1) | Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows: |
108
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 133 | $ | 694 | $ | 1,307 | ||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
624 | 7,100 | 10,137 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing |
74 | 1,740 | 3,408 | |||||||||
General and administrative |
659 | 5,620 | 16,635 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total stock-based compensation expense |
$ | 1,490 | $ | 15,154 | $ | 31,487 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Revenue |
100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||||||
Operating expenses: |
||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
77 | 30 | 26 | |||||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
114 | 58 | 50 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing |
16 | 6 | 1 | |||||||||
General and administrative |
38 | 13 | 6 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total operating expenses |
245 | 106 | 83 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating income (loss) |
(145 | ) | (6 | ) | 17 | |||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
(18 | ) | (233 | ) | (39 | ) | ||||||
Interest expense, net |
(60 | ) | (12 | ) | (19 | ) | ||||||
Other income, net |
1 | 8 | 3 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(221 | ) | (244 | ) | (39 | ) | ||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(26 | ) | 16 | 6 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from continuing operations |
(195 | ) | (259 | ) | (45 | ) | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from discontinued operations, net of tax |
(1 | ) | | | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss |
(196 | )% | (259 | )% | (45 | )% | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Note: | Totals may not sum due to rounding. |
Comparison of the Year Ended December 31, 2023 and 2024
Revenue
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | $ | 1,686,483 | 737 | % |
Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $1.7 billion, or 737%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This substantial growth was related to increased demand from both existing and new customer contracts and our ability to rapidly scale our operations, emphasizing the strength of our customer relationships and our ability to meet the evolving needs of the industry. Over 95% of the increase in revenue was attributable to expansion within our existing customer base and the remaining increase was attributable to new customers.
109
Cost of Revenue
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 68,780 | $ | 493,350 | $ | 424,570 | 617 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
30 | % | 26 | % |
Cost of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $425 million, or 617%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was attributable to higher costs directly related to running our data centers to support the significant increase in customer demand, driven by the successful deployment of new data centers, which resulted in an increase in rent expense of approximately $290 million, an increase in data center utilities and power spend of approximately $76 million, an increase in personnel costs of approximately $22 million, which includes headcount growth of employees directly associated with data centers, and an increase in depreciation and amortization related to power installation and distribution systems of approximately $18 million.
Technology and Infrastructure
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
$ | 131,855 | $ | 960,685 | $ | 828,830 | 629 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
58 | % | 50 | % |
Technology and infrastructure expense for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $829 million, or 629%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was attributable to an increase in depreciation and amortization of approximately $742 million, from $101 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, to $843 million for the year ended December 31, 2024, resulting from investments in our platform and servers, switches, and other networking equipment fixed assets within our infrastructure, as well as an increase of approximately $56 million of personnel costs and an increase of approximately $45 million of equipment support and software expenses.
Sales and Marketing
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
$ | 12,917 | $ | 18,389 | $ | 5,472 | 42 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
6 | % | 1 | % |
Sales and marketing expense for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $5 million, or 42%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was attributable to an increase of approximately $3 million in personnel costs to help our efforts in driving customer demand.
General and Administrative
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
General and administrative |
$ | 29,842 | $ | 118,644 | $ | 88,802 | 298 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
13 | % | 6 | % |
110
General and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $89 million, or 298%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was attributable to an increase of approximately $41 million in personnel-related expenses, which includes headcount growth to support our expanding operations. Professional services expenses also increased by approximately $28 million, primarily from accounting, tax, legal, and advisory services necessary to support our growth and public company preparation activities. Additional increases of approximately $10 million were attributable to higher overhead costs, including facilities expenses and software costs.
Loss on Fair Value Adjustments
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
$ | (533,952 | ) | $ | (755,929 | ) | $ | (221,977 | ) | 42 | % |
Loss on fair value adjustments for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $222 million, or 42%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was driven by an increase in the valuation of derivatives and warrants tied to our common stock and redeemable convertible preferred stock within the periods presented.
Interest Expense, Net
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Interest expense, net |
$ | (28,404 | ) | $ | (360,824 | ) | $ | (332,420 | ) | 1,170 | % |
Interest expense, net for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $332 million, or 1,170%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was attributable to higher borrowing levels under our Credit Facilities, resulting in an increase in interest expense, partially offset by capitalized interest associated with investments in our platform and data center infrastructure.
Other Income, Net
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Other income, net |
$ | 18,760 | $ | 48,194 | $ | 29,434 | 157 | % |
Other income, net for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $29 million, or 157%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was attributable to an increase in investment income of approximately $30 million and interest income of approximately $15 million, partially offset by a loss on extinguishment of debt of approximately $11 million.
Provision for Income Taxes
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2023 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
$ | 35,701 | $ | 119,247 | $ | 83,546 | 234 | % | ||||||||
Effective tax rate |
(6 | )% | (16 | )% |
111
Provision for income taxes for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $84 million, or 234%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. We recorded income tax expense in all periods presented despite experiencing pre-tax losses in part due to nondeductible losses on fair value adjustments and projected limitations on our ability to realize certain tax benefits, which has resulted in us maintaining a full valuation allowance on our U.S. deferred tax assets. The increase in year over year income tax expense primarily resulted from an increase in pre-tax income excluding these nondeductible losses and the inability to record a net benefit from deferred tax assets generated in the period.
Our effective tax rate might fluctuate significantly in the future due to additional impacts from non-deductible items and future changes in the valuation allowance on net deferred tax assets.
Comparison of the Year Ended December 31, 2022 and 2023
Revenue
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 213,113 | 1,346 | % |
Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $213 million, or 1,346%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This substantial growth was related to increased demand from both new and existing customer contracts and our ability to rapidly scale our operations and meet the evolving needs of the industry. Approximately 88% of the increase in revenue was from sales to new customers and the remaining increase was attributable to sales to existing customers.
Cost of Revenue
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 12,122 | $ | 68,780 | $ | 56,658 | 467 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
77 | % | 30 | % |
Cost of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $57 million, or 467%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was attributable to higher costs directly related to running our data centers to support the significant increase in customer demand, driven by the successful deployment of new data centers, which resulted in an increase in rent expense of approximately $48 million and an increase in personnel costs of approximately $2 million, which includes headcount growth of employees directly supporting data center operations.
Technology and Infrastructure
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
$ | 18,106 | $ | 131,855 | $ | 113,749 | 628 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
114 | % | 58 | % |
Technology and infrastructure expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $114 million, or 628%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was attributable to an increase in depreciation and amortization of approximately $90 million, from $11 million for the year ended December 31,
112
2022, to $101 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, driven by investments in our platform and servers, switches, and other networking equipment fixed assets within our infrastructure, as well as an increase of approximately $17 million of personnel costs and an increase of approximately $4 million of equipment support and software expenses.
Sales and Marketing
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
$ | 2,481 | $ | 12,917 | $ | 10,436 | 421 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
16 | % | 6 | % |
Sales and marketing expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $10 million, or 421%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was attributable to an increase of approximately $7 million in personnel costs to help our efforts in driving customer demand.
General and Administrative
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
General and administrative |
$ | 6,001 | $ | 29,842 | $ | 23,841 | 397 | % | ||||||||
Percentage of revenue |
38 | % | 13 | % |
General and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $24 million, or 397%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was attributable to an increase of approximately $16 million in personnel related expenses, which includes headcount growth to support our expanding operations. Professional services expenses also increased by approximately $3 million, primarily from accounting, tax, legal, and advisory services necessary to support our growth.
Loss on Fair Value Adjustments
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
$ | (2,884 | ) | $ | (533,952 | ) | $ | (531,068 | ) | NM |
NM - Not meaningful.
Loss on fair value adjustments for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $531 million, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was driven by an increase in the valuation of derivatives and warrants tied to our common stock and redeemable convertible preferred stock within the periods presented.
Interest Expense, Net
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Interest expense, net |
$ | (9,444 | ) | $ | (28,404 | ) | $ | (18,960 | ) | 201 | % |
113
Interest expense, net for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $19 million, or 201%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was attributable to higher borrowing levels under our Credit Facilities, resulting in an increase in interest expense, partially offset by capitalized interest associated with investments in our platform and data center infrastructure.
Other Income, Net
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Other income, net |
$ | 192 | $ | 18,760 | $ | 18,568 | NM |
NM - Not meaningful.
Other income, net for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $19 million, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was attributable to an increase in investment income of approximately $21 million.
Provision for (benefit from) Income Taxes
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
$ | (4,150 | ) | $ | 35,701 | $ | 39,851 | (960 | )% | |||||||
Effective tax rate |
12 | % | (6 | )% |
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes for the year ended December 31, 2023 changed by $40 million, or 960%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. We recorded income tax expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 despite experiencing pre-tax losses in part due to nondeductible losses on fair value adjustments and projected limitations on our ability to realize certain tax benefits, which has resulted in us maintaining a full valuation allowance on our U.S. deferred tax assets. The increase in year over year income tax expense primarily resulted from an increase in pre-tax income excluding these nondeductible losses and, the inability to record a net benefit from deferred tax assets generated in the period.
Our effective tax rate might fluctuate significantly in the future due to additional impacts from non-deductible items and future changes in the valuation allowance on net deferred tax assets.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
To supplement our consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP, we use adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating income (loss) and adjusted operating income (loss) margin, and adjusted net income (loss) and adjusted net income (loss) margin, collectively, to help us evaluate our business. We use such non-GAAP financial measures to make strategic decisions, establish business plans and forecasts, identify trends affecting our business, and evaluate operating performance. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures, when taken collectively, may be helpful to investors because they allow for greater transparency into what measures we use in operating our business and measuring our performance and enable comparison of financial trends and results between periods where items may vary independent of business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are presented for supplemental informational purposes only, should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP, and may be different from similarly titled non-GAAP measures used by other companies. A reconciliation is provided below for each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable financial measure presented in accordance with GAAP. Investors are encouraged to review the
114
related GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, as well as our consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus.
We believe excluding items that neither relate to the ordinary course of business nor reflect our underlying business performance or that other companies, including companies in our industry, frequently exclude from similar non-GAAP measures enables us and our investors to compare our underlying business performance from period to period. Accordingly, we believe these adjustments facilitate a useful evaluation of our current operating performance and comparison to our past operating performance and provide investors with additional means to evaluate cost and expense trends. In addition, we also believe these adjustments enhance comparability of our financial performance and are similar measures that are widely used by analysts and investors as a means of evaluating a companys performance.
There are a number of limitations related to our non-GAAP measures. Some of these limitations are that these measures, to the extent applicable, exclude:
| loss on fair value adjustments, a non-cash expense, which represents gains and losses as a result of recording our derivative and warrant liabilities at fair value at the end of each reporting period, as well as recording our derivatives and warrants and prior to settlement of the associated instruments; |
| depreciation and amortization, a non-cash expense, where the assets being depreciated and amortized may have to be replaced in the future and these measures do not reflect cash capital expenditure requirements for such replacements or for new capital expenditure requirements; |
| interest expense, net, or the cash requirements necessary to service interest or principal payments on our indebtedness, which reduces cash available to us; |
| stock-based compensation expense, which has been, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a significant recurring expense for our business and an important part of our compensation strategy; |
| provision for income taxes, which may represent a reduction in cash available to us; and |
| other income, net, for certain non-cash or non-routine items that are not reflective of our ongoing operational results, which currently primarily relate to interest income and loss on extinguishment of debt. |
In addition, other companies, including companies in our industry, may calculate these non-GAAP measures differently or may use other measures to evaluate their performance, all of which could reduce the usefulness of our disclosure of non-GAAP measures as a tool for comparison.
Because of these and other limitations, you should consider these non-GAAP measures along with other financial performance measures, including our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin
We define adjusted EBITDA as net loss, excluding (i) loss on fair value adjustments, (ii) depreciation and amortization, (iii) interest expense, net, (iv) stock-based compensation, (v) other income, net, and (vi) provision for (benefit from) income taxes. We define adjusted EBITDA margin as adjusted EBITDA divided by revenue.
115
The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss and net loss margin, the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, respectively, for each of the periods presented:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
Loss on fair value adjustments(1) |
2,884 | 533,952 | 755,929 | |||||||||
Depreciation and amortization |
11,695 | 103,210 | 863,413 | |||||||||
Interest expense, net |
9,444 | 28,404 | 360,824 | |||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
1,490 | 15,154 | 31,487 | |||||||||
Other income, net |
(192 | ) | (18,760 | ) | (48,194 | ) | ||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(4,150 | ) | 35,701 | 119,247 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Adjusted EBITDA |
$ | (9,884 | ) | $ | 103,913 | $ | 1,219,258 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss margin |
(196 | )% | (259 | )% | (45 | )% | ||||||
Adjusted EBITDA margin |
(62 | )% | 45 | % | 64 | % |
(1) | Represents adjustments related to recording our derivative liabilities at fair value at the end of each reporting period for our 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes, warrant liabilities related to our 2022 Senior Secured Notes, and the fair value remeasurement of the option liability in connection with our Series B financing. Refer to Note 3. Fair Value Measurements to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for additional information. |
Adjusted Operating Income (Loss) and Adjusted Operating Income (Loss) Margin
We define adjusted operating income (loss) as operating income (loss), excluding stock-based compensation and adjusted operating income (loss) margin as adjusted operating income (loss) divided by revenue.
The following table presents a reconciliation of operating income (loss) and operating income (loss) margin, the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted operating income (loss) and adjusted operating income (loss) margin, respectively, for each of the periods presented:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||
Operating income (loss) |
$ | (22,880 | ) | $ | (14,451 | ) | $ | 324,358 | ||||
Stock-based compensation |
1,490 | 15,154 | 31,487 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Adjusted operating income (loss) |
$ | (21,390 | ) | $ | 703 | $ | 355,845 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating income (loss) margin |
(145 | )% | (6 | )% | 17 | % | ||||||
Adjusted operating income (loss) margin |
(135 | )% | | % | 19 | % |
Adjusted Net Income (Loss) and Adjusted Net Income (Loss) Margin
We define adjusted net income (loss) as net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders, excluding (i) loss on fair value adjustments, (ii) stock-based compensation, (iii) other adjustments for certain non-cash or non-routine items that are not reflective of our ongoing operational results, and (iv) income tax effect adjustments. Adjusted net income (loss) margin is defined as adjusted net income (loss) divided by revenue.
116
The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss and net loss margin, the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted net loss and adjusted net loss margin, respectively, for each of the periods presented:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
Loss on fair value adjustments(1) |
2,884 | 533,952 | 755,929 | |||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
1,490 | 15,154 | 31,487 | |||||||||
Other adjustments(2) |
| | 11,124 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Adjusted net loss(3) |
$ | (26,681 | ) | $ | (44,642 | ) | $ | (64,908 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss margin |
(196 | )% | (259 | )% | (45 | )% | ||||||
Adjusted net loss margin(3) |
(169 | )% | (19 | )% | (3 | )% |
(1) | Represents adjustments related to recording our derivative liabilities at fair value at the end of each reporting period for our 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes, warrant liabilities related to our 2022 Senior Secured Notes, and the fair value remeasurement of the option liability in connection with our Series B financing. Refer to Note 3. Fair Value Measurements to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for additional information. |
(2) | Primarily relates to loss on extinguishment of debt related to the conversion of our 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes and settlement of our 2022 Senior Secured Notes. |
(3) | There were no material income tax effects on our non-GAAP adjustments for all periods presented. |
Quarterly Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our unaudited quarterly consolidated statements of operations data for each of the quarters indicated. In our opinion, the unaudited quarterly statements of operations data set forth below have been prepared on a basis consistent with our audited financial statements and contain all adjustments, consisting only of normal and recurring adjustments, necessary for the fair statement of such data. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected in the future, and the results for any particular quarter are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for a full year or any other period. The following unaudited quarterly financial data should be read together with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus.
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||
March 31, 2024 | June 30, 2024 | September 30, 2024 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 188,684 | $ | 395,371 | $ | 583,941 | $ | 747,430 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Operating expenses: |
||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) |
59,220 | 108,838 | 143,134 | 182,158 | ||||||||||||
Technology and infrastructure(1) |
92,881 | 182,886 | 285,509 | 399,409 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) |
4,050 | 4,172 | 4,554 | 5,613 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative(1) |
15,686 | 21,754 | 33,628 | 47,576 | ||||||||||||
Total operating expenses |
171,837 | 317,650 | 466,825 | 634,756 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Operating income |
16,847 | 77,721 | 117,116 | 112,674 | ||||||||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
(97,500 | ) | (310,231 | ) | (341,133 | ) | (7,065 | ) | ||||||||
Interest expense, net |
(40,656 | ) | (66,766 | ) | (104,375 | ) | (149,027 | ) | ||||||||
Other income, net |
7,460 | 16,406 | 10,244 | 14,084 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Loss before provision for income taxes |
(113,849 | ) | (282,870 | ) | (318,148 | ) | (29,334 | ) | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
15,399 | 40,151 | 41,659 | 22,038 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (129,248 | ) | $ | (323,021 | ) | $ | (359,807 | ) | $ | (51,372 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
117
(1) | Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows: |
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||
March 31, 2024 | June 30, 2024 | September 30, 2024 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 388 | $ | 350 | $ | 271 | $ | 298 | ||||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
2,357 | 2,080 | 2,161 | 3,539 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
867 | 848 | 847 | 846 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative |
4,577 | 4,382 | 4,338 | 3,338 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Total stock-based compensation |
$ | 8,189 | $ | 7,660 | $ | 7,617 | $ | 8,021 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following table sets forth our unaudited quarterly consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for each of the quarters indicated:
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||
March 31, 2024 | June 30, 2024 | September 30, 2024 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||||||||
Revenue |
100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Operating expenses: |
||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
31 | % | 28 | % | 25 | % | 24 | % | ||||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
49 | % | 46 | % | 49 | % | 53 | % | ||||||||
Sales and marketing |
2 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | ||||||||
General and administrative |
8 | % | 6 | % | 6 | % | 6 | % | ||||||||
Total operating expenses |
91 | % | 80 | % | 80 | % | 85 | % | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Operating income |
9 | % | 20 | % | 20 | % | 15 | % | ||||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
(52 | )% | (78 | )% | (58 | )% | (1 | )% | ||||||||
Interest expense, net |
(22 | )% | (17 | )% | (18 | )% | (20 | )% | ||||||||
Other income, net |
4 | % | 4 | % | 2 | % | 2 | % | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Loss before provision for income taxes |
(60 | )% | (72 | )% | (54 | )% | (4 | )% | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
8 | % | 10 | % | 7 | % | 3 | % | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Net loss |
(68 | )% | (82 | )% | (62 | )% | (7 | )% | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Note: Totals may not sum due to rounding
Quarterly Trends
Revenue
On a quarterly basis, revenue increased during each period presented as a result of increased demand from both existing and new customer contracts and our ability to rapidly scale our operations, emphasizing the strength of our customer relationships and our ability to meet the evolving needs of the industry. Substantially all of the increase in revenue was attributable to expansion within our existing customer base and the remaining increase was attributable to new customers.
Cost of Revenue
On a quarterly basis, cost of revenue increased during each period presented. This increase was attributable to higher costs directly related to running our data centers to support the significant increase in customer demand, driven by the successful deployment of new data centers, which resulted in an increase in rent expense, data center utilities and power spend. As a percentage of revenue, however, cost of revenue decreased in each consecutive period, reflecting initial efficiency gains as we expand our operations. We expect cost of revenue to
118
fluctuate over time as a percentage of revenue due to the timing of expanding our data center footprint in relationship to the corresponding revenue and our ongoing efforts to optimize the costs of operating those facilities.
Technology and Infrastructure
On a quarterly basis, technology and infrastructure expense increased during each period presented. This increase was attributable to an increase in depreciation and amortization, resulting from investments in our platform and servers, switches and other networking equipment within our infrastructure. As a percentage of revenue, technology and infrastructure expense fluctuated moderately in each period, due to the timing of investments in our growth and innovation of our platform, which we expect to continue over time.
Sales and Marketing
On a quarterly basis, sales and marketing expense slightly increased during each period presented. This increase was attributable to an increase in personnel costs to help our efforts in driving customer demand.
General and Administrative
On a quarterly basis, general and administrative expense increased during each period presented. The increase was attributable to a rise in personnel-related and professional services expenses, necessary to support our growth and public company preparation activities. As a percentage of revenue, general and administrative expense remained relatively consistent in each period.
Loss on Fair Value Adjustments
On a quarterly basis, loss on fair value adjustments has varied significantly during each period presented. This variability is based on the valuation of derivatives and warrants tied to our common stock and redeemable convertible preferred stock within the periods presented. In the quarter ended September 30, 2024, all of the outstanding 2021 Convertible Senior Notes converted into shares of common stock, and as a result, the fair value adjustments recorded in the quarter ended December 31, 2024 decreased relative to prior periods.
Interest Expense, Net
On a quarterly basis, interest expense, net increased during each period presented. This increase was attributable to higher borrowing levels under our Credit Facilities.
Provision for Income Taxes
On a quarterly basis, our provision for income taxes has remained relatively consistent as a percentage of revenue, with the exception of the fourth quarter during which the provision for income taxes decreased relative to prior quarters. Our effective tax rates may vary depending on the impact of the valuation allowance and nondeductible fair value adjustments to derivatives, as well as the relative proportion of foreign income to domestic income, generation of tax credits, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, and changes in tax laws.
Quarterly Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Quarterly Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin
The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss and net loss margin, the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, respectively, for each of the periods presented:
119
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||
March 31, 2024 | June 30, 2024 | September 30, 2024 | December 31, 2024 | |||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (129,248 | ) | $ | (323,021 | ) | $ | (359,807 | ) | $ | (51,372 | ) | ||||
Loss on fair value adjustments(1) |
97,500 | 310,231 | 341,133 | 7,065 | ||||||||||||
Depreciation and amortization |
79,510 | 164,460 | 254,024 | 365,419 | ||||||||||||
Interest expense, net |
40,656 | 66,766 | 104,375 | 149,027 | ||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
8,189 | 7,660 | 7,617 | 8,021 | ||||||||||||
Other income, net |
(7,460 | ) | (16,406 | ) | (10,244 | ) | (14,084 | ) | ||||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
15,399 | 40,151 | 41,659 | 22,038 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Adjusted EBITDA |
$ | 104,546 | $ | 249,841 | $ | 378,757 | $ | 486,114 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 188,684 | $ | 395,371 | $ | 583,941 | $ | 747,430 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Net loss margin |
(68 | )% | (82 | )% | (62 | )% | (7 | )% | ||||||||
Adjusted EBITDA margin |
55 | % | 63 | % | 65 | % | 65 | % |
(1) | Represents adjustments related to recording our derivative liabilities at fair value at the end of each reporting period for our 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes, warrant liabilities related to our 2022 Senior Secured Notes, and the fair value remeasurement of the option liability in connection with our Series B financing. Refer to Note 3. Fair Value Measurements to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for additional information. |
Quarterly Adjusted Operating Income (Loss) and Adjusted Operating Income (Loss) Margin
The following table presents a reconciliation of operating income (loss) and operating income (loss) margin, the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted operating income (loss) and adjusted operating income (loss) margin, respectively, for each of the periods presented:
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||
March 31, 2024 | June 30, 2024 | September 30, 2024 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Operating income |
$ | 16,847 | $ | 77,721 | $ | 117,116 | $ | 112,674 | ||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
8,189 | 7,660 | 7,617 | 8,021 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Adjusted operating income |
$ | 25,036 | $ | 85,381 | $ | 124,733 | $ | 120,695 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 188,684 | $ | 395,371 | $ | 583,941 | $ | 747,430 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Operating income margin |
9 | % | 20 | % | 20 | % | 15 | % | ||||||||
Adjusted operating income margin |
13 | % | 22 | % | 21 | % | 16 | % |
Quarterly Adjusted Net Income (Loss) and Adjusted Net Income (Loss) Margin
The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss and net loss margin, the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted net loss and adjusted net loss margin, respectively, for each of the periods presented:
120
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||
March 31, 2024 | June 30, 2024 | September 30, 2024 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (129,248 | ) | $ | (323,021 | ) | $ | (359,807 | ) | $ | (51,372 | ) | ||||
Loss on fair value adjustments(1) |
97,500 | 310,231 | 341,133 | 7,065 | ||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
8,189 | 7,660 | 7,617 | 8,021 | ||||||||||||
Other adjustments(2) |
| | 11,124 | | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Adjusted net income (loss)(3) |
$ | (23,559 | ) | $ | (5,130 | ) | $ | 67 | $ | (36,284 | ) | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 188,684 | $ | 395,371 | $ | 583,941 | $ | 747,430 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Net loss margin |
(68 | )% | (82 | )% | (62 | )% | (7 | )% | ||||||||
Adjusted net income (loss) margin(3) |
(12 | )% | (1 | )% | | % | (5 | )% |
(1) | Represents adjustments related to recording our derivative liabilities at fair value at the end of each reporting period for our 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes, warrant liabilities related to our 2022 Senior Secured Notes, and the fair value remeasurement of the option liability in connection with our Series B financing. Refer to Note 3. Fair Value Measurements to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for additional information. |
(2) | Primarily relates to loss on extinguishment of debt. |
(3) | There were no material income tax effects on our non-GAAP adjustments for all periods presented. |
For further details on our use of non-GAAP financial measures and their inherent limitations, see the section titled Non-GAAP Financial Measures.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
We have generated significant losses from operations, as reflected in our accumulated deficit of $1.5 billion as of December 31, 2024. Additionally, we have generated significant negative cash flows from investing activities as we continue to support the growth of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. We anticipate making significant investments for the foreseeable future, including in our infrastructure and go-to-market capabilities, to maintain our leadership and position us to continue to capitalize on the AI revolution.
Our non-cancellable commitments are disclosed in Note 8. Leases, Note 9. Commitments and Contingencies, and Note 10. Debt to our audited consolidated financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 included elsewhere in this prospectus.
We believe our existing balance of cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments, in addition to amounts available for borrowing under our various debt agreements, will be sufficient to meet our obligations due or anticipated to be due within one year from the date of this prospectus, including operating expenses, working capital, and current commitments for capital expenditures. Our future capital requirements may depend on many factors, including those set forth in the section of this prospectus entitled Risk Factors. We anticipate that current and future investments will require significant debt and/or equity financing. The sale of additional equity would result in dilution to our stockholders. The incurrence of additional debt would result in debt service obligations, and the instruments governing such debt could provide for operational and/or financial covenants that further restrict our operations. There can be no assurances that we will be able to raise additional capital on favorable terms or at all. The inability to raise capital could adversely affect our ability to achieve our business objectives.
121
The following table summarizes our principal sources of liquidity:
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
2023 | 2024 | |||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 217,147 | $ | 1,361,083 | ||||
Short-term investments |
2,368 | | ||||||
Availability under existing facilities(1) |
925,076 | 4,406,181 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total liquidity |
$ | 1,144,591 | $ | 5,767,264 | ||||
|
|
|
|
(1) | Refers to secured commitments under the revolving credit facility and delayed draw term loan agreements. |
Revolving Credit Facility
On June 21, 2024, we entered into a credit agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as administrative agent and collateral agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders and issuing banks party thereto. The credit agreement matures on June 21, 2027. On October 7, 2024, the credit agreement was amended to provide for a $650 million senior revolving credit facility consisting of (i) a $500 million secured facility and (ii) a $150 million unsecured facility. On December 2, 2024, the credit agreement was further amended to provide for the $650 million senior revolving credit facility to be fully secured (the Revolving Credit Facility). Our Revolving Credit Facility may be increased by the sum of $300 million plus an unlimited amount that does not result in our total net leverage ratio exceeding 6.00x or our secured net leverage ratio exceeding 4.00x, pursuant to the exercise of an uncommitted accordion feature through which existing and new lenders may, at their option, agree to provide additional financing. The proceeds of our Revolving Credit Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and investments). Our Revolving Credit Facility includes a $175 million letter of credit sub-facility. As of December 31, 2024, we had not drawn from our Revolving Credit Facility. See Description of Material IndebtednessRevolving Credit Facility.
Amounts borrowed under our Revolving Credit Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 0.75% plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (a) the federal funds effective rate and (b) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin of 1.75% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three or six month interest period. We may voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under our Revolving Credit Facility at any time without premium or penalty, other than customary breakage costs.
Additional Secured Commitments
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 1.0
On July 30, 2023, one of our subsidiaries entered into a delayed draw term loan with various lenders and U.S. Bank, N.A., as the administrative agent. The agreement provides for a delayed draw term loan facility of up to $2.3 billion (as amended, the DDTL 1.0 Facility). All obligations under the DDTL 1.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by us and secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of the subsidiarys assets and a pledge of 100% of the equity interests in the subsidiary. Borrowings under the DDTL 1.0 Facility were used to finance a portion of the purchase consideration, fees, and expenses relating to the acquisition of computing equipment. See Description of Material IndebtednessDelayed Draw Term Loan 1.0 Facility.
On May 15, 2024, the interest rate was modified to Term SOFR plus 9.62% or the alternative base rate plus 8.62%. The principal amount of the loans is required to be repaid in quarterly installments, with the final balloon payment due on March 28, 2028. The loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at our option, and are
122
required to be prepaid upon the occurrence of an event of default or change of control of us, or with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions or incurrences of indebtedness. If the loans are prepaid prior to the fourth anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, in addition to principal and accrued interest, we are required to pay an applicable premium equal to (a) with respect to prepayments made prior to the third anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, an amount equal to the present value of future interest payments that would have accrued on the principal amount of the loans being prepaid through the third anniversary of the loan commitment termination date based on the interest rate in effect plus 1.00% of the principal amount of the loans being prepaid and (b) with respect to prepayments made between the third and fourth anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, an amount equal to 1.00% of the principal amount of the loans being prepaid.
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, we had $1.4 billion and $2.0 billion outstanding, respectively, under the DDTL 1.0 Facility. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the actual average interest rate being charged on the amounts borrowed against the DDTL 1.0 Facility was 14.12% and 14.11%, respectively.
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 2.0
On May 16, 2024, another of our subsidiaries entered into a second delayed draw term loan facility with various lenders and U.S. Bank, N.A. as the administrative agent. The agreement provides for a delayed draw term loan facility of up to $7.6 billion assuming the relevant collateralization requirements are met (as amended, the DDTL 2.0 Facility). Under the DDTL 2.0 Facility, additional loans may be drawn until June 2025, with an option to extend the commitment period by three months subject to lender consent. The total loans available are limited to a percentage of the depreciated purchase price of GPU servers and related infrastructure for the contract that the loans are being used to finance, with such percentage based upon the credit rating of the applicable customer. All obligations under the DDTL 2.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by us and secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of the subsidiarys assets and a pledge of 100% of the equity interests in the subsidiary. Borrowings under the DDTL 2.0 Facility will be used to finance a portion of the purchase consideration, fees, and expenses relating to the acquisition of computing equipment. See Description of Material IndebtednessDelayed Draw Term Loan 2.0 Facility.
Interest on outstanding borrowings on the DDTL 2.0 Facility accrued at a rate per annum equal to either, at our election, Term SOFR or the alternative base rate plus a spread based on the credit quality of the associated customer contracts. For specified investment-grade customers, the spread is equal to 6.00% for Term SOFR loans and 5.00% for base rate loans. For investment-grade customers, the spread is equal to 6.50% for Term SOFR loans and 5.50% for base rate loans. For non-investment-grade customer contracts, the spread is equal to 13.00% for Term SOFR loans and 12.00% for base rate loans.
The principal amount of the loans is required to be repaid in quarterly installments, beginning in October 2025, with the final balloon payment due five years after the applicable loan was funded. The loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at our option, and are required to be prepaid upon the occurrence of an event of default or change of control of us, or with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions or incurrences of indebtedness. If the loans are prepaid prior to the 30-month anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, in addition to principal and accrued interest, we are required to pay an applicable premium equal to the present value of future interest payments that would have accrued on the principal amount of the loans being prepaid through the 30-month anniversary of the loan commitment termination date based on the interest rate in effect.
As of December 31, 2024, we had borrowed $3.8 billion against the DDTL 2.0 Facility and $3.8 billion remained available for borrowing. As of December 31, 2024, the actual average interest rate being charged on the amounts borrowed against the DDTL 2.0 Facility was 10.53%.
123
2024 Term Loan Facility
On December 16, 2024, we entered into a credit agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as administrative agent and collateral agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $1.0 billion term loan facility consisting of (i) a $229.0 million secured facility and (ii) a $771.0 million unsecured facility. On December 16, 2024, we borrowed the full $1.0 billion of loans available under the 2024 Term Loan Facility. Our 2024 Term Loan Facility may be increased by $500.0 million pursuant to the exercise of an uncommitted accordion feature. The proceeds of our 2024 Term Loan Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and investments). As of December 31, 2024, $1.0 billion was outstanding under our 2024 Term Loan Facility. The 2024 Term Loan Facility will mature on December 16, 2025. See Description of Material Indebtedness2024 Term Loan Facility.
Amounts borrowed under our 2024 Term Loan Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 4.25% to 5.25%, depending on how long the loans are outstanding) plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (A) the federal funds effective rate and (B) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 5.25% to 6.25%, depending on how long the loans are outstanding) plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three, or six month interest period. The loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at our option, and are required to be prepaid upon the occurrence of an event of default, or with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions, incurrences of indebtedness or equity issuances, including a requirement to be prepaid with some or all of the proceeds of this offering.
Additional Unsecured Commitments
2025 Term Loan Facility
On March 7, 2025, we entered into the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement with Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as administrative agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $300.0 million unsecured term loan facility. The obligations under our 2025 Term Loan Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by our subsidiary guarantors as described in the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement. Amounts borrowed under the 2025 Term Loan Facility may only be borrowed in a single funding. As the date of this prospectus, there have been no borrowings under the 2025 Term Loan Facility. The proceeds of our 2025 Term Loan Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and other investments). The 2025 Term Loan Facility will mature on December 16, 2025. See Description of Material Indebtedness2025 Term Loan Facility.
Amounts borrowed under our 2025 Term Loan Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 0.75% plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (A) the federal funds effective rate and (B) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin of 1.75% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three, or six month interest period plus, in the case of either of clauses (a) or (b), a fee of 2.25% payable to the lenders thereof. Once drawn, the loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at our option, and are required to be prepaid with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions, incurrences of indebtedness or equity issuances, including a requirement to be prepaid with some or all of the proceeds of this offering. All unfunded commitments of the lenders under the 2025 Term Loan Facility shall terminate upon the earlier to occur of (i) April 7, 2025 and (ii) the closing of this offering.
124
Cash Flows
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||
Net cash provided by operating activities |
$ | 910 | $ | 1,832,650 | $ | 2,749,168 | ||||||
Net cash used in investing activities |
(79,183 | ) | (3,147,710 | ) | (8,658,058 | ) | ||||||
Net cash provided by financing activities |
81,454 | 1,787,751 | 7,464,648 |
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities was $2.7 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024 as compared to $1.8 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was driven by cash received for upfront payments from our committed contracts from new and expanded customer contracts, as well as higher accounts payable and accrued expenses due to the growth of our business and timing of accrual payments. The increase was partially offset by higher cash payments and an increase in accounts receivable.
Net cash provided by operating activities was $1.8 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023, as compared to $1 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase was driven by cash received for upfront payments from our committed contracts due to the increased demand for both new and expanded customer contracts.
Investing Activities
Net cash used in investing activities was $8.7 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024, as compared to $3.1 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was driven by increased capital investments in our infrastructure, including our GPU fleet, networking equipment, and software development. The increase was partially offset by sales and maturities of marketable securities and available-for-sale marketable securities.
Net cash used in investing activities was $3.1 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023 as compared to $79 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase was driven by increased capital investments in our infrastructure, including our GPU fleet, networking equipment, and software development.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities was $7.5 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024, as compared to $1.8 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was driven by borrowings under our delayed draw term loans, proceeds from the issuance of our Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock, and proceeds from the issuance of our 2024 Term Loan Facility. The increase was partially offset by the settlement of our 2022 Senior Secured Note and higher payments on debt.
Net cash provided by financing activities was $1.8 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023, as compared to $81 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase was driven by borrowings under our DDTL 1.0 Facility and proceeds from the issuance of our Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock.
Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
We did not have during the periods presented, and we do not currently have, any off-balance sheet financing arrangements or any relationships with unconsolidated entities or financial partnerships, including entities sometimes referred to as structured finance or special purpose entities, that were established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements or other contractually narrow or limited purposes.
125
Critical Accounting Estimates
Revenue Recognition
We generate revenue from the delivery of cloud computing services. Revenue is recognized when a customer obtains control of promised goods or services are delivered. The amount of revenue recognized reflects the consideration that we expect to receive in exchange for these goods or services. We recognize revenue in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification (ASC), Topic 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, or ASC 606. We account for revenue by applying the following steps:
1. | Identification of the contract, or contracts, with the customer. |
2. | Identification of the performance obligations in the contract. |
3. | Determination of the transaction price. |
4. | Allocation of the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract. |
5. | Recognition of the revenue when, or as, a performance obligation is satisfied. |
We allocate the total transaction price to each distinct performance obligation in an arrangement containing multiple performance obligations on a relative stand-alone selling price (SSP) basis. The SSP reflects the price we would charge for a specific service if it were sold separately in similar circumstances and to similar customers. If a contract contains a single performance obligation, no allocation is required.
Revenue includes both committed contracts and on-demand access. Committed contracts generally consist of two stand-ready obligations to process transactions, store data, and run customers programs over a specified period, one being the compute infrastructure services and the other being the related support services. As these are both delivered ratably and over the same term, they are accounted for as one combined performance obligation. As a result, revenue is recognized ratably over the contract period. On-demand access is provided to customers on a consumption basis and is billed monthly in arrears based on usage of compute, storage, and other services in the period. As these contracts include an unknown quantity of transactions at a fixed contractual rate per transaction executed on a monthly basis, the contract price is deemed variable. We allocate the variable consideration to the month in which we have the contractual right to bill under the contract as this represents the amount of consideration to which we expect to be entitled for the transfer of services during that month.
Income Taxes
Management makes estimates, assumptions, and judgments to determine our provision for income taxes, deferred tax assets and liabilities, and any valuation allowance recorded against deferred tax assets. We recognize a deferred tax asset when it is more likely than not that the asset will be realized. We regularly review our deferred tax assets for recoverability and establish a valuation based upon historical losses, projected future taxable income and the expected timing of the reversals of existing temporary differences. To the extent we increase or decrease the allowance in a period, we recognize the change in the allowance within Provision for (benefit from) income taxes in the audited consolidated statements of operations. Unforeseen changes in tax rates and tax laws, as well as differences in the projected taxable income as compared to actual taxable income, may affect these estimates.
We believe that there is a reasonable possibility that sufficient positive evidence may become available in the near-term to allow us to reach a conclusion that a portion of the valuation allowance may no longer be needed. If, as a result of the above, all or a portion of the valuation allowance is released, we would recognize a decrease to income tax expense for the period during which such release is recorded. The timing and amount of the valuation allowance release, if any, are subject to change on the basis of the level of profitability, if any, that we are able to actually achieve. Estimates of future taxable income are based on assumptions that are consistent with our plans.
126
We calculate the current and deferred income tax provision based on estimates and assumptions that could differ from the actual results reflected in income tax returns filed in subsequent years and record adjustments based on filed tax returns when identified. The amount of income taxes paid is subject to examination by U.S. federal and state tax authorities.
Common Stock Valuations
The fair value of common stock underlying our stock-based awards has historically been determined by our board of directors, with input from management and contemporaneous third-party valuations. We believe that our board of directors has the relevant experience and expertise to determine the fair value of our common stock. Given the absence of a public trading market of our common stock, and in accordance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Practice Aid, Valuation of Privately-Held Company Equity Securities Issued as Compensation, our board of directors exercised reasonable judgment and considered numerous objective and subjective factors to determine the best estimate of the fair value of our common stock at each grant date. These factors included:
| contemporaneous valuations of our common stock performed by independent third-party specialists; |
| the prices, rights, preferences, and privileges of our redeemable convertible preferred stock relative to those of our common stock; |
| the prices paid for common or convertible preferred stock sold to third-party investors by us and in secondary transactions for shares repurchased by us in arms-length transactions, including any tender offers; |
| the lack of marketability inherent in our common stock and involving securities in a private company; |
| our actual operating and financial performance and estimated trends and prospects for our future performance; |
| our stage of development; |
| the hiring of key personnel and the experience of our management; |
| the likelihood of achieving a liquidity event, such as an initial public offering (IPO), direct listing, or sale of our company, given prevailing market conditions; |
| the market performance of comparable publicly traded companies; and |
| U.S. and global capital market conditions. |
In valuing our common stock, the fair value of our business was determined using various valuation methods, including combinations of income and market approaches, with input from management. The income approach estimates value based on the expectation of future cash flows that we may generate. These future cash flows are discounted to their present values using a discount rate derived from an analysis of the cost of capital of comparable publicly traded companies in our industry or similar business operations as of each valuation date, adjusted to reflect the inherent risks in our cash flows. The market approach estimates value based on a comparison of the subject company to comparable public companies in a similar line of business and may also include backsolves, which infers our value from recent financing rounds or tender offers. From these comparable companies, a representative market value multiple is determined and then applied to the subject companys financial forecasts to estimate its value.
For each valuation, the fair value of our business determined by the income and market approaches was then allocated to the common stock using either the option-pricing method (OPM), or a hybrid of the probability-weighted expected return method (PWERM) and OPM methods. The OPM is based on the Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing model, which identifies a range of possible future outcomes, each with an associated probability. This method is appropriate when the range of possible future outcomes is difficult to predict,
127
resulting in highly speculative forecasts. PWERM involves a forward-looking analysis of potential future outcomes for the enterprise, including an IPO and other market-based outcomes. After determining and allocating the equity value to the various classes of securities, a discount for lack of marketability (DLOM) is applied to arrive at the fair value of our common stock. The DLOM reflects the theory that private company stockholders have limited opportunities to sell their stock, and any such sale would involve significant transaction costs, thereby reducing the overall fair market value.
In addition, we also considered any secondary transactions involving our capital stock. In evaluating those transactions, we took into account the facts and circumstances of each transaction to determine the extent to which they represented a fair value exchange and assigned the transactions an appropriate weighting in the valuation of our common stock. Factors considered include the number of different buyers and sellers, transaction volume, timing relative to the valuation date, whether the transactions occurred between willing and unrelated parties, and whether the transactions involved investors with access to our financial information.
The application of these approaches and methodologies involves the use of highly complex and subjective estimates, judgments, and assumptions, such as those regarding our expected future revenue, expenses, and cash flows; discount rates; market multiples; the selection of comparable public companies; and the probability and timing of possible future events. Changes in any or all of these estimates and assumptions, or the relationships between those assumptions, impact our valuations as of each valuation date and may have a significant impact on the valuation of our common stock.
For valuations after the closing of this offering, our board of directors will determine the fair value of each share of underlying our Class A common stock based on the closing price of our Class A common stock on the date of grant. Future expense amounts for any particular period could be affected by changes in our assumptions or market conditions.
We estimate the fair value of stock options granted to employees and directors using the Black-Scholes option-pricing model. The fair value of stock options that are expected to vest is recognized as stock-based compensation expense on a straight-line basis over the requisite service period. The fair value of RSUs is estimated based on the fair market value of our common stock on the date of grant. We grant RSUs that vest upon the satisfaction of both a service-based vesting condition and a performance-based vesting condition. The fair value of RSUs that are expected to vest is recognized as stock-based compensation expense over the requisite service period, using the accelerated attribution method, once the performance-based vesting condition becomes probable of being achieved. As of December 31, 2024, no stock-based compensation expense had been recognized for RSUs because the performance-based vesting condition had not been probable of being satisfied.
Upon the closing of this offering, we may recognize a significant non-cash cumulative stock-based compensation charge for stock-based awards for which the service-based vesting condition has been satisfied. As of December 31, 2024, the total unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to unvested RSUs was $600 million, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of two years. Of that amount, approximately $78 million relates to RSUs for which the service-based vesting condition had been satisfied or partially satisfied as of December 31, 2024, calculated using the accelerated attribution method. We expect to recognize the remaining unrecognized non-cash compensation expense for stock-based awards that were outstanding as of the closing of this offering ratably, using the accelerated attribution method, net of forfeitures, as the service-based vesting condition is satisfied. Additionally, as of December 31, 2024, unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to unvested stock options was $91 million, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of three years.
Subsequent to December 31, 2024, our board of directors approved grants of 8,753,320 RSUs. Based on the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, we currently estimate that the unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to these RSUs will be approximately $450 million. This estimate is preliminary, subject to change, and may differ materially from the final amount recognized depending
128
on factors such as the actual offering price and other valuation inputs. These RSUs will vest upon satisfaction of both a service-based and performance-based vesting condition. For stock-based awards granted after the closing of this offering, we expect to record stock-based compensation expense on a straight-line basis over the requisite service period of the awards, as these awards are anticipated to include no additional vesting conditions beyond a graded vesting service condition.
Valuation of Derivatives and Warrants
We are involved in certain debt financing transactions that contain embedded derivatives and include the issuance of common stock warrants. We measured the fair value of the embedded derivatives on the date of issuance and recognized derivative liabilities. The derivative liabilities are remeasured to fair value each reporting period until settlement or extinguishment, with changes in the fair value recorded in loss on fair value adjustments in the consolidated statements of operations.
We account for warrants issued in connection with debt financings as either equity-classified or liability-classified instruments based on an assessment of the warrants specific terms at the time of issuance for each warrant and as of each subsequent reporting period while the warrants are outstanding. For equity-classified warrants, the relative fair value of the warrants at issuance is recorded in additional paid-in capital in the consolidated balance sheets and no changes in fair value are recognized after the issuance date. For liability-classified warrants, the relative fair value of the warrants at issuance is included within other derivative and warrant liabilities in the consolidated balance sheets and warrants are measured at fair value each period with changes in fair value recorded in loss on fair value adjustment to warrants in the audited consolidated statements of operations.
We may continue to adjust the derivative liabilities and warrant liabilities for changes in fair value until the earlier of conversions, exercise, or expirations. The fair value measurement of derivative liabilities and warrant liabilities are measured using unobservable inputs that require a high level of judgment to determine fair value. We estimate the fair value of derivative liabilities and warrant liabilities using a binomial lattice approach that incorporates a Monte Carlo simulation that considers our future stock price.
Leases
We determine if an arrangement meets the definition of a lease at the inception of the lease, with leases classified at commencement as either operating or finance leases. Operating leases are reported separately in our audited consolidated balance sheets. Finance leases are recognized within property and equipment, net, and as a finance liability separately presented in our audited consolidated balance sheets.
Right-of-use (ROU) assets represent our right to use an underlying asset for the lease term and lease liabilities represent our obligation to make lease payments arising from the lease during the lease term. ROU assets are measured based on the discounted present value of the remaining lease payments, initial direct costs incurred, and prepaid lease payments, excluding lease incentives received prior to lease commencement. Lease liabilities are measured based on the discounted present value of the remaining lease payments at commencement date. We utilize our incremental borrowing rate (IBR) to discount the present value of the remaining lease payments. The IBR is based on our estimated rate of interest for a collateralized borrowing with a similar term and payments as the lease.
Many of our leases include escalation clauses, renewal options and termination options that are factored into the determination of lease payments when reasonably certain that we would exercise that option. Certain future minimum lease payments due under the operating lease agreements contain rent-free periods or escalating rent payment provisions. Our finance leases generally include purchase options and declining minimum payments. Short-term leases with an initial term of 12 months or less are not recorded on the balance sheets.
129
We account for lease components and non-lease components as a single lease component. Payments under our lease agreements are primarily fixed. However, certain lease agreements contain variable payments, which are expensed as incurred and not included in the ROU assets and lease liabilities. Variable lease payments are mainly composed of common area maintenance, utilities, real estate taxes, and payments affected by changes in indexes.
Operating leases are expensed on a straight-line basis over the lease term. The expense for finance leases includes both interest and amortization expense components, with the interest component calculated based on the effective interest method over the lease term and the amortization component calculated based on the straight-line amortization of the ROU asset over the lease term.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
See the sections titled Overview and Summary of Significant Accounting PoliciesRecent Accounting Pronouncements Adopted and Recent Accounting Pronouncements Not Yet Adopted in Note 1 to our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for more information.
JOBS Act Accounting Election
We will be treated as an emerging growth company (EGC), as defined in the JOBS Act for certain purposes until the earlier of the date on which we complete this offering or December 31, 2025. The JOBS Act allows EGCs to take advantage of an extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting pronouncements applicable to public companies and delay adoption of such pronouncements until they are made applicable to private companies. The JOBS Act does not preclude an EGC from early adopting new or revised accounting standards. We have elected to use extended transition periods permissible under the JOBS Act, while also early adopting certain accounting pronouncements. When we cease to be an emerging growth company, we will no longer be able to benefit from these exemptions or the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards.
Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
Neither we nor our independent registered public accounting firm were required to, and therefore did not perform, an evaluation of our internal control over financial reporting as of or for any period included in our financial statements, nor any period subsequent in accordance with the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. However, while preparing the financial statements that are included elsewhere in this prospectus, we identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
The material weaknesses identified pertained to the lack of effectively designed, implemented, and maintained IT general controls over tools and applications that support our financial reporting processes; insufficient segregation of duties across financially relevant functions, and lack of sufficient number of qualified personnel within our accounting, finance, and operations functions who possessed an appropriate level of expertise to provide reasonable assurance that transactions were being appropriately recorded and disclosed. We have concluded that these material weaknesses existed because we did not have the necessary business processes, systems, personnel and related internal controls. The deficiencies identified did not result in a material misstatement to our financial statements.
We have taken and will continue to take action to remediate these material weaknesses, including:
| implementation of IT general controls to manage access and program changes within our IT environment; |
130
| implementation of processes and controls to better identify and manage segregation of duties risks; |
| continued hiring of additional accounting and finance resources with appropriate and sufficient technical expertise and to better allow for segregation of conflicting duties; and |
| consulting with experts on technical accounting matters, internal controls, and in the preparation of our financial statements. |
We will not be able to fully remediate these material weaknesses until these steps have been completed and have been operating effectively for a sufficient period of time. Additionally, as stated above, we have not performed an evaluation of our internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we cannot ensure that we have identified all, or that we will not in the future have additional, material weaknesses. Material weaknesses may still exist when we report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as required under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, beginning with our second annual report after the completion of this offering.
Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
We are exposed to market risk in the ordinary course of our business. Market risk represents the risk of loss that may impact our financial position due to adverse changes in financial market prices and rates. Our market risk exposure is primarily the result of fluctuations in interest rates.
Interest Rate Risk
As of December 31, 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities of $1.4 billion. In addition, we had $704 million of restricted cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities consisting of bank deposits related to collateralized loan facilities and letters of credit. Our cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities are held for working capital purposes. We do not enter into investments for trading or speculative purposes.
Our exposure to market risk for changes in interest rates relates primarily to our DDTL 1.0 Facility, DDTL 2.0 Facility, 2024 Term Loan Facility, and Revolving Credit Facility (described above), which bear floating interest rates, and a rising interest rate environment may increase the amount of interest paid on these loans. For the year ended December 31, 2024, each 100-basis point increase or decrease in interest rates would have increased or decreased our interest expense related to these facilities by approximately $31 million.
131
Overview
CoreWeave powers the creation and delivery of the intelligence that drives innovation.
We are the AI HyperscalerTM driving the AI revolution. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform consists of our proprietary software and cloud services that deliver the software and software intelligence needed to manage complex AI infrastructure at scale. Our platform supports the development and use of ground-breaking models and the delivery of the next generation of AI applications that are changing the way we live and work across the globeour platform is trusted by some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises, including Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, NVIDIA, and OpenAI.
We believe AI is the next frontier for innovation in technology, driving productivity and efficiency gains and enabling new business models in nearly every industry and organization. According to IDC, AI will generate a cumulative global economic impact of $20 trillion, or 3.5% of global GDP, by 2030. The generalized cloud infrastructure that drove the cloud revolution beginning in the 2000s was built to host websites, databases, and SaaS apps that have fundamentally different needs than the high performance requirements of AI. As workloads and technologies evolve, so too must the infrastructure and cloud software and services that power them. We believe we are at the start of a new cloud era that will drive the AI revolution. The opportunity for a purpose-built AI cloud platform, including the infrastructure and integrated software, is massive. Based on market research from Bloomberg Intelligence, total spending on AI inference/fine-tuning, AI workload monitoring, and training infrastructure, including AI servers, AI storage, training compute, cloud workloads, and networking, will reach approximately $399 billion by 2028. For AI to reach its full potential, it needs a purpose-built AI cloud platform with infrastructure and managed cloud services that are delivered in an efficient, automated, and highly performant way. Enter CoreWeave, the AI HyperscalerTM.
We purpose-built our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to be the infrastructure and application platform for AI. Our platform manages the complexity of engineering, assembling, running, and monitoring state-of-the-art infrastructure at a massive scale to deliver high performance and efficiency to AI workloads. Through our proprietary software capabilities, we enable our customers to achieve substantially higher total system performance and more favorable uptime relative to other AI offerings within existing infrastructure cloud environments and unlock speed at scale. By delivering more compute cycles to AI workloads and thereby reducing the time required to train models, our capabilities can significantly accelerate the time to solution for customers in the ongoing hyper-competitive race to build the next bleeding-edge AI models. For example, in June 2023, our NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU training cluster completed the MLPerf benchmark test (which benchmarks how quickly a system can train a model from scratch) in eleven minutesa record and 29 times faster than the next best competitor at the time of the benchmark test.
These efficiencies also extend from training to inference use cases, as our CoreWeave Cloud Platform significantly improves both run-time efficiency for inference workloads and enables overall higher AI application uptime. These performance gains help to ensure lower performance-adjusted costs and a superior end-user experience. The supercomputers we build to power our platform are optimized to support many types of AI workloads, and they are augmented by our suite of cloud services to deliver meaningful time and cost savings to customers through our orchestration, automation, and monitoring capabilities.
Our multidisciplinary, customer-centric team has a proven ability to conceptualize, design, and implement solutions to solve the most complex engineering challenges in the pursuit of furthering AI. We hire individuals who help contribute to and maintain a culture centered around solving the most complex AI infrastructure scaling, performance, and reliability challenges.
Customers utilize our platform through a set of cloud services comprising Infrastructure Services, Managed Software Services, and Application Software Services, all augmented by our Mission Control and Observability
132
software. Our comprehensive and integrated cloud services work together as a suite to deliver state-of-the-art compute, networking, and storage. These services enable the provisioning of infrastructure, the orchestration of workloads, and the proactive monitoring of our customers training and inference environments to increase performance and minimize interruptions.
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is hosted in our distributed network of active purpose-built data centers that are interconnected using low latency connections to major metropolitan areas, and incorporate state-of-the-art data center networking equipment, enhanced access to power and, where appropriate, the latest liquid cooling technologies.
As of December 31, 2022, we had three data centers running more than 17,000 GPUs in total and supported by approximately 10 MW of active power, which grew to 10 data centers running more than 53,000 GPUs in total and supported by more than 70 MW of active power as of December 31, 2023, and grew further to 32 data centers running more than 250,000 GPUs in total and supported by more than 360 MW of active power as of December 31, 2024. Our total contracted power extends to approximately 1.3 GW as of December 31, 2024, which we expect to roll out over the coming years.
We benefit from robust collaborations with leading chipmakers, OEMs, and software providers to supply us with infrastructure components and other products. We have a proven track record of rapidly expanding our power capacity to support the growth of our data center footprint along with our collection of managed cloud services. We deploy a sophisticated financing strategy and have efficiently financed the development of additional compute capacity through the use of asset-backed debt, having raised total commitments of $12.9 billion in debt through December 31, 2024 to support the development of our platform.
Our customers include some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises the builders and integrators of AI who depend on our platform for their core products and most promising innovations. We deliver significant benefits to our customers in terms of overall performance, time to market, and reduced cost of ownership, which results in our customers making large, long-term initial commitments and expanding those commitments with us over time. The vast majority of our revenue today is from multi-year committed contracts, whereby a customer purchases access to our platform over the contract term on a take-or-pay basis. We also sell access to our platform on an on-demand basis through a pay-as-you-go model. As of December 31, 2024, we had $15.1 billion of remaining performance obligations reflecting an increase of 53%, from $9.9 billion as of December 31, 2023. Microsoft, our largest customer for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, will represent less than 50% of our expected future committed contract revenues when combining our RPO balance of $15.1 billion as of December 31, 2024 and up to $11.55 billion of future revenue from our recently signed Master Services Agreement with OpenAI, as described herein.
Our ability to abstract away the complexity our customers would face in assembling, managing, and deploying this infrastructure themselves establishes us as a critical partner and leads to long-term, durable relationships that have the potential to expand over time. As evidence of this, three of our top five committed contract customers by TCV as of December 31, 2024 signed agreements for additional capacity within 12 months of their respective initial purchase dates. These agreements, measured during each respective 12-month period from the initial date of signing, represent a cumulative increase of approximately $7.8 billion in committed spend and a multiple of approximately 4x on initial contract value. Our deep relationships with customers are a competitive advantage, and our first-to-market track record with highly performant technology gives customers confidence in choosing CoreWeave.
Some of the most ambitious compute-intensive projects in the world are powered by our platform, and our business has grown rapidly since our inception. Our revenue was $16 million, $229 million, and $1.9 billion for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 1,346% and 737%, respectively. During these periods, we continued to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a result, our net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $31
133
million, $594 million, and $863 million, respectively. Our adjusted net loss for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 was $27 million, $45 million, and $65 million, respectively. See the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsNon-GAAP Financial Measures for information regarding our use of adjusted net (loss) income and a reconciliation of net loss to adjusted net (loss) income.
Industry Background
Over the past five decades, technology has experienced multiple secular shifts that have revolutionized productivity. In the 1960s, mainframes introduced compute and storage technology to hundreds of thousands of organizations and helped to introduce new product capabilities such as high-volume transaction processing in banking. In the 1980s, the development of client-server architecture dramatically reduced the cost of compute, which enabled the personal computer (PC) revolution and resulted in widespread access to PCs and significant productivity gains. In the 1990s, the internet fundamentally changed the way people worked, interacted, shopped, and learned. In the 2000s and 2010s, mobile and cloud adoption unlocked new customer and developer experiences and led to a fundamental improvement in the flexibility of compute, creating millions of new digital products and experiences. AI represents the next major evolution of technology, and its impact is potentially greater than these transformational shifts of the past. AI is expected to support tens of billions of connected users, devices and applications. It is also expected to penetrate half of all U.S. households in three years, based on data demonstrating that the time to adoption by 50% of U.S. households of new technology has halved each cycle, measured in years. This expected penetration time is six times faster than PC adoption and two times faster than mobile adoption, and, since 2012, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially, doubling every three to four months. It is akin to a new industrial revolution delivering significant productivity gains, enabling new products that are poised to radically reshape and transform industries, and helping organizations become far more efficient.
Demand and Supply Side Factors Enabling AI
A combination of demand and supply side factors is enabling the massive and unprecedented growth of AI and powering the new industrial revolution.
Demand Side Factors
| AI has advanced significantly. There is a proliferation of new use cases as AI models become more advanced and their capabilities extend beyond simple prediction and rules-based pattern recognition, to foundational model-based applications with human-like reasoning and judgment capabilities. AI is moving beyond generative AI, which is focused on content creation, to agentic AI that takes action to assist and advise across myriads of use cases. |
| AI is significantly improving outcomes for businesses and individuals. AI is enabling a tectonic shift in productivity that is fundamentally changing the way we interact with technology on a daily basis and is driving material impacts such as faster drug discovery, personalized education, shorter software development cycles, better sales and customer support, and a multitude of other use cases. AI is also helping to narrow the skills gap that exists in specialized, yet highly in-demand occupations, including engineering, law, design, and medicine. |
| AI is a strategic priority for organizations. AI has become a primary source of competitive differentiation. Management teams and boards are reshaping their technology budgets and rearchitecting their broader corporate strategies through the lens of AI as a strategic imperative. |
Supply Side Factors
| Foundational models are pervasive and effective. The explosion of commercially available foundational models, both proprietary and open-source, is democratizing access to AI and enabling |
134
more enterprises to develop AI products and services. Furthermore, continued investments in and the resulting effects of scaling have made these models more impactful and useful. Availability of performant and efficient cloud infrastructure is critical to run these models effectively. |
| The amount of data has grown rapidly. The vast amount of enterprise data and accessible public data is being further supplemented by the emergence and rapid growth of AI-generated synthetic data, creating a massive volume of data used to build and train AI models. Enormous amounts of compute and storage capacity will be required to process this data so that it can be deployed for AI use cases. |
| Infrastructure has evolved to enable AI workloads. New generations of infrastructure deliver significantly greater performance for AI workloads, with much greater speed and at dramatically lower cost, which in turn spurs more innovation as the infrastructure becomes more accessible. GPU performance, which powers AI model training and inference, has increased 7,000 times over the past two decades. |
Infrastructure is the Key Enabler of AI
To unlock the full potential of AI, continuous improvements in model architecture, access to data, and scalable, specialized, high-performance compute infrastructure are essential. We believe that specialized compute infrastructure is the key enabler that AI labs and AI enterprises need to train models, perform inference faster at scale, and accelerate their time to market. It has become generally accepted that there is a direct relationship between compute resources (FLOPs, training, and testing time) and model output quality. There has been a dramatic increase in the computational resources dedicated to training and hosting state-of-the-art AI models, with top models released by OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta AI generally requiring exponentially greater quantities of compute compared to prior model generations to unlock performance gains.
This race towards more performant models and the resulting demand for increasingly significant amounts of compute resources should come as no surprise. According to various papers that analyze scaling laws such as Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models, as compute infrastructure scales, the performance of the foundational models also increases. This principle applies for both training and inference: it states that the more compute power available, the better both the models and applications built on top of them become. To achieve greater compute capabilities and succeed in AI, AI labs and AI enterprises require specialized compute platforms that run at superior performance and efficiency and maximize the utilization of the underlying infrastructure.
Delivering Performant AI Infrastructure is Immensely Challenging
The highly specialized infrastructure that is required to unlock the potential of AI is immensely challenging to build and operate, especially at scale. Additionally, the software architectures utilized in generalized clouds for provisioning, orchestrating, and running AI workloads are neither purpose-built nor suitable for AI and cannot deliver the required efficiency and performance. The scale of the required infrastructure is staggering, with tens of thousands of GPUs, thousands of miles of high-speed networking cables, and hundreds of thousands of interconnects coming together to create superclusters for training and serving AI models, as well as hundreds of MW of power and petabytes of total storage. Depending on the configuration of the data center, a single 32,000-GPU cluster may require the deployment of approximately 600 miles of fiber cables and around 80,000 fiber connections. Acquiring the necessary high-performance components requires managing a complex global supply chain, and configuring and deploying those components in data centers requires deep operational experience. The data centers themselves need to be specifically designed for high-performance compute, which requires specialized heat management capabilities such as liquid cooling, with heat exchangers and subfloors to support high density racks and high power supply per rack.
Software is Critical to Unlocking the Performance and Efficiency of AI Infrastructure
AI supercomputers are some of the most complex computing machines to have ever been created, requiring purpose-built software to unlock performance and efficiency at massive scale. These supercomputers require
135
software to test and validate each component and to provision the infrastructure so that compute-intensive workloads can run with minimal downtime. Moreover, AI supercomputers often require multiple specialized orchestration frameworks to schedule complex workloads, which frequently need to be paired with substantial engineering resources. Once operational, these AI workloads put enormous pressure on infrastructure, frequently leading to high rates of component failures that cause training and inference jobs to fail, and thus require constant monitoring to manage and reduce failures and downtime. While training foundational models, failure of a single system component adversely impacts the entire cluster, translating to either significantly reduced training performance or, more commonly, failure of the entire job. High failure rates result in a significant loss of efficiency and increased cost if not properly monitored and managed.
AI Infrastructure Suffers from an MFU Efficiency Gap
Designing, provisioning, and maintaining the health of infrastructure is highly complex. Additionally, significant inefficiencies are associated with scheduling AI workloads on infrastructure at scale. Together, these complexities substantially increase the difficulty of maximizing the compute potential of infrastructure components, as measured by the MFU of the chips. MFU is a measure of the observed throughput compared to the theoretical system maximum if it operates at peak FLOPs. The complexity of managing AI infrastructure means that a majority of the compute capacity embedded in GPUs is lost to system inefficiencies, with empirical evidence suggesting observed levels of performance within the 35% to 45% range. Minimizing the efficiency gap between the approximately 35% and the theoretical 100% represents a significant opportunity for unlocking AI infrastructure performance potential and therefore the improvement in quality of AI overall. Moreover, the complexity of managing this high-performance infrastructure as it scales increases exponentially, making it increasingly challenging to extract high MFU and efficiency out of larger GPU clusters, which is what the market is currently demanding.
AI Requires a Purpose-Built Cloud
The complexity and resource demands of AI workloads necessitate that they run in a cloud environment purpose-built for AI, with high-performance infrastructure as well as software and application services that alleviate the specific complexities and inefficiencies associated with running training and inference jobs.
136
Generalized clouds operated by hyperscalers were not built to serve the specific requirements of AI. These clouds were created over a decade ago and were designed for general purpose use cases such as search, e-commerce, generalized web-hosting, and databases, and relied on CPU-based web-scale compute, and thus are not optimal for the high compute intensity requirements of AI.
Organizations need access to a fundamentally different GPU-based compute infrastructure that is built from the ground-up for AI and proven to perform at the scale and efficiency required to deliver AI. Cloud platforms therefore need to be fundamentally reimagined and purpose-built to deliver the capacity, performance, storage, and scalability requirements of AI workloads and increase the MFU of the underlying infrastructure.
Requirements of the AI Cloud
We believe the AI cloud requires a first-principles reimagining of how infrastructure is built, with the following requirements:
| Superior infrastructure performance and efficiency. The AI cloud should be able to extract the maximum possible output from the underlying GPUs and other infrastructure components. To achieve this, it needs to deliver a combination of performance and resiliency to ensure maximum AI training and inference uptime. |
| Maximize performance. The AI cloud should run the latest and highest performance components and leverage an optimized technology stack that reduces latency and overhead to increase performance. Generalized clouds include virtualized compute, storage, and networking, and a host of managed services that are not required by AI workloads and typically consume additional resources, degrading performance. |
| Minimize downtime and failure rates. The AI cloud should be able to identify and rapidly solve performance issues and prevent failures before they occur. AI workloads push infrastructure to its limits, causing nodes to fail and inducing storage, memory, and network latencies, which interrupt training runs. This creates delays and increases the cost of compute. GPU offerings from generalized clouds do not have capabilities required for high-performance AI workloads due to their CPU-centric heritage. CPU-based clouds lack the remediation capabilities, such as predictive maintenance and proactive health monitoring, needed to avoid the types of issues and outages experienced by GPU nodes, which are significantly more complex than CPU nodes. Traditional workload migrations that shift jobs away from impacted compute nodes in CPU-based clouds do not work for GPU-based infrastructure, which has far greater data and memory dependencies and job restart complexities. Moreover, due to their built-in layers of abstraction (e.g., virtualization), CPU-based clouds lack the complete node level visibility and the automation required to rapidly detect and remediate issues in GPU-based infrastructure. |
| Rapid access to the latest advancements in infrastructure. AI advancement is limited by the infrastructure that supports it. To continuously push the AI frontier, customers should be able to access the latest advancements in technology for each component of their AI infrastructure. Bleeding-edge AI training workloads today benefit from running on the latest GPUs, CPUs, and DPUs, from the most advanced storage, networking, and memory, and from high-density liquid-cooled data center racks to maximize performance and efficiency. Moreover, the latest advancements in infrastructure technology are not in and of themselves enough. Customers benefit from an integrated solution that enables seamless deployment, automation, orchestration and monitoring of their infrastructure and workloads. |
| Immediate out-of-the-box functionality. The AI cloud should deliver an autonomous, self-service approach with seamless deployment and automation, enabling developers and researchers to focus on delivering cutting-edge AI innovations. If not set up in the right way, due to the newness and the sheer scale of AI infrastructure deployments, GPU acceptance, provisioning, burn-in and testing issues can take months, which can significantly delay time to solution for the latest AI models and the products |
137
built on top of them. Moreover, when infrastructure is ready, it typically takes significant involvement from engineering resources to consume the infrastructure and deploy workloads due to a lack of provisioning automation. The AI cloud should be built to minimize delays and resource intensity and work out-of-the-box at scale. |
| Ability to run and dynamically balance all types of AI workloads. The AI cloud should incorporate dynamic workload scheduling and balancing between inference and training to optimize resource utilization and performance. At present, many AI developers use Slurm and Kubernetes as their orchestration and scheduling frameworks for training and inference compute, respectively, and are forced to run separate pools of capacity for each. This results in underutilization of their infrastructure, which results in a material reduction of efficiency and increase in cost. Customers should be able to host a wide variety of AI workloads such as training and inference on the same clusters concurrently and seamlessly. |
| Flexibility and customization with a specialized technology stack. Generalized cloud environments lack the flexibility to meet the specialized needs of AI applications, often forcing customers into rigid, predefined solutions. The AI cloud should be built to enable maximum composability, offering customers the freedom to tailor infrastructure and operational setup around their unique set of design requirements. Customers need a trusted partner with a track record of delivering performant and efficient AI cloud services at massive scale. |
| Lower performance-adjusted cost. The AI cloud should deliver superior value by prioritizing performance and efficiency to help ensure that customers get the maximum utilization out of their infrastructure investments. Generalized clouds that are not purpose-built for AI burden customers running AI workloads with lengthy setup times, higher failure rate, longer downtime, and manual engineering workflows. As a result, running AI workloads on them requires more time, effort, and compute, degrading cost relative to performance. |
We believe the AI revolution requires a cloud that is performant, efficient, resilient, and purpose-built for AI. Todays leading AI labs and AI enterprises demand high-performance and cost-efficient compute, storage, networking, and managed software services integrated into a cloud platform that enables them to bring their innovations to market faster by maximizing the utilization of their infrastructure and training and deploying models seamlessly and out-of-the box.
Our Solution
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is an integrated solution that is purpose-built for running AI workloads such as model training and inference at maximum performance and efficiency. It includes Infrastructure Services, Managed Software Services, and Application Software Services, all of which are augmented by our Mission Control and Observability software. Our proprietary software enables the provisioning of infrastructure, the orchestration of workloads, and the monitoring of our customers training and inference environments to enable high availability and minimize downtime. Built on a microservices-based architecture, the components of our platform are fully fungible and composable. Customers can configure their use of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to best fit their needs. For instance, they can choose to bring their own storage or managed software services or run our respective solutions, and choose the type and scale of deployment that best suits their workloads. This flexibility allows our customers to customize their use of our platform without compromising performance or efficiency. We have designed security as a fundamental component across our platform and technology stack. We leverage advanced security capabilities such as XDR and DLP, adhere to industry leading security standards such as SOC2 and ISO 27001, and employ our in-house information security teams to ensure that our customers operate in a secure environment.
138
The following is a summary of our Layered Architecture Stack.
CoreWeaves Layered Architecture Stack
Infrastructure Services provide our customers with access to advanced GPU and CPU compute, highly performant networking (supported by DPUs), and storage.
Managed Software Services include CKS (a purpose-built-for-AI managed Kubernetes environment with a focus on efficiency, performance and ease of use), our flexible Virtual Private Cloud offering, and our Bare Metal service that runs Kubernetes directly on high-performance servers for maximum performance and efficiency.
Application Software Services build on top of our infrastructure and managed software services, integrating additional tools to further accelerate and improve training and inference for our customers. This includes SUNK, which allows customers to run Slurm-based workloads on top of Kubernetes and colocate jobsincluding training and inference workloadson a single cluster; CoreWeave Tensorizer, which significantly increases the efficiency of model checkpointing and enables high-speed model loading; and our inference optimization services. Our recently announced acquisition of Weights & Biases positions us to extend our application software following closing of the acquisition with an end-to-end, fully managed software platform and to accelerate development of our Application Software Services to target AI developers who are building, fine-tuning, and experimenting with AI models in order to deploy them to support production applications.
139
Our purpose-built technology stack is augmented by our lifecycle management and monitoring software, Mission Control and Observability, and our advanced cluster validation, proactive health checking capabilities, and observability capabilities. Our AI cloud runs in a distributed network of 32 active purpose-built data centers, which are specifically engineered to support high intensity AI workloads with features including enhanced power, liquid cooling, and networking components, reinforcing the robustness of our entire technology stack. Our Third-Party Tooling and Solutions further enhance this flexibility by providing a composable architecture that allows customers to customize their solution by integrating additional third-party tools.
Key Benefits to Customers
Through our CoreWeave Cloud Platform, we offer the following key benefits to customers:
| Highly efficient infrastructure. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform delivers more optimized MFU than the cloud infrastructure provided by generalized hyperscalers, thereby minimizing the efficiency gap between the observed GPU cluster performance and the theoretical maximum. Based on internal testing, our CoreWeave Cloud Platform offers up to approximately 20% improvement in system MFU over comparative benchmark MFU performance. This is achieved through the performance at scale of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform, including optimizations such as Tensorizer to accelerate modeling loading and checkpointing, our purpose-built infrastructure, and our rapid fault remediation and failure prevention capabilities. As a result, our customers either derive more performance out of their existing clusters or need less infrastructure to achieve the same level of performance. |
| Performance at scale. Our infrastructure is optimized to run AI workloads, delivering cutting-edge performance to AI model training and inference use cases. Our capabilities, such as Bare Metal GPU nodes, operate with highly performant system technologies, a scale-out network with one of the industrys leading effective network speeds, storage services with data read speeds of up to 2GB per second per GPU, and software optimizations to efficiently utilize infrastructure performance. Our compute nodes spin up rapidly, our cloud enables seamless autoscaling to accommodate complex training runs, and our rapid model loading capabilities, facilitated by our Tensorizer solution, significantly reduce inference latency. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform has broken performance records, including setting an MLPerf record that was 29 times faster than competitors in 2023. |
| Reliability and Resilience. Our Mission Control suite of capabilities help deliver and maintain vetted cloud infrastructure and provide observability into the health and performance of the entire solution. This helps ensure that our customers clusters continue to operate at ideal performance, quickly recover from any hardware events, and ultimately get better value by using our cloud solution. Moreover, our automated GPU node validation capabilities ensure when nodes are remediated that they are immediately made available for use and do not remain idle. This allows our customers to focus more of their time and resources on building new products faster instead of managing AI infrastructure. |
140
CoreWeave Helps Bridge the MFU Gap
(1) | Based on internal testing |
| Faster access to latest AI infrastructure advancements. Our customers benefit from faster access to the latest AI infrastructure advancements, including our access to the latest GPU technologies at scale. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform enables customers to run their AI workloads on highly performant compute, networking, and storage infrastructure, optimized through our dedicated infrastructure management and workload orchestration software. We have a track record of being among the first to market with cutting-edge infrastructure technology. For instance, we were among the first to deliver NVIDIA H100, H200, and GH200 clusters into production at AI scale, and the first cloud provider to make NVIDIA GB200 NVL72-based instances generally available. We are able to deploy the newest chips in our infrastructure and provide the compute capacity to customers in as little as two weeks from receipt from our OEM partners such as Dell and Super Micro. This allows our customers to take advantage of the latest innovations in AI infrastructure and performance to innovate, build new products, and serve customers faster. |
| Highly performant on day 1. Our full-featured managed software services make the consumption of infrastructure seamless. Automated provisioning and node validation remove the need for manual burn-in testing and ensure our highly-performant CoreWeave Cloud Platform is up and running for new customers and ready for consumption in a matter of hours from customer acceptance. Customers take receipt of the infrastructure and can immediately schedule and run training and inference jobs instead of investing significant time and resources in stress-testing compute nodes and verifying their health. CKS helps to ensure workloads of any type can be immediately scheduled on the infrastructure, while Mission Control automatically vets all the infrastructure to ensure on an ongoing basis that any faults are proactively detected and remediated. This shifts the burden of infrastructure management away from customers, significantly reducing costs and accelerating their time to solution. |
| Efficient GPU fleet utilization. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is architected to support all types of AI workloads, including training (consisting of pre-training and fine tuning), synthetic data generation, and inference, covering the full spectrum of customer requirements. Customers can orchestrate all these types of inference and training workloads across the same cluster simultaneously, enabled by our |
141
industry-leading Slurm integration, SUNK. Running different types of jobs on the same cluster at the same time increases the utilization of a customers AI infrastructure by allowing customers to seamlessly transition between Slurm based training jobs and containerized inference workloads on the same GPU cluster, negating the need to have two discrete clusters with lower efficiency. CKS, in conjunction with SUNK, enables this intelligent management of workload scheduling to prioritize serving inference demand spikes and better utilize GPU clusters across training and inference. |
| Flexible technology stack. We adapt to our customers needs, enabling our customers to obtain the platform most ideal for their AI applications to run on. Our team is committed to moving quickly and solving problems for our customers that have never been addressed before as they develop and serve the next generation of foundational models. This partnership extends beyond support. Our flexibility is a key asset for our customers as we do not ask them to compromise, but rather empower them to integrate with our platform in the way that best suits their needs. Our microservices-based architecture tailored to AI enables this flexibility. For instance, customers can choose to bring their own storage instance, opt to run on Bare Metal, can elect for committed or on-demand deployment, and can generally configure their use of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to best fit their requirements. This enables customers to obtain the platform most ideal for their AI applications to run on, providing them with exactly what they require without needing them to make tradeoffs or compromises that leads to reduced efficiency and increased costs. |
| Lower performance-adjusted cost. We deliver efficiency to our customers through fully optimized AI performance out-of-the-box, our rapid cluster remediation and failure prevention capabilities, and our differentiated ability to simultaneously and seamlessly run inference and training jobs on the same clusters. All this results in significantly improved infrastructure efficiency and higher MFU, which translates to lower costs relative to solutions provided by other cloud service providers for demanding AI workloads. |
CoreWeave Cloud Platforms performance advantage, day-one utility and reliability, higher run-time efficiency, resiliency, and overall AI infrastructure uptime ensures customers can confidently build AI products and services, while benefiting from a lower total cost of ownership. It enables customers to deliver superior intelligence faster, and to expand their compute footprint in lockstep with the commercialization of their solutions.
Competitive Strengths
Our key competitive strengths, which we believe set us apart from the generalized cloud providers in the industry, include:
| We are purpose-built for AI. Our platform is fundamentally architected from the ground up to deliver cutting-edge performance for AI workloads. We have reimagined the traditional cloud architecture to deliver the infrastructure and technology stack required for AI, optimizing it to remove services such as the hypervisor layer and other unnecessary managed services that would otherwise cause performance leakage. It is built to efficiently run workloads on Bare Metal nodes, which makes our CoreWeave Cloud Platform more transparent given the wealth of GPU node-level metrics generated by our stack that most competing solutions are unable to retrieve. Our Managed Software Services, which include our orchestration solution, CKS, and our application services, are optimized for complex AI workloads. Our infrastructure is built on cutting-edge components, including the latest-generation GPUs, networking, and high-performance storage, all working cohesively to deliver unprecedented performance to our customers. Importantly, our data centers are also designed with our no compromise philosophy centered around AI, with our current builds incorporating liquid cooling where possible to maximize rack density and drive higher utilization of our data center footprint. These innovations are what enable us to help bridge the efficiency gap between the approximately 35% real-world infrastructure MFU and the 100% theoretical maximum. |
| We live at the bleeding-edge of technology. Our diverse, multi-disciplinary team is founded on a culture of saying yes to delivering our customers needs. We are fearless in facing and overcoming |
142
complex engineering challenges, and we hire individuals who help contribute to and maintain a culture centered around this philosophy. We raise the standards of execution to meet the needs of our customers, which include some of the largest and most sophisticated organizations that themselves live on the bleeding-edge. We have demonstrated this in our ability to create some of the largest and most performant GPU clusters assembled to date, develop a rich suite of software and services that maximizes infrastructure utilization and efficiency, deliver against an accelerated data center build schedule, and consistently be among the first to market with cutting-edge infrastructure components. We were one of the first to deploy NVIDIAs H100, H200 chips, NVIDIA Bluefield 2 and 3 DPUs, 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (formerly Sapphire Rapids), and InfiniBand 3200Gbps NDR high-performance networking in our infrastructure at production scale, and the first cloud provider to make NVIDIA GB200 NVL72-based instances generally available. |
| We operate at scale. We benefit from a network of 32 active purpose-built data centers that together ran more than 250,000 GPUs for AI workloads as of December 31, 2024. There is a massive operational capability difference between operating clusters of thousands versus tens of thousands of GPUs. Our track record of operating at scale enables us to participate in this market in ways that others cannot. Our specialization in deploying AI infrastructure at massive scale enables us to serve some of the worlds leading providers of AI who require massive deployments in order to effectively train and serve the latest foundational models. Moreover, it enables us to benefit from clear economies of scale. It lends us critical brand recognition in the AI ecosystem that accelerates inbound demand for our solutions. It strengthens our supply chain relationships and enhances our access to the best engineering and product talent. And, importantly, it enables us to detect issues and derive insights from across our AI infrastructure sooner than our competitors. Over the long term, our platform delivers superior performance and value as a result. |
| We have a proven track record of securing power. Power is a key enabler of the AI revolution and an asset that we have managed to secure at scale. As of December 31, 2024, we had more than 360 MW of active power and approximately 1.3 GW of total contracted power. This provides us with a durable, multi-year runway in power capacity. We relentlessly and creatively explore additional opportunities to add power capacity, as demonstrated by our agreement with Core Scientific for more than 500 MW of capacity as of December 31, 2024. |
| We have demonstrated unique financing capabilities. We have designed our capital structure to enable the investments needed to maintain growth at the pace of AI innovation. We have pioneered GPU infrastructure-backed lending, and to date, we have raised over $14.5 billion in debt and equity across 12 financings. Our recent raise of $7.6 billion in committed GPU infrastructure-backed debt led by Blackstone and Magnetar represents one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud. This scale of funding has not been achieved by any established players or new entrants in the AI cloud space that we compete with today, demonstrating the confidence that investors have in our vision and execution capabilities. Our rapid growth and track record for creating high-performance compute clusters and financing them has enabled us to decrease our cost of capital over time. We intend to innovate the financing structures and strategies that we employ in order to access new forms of capital at the scale required to grow our business, while simultaneously driving down our overall cost of capital. |
| We maintain robust ecosystem relationships. We benefit from strong, mutually beneficial relationships with our suppliers and customers that strengthen our solution and market position. Our relationship with NVIDIA strengthens our supply chain. We work with NVIDIA to deploy the latest GPU technologies at scale. In turn, we are a partner to NVIDIA in that our proprietary software and purpose-built infrastructure help to minimize the efficiency gap between the observed GPU cluster performance and the theoretical maximum GPU cluster performance, help to diversify their customer base, and help to get their technology in the hands of end customers faster. Our relationships with some of the worlds leading and most discerning AI labs and AI enterprises, including Microsoft, Meta, and |
143
OpenAI, further position us as a cornerstone of the evolving AI ecosystem and creates a flywheel that strengthens our engineering advantage through continuous learning and development. |
These deep technical partnerships with our customers provide our engineers with exposure to unique technical challenges, enabling them to build an invaluable knowledge base regarding the complex requirements of running supercomputers efficiently to extract maximum performance, automate operations, and optimize total cost of management. This gives us the ability to deliver an AI cloud that can operate at the performance, scale and efficiency required by the worlds most complex workloads. Moreover, we serve some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises, which fosters a reinforcing cycle of continued innovation, as we are the first to experience and solve the challenges of the most compute intensive AI training and inference workloads. This data, which is only used internally to improve our services for our customers, is a critical input into our engineering process and strengthens our technological differentiation as we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in computing. This economy of AI leadership ensures we can continuously improve our CoreWeave Cloud Platform over time in a positive feedback loop, by enabling us to learn from any issues or misconfigurations detected across our large infrastructure base and apply those learnings to all our clusters, which in turn positions us as a leading-edge provider of choice for new customers.
Our Market Opportunity
The impact of AI will be immense for organizations of all sizes across all sectors, which will realize significant productivity gains and time and cost-efficiencies by deploying AI technologies. IDC estimates that AI will add nearly $20 trillion to global GDP by 2030. We believe businesses of all sizes will adopt AI products and services to enhance automation and improve decision making and will need to embed AI into their solutions to differentiate and remain competitive.
We believe that CoreWeave will be one of the most sought-after platforms for the worlds AI workloads. Our solution enables AI products, services and models to train and run with significantly greater speed and efficiency. We have estimated our total addressable market opportunity by evaluating the size of the large and rapidly growing AI compute software and infrastructure market that we are pioneering. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the market for AI inference/fine-tuning, AI workload monitoring, and training infrastructure, including AI servers, AI storage, training compute, cloud workloads, and networking, will increase by over $300 billion from 2023 to 2028, growing at a CAGR of 38% from approximately $79 billion in 2023 to approximately $399 billion by 2028. This market opportunity is expected to include $330 billion related to training infrastructure, which includes AI servers, AI storage,
144
training compute, LLM licensing revenue, cloud workloads, and networking; $49 billion related to inference infrastructure; and $20 billion related to workload monitoring, all of which are supportable by CoreWeave.
The AI cloud infrastructure and software market is dynamic and will continue to evolve as new models are introduced and inference continues to scale. We believe we are ideally positioned to capture the opportunity as the market develops and continues to expand. At present, the AI compute market is centered on training the latest generations of models, which is being driven by a select few hyperscalers and AI labs which are advancing model quality and the standard of intelligence they output. While it is likely that inference will grow to account for an increasingly larger proportion of AI workloads, we expect that training and fine-tuning new generations of models on updated infrastructure will continue to be an important addressable market as new generations of hardware, networking, and storage are released. We believe that our best-of-breed software and infrastructure solution and our track record of being among the first to market with the latest infrastructure modalities makes us optimally suited to capture these bleeding-edge training workloads.
In the near-term, we expect to see continued rapid growth in demanding inference workloads driven by an exponential increase in model size and complexity and complex reasoning skills, and we anticipate that these workloads will need to run on the latest generation of high-performance infrastructure. Over time, we expect there will be more widespread enterprise adoption of production workloads as enterprises train and serve their own models on high-performance cloud infrastructure leveraging proprietary data. These workloads will have a spectrum of complexity levels. Some of them will need to run on state-of-the-art infrastructure, while other, lower intensity workloads will run more efficiently on older generations of infrastructure. The acceleration of these lower intensity inference workloads will coincide with the growth of our geographically distributed compute base, which over time will consist of a broad range of cross-generation infrastructure as current generations roll off existing contracts and are superseded by new releases. We believe that the mix of hardware across generations that is optimized for different use cases in our compute base will ensure that we are optimally situated to capture all workload types, both inference and training.
Growth Strategies
Demand for AI training and inference continues to scale as models improve and AI drives enhancements to productivity and overall quality of life. Organizations are accessing AI either directly or through layers of abstraction, for instance through APIs that connect businesses to the leading foundational models in circulation today. We are committed to investing in our business to capitalize on the accelerating demand for AI compute and grow the adoption of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform, and are pursuing a number of strategies to enhance our ability to deliver the software and infrastructure to power the proliferation of intelligence across the worlds economy and society. Our principal growth strategies include:
| Extend our product leadership and innovation. We pioneered the AI Hyperscaler and are committed to innovating to extend our technology leadership. Our team operates at the bleeding-edge of technological advancement and continues to deliver new solutions and optimize our technology stack to deliver substantial performance and efficiency gains for AI workloads at scale. We have delivered and unlocked the performance of some of the largest GPU clusters assembled to date, and we continue to release additional updates to our cloud software services to further enhance the capabilities of our infrastructure, as demonstrated for example by our recent product releases including CKS, Mission Control, and SUNK all of which accelerate the ability of our customers to train and serve models. We plan to continue to prioritize investing in our product and engineering teams to develop our cloud software services. |
| Continue capturing additional workloads from existing customers. Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform serves some of the most powerful AI labs and AI enterprises that are building AI products today. Through some of these cornerstone customers, it addresses a massive volume of AI workloads directly from them or through their APIs. As these leading providers of AI continue to achieve product market fit with the latest foundational models, their training and inference workload volume will scale exponentially. Our dedicated focus on both AI labs and AI enterprises will enable us to achieve natural |
145
growth across this customer segment as AI continues to become ubiquitous, and as these customers realize the performance and efficiency benefits of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. We have built dedicated teams of AI-experts across our engineering, product, sales and customer experience organization that understand customers needs for rapidly evolving AI use cases. These teams work hand-in-hand with our customers to help them better understand our product capabilities and innovations to best position us to capture increasing spend as they expand. |
| Extend into broader enterprise customers across new industries and verticals. Our current and potential customers include the worlds premier AI labs and AI enterprises, for whom AI is a core component of their product strategy and overall business model, and who depend on our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to deliver the next generation of AI models and applications. As AI continues to become ubiquitous in daily life and as other verticals and industries, including regulated industries like banks, high-frequency trading, and pharmaceutical companies, begin to develop and build their own dedicated AI solutions, we plan to expand to serve those verticals and capitalize on the opportunity to provide our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to host their workloads. Although it is early, we have already started to see strong interest from such industries. We also anticipate that new industries and use cases will arise to take advantage of developing AI capabilities as AI models become more accessible and cheaper, presenting additional growth opportunities for our platform. We believe that our recently announced acquisition of Weights & Biases will enable us to improve our CoreWeave Cloud Platform to address the needs of customers who are researching, building, and deploying AI models and applications. Following closing of the acquisition, we plan to integrate Weights & Biases capabilities as a new entry point for customers to access our CoreWeave Cloud platform and take advantage of the differentiated infrastructure and managed software services that we offer. |
| Expand internationally. We are expanding our business to capitalize on growing demand for AI applications and solutions across the globe, driven by customers desire to build their AI applications locally and minimize latency. In 2024, we established a presence in London, United Kingdom, Barcelona, Spain, and Falun, Sweden, with more than 40 MW of active power in these locations as of December 31, 2024. In addition, we have contracted data center capacity in Canada, Sweden, and Norway with additional capacity in the pipeline. In addition, regulatory frameworks are expected to increasingly restrict data from flowing across borders, meaning that AI models may eventually need to be trained on regional data pools and served locally. Expanding our reach in key international markets enables us to serve that regional demand for AI compute. We are methodical around our international expansion and tailor it to where we see the most demand for AI compute. |
| Increase our vertical integration. We plan to continue to verticalize up the stack by innovating and adding to our software offerings to drive customer engagement and value. At the same time, we may continue to verticalize down the stack by enhancing our data center capabilities to bolster our access to data center capacity, future-proof our solutions, and drive further operational efficiency. We intend to achieve further vertical integration either organically or through targeted acquisitions. |
| Verticalize up the stack. The strategic position of our solution as the control plane which drives the performance, efficiency and visibility into the underlying infrastructure enables us to build additional functionality and services on top of it, including dedicated layers of abstraction and automation to simplify the way customers interact with our infrastructure, as well as solutions for fine-tuning AI models and production environments for AI applications. This enables our customers to access AI infrastructure more easily, scale as their need for AI workloads grows, and get their products to market faster. For example, we plan to further increase ease of use by abstracting complexity for our customers through our Global Inferencing solution which enables customers to automate the management of their inference deployments by plugging in APIs and avoiding the need to manage GPUs at a more granular level. We plan to also create tools to empower developers and machine learning engineers to seamlessly access and fine-tune foundational models to power AI applications on our platform achieving greater efficiency and productivity. We believe our announced acquisition of Weights & Biases will help to accelerate the expansion of our developer tools for both fine-tuning and training |
146
models, as well as building AI applications, and reinforces our ability to continue adding functionality up the stack following closing of the acquisition. We are best positioned to add functionality up the stack given we control the underlying infrastructure, which is the most difficult layer of the technology stack to replicate given our investments into our infrastructure over time. |
| Verticalize down the stack. As data centers continue to evolve and take center stage as the next-generation supercomputers driving the AI revolution, our ability to further manage and customize our data center footprint will de-risk our future growth and expense. Currently, the majority of our data center portfolio is leased. We may make investments into data centers and increase the proportion of our data center footprint where we have direct ownership stakes. This will enable us to have more control and accountability over the delivery timeline of new builds, and allow us to exert more control over our data center costs. |
| Maximize the economic life of our infrastructure. We seek to maximize the value of our fleet of GPUs to the fullest extent possible, and do this by monetizing the infrastructure underlying expired contracts through either another contract for the remainder of its economic life or through an on-demand consumption pool. We expect a large number of GPUs to become available for the on-demand distributed compute pool as our customers renew contracts with future generations of chips. These current generation chips will be well-suited to handle inference workloads and lower intensity training workloads after contracts expire, which will lead to cost optimal solutions for our customers. As the AI revolution continues and more widespread enterprise adoption of AI workloads occurs, there will be a breadth of workload complexity levels which will need to be matched to infrastructure with varying levels of performance and cost. Some of those workloads will be less computationally intensive and can be served by older generations of infrastructure. |
Our Platform and Product Offerings
Our CoreWeave Cloud Platform is an integrated solution that enables companies to run AI workloads with high performance and efficiency. It includes our Infrastructure Services, Managed Software Services, and Application Software Services, all bolstered by our Mission Control and Observability software. Our proprietary software underpins every component of the platform, allowing for highly secure provisioning of infrastructure, effective orchestration of workloads, and real-time monitoring of training and inference environments. Security is a fundamental component of our platform. We ensure our customers operate in a secure environment by implementing a zero trust model for data access and leveraging advanced security technologies, including XDR and DLP deployed across our endpoints. Additionally, we use single-sign-on and multi-factor authentication to ensure our CoreWeave Cloud Platform remains resilient against identity-based cyber threats.
147
CoreWeave Cloud Platform
Infrastructure Services: Delivering bleeding-edge compute, networking, and storage infrastructure
Our platform is powered by our foundational Infrastructure Services, which utilize our proprietary software and a combination of high-performance GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, storage, and networking equipment, all calibrated to deliver the performance at scale required to power AI workloads.
| Compute. Our compute is delivered through combinations of GPU and CPU nodes interconnected with state-of-the-art, high-performance networking technology such as NVIDIA InfiniBand and optimized through DPUs in a high throughput network topology that provides extensive scalability for AI workloads. GPU nodes are the primary engines for AI compute and are supported by the latest generation of CPUs, memory, PCI-Express data interconnects, NVMe SSDs, and DPUs. These components help to extract maximum performance out of GPUs and also offload non-core tasks. We continuously monitor the health and performance of GPU and CPU nodes to ensure improved resilience and rapid recovery. |
| GPU Compute. We provide our customers with access to a vast portfolio of high-performance GPUs that are purpose-built for AI. This includes the NVIDIA H200, which we were among the first to market with at production scale, and NVIDIA H100. Our H100 architecture enabled us to break the MLPerf record in 2023, delivering training speeds 29 times faster than competitors at greater scale. |
148
| CPU Compute. We offer versatile CPU instances to support AI workloads. Our infrastructure utilizes some of the industrys highest performing and latest CPUs instead of prior generation technology that can degrade GPU performance and utility. Our CPUs complement our GPUs by performing tasks, including data pre-processing, control plane functions, and workload orchestration, which frees GPUs to focus on compute intensive tasks. |
| DPUs. DPUs optimize compute for AI workloads by offloading networking, security, and storage management tasks from GPUs and CPUs. They are a critical enabling component for increasing overall efficiency and performance. |
| Nimbus. Nimbus is our control and data-plane software running on our DPUs inside Bare Metal instances, performing the typical role of a hypervisor in enabling security, flexibility and performance. Nimbus-enabled DPUs remove the need for a virtualization layer and give customers the flexibility to run directly on our servers without a hypervisor, enabling greater compute performance. Nimbus also provides security through the isolation of customer models and data encryption, while enabling them to set up Virtual Private Cloud environments. |
| Networking. Our networking architecture is highly specialized and uniquely designed to meet the complex needs of AI use cases. It includes our high-performance InfiniBand based cluster networking, our data center network fabric which connects our GPU and CPU nodes to our control plane via DPUs for efficient offloading of certain processing tasks, our VPC networking framework, as well as our Direct Connect offering which provides enterprise-grade networking and supports multi-cloud deployments. The ultra-fast connection and superior throughput enabled by our networking architecture ensures faster training and inference times for our customers. |
| Cluster Networking is the result of our relationship with NVIDIA to design a networking architecture that is purpose-built for AI clusters. The NVIDIA InfiniBand network that we deploy is one of the largest in existence with up to 3,200Gbps of non-blocking GPU interconnect and provides industry-leading effective networking throughput to accelerate time to train and serve models. Our Blackwell deployments will further be supported by external NVLink Switches, a low latency, scalable, and energy-efficient protocol that allows GPUs to communicate with other GPUs and CPUs within the same and different systems more efficiently. These technologies enable us to offer our customers access to tens of thousands of GPUs connected in a single cluster, and the ability to create massive megaclusters. Our megacluster resilience is supported by Mission Control, which prevents and rapidly remediates any deficiencies that arise. |
| VPC Networking creates isolated virtual networks to manage CoreWeave Cloud Platform resources, allows customers to securely connect compute, storage, and networking resources to their development and deployment platforms using the latest security best practices including encryption, isolation, and access control. |
| CoreWeave Direct Connect plugs into our carrier grade networking backbone and enables embedded scale that supports our data centers. It is built to support multi-cloud needs, operates across the United States and Europe, and provides private, highly performant connections to transfer data with speed and security. It allows our customers to easily connect their CoreWeave clusters with resources available at other cloud providers or on-premises. Direct Connect boasts port speeds of up to 400Gbps, flexible options to connect through either dedicated ports or existing carriers, and budget-friendly costs with no data transfer or egress fees. |
| Storage. Our systems incorporate enterprise-grade, software-defined scale-out storage capabilities. Our highly performant, secure, and reliable storage capabilities are designed for the most complex and demanding AI workloads. They load data at rapid speeds, enabling large distributed AI workloads to be scaled up in seconds. These storage capabilities also allow customers to benefit from auto-provisioning of GPUs and store large volumes of model checkpoints and intermediate results so that teams can stay on track after interruptions to their training or inference jobs. Our purpose-built storage architecture |
149
enables our customers to achieve significantly faster load times. Our storage services, which include object storage and distributed file storage, leverage industry-best security practices, including encryption at rest and in transit, role-based identity access management, and authentication. |
| Object Storage. Given traditional object storage solutions are not designed for accelerated workloads, customers typically need to leverage a caching layer on top of object storage to run their GPU clusters at top performance. Our object storage solution is built from the ground-up specifically for AI. It eliminates the need for an intermediate cache based on a file storage system. It leverages our proprietary Local Object Transport Accelerator, which caches data locally onto GPU nodes to deliver the performance required to go straight from object storage to GPUs. |
| Distributed File Storage. We offer distributed file storage solutions that centralize asset storage and support parallel computation setups. For customers who require these features and prefer to utilize a distributed file storage system in addition to object storage, our Distributed File Storage system provides the flexibility to do so. Our platform also enables customers who run on-premise to integrate their own distributed file storage system into our platform, providing a truly flexible technology stack that is designed to support our customers storage needs. |
| Dedicated Storage Clusters. Our microservices based architecture allows us to support our customers choice of storage back-ends. We work with an ecosystem of storage cloud partners to provide flexibility and choice in order to get access to their preferred storage solutions that are well integrated with our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. |
Managed Software and Application Software Services: Built for AI at Multiple Layers of the Cloud Technology Stack
1. | Weave, Models, and Launch will be platform additions following the closing of our acquisition of Weights & Biases. |
Managed Software Services: Fully managed deployment for the most efficient workloads
Our Managed Software Services include CoreWeave Kubernetes Service, our AI workload orchestration and auto-scaling solution, our VPC product, and our Bare Metal service.
| CoreWeave Kubernetes Service. CKS is our AI-optimized, managed Kubernetes service that minimizes the burden of managing large GPU clusters. CKS is purpose-built for AI workloads and delivers fast performance, security, and flexibility in a fully managed Kubernetes solution. CKS has |
150
built-in guardrails and automated processes specialized for AI workloads that reduce the need for teams to spend countless hours managing complex Kubernetes clusters. CKS clusters leverage Bare Metal nodes without a hypervisor to maximize node performance, and our DPU-based architecture for complete isolation and acceleration with private-cluster VPCs. As such, CKS ensures that each node operates at peak performance within a secure, isolated environment. There are extensive customization options available to manage data, control access and policy, and handle authentication and other security controls, giving customers ultimate flexibility and authority over their specific data management practices. |
| Virtual Private Cloud. Our VPC solution allows customers to utilize an isolated, private section of our CoreWeave Cloud Platform where they can run their resources in a controlled network environment. It delivers a flexible experience backed by enhanced security, with both direct control and a high degree of customization. It enables hyper specific networking policies on a workload-by-workload basis, including terminating VPNs, managing routing, and access control. Our robust node isolation capabilities create both data and VPC segregation that deliver maximum security for our customer workloads. |
| Bare Metal. Our Bare Metal service is fast, reliable, and performant. The vast majority of AI workloads do not need virtualization. Instead, they need direct access to resources to run training, inference, and experimentation with maximum performance and low latency. We eliminate the need to have a hypervisor layer and enable our customers to run Kubernetes, or an orchestration platform of their choice, directly on Bare Metal instances. This allows us to combine the flexibility of cloud-like provisioning and the power and performance of dedicated hardware, unlocking higher performance, increasing reliability, freeing up compute resources, and allowing for in-depth insights on cluster health and performance through granular metrics. For customers who prefer a more managed experience, our Bare Metal service also enables customers to spin up Bare Metal nodes in CKS and offload certain basic functions such as storage and network drivers. |
Application Software Services: Additional tools that accelerate and improve training and inferencing
Our Application Software Services allow companies to seamlessly integrate additional tools that accelerate and improve training and inference. Due to our microservices-based architecture, our platform is fully composable, with customers able to run their own orchestration solution or third-party applications seamlessly as part of our stack. As with all our other services, we follow security best practices at every step.
| Slurm on Kubernetes Integration (SUNK). Slurm is an open-source workload manager popular among AI model developers and other users of high-performance compute. It is an industry leader for the orchestration of massive parallel scheduling jobs such as training LLMs. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is designed for containerized workloads in cloud-native environments making it particularly well suited for model serving. Customers previously had to either choose between Slurm or Kubernetes on a per cluster basis for their resource management needs, even though the two applications serve different use cases and excel in different environments. Often, this led to maintaining two distinct platforms and pools of compute. We have eliminated the need to choose between Slurm or Kubernetes by creating SUNK, a proprietary offering released in early 2024 that integrates Slurm with CKS and allows for Slurm jobs to run inside Kubernetes. This allows developers to leverage the resource management of both Slurm and Kubernetes and results in a seamless end-user experience. Different AI workloads can be co-located on the same cluster, including training, inference, and experimentation, unlocking greater workload fungibility. SUNK enhances the efficiency of compute by sharing resources between Slurm and Kubernetes and streamlining deployment of our system. Introducing Slurm into our stack has solved a major infrastructure pain point for our customers while reducing their total cost of ownership. |
| CoreWeave Tensorizer. CoreWeave Tensorizer is our training and inference optimization solution that spins up models rapidly from storage directly into GPU memory from a variety of different endpoints. It serializes models into a single binary file and incorporates a caching layer to quickly flow models to |
151
the closest node to the client, thereby dramatically cutting down resource expenditure caused by long loading times. When tested on a larger model size using a higher-performing GPU, the impact of Tensorizer on model load time becomes even more pronounced. In terms of relative performance, our Tensorizer had average model load times that were 1.7x and 1.4x faster than that of SafeTensors and HuggingFace respectively. Our Tensorizer solution also increases model training efficiency by enabling fast checkpoints and reducing restart times. Checkpointing ensures models are frequently saved and archived during the training process such that failures do not require full and time consuming restarts. |
| Weights & Biases Models. Following the closing of our announced acquisition of Weights & Biases, we intend to expand our platform to include their Models product-line, which will extend the capabilities we currently offer with SUNK and Tensorizer to include real-time tracking and visualization of training runs, customer packaging, and workflow optimization, and the ability to further optimize hyperparameters, track model lineage, and fine-tune both open-source and proprietary models. |
| Inference Optimization & Services. Our platform is optimized for inference, delivering unparalleled flexibility, efficiency and access to the compute required to serve these workloads effectively. Through our planned inference optimization services, customers will be able to right-size their workloads with access to a varied GPU fleet customized to their specific performance and cost requirements, and can provision what they need when they need it to match the complexity of their workloads. Following the closing of the acquisition, we intend to integrate Weights & Biases Weave product into our inference optimization services, enabling the real-time monitoring and debugging of LLMs and prompts, offering additional tools for rigorous evaluation of generative AI applications, and providing monitoring and debugging agents and prompts. |
Mission Control & Observability: Delivering full visibility into and control over infrastructure and workloads
AI compute infrastructure brings together multiple cutting-edge technologies including the latest and most powerful compute resources, high bandwidth memory, high-speed chip-to-chip interconnects, and node-to-node connectivity. While these technologies deliver unprecedented performance, they come with the additional overhead and complexity of dealing with node and system failures. Our Mission Control & Observability solution helps customers to manage their infrastructure and operations with a suite of services designed to ensure optimal setup and functionality of infrastructure components throughout their entire lifecycle, thereby preventing and rapidly remediating issues and enhancing performance. Mission Control consists of our FLCC and NLCC, and is complemented by our Observability solution.
| Fleet LifeCycle Controller (FLCC). Our Fleet LifeCycle Controller automates node provisioning, testing, and monitoring to validate nodes and systems for Day 1 operations and beyond. |
| Node LifeCycle Controller (NLCC). Our Node LifeCycle Controller proactively assesses ongoing node health and performance to ensure problematic nodes are replaced with healthy ones before they cause failures. Both FLCC and NLCC are systems that are running on our back-end. |
| Observability. Our Observability solution provides access to a rich collection of node and system-level metrics to complement the capabilities of Mission Control that help prevent or quickly identify system faults and restore system-level performance. Faults can occur for various reasons, such as bad user configuration (memory allocation issues), misbehaving software updates, server component malfunctions, or issues in the high speed node-to-node network. Customers can collect and receive alerts on metrics across their fleet, using dashboards that visualize either the entire cluster or individual jobs, and identify root-cause issues in a matter of minutes, as well as early warning signs that enable them to replace or repair nodes that are close to failure. Our Observability solution gives customers deep insight into their infrastructure down to the temperature of individual GPUs. |
152
CoreWeave Real-Time Dashboard
Deep Technical Partnerships
Our partnership strategy is to augment our capabilities by developing deep technical partnerships and relationships with companies that share our vision for empowering customers and accelerating the AI ecosystem. These partnerships are central to how we build our products and services: they enable us to unlock capabilities further up the stack and serve as layers of abstraction that extend our reach to a broader customer base who ultimately run on our infrastructure. Through our partnerships, we have been able to drive enhancements in AI Ops/inference (e.g., Run:ai), improve infrastructure capabilities (e.g., Datadog), and engineer new purpose-built data architectures (e.g., Vast Data and Pure Storage). Our partnership strategy further extends to our relationships and collaboration with suppliers like NVIDIA whose GPUs we bring to market in highly efficient and performant architecture for end customers, and to our data center providers such as Switch and Chirisa Technology Parks who we work with to integrate the most cutting-edge design and cooling standards customized for the performance requirements of AI workloads.
Customer Experience
All of our solutions are complemented by our highly skilled and AI specialized Customer Experience teams, which provide deep insights and expertise in AI compute, networking, and storage. Our teams deep AI expertise is fundamental to us gaining the trust of some of the worlds leading AI labs and AI enterprises, and so we have purposefully designed our Customer Experience organization in a way that seamlessly extends our expert capabilities to our customers. Our Customer Experience team is comprised of:
| Fleet Ops and Cloud Ops: Teams that support our FLCC and NLCC solutions and function as operations centers supporting overall system resilience across our customers infrastructure. Our Fleet Ops team monitors how fleets are operating, while our Cloud Ops team monitors customer-specific deployments. |
| Support specialists: Dedicated Support Operations Engineers and Customer Success Engineers who are tasked with setting-up deployments and working with customers to scale workloads as quickly and efficiently as possible. These teams help our customers achieve their goals with our product through proactive support and resources and focus on understanding and assisting customers post-sale to foster long-term relationships. Our team of engineering experts is available 24/7 to assist customers and provide the support needed to ensure optimal cluster performance. Support specialists also include our Documentation team, which creates and maintains the technical documentation to support our customer success, sales, and marketing teams. |
| Solutions architects: Experts who work with our engineering teams to ensure customer infrastructure runs at peak performance. Our solutions architects focus on helping customers understand and derive |
153
value from our platform, and cover both pre-sale and post-sale processes including proof-of-concept, implementation, switching to new architectures, and ongoing management/deployment. They ensure customers derive maximum value from their infrastructure and assist with any tuning work required to unlock the leading performance of our platform. |
Across our entire platform, we are committed to delivering robust security solutions that maintain system integrity, availability, and data security. We continuously test our platform for security vulnerabilities using automated testing methods and have teams dedicated to penetration testing, enterprise vulnerability management, and application security. We also have a Security Operations team that monitors security events in real time 24 hours a day to provide continuous protection.
Our Data Center Footprint
CoreWeaves Data Center Network
Our platform is powered by some of the largest and most sophisticated data centers in the world, consisting of complex installations of the most cutting-edge GPU accelerators. These large clusters are designed and built with pioneering network architectures and a no compromise philosophy that centers around maximizing performance for AI workloads. The state-of-the-art hardware deployed in our data centers requires the most forward thinking physical infrastructure designs to deliver highly performant networking, power, and cooling characteristics. Each component of our data center technology stack is purposefully selected to contribute to, and compound, this performance advantage. The result is a geographically distributed and highly performant data center footprint underpinned by cutting-edge components, high-density design configurations, and robust security standards.
| Cutting-edge data center technologies maximize rack density. Our data centers are purposefully designed to maximize rack density and drive power per rack. They utilize advanced liquid cooling systems that enable the efficient use of space by removing the bulky chillers and airflow management equipment required in air cooling systems. The improved heat capacity of liquid cooling systems also allows us to stand up racks closer together, supporting higher power density while preventing performance degradation of our systems due to overheating. Liquid cooling systems, while highly efficient at supporting dense, power-intensive workloads, require a fundamental redesign of the data center in order to accommodate necessary piping, pumps, and heat exchangers. This often entails having a separate subfloor to contain routing and plumbing infrastructure while keeping the main floor more organized and compact to drive density. |
154
CoreWeaves First NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 Cluster With Liquid Cooling
These design requirements render traditional cloud service providers, who are tied to significant existing air-cooled data center footprints and buildout plans, incapable of maximizing their data center capacity without time intensive and costly retrofitting challenges. Liquid cooling systems and the greater power density and efficiency it unlocks, is not a nice-to-have feature but rather an essential component of any GPU-based infrastructure that is purpose-built for AI.
| Broad Footprint. We have architected a distributed and interconnected portfolio of data centers that delivers a high density of compute close to major population centers, thereby minimizing latency for end users. Our portfolio covers cities spanning the United States and is rapidly expanding into new markets in Europe, delivering high-compute capacity to regions that are currently capacity constrained. |
| Massive Scale. Delivering highly performant and flexible infrastructure means building high capacity data centers that can quickly scale from tens to hundreds of megawatts in response to burst workloads, i.e., sudden surges in demand. We leverage dark fiber connectivity to deliver rapid and efficient inter-data-center connectivity and enable customer workloads to burst across regions. By connecting multiple active purpose-built data centers with high speed interconnects, we deliver the flexible compute required for large scale supercomputers optimized for AI workloads, and can scale this compute to match our customers needs. |
| Embedded Security. We reinforce our infrastructure with industry leading security standards and certifications, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001, to ensure that customers are met with the most robust data security practices. Our security measures also extend to our physical security, where we employ rigorous standards around background checks, access control, security awareness training, and a zero-trust framework. This multi-layered approach ensures a secure, resilient operating environment at every level of our data centers. |
Altogether, these design considerations have enabled us to deliver some of the most performant, efficient, and secure infrastructure deployments in the industry, at unprecedented scale. Our innovation also extends beyond the physical hardware and infrastructure powering our data centers to the supporting software and infrastructure services. This allows customers to run their AI jobs without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure themselves.
As of December 31, 2024, we had more than 360 MW of active power and approximately 1.3 GW of total contracted power. This includes 32 cutting-edge data center facilities in the United States across 15 states,
155
as well as facilities in three countries. Importantly, our power capacity is available in large individual deployments that are capable of serving large infrastructure clusters, which is critical for our larger customers.
In May 2024, we opened our European headquarters in London to help facilitate our expansion to Europe. Our initial expansion to Europe includes five sites in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Sweden. In June 2024, we announced a $2.2 billion investment to expand in Spain and Sweden and launch in Norway, which we expect will more than double our MW of capacity by the end of 2025.
Our Culture and Values
Our mission is to power the creation and delivery of the intelligence that drives innovation. To succeed in this mission, we place great value on our team and emphasize the importance of a strong culture. Our diverse, multidisciplinary team is founded on a culture of saying yes and facing and overcoming complex engineering challenges. We have assembled leading engineering and go-to-market teams with what we believe is an unmatched knowledge base in accelerated computing at scale. These teams work synchronously to deliver our CoreWeave Cloud Platform and drive the maximum performance in AI workloads for our customers. To maintain this competitive advantage and continue to innovate, we remain focused on building an inclusive working environment in which our team members can push the boundaries of what is possible, and we empower our employees to grow and succeed with the right tools in a highly collaborative environment.
We have created and instilled a set of Core Values that our employees embrace and demonstrate each day.
Our Core Values include:
| Be Curious at Your Core. We foster a mindset of continuous learning, understanding that curiosity drives innovation and is essential in staying ahead of our competition. Curiosity is a driving force that allows us to explore ideas and innovations that push boundaries, challenge the status quo, and better serve our customers. |
| Act Like an Owner. We take full responsibility for our work and our decisions to find the best solution to any challenge. We take initiative, hold ourselves accountable, and foster a culture where everyone feels empowered to contribute to our success. |
| Empower Employees. We trust each other to make decisions, communicate transparently, and are clear on our goals. We support each other with the tools, resources, and feedback necessary to succeed. |
| Deliver Best-in-Class Customer Experiences. We go above and beyond to understand our clients needs and aim to exceed expectations at every step. Our commitment to excellence ensures we build lasting partnerships and set the standard for exceptional service. |
| Achieve More Together. Collaboration is at the heart of our success. Together, we unlock greater potential and solve challenges more effectively. We believe that by leveraging diverse perspectives, supporting each other, and working as one team, we can accomplish more than we could ever do alone. |
We are also committed to diversity, inclusion and belonging:
| Diversity. Ensuring diversityin background, skill set, and perspectivewhich is business critical to continuing to innovate and bring new products into the market to effectively serve our customer base and new AI use cases. |
| Inclusion. Ensuring all employees have opportunities to learn, grow, develop, and perform the best work of their lives. |
| Belonging. Ensuring that all our employees feel they are a meaningful part of CoreWeave and they matter. |
156
As of December 31, 2024, we had 881 employees, with 791 in the United States and 90 in five other countries. We work to identify, attract, and retain employees who are aligned with and will help us progress with our mission, and we seek to provide competitive cash and equity compensation. We believe we have a good relationship with our employees and our strong culture differentiates us and is a key driver of business success.
Our Customers
We offer a solution used by organizations of all sizes that require sophisticated AI compute, from the largest of enterprises to small, well-funded start-ups. Our customers today are segmented into two key verticals: AI Natives and AI Enterprises. Companies within these verticals include the builders of AI, the integrators of AI, and those that have business models whose success largely hinges on deploying AI capabilities in their core products and technology stack. Our differentiation lies in the specialized AI infrastructure that we deliver and make accessible to our customers on Day 1, which enables them to accelerate their time to market and achieve lower total costs of ownership. We shift the entire burden of managing infrastructure from our customers to our platform, allowing them to spend more time building models, serving models, or focusing on critical strategic priorities such as growing their customer base or developing their product roadmaps.
Our Customer Verticals
Our customers include:
| AI Natives: Customers whose core competency and singular focus is AI. These companies serve as important layers of abstraction for the market and enable end customers across industries to unlock the power of AI by accessing the power of foundational models. This vertical includes: |
| AI Labs: Research organizations building their own foundational models through proprietary datasets, and creating products to deliver those models to the market. While these labs have tended to focus more on building general-purpose models, industry-specific AI labs, such as the AI cluster at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation supporting research in the life sciences, are expected to become a growing part of this segment. These AI labs deliver their general purpose models or custom versions of those models via APIs to businesses of all shapes and sizes in order to power a growing range of applications. Our AI Lab customers include, among others, Cohere, Mistral AI, and OpenAI. |
| AI Ops / ML Ops: Organizations providing software or platform solutions up the stack from cloud infrastructure to make AI adoption easier for businesses with inference or training needs. These companies provide a range of solutions, including access to pre-trained model hubs and datasets, APIs to streamline model deployment, and dedicated tooling that helps optimize training and fine-tuning techniques. Companies within this space will be critical enablers of AI and its broader adoption as they will support customers who either lack the willingness, expertise, or financial means to build proprietary models through their own research teams and dedicated infrastructure. AI Ops / ML Ops customers include, among others, Replicate. |
| AI Enterprises: Large companies whose business and product are not AI, but are being driven by AI. These include Fortune 500 companies and other large enterprises with business models that are increasingly AI-enabled through their own development efforts and/or that leverage AI directly to drive internal efficiency gains. We have seen initial traction in adopting our platform from big tech, financial institutions, and life sciences companies to date with customers such as Meta, IBM, Microsoft, and Jane Street. |
In addition to the AI Natives and AI Enterprises who we sell to directly, there is a large segment of the market that uses our platform, solutions and services indirectly. This includes the tens of thousands of enterprises that have not yet built in-house AI models or systems, but who use solutions developed by AI Natives. As AI continues to find product market fit, we expect these enterprises to grow their indirect consumption of our
157
platform through AI labs. Furthermore, as these enterprises increase their consumption and our product roadmap evolves and verticalizes up-the-stack, we expect that we will serve more of these enterprise customers directly through our dedicated solutions and partnerships.
Contracted customers had a weighted average contract term of approximately four years as of December 31, 2024. Due to our focus on the leading organizations engaged in AI training and inference, we recognized an aggregate of approximately 41% and 73% of our revenue from our top three customers for the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, respectively. We recognized an aggregate of approximately 77% of our revenue from our top two customers for the year ended December 31, 2024. None of our other customers represented 10% or more of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024. For the year ended December 31, 2022, our largest customer accounted for 16% of our revenue. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, our largest customer was Microsoft, which accounted for 35% and 62% of our revenue, respectively. Additionally, Microsoft will represent less than 50% of our expected future committed contract revenue when combining our RPO balance of $15.1 billion as of December 31, 2024 and up to $11.55 billion of future incremental revenue from our recently signed Master Services Agreement with OpenAI as described below.
In February 2023, we entered into a Master Services Agreement (the Microsoft Master Services Agreement) with Microsoft, pursuant to which we provide Microsoft with access to our infrastructure and platform services through fulfillment of reserved capacity orders submitted to us by Microsoft and as may be amended upon our and Microsofts mutual agreement. We have recognized revenue of $81 million and $1.2 billion for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively, pursuant to the Microsoft Master Services Agreement. The Microsoft Master Services Agreement will remain in place until either all outstanding orders under the Microsoft Master Services Agreement are expired or terminated, or the Microsoft Master Services Agreement is otherwise terminated in accordance with its terms. Either party may terminate the Microsoft Master Services Agreement for cause (i) upon 45 days written notice to the other party of a breach or (ii) if the other party becomes subject to a bankruptcy petition or other insolvency proceeding, receivership, liquidation or assignment for the benefit of creditors.
In March 2025, we entered into a Master Services Agreement (the OpenAI Master Services Agreement) with OpenAI, pursuant to which we provide OpenAI access to cloud computing capacity through fulfillment of reserved capacity orders submitted to us by OpenAI and as may be amended upon our and OpenAIs mutual agreement. As of March 11, 2025, subject to any termination described below and satisfaction of delivery and availability of service requirements, OpenAI has committed to pay us up to approximately $11.9 billion through October 2030. The OpenAI Master Services Agreement will remain in place until either all outstanding orders under the OpenAI Master Services Agreement are expired or terminated, or the OpenAI Master Services Agreement is otherwise terminated in accordance with its terms. Either party may terminate the OpenAI Master Services Agreement (and any orders thereunder) for cause. Under the outstanding order under the OpenAI Master Services Agreement, we have established a special purpose vehicle by March 14, 2025 that is reasonably satisfactory in form and substance to OpenAI that will hold the infrastructure, and we intend for the special purpose vehicle to incur indebtedness to finance the obligations under the OpenAI Master Services Agreement.
We have agreed to issue to OpenAI, in accordance with the terms of the OpenAI Master Services Agreement and pursuant to a stock issuance agreement (the OpenAI Stock Issuance Agreement) with OpenAI, a number of shares of our Class A common stock equal to $350.0 million valued at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price. For more information, see the section titled Concurrent Share Issuance.
Our focus on committed contracts and revenue from some of the worlds leading providers of AI is deliberate in that these close relationships have allowed us to scale rapidly and provide us with unique insights into delivering highly performant and efficient AI compute at scale. In turn, we enable these customers to incorporate better AI into their products to drive faster time to market and broader adoption, thereby reinforcing their continued adoption of our platform.
158
Customer Case Studies
We believe the following case studies are examples of how some of our customers have selected, deployed and benefited from our platform, solutions and services. We have highlighted customers of varying size and types across different industries. Our customers experience different results depending on a number of factors, and these case studies are not necessarily representative of the results achieved by other customers of these types or otherwise.
Replicate
| Background: Replicate enables developers to easily run, fine-tune, and deploy both public and private machine learning models. Its cloud-based API allows for simple integration of AI capabilities without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure. Businesses rely on Replicates platform to integrate and scale inference workloads for generative AI applications whether it be text, image, or video generation across their end users. |
| Challenge: Many of the workloads that run on Replicates platform are for real-time applications where users expect near-instantaneous responses. The high variability nature of inference workloads meant that Replicate needed to be able to dynamically scale its platform in response to user demand. Other cloud solutions in the market did not offer the right set of capabilities and infrastructure to meet these needs they lacked latest generation GPU-compute infrastructure, experienced bottlenecks that slowed down Replicates platform, and became cost prohibitive at scale for the level of performance required. To achieve its mission of making AI more accessible, Replicate needed a reliable, elastic, and highly performant solution that could accommodate burst workloads with minimal downtime, even as infrastructure was pushed to its maximum performance. Replicate also required a solution that provided lower performance-adjusted cost to support its pay-per-use pricing model in a cost-efficient way. |
| Solution & Outcomes: |
| Since 2022, Replicate has selected CoreWeave as its cloud provider to unlock access to high- performance compute for its inference needs, leveraging CoreWeaves full-stack cloud platform delivered in a fully managed format. |
| Radically simplified infrastructure management enabled Replicate to focus more on innovating across its platform and building client engagement and less on operating highly complex infrastructure. |
| CoreWeaves observability tools provided Replicate with valuable insights into billing and resource utilization. |
| Customer Quote: |
| CoreWeave is our key cloud provider and has been instrumental in enabling our demanding inference workloads to scale seamlessly. CoreWeave has delivered high performance, resilience, and reliability that directly enables us to allow our customers to access and fine tune some of the best AI models on the market with minimal friction. - Ben Firshman, CEO at Replicate |
Jane Street
| Disclaimer: Jane Street is a customer and one of our investors. |
159
| Background: Jane Street is a global, technology-driven liquidity provider and trading firm. It leverages sophisticated quantitative analysis and a deep understanding of market mechanics to trade in even the most challenging situations. Its cutting-edge research has become increasingly dependent on GPU-powered compute. |
| Challenge: Jane Street required a flexible, full-stack solution that would meet its demands for scalability, efficiency, and security. Jane Street needed reliable access to state-of-the-art GPU infrastructure to train its next generation of trading models while maintaining the agility to adapt to rapidly evolving technology. |
| Solution & Outcomes: |
| Since 2024, Jane Street has relied on CoreWeave to provide a full-stack compute solution purpose-built for the high performance and security requirements of Jane Streets operations. |
| Jane Street benefited from the broad and flexible array of CoreWeaves offerings, including direct connections, dedicated storage, upgrade options, and more, when designing, executing, and scaling its own proprietary models. |
| Through CoreWeave, Jane Street was able to obtain timely access to the latest cutting-edge infrastructure technologies, delivered in a fully managed fashion that enabled rapid deployment of workloads. |
| CoreWeave provided Jane Street with scalability, enabling Jane Street to grow its training and inference workloads. |
| Jane Street achieved higher overall compute performance thanks to CoreWeaves high-performance compute specialization. |
| Customer Quote: |
| We decided on CoreWeave as our high-performance cloud provider after we saw how fast the CoreWeave team moved and got Hopper online first. We needed access to the latest cutting-edge hardware quickly, and we trusted CoreWeave to deliver it faster than any other provider. CoreWeaves resilient, high-performance compute infrastructure is fundamental to allowing us to build quickly, as CoreWeave delivered a reliable cluster that could withstand our intense training requirements. CoreWeaves deep technical capabilities and extensive scalability have been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of whats possible in algorithmic trading. - Craig Falls, Head of Quant Research, Jane Street |
Mistral AI
| Background: Mistral AI is a leading Paris-based AI lab that develops open-source AI models. Its most recent model, Mistral Large, is one of the worlds highest-performance LLMs available through an API, demonstrating remarkable performance across multiple critical benchmarks, including the Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU), math and coding tasks, and complex reasoning challenges. From inception, Mistrals mission has been focused on making frontier AI ubiquitous and providing high-quality, tailor-made solutions to builders. |
| Challenge: To fulfill its mission and train bleeding-edge foundational models like Mistral Large, Mistral required a cloud computing platform for its training workloads that could provide access to rapid, flexible compute at a low performance-adjusted cost. Specifically, Mistral required a large high- |
160
performance GPU cluster that could scale to thousands of GPUs on a single InfiniBand fabric. Mistral also strongly desired to use Slurm to launch its jobs, due to its fluency with the scheduling system. In addition, Mistral could not afford to spend time on infrastructure management and needed a cloud solution that would offload the challenging operational aspects of managing bleeding-edge high-performance infrastructure. |
| Solution & Outcomes: |
| Mistral selected CoreWeave in 2023 due to the strength of CoreWeaves ML Perf benchmarks and CoreWeaves track record of delivering InfiniBand-based networks for large GPU clusters that provided significant performance gains over clusters with ethernet-based networking. |
| The CoreWeave Cloud Platform provided immediate access to NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU-based infrastructure, which enabled Mistral to increase the speed of its training runs and release Mistral-7B only a few months after founding. |
| CoreWeaves Mission Control lifecycle automation was instrumental in monitoring and maintaining infrastructure health while running massive training workloads at maximum performance. This automation offloaded the burden of managing infrastructure from Mistrals small team, allowing the team to focus on its mission of building high-quality models, executing their AI roadmap efficiently, and ultimately getting their models to market faster. |
| CoreWeaves deep technical partnership with Mistral as a customer involved a Kubernetes-based continuous delivery model in a shared GitOps repository, which ultimately removed operational responsibilities from Mistrals hands. |
| Over time, CoreWeave has become Mistrals compute provider of choice due to its ability to deliver more performant deployments with the latest state-of-the-art NVIDIA architecture while lowering its cost per FLOP through its automation, monitoring, and infrastructure health management software. |
| Customer Quote: |
| CoreWeaves Mission Control has been transformative for our infrastructure, unlocking higher cluster performance and dramatically accelerating our time to market. CoreWeaves intelligent lifecycle management and optimization tools and robust support solutions, have been critical in our journey to becoming an industry-leading AI model developer. - Arthur Mensch, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Mistral |
Go-to-Market
Our go-to-market organization consists of Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, and Customer Experience. We operate as a lean team with a disciplined, long-term vision of the AI market trajectory, our ideal customers, and our growth levers, which allows us to maintain agility, operationalize our go-to-market strategy efficiently, and execute effectively. On that journey, we have developed significant brand awareness within an industry that has been historically dominated by trillion-dollar competitors, built an exceptional organic reputation in market among both customers and partners, and successfully executed on both bottoms-up and top-down sales models.
Since entering the specialized AI cloud market in the second half of 2020, our go-to-market strategy has been built upon a strong foundation of demand generation, solution selling, and a deep cultural commitment to delivering an exceptional customer experience. Our lean Sales team has afforded us the agility to adapt and direct our efforts towards the greatest business need for the long-run.
Initially, this meant focusing on a bottoms-up sales model that targeted engineering pain points through product-led growth. We focused on customer acquisition within our on-demand environment, supporting use cases across AI, Visual Effects, and Life Sciences companies that benefited from a managed solution that abstracted complexity and provided seamless, elastic consumption of compute resources. As our business
161
continues to evolve, many of the PLG strategies we built to grow the business during this time continue to be critical to the growth and upsell strategies we deploy across our existing customer base moving forward.
Beginning in 2023, we transitioned our go-to-market motion to a direct named account strategy. This allowed us to transition from serving multiple high-growth start-ups delivering inference products built on top of open-source models, to securing billion-dollar contracts from some of the worlds leading and most important AI companies in the world. Our sales organization remains focused on this top-down sales model to drive demand and pipeline from the worlds most important AI Native and AI Enterprise businesses and is structured around a team of dedicated Account Managers, Account Executives, and Sales Development Representatives. We believe that, following closing of the acquisition, our announced acquisition of Weights & Biases enables us to accelerate this build and deployment of our direct named account strategy, while also improving our PLG strategy to land customers with additional functionality that targets AI developers and AI and machine learning engineers. We expect to diversify our pricing model over time as we offer additional services built for AI developers, as we intend to do following the closing of the acquisition of Weights & Biases.
Our Marketing organization is organized across three pillars: product marketing, demand-generation, and brand. Marketing is responsible for building and executing campaigns across the entirety of the customer journey, including brand awareness, demand generation, and customer and partner marketing.
Our Customer Experience organization is the first line of support in the post-sale portion of the customer journey. Our dedicated teams enable us to better serve our customers and establish a high degree of trust by ensuring they derive maximum value from our CoreWeave Cloud Platform. Our Customer Experience teams function as an extension of our customers engineering organizations, tackling challenges with the same level of urgency as their own teams and allowing them to leverage our deep AI infrastructure expertise to solve problems collaboratively. These close relationships give us unique insights into our customers most pressing needs and enable us to support them not only with creative problem solving but also with proactive capacity planning as they seek to scale their AI workloads. This intimate knowledge of our customers evolving needs allows us to anticipate and address future requirements in advance, and strategically positions us to continue expanding our business with them. Equally, these deep customer engagements add to our knowledge flywheel and increase our skill base in AI compute, allowing us to problem solve faster across all of our customers.
Sustainability
AI can drive numerous benefits. However, we recognize that there are also risks that need to be managed to ensure that our platform is built to maintain resiliency and assure its longevity. One of the challenges we will face is to ensure that we take appropriate steps to mitigate the environmental impacts of our operations. We are focused on the benefits our CoreWeave Cloud Platform can provide while managing the associated risks.
This strategy will be centered around: Climate Change Mitigation, Energy Efficiency Improvements, Responsible Resource Usage, Supplier Relationships, and ESG Oversight.
Climate Change Mitigation
Energy Consumption & Sustainable Infrastructure
Our fleet of 32 data centers necessarily uses a significant amount of power to enable our customers to train AI models, particularly large language, and deep learning models. This energy usage results in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which impact the environment. Our goal is to minimize our environmental impact. For example, several of the existing data centers in the United States and Europe in which we are a tenant are powered by non-emitting sources of energy, and we are exploring other ways we can reduce our environmental impact.
We are currently evaluating and measuring Scopes 1 and 2 GHG emissions from our facilities and data center operations and will soon begin to evaluate our emissions resulting from our supply chain (Scope 3). A large portion of our GHG emissions are currently Scope 2 emissions, which result from purchased electricity for our data centers. The mix of our GHG emissions could shift over time as we grow and begin to control more of our data centers, potentially increasing our ability to contract larger amounts of non-emitting sources of energy.
162
As we continue to scale, we will seek to integrate GHG emissions management and other sustainability considerations into our lease negotiations for new data centers and the renewal of existing leases to reduce our data centers environmental impacts. We will also seek to establish our operations in buildings that meet high levels of environmental standards.
Energy Efficiency Improvements
To improve operational and energy efficiency, we are using energy-efficient computing and are expanding our use of innovative cooling solutions. These actions are designed to optimize data center operations and performance and to reduce energy consumption required to train AI models.
We are also investing in innovative cooling technologies that will allow us to manage the increased heat output stemming from our use of smaller and more dense servers and improve energy efficiency. We are also collecting the necessary data to improve our Power Use Effectiveness, which measures how efficiently data centers use energy.
Responsible Resource Usage
Water Stewardship
We are committed to responsible water consumption that seeks to balance our Water Usage Effectiveness, which measures how efficiently data centers use water. We will also explore opportunities to participate in water replenishment programs.
Waste Management
In addition to managing scarce resources such as water, we intend to extend our responsible resource usage to waste management. For example, we intend to evaluate the potential for heat recovery systems to repurpose heat generated by our data centers, which can optimize power consumption and improve environmental performance.
Supplier Relationships
We will also look for opportunities to utilize our relationships with suppliers to mitigate the environmental impacts of their operations, while improving our data centers environmental performance.
ESG Oversight
We intend to appropriately integrate material ESG considerations into our strategic decisions, risk assessments and enterprise risk management, including identifying material ESG risks and incorporating them into a long-term risk management strategy. The risk management strategy will be implemented by internal sustainability staff with oversight by our board of directors.
Competition
The end markets we target are highly competitive and are changing rapidly. As the technological landscape evolves, we anticipate continued competition from various industry participants.
Our primary competitors are larger, global enterprises that offer general purpose cloud computing as part of a broader, diversified product portfolio. Key companies in this category are Amazon (AWS), Google (Google Cloud Platform), IBM, Microsoft (Azure), and Oracle. While these businesses have greater resources than us across sales and marketing and research and development, and benefit from broad brand awareness, they are not purpose-built for the AI and accelerated compute use cases that we serve. As a result, some of these very
163
competitors have become customers of, and partners to, CoreWeave in a number of cases, demonstrating our competitive differentiation and ability to deliver highly performant, purpose-built infrastructure that outperforms existing general purpose cloud solutions today.
In addition to these large companies, we also compete with smaller cloud service providers, including Crusoe and Lambda.
We believe we compete favorably based on the following factors:
| our proven track record of delivering performance and reliability at scale; |
| our ability to service high-intensity AI workloads with greater efficiency; |
| our enhanced health monitoring and remediation capabilities; |
| our automation and ease of use that shifts infrastructure management from our customers to our platform; |
| our speed to market with the latest generation of GPUs; |
| the scale of GPU clusters; |
| our security; |
| our brand awareness and reputation within the AI community; |
| our customer experience, support, and service, with a focus on AI and accelerated computing use cases; |
| our customization that enables bespoke configurations for customers reliant on specific technology such as storage; |
| the price, total cost of ownership, and transparency; and |
| our features, functionalities, and quality of user interface. |
The pace of our organic growth demonstrates that we have become one of the technological leaders in accelerated AI computing. Our competitive differentiation is underpinned by our ability to service AI compute use cases more rapidly and flexibly than many competitors because of our access to some of the most performant hardware available and our proprietary software that is specially tailored for model training and inference.
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property is an important aspect of our business and helps us to maintain our competitive position. To establish and protect our rights in our proprietary technology, we rely upon a combination of trade secret and trademark laws and contractual restrictions such as confidentiality agreements, licenses and intellectual property assignment agreements.
We control access to our intellectual property and confidential information through internal and external controls. We maintain a policy requiring our employees, contractors, consultants and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements to control access to and non-disclosure of our proprietary information. Intellectual property laws and our procedures and restrictions provide only limited protection, and any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged, invalidated, circumvented, infringed, misappropriated or violated.
Government Regulation
We are subject to the laws and regulations of various jurisdictions and governmental agencies affecting our operations and the sale of our infrastructure and services in areas including, but not limited to: AI, AI, intellectual property; tax; import and export requirements; anti-corruption; economic and trade sanctions; national security and
164
foreign investment; foreign exchange controls and cash repatriation restrictions; data privacy and security requirements (such as the CCPA); competition; advertising; employment; product regulations; environment, health and safety requirements; and consumer laws. To date, costs and accruals incurred to comply with these governmental regulations have not been material to our capital expenditures and results of operations. Although there is no assurance that existing or future governmental laws and regulations applicable to our operations and the sale of our infrastructure services will not have a material adverse effect on our capital expenditures, operating results, and competitive position, we do not currently anticipate material expenditures for government regulations. Nonetheless, we believe that global trade regulations could potentially have a material impact on our business.
As a global company, the import and export of our infrastructure services and technology are subject to laws and regulations including international treaties, U.S. export controls and sanctions laws, customs regulations, and local trade rules around the world. The scope, nature, and severity of such controls varies widely across different countries and may change frequently over time. Such laws, rules, and regulations may delay the introduction of our infrastructure and services or impact our competitiveness through restricting our ability to do business in certain places or with certain entities and individuals. For example, the U.S. Department of Commerce continues to tighten export controls and add firms to the Entity List. These export restrictions, which would require that we obtain licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce to allow us to export infrastructure services to such listed firms, could limit or prevent us from doing business with certain potential customers or potential suppliers. These restrictive governmental actions and any similar measures that may be imposed on U.S. companies by other governments could limit our ability to conduct business globally.
See the Risk Factors titled We are subject to laws and regulations, including governmental export and import controls, sanctions, and anti-corruption laws, that could impair our ability to compete in our markets and subject us to liability if we are not in full compliance with applicable laws, We are subject to laws, regulations, and industry requirements related to data privacy, data protection and information security, and user protection across different markets where we conduct our business and such laws, regulations, and industry requirements are constantly evolving and changing. Any actual or perceived failure to comply with such laws, regulations, and industry requirements, or our privacy policies, could harm our business, and Our business is subject to a wide range of laws and regulations, and our failure to comply with those laws and regulations could harm our business for additional information regarding risks we face related to government regulation.
Facilities
We are headquartered in Livingston, New Jersey, where we occupy approximately 30,856 square feet of office space pursuant to a lease that is expected to expire in October 2035, subject to the terms thereof. As of December 31, 2024, we also lease office space in the United States in New York, New Jersey, the State of Washington, Pennsylvania and California, and internationally in the United Kingdom, with an aggregate of approximately 100,000 square feet of office space, and lease or license data centers in the United States in 15 states and internationally in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Sweden. For additional information regarding our data centers, see Our Platform and Product OfferingsOur Data Center Footprint above.
We believe that our current facilities are adequate to meet our current needs and that, should it be needed, suitable additional or alternative space will be available to accommodate our operations.
Legal Proceedings
From time to time, we may be involved in various legal proceedings arising from the normal course of business activities. We are not presently a party to any litigation the outcome of which, we believe, if determined adversely to us, would individually or taken together have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, cash flows or financial condition. We may in the future receive claims from third parties asserting, among other things, infringement of their intellectual property rights. Defending such proceedings is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees, we may receive unfavorable preliminary or interim rulings in the course of litigation, and there can be no assurances that favorable final outcomes will be obtained.
165
Executive Officers, Non-Employee Directors, and Key Employees
The following table provides information regarding our executive officers, non-employee directors, and key employees as of March 15, 2025:
Name |
Age |
Position(s) | ||||
Executive Officers: |
||||||
Michael Intrator |
56 | Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of the Board of Directors | ||||
Brian Venturo |
40 | Chief Strategy Officer and Director | ||||
Brannin McBee |
39 | Chief Development Officer | ||||
Nitin Agrawal |
45 | Chief Financial Officer | ||||
Kristen McVeety |
54 | General Counsel and Corporate Secretary | ||||
Chen Goldberg |
44 | Senior Vice President of Engineering | ||||
Key Employees: |
||||||
Max Hjelm |
36 | Senior Vice President of Revenue | ||||
Peter Salanki |
38 | Chief Technology Officer | ||||
Sachin Jain |
47 | Chief Operating Officer | ||||
Chetan Kapoor |
44 | Chief Product Officer | ||||
Non-Employee Directors: |
||||||
Karen Boone(1)(2) |
51 | Director | ||||
Jack Cogen(1)(3) |
68 | Director | ||||
Glenn Hutchins(2)(3)(4) |
69 | Director | ||||
Margaret C. Whitman(1)(3) |
68 | Director |
(1) | Member of the audit committee. |
(2) | Member of the compensation committee. |
(3) | Member of the nominating and corporate governance committee. |
(4) | Lead independent director. |
Executive Officers
Michael Intrator is one of our co-founders and has served as Chairman of our board of directors and as our Chief Executive Officer and President since September 2017. Previously, from January 2013 to January 2018, Mr. Intrator was a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Hudson Ridge Asset Management LLC, a natural gas hedge fund. From September 1998 to July 2014, he served in roles of increasing responsibilities, including as a Principal Portfolio Manager, for the asset management and advisory firm Natsource Asset Management LLC, where he oversaw investments in global environmental markets and related energy products. Mr. Intrator earned a B.A. in Political Science from Binghamton University, and an M.P.A. from Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs. We believe Mr. Intrator is qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to the perspective and experience he brings as our co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, and President.
Brian Venturo is one of our co-founders and has served as a member of our board of directors since April 2019 and as our Chief Strategy Officer since March 2024. From October 2017 to March 2024, Mr. Venturo
166
served as our Chief Technology Officer. Previously, from January 2013 to January 2018, Mr. Venturo was a Partner at Hudson Ridge Asset Management LLC, a natural gas hedge fund. From May 2007 to December 2012, he served as Portfolio Manager Energy and Emissions for the asset management and advisory firm Natsource Asset Management LLC, where he managed a proprietary trading portfolio of investments in global environmental markets and related energy products. Mr. Venturo earned a B.A. in Economics from Haverford College. We believe Mr. Venturo is qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to the perspective and experience he brings as our co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer.
Brannin McBee is one of our co-founders and has served as our Chief Development Officer since March 2024. From September 2017 to March 2024, Mr. McBee served as our Chief Strategy Officer. Previously, he worked as a Proprietary Trader at Active Power Investments, a company in the North American Natural Gas, Power and Agriculture markets from April 2020 to January 2021. From March 2017 to August 2018, Mr. McBee was Vice President at Fourth Floor Coastal LLC, an exploration and production company in the oil and gas industry. Prior to that, from January 2013 to January 2018, he was a proprietary trader at Windy Bay Power LLC, a commodity-focused hedge fund. Mr. McBee earned a B.S. in Finance from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Nitin Agrawal has served as our Chief Financial Officer since March 2024. Prior to joining us, from May 2021 to March 2024, he served as Vice President, Finance of Google Cloud, the cloud computing services business segment of Alphabet Inc. From August 2019 to April 2021, Mr. Agrawal served as Chief Financial Officer of Mapbox, Inc., a location technology company. Prior to that, from January 2015 to July 2019, he served as Finance Director of the Compute Services division of Amazon Web Services, Inc., a cloud computing company and subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Mr. Agrawal holds a Bachelor of Technology, Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Kurukshetra, India, and an M.B.A. in Finance from The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Kristen McVeety has served as our General Counsel since March 2022 and as our Corporate Secretary since December 2024. Prior to joining us, from February 2003 to March 2022, Ms. McVeety was a founder and partner of Gabler & McVeety LLP, a law firm. Prior to founding Gabler & McVeety, Ms. McVeety was an Associate in the Corporate and M&A practice groups at Dorsey & Whitney LLP from March 1999 to February 2003. She earned a B.A. in International Relations and Business Management from Boston University and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.
Chen Goldberg has served as our Senior Vice President of Engineering since August 2024. Prior to joining us, from February 2016 to August 2024, Ms. Goldberg held multiple roles at Google Cloud, the cloud computing services business segment of Alphabet Inc, with her last role as General Manager & Vice President of Engineering, leading the Kubernetes and Serverless team and product portfolio. Earlier in her career, Ms. Goldberg served as Director of Engineering at HP. Ms. Goldberg holds a B.A. in Management and Computer Sciences and an M.B.A. from The Open University of Israel.
Key Employees
Max Hjelm has served as our Senior Vice President of Revenue since January 2024. From July 2020 to January 2024, he served in roles of increasing responsibility at our company, including most recently as Vice President of Sales from January 2022 to January 2024 and prior to that as Director of Sales from July 2020 to January 2022. Prior to joining us, from January 2020 to July 2020, Mr. Hjelm was employed as Director of Business Development of AspirelQ, Inc., an influencer and community intelligence marketing platform. Prior to that role, from January 2017 to December 2019, Mr. Hjelm served as the Head of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships for Curalate, Inc., a social commerce platform. Mr. Hjelm holds a B.S. in Sociology from Haverford College.
Peter Salanki is one of our co-founders and has served as our Chief Technology Officer since March 2024. From June 2019 to March 2024, he served in roles of increasing responsibility at our company, including most
167
recently as Vice President of Engineering from April 2022 to March 2024 and prior to that as Director of Engineering from June 2019 to April 2022. From January 2018 to June 2019, Mr. Salanki served as Director, Americas, Office of the CTO at Sandvine, an application and network intelligence company.
Sachin Jain has served as our Chief Operating Officer since August 2024. From May 2024 to August 2024, he served as Senior Vice President at Oracle Cloud, the cloud computing service of Oracle Corporation (Oracle), where he led Oracles AI infrastructure, data center capacity and infrastructure product teams. Previously, from June 2020 to May 2024, Mr. Jain served as Vice President at Google Cloud, the cloud computing services business segment of Alphabet Inc. Prior to that, from January 2002 to June 2020, Mr. Jain served in roles of increasing responsibility at Amazon.com, Inc., including most recently as Vice President, Selling Partner Experience from August 2017 to June 2020. Mr. Jain holds a Bachelor of Technology in Manufacturing Science & Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and an M.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Chetan Kapoor has served as our Chief Product Officer since June 2024. From August 2016 to June 2024, Mr. Kapoor served in roles of increasing responsibility at Amazon EC2 by Amazon Web Services, Inc., a cloud computing company and subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., including most recently as Director Product Management from October 2021 to June 2024. Previously, from September 2015 to July 2016, he served as the Principal Product Manager at National Instruments Corporation, a producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. Mr. Kapoor holds a Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Shivaji University and a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
Non-Employee Directors
Karen Boone has served as a member of our board of directors since January 2025. Ms. Boone previously served as the Interim Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-President of Peloton Interactive, Inc. (Peloton) from May 2024 to January 2025. Prior to her service at Peloton, Ms. Boone served as the President and Chief Financial and Administrative Officer of Restoration Hardware, Inc., a home furnishings company, from May 2014 to August 2018 and as Chief Financial Officer from June 2012 to May 2014. Prior to that, from 1996 to 2012, Ms. Boone held various roles at Deloitte & Touche LLP, a public accounting firm, most recently as an Audit Partner. Ms. Boone currently serves on the board of directors of Peloton, Sonos, Inc., Rivian Automotive, Inc. and several private companies. Ms. Boone earned a B.S. in Business Economics from the University of California, Davis. We believe Ms. Boone is qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to her financial expertise and her experience as a public company executive officer and director.
Jack Cogen has served as a member of our board of directors since September 2017. Mr. Cogen is a private investor. From September 1994 to December 2014, Mr. Cogen was a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Natsource Asset Management LLC, an asset management and advisory firm focused on global environmental markets and related energy products. Additionally, from January 2008 to January 2011, Mr. Cogen served as Chair of the International Emissions Trading Association (the IETA), a non-profit trade organization committed to promoting high-integrity markets for corporate carbon footprint reduction, and Mr. Cogen continues to support the IETA as a Fellow. Mr. Cogen also previously served as a non-employee director of Hudson Ridge Asset Management LLC, a natural gas hedge fund, from November 2013 to June 2018. Mr. Cogen earned a B.A. from Rutgers University, as well as an M.S. in Mathematics and an M.B.A. from New York University. We believe Mr. Cogen is qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to his experience with technology companies and as an investor in our industry.
Glenn Hutchins has served as a member of our board of directors since February 2025. Mr. Hutchins currently serves as the Chairman of North Island, an investment firm, a role he has held since 2013, and as Chairman of North Island Ventures, an investment firm, since 2020. He was a co-founder of Silver Lake, a technology investment firm, which was founded in 1999, and of which Mr. Hutchins served as Co-Chief
168
Executive Officer until 2011 and, prior to that, as Managing Director from 1999 to 2011. Prior to that, Mr. Hutchins was a Senior Managing Director at The Blackstone Group, a global investment firm, from 1994 to 1999. He has served as a director of AT&T Inc., a telecommunications company, since June 2014 and as Vice Chairman and Lead Independent Director of Banco Santander S.A., a financial services firm, since December 2022. Previously, Mr. Hutchins served as a director of Virtu Financial, Inc., a financial services firm, from July 2017 to August 2021 and as a director at Nasdaq, Inc., a global financial services technology company, from April 2005 to July 2017. Mr. Hutchins has served as the Co-Chairman of the Brookings Institution since November 2018 and was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2011 to 2020. He holds an A.B. from Harvard College, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. We believe Mr. Hutchins is qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to his extensive operational, business planning, and investment expertise within the technology industry.
Margaret C. Whitman has served as a member of our board of directors since March 2025. Ms. Whitman previously served as United States Ambassador to Kenya from July 2022 to November 2024. Prior to that, she was Chief Executive Officer of Quibi Holdings, LLC, a mobile media company, from March 2018 to February 2021. From June 2017 to February 2018, Ms. Whitman served as Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE), a multinational information technology enterprise, and as HPEs President and Chief Executive Officer from November 2015 to June 2017. Before her role at HPE, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (now known as HP Inc.) from September 2011 to July 2015, as well as Chair of their board of directors from July 2014 to November 2015. Ms. Whitman also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay Inc., an e-commerce company, from March 1998 to November 2008. Ms. Whitman has previously served on the boards of directors of The Procter & Gamble Company, a multinational consumer goods company, from February 2011 to July 2022, General Motors Company, a multinational automotive manufacturing company, from March 2021 to July 2022, and Dropbox, Inc., a cloud storage company, from September 2017 to May 2020. Ms. Whitman holds an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. We believe Ms. Whitman is qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to her extensive leadership, strategy, risk management, and industry experience.
Family Relationships
There are no family relationships among any of our executive officers or directors.
Code of Business Conduct and Ethics
Our board of directors has adopted a code of business conduct and ethics that applies to all of our employees, officers, and directors, including our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and other executive and senior financial officers. The full text of our code of business conduct and ethics will be posted on the investor relations page on our website. We intend to disclose any amendments to our code of business conduct and ethics, or waivers of its requirements, on our website or in filings under the Exchange Act.
Board of Directors
Our business and affairs are managed under the direction of our board of directors. Our board of directors currently consists of six directors. Pursuant to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as currently in effect, and the Second Amended and Restated Voting Agreement between us and other parties, dated May 16, 2024 (the Voting Agreement), our current directors were elected as follows:
| Mr. Cogen and Ms. Whitman were elected as designees nominated by the then-serving Chief Executive Officer; |
| Mr. Venturo was elected as the designee nominated by certain holders of our common stock then providing services to us as employees or consultants; |
| Ms. Boone and Mr. Hutchins were elected as designees nominated by us; and |
169
| Mr. Intrator was elected as our current Chief Executive Officer. |
Our Voting Agreement will terminate and the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation by which our directors were elected will be amended and restated in connection with this offering and, following this offering, these contractual obligations regarding the election of our directors will no longer be effective. After this offering, the number of directors will be fixed by our board of directors, subject to the terms of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering. Each of our current directors will continue to serve as a director until the election and qualification of their successor, or until their earlier death, resignation, or removal.
Classified Board of Directors
Upon the completion of this offering, our board of directors will consist of six members and be divided into three classes of directors that will serve staggered three-year terms. At each annual meeting of stockholders, a class of directors will be elected for a three-year term to succeed the same class whose term is then expiring. As a result, only one class of directors will be elected at each annual meeting of our stockholders, with the other classes continuing for the remainder of their respective three-year terms. Our directors will be divided among the three classes as follows:
| the Class I directors will be Michael Intrator and Jack Cogen and their terms will expire at the first annual meeting of stockholders to be held after the completion of this offering; |
| the Class II directors will be Margaret C. Whitman and Glenn Hutchins and their terms will expire at the second annual meeting of stockholders to be held after the completion of this offering; and |
| the Class III directors will be Brian Venturo and Karen Boone and their terms will expire at the third annual meeting of stockholders to be held after the completion of this offering. |
Each directors term continues until the election and qualification of his or her successor, or his or her earlier death, resignation, or removal. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws to be in effect immediately prior to the completion of this offering will authorize only our board of directors to fill vacancies on our board of directors. Any increase or decrease in the number of directors will be distributed among the three classes so that, as nearly as possible, each class will consist of one-third of the directors. This classification of our board of directors may have the effect of delaying or preventing changes in control of our company. See the section titled Description of Capital StockAnti-Takeover Provisions.
Director Independence
In connection with this offering, we have applied to list our Class A common stock on Nasdaq. Under the rules of Nasdaq, independent directors must comprise a majority of a listed companys board of directors within a specified period after the completion of this offering. In addition, the rules of Nasdaq require that, subject to specified exceptions, each member of a listed companys audit, compensation, and nominating and corporate governance committees be independent. Under the rules of Nasdaq, a director will only qualify as an independent director if, in the opinion of that companys board of directors, that person does not have a relationship that would interfere with the exercise of independent judgment in carrying out the responsibilities of a director.
Additionally, compensation committee members must not have a relationship with us that is material to the directors ability to be independent from management in connection with the duties of a compensation committee member.
Audit committee members must also satisfy the independence criteria set forth in Rule 10A-3 under the Exchange Act. In order to be considered independent for purposes of Rule 10A-3, a member of an audit committee of a listed company may not, other than in his or her capacity as a member of the audit committee, the board of directors or any other board committee: accept, directly or indirectly, any consulting, advisory, or other
170
compensatory fee from the listed company or any of its subsidiaries; or be an affiliated person of the listed company or any of its subsidiaries. We intend to satisfy the audit committee independence requirements of Rule 10A-3 as of the completion of this offering.
Our board of directors has undertaken a review of the independence of each director and considered whether each director has a material relationship with us that could compromise his or her ability to exercise independent judgment in carrying out his or her responsibilities. As a result of this review, our board of directors determined that each director other than Michael Intrator and Brian Venturo is an independent director as defined under the applicable rules and regulations of the SEC and the listing requirements and rules of Nasdaq. In making these determinations, our board of directors reviewed and discussed information provided by the directors and by us with regard to each directors business and personal activities and relationships as they may relate to us and our management, including the beneficial ownership of our common stock by each non-employee director and the transactions involving them described in the section titled Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions.
Lead Independent Director
Our board of directors has adopted corporate governance guidelines that provide that one of our independent directors will serve as our lead independent director. Our board of directors has appointed Glenn Hutchins to serve as our lead independent director. As lead independent director, Mr. Hutchins will provide leadership to our board of directors if circumstances arise in which the role of Chief Executive Officer and chairperson of our board of directors may be, or may be perceived to be, in conflict, and perform such additional duties as our board of directors may otherwise determine and delegate.
Director Nomination Letter
In May 2024, we entered into the Director Nomination Letter with the Magnetar DNL Parties, pursuant to which, during the period beginning at the closing of this offering until the earlier of the date on which (i) no shares of our Class B common stock are outstanding and (ii) the Magnetar DNL Parties and their affiliates collectively no longer beneficially own at least 4,976,240 shares of our capital stock, if a designee or affiliate of the Magnetar DNL Parties is not then a member of our board of directors, the Magnetar DNL Parties have the collective right to nominate one individual for consideration to serve as a member of our board of directors (the Magnetar Nominee). The rights provided in the Director Nomination Letter will terminate upon the earliest of (i) such time as the Magnetar DNL Parties and their affiliates no longer beneficially own at least 4,976,240 shares of our capital stock, (ii) such time no shares of our Class B common stock are outstanding or (iii) the consummation of a merger or consolidation of the Company that is effected (a) for independent business reasons unrelated to extinguishing such rights; and (b) for purposes other than (x) the reincorporation of the Company in a different state; or (y) the formation of a holding company that will be owned exclusively by the Companys stockholders and will hold all of the outstanding shares of capital stock of the Companys successor.
Our nominating and governance committee may consider the Magnetar Nominee in its sole discretion in accordance with its charter and the listing requirements and rules of Nasdaq. If our nominating and governance committee approves of the Magnetar Nominee for service on our board of directors, we will have the obligation to support the nomination of the Magnetar Nominee and to cause our board of directors to include the Magnetar Nominee in the slate of nominees recommended to our stockholders for election. To the extent that (a) our nominating and governance committee does not approve of the Magnetar Nominee for service on our board of directors or (b) the Magnetar Nominee ceases to serve as a director for any reason (other than the failure of our stockholders to elect the Magnetar Nominee as a director), the Magnetar DNL Parties will have the right to nominate another nominee in accordance with the terms of the Director Nomination Letter until such time as a Magnetar Nominee is elected to our board of directors.
171
Role of Board in Risk Oversight
Risk assessment and oversight are an integral part of our governance and management processes. Our board of directors encourages management to promote a culture that incorporates risk management into our corporate strategy and day-to-day business operations. Management discusses strategic and operational risks at regular management meetings and conducts specific strategic planning and review sessions during the year that include a focused discussion and analysis of the risks we face. Throughout the year, senior management reviews these risks with our board of directors at regular board meetings as part of management presentations that focus on particular business functions, operations, or strategies, and presents the steps taken by management to mitigate or eliminate such risks.
Our board of directors does not have a standing risk management committee. Our board of directors administers this oversight function directly and through various standing committees that address risks in their respective areas of oversight. While our board of directors is responsible for monitoring and assessing strategic risk exposure, our audit committee is responsible for overseeing our major financial risk exposures and the steps our management has taken to monitor and control these exposures. The audit committee also reviews any related person transactions. Our nominating and corporate governance committee monitors the effectiveness of our corporate governance guidelines. Our compensation committee assesses and monitors whether any of our compensation policies and programs has the potential to encourage excessive risk-taking.
Committees of the Board of Directors
Our board of directors has an audit committee, a compensation committee, and a nominating and corporate governance committee, each of which, pursuant to its respective charter, will have the composition and responsibilities described below upon the completion of this offering. Following the completion of this offering, copies of the charters for each committee will be available on the investor relations portion of our website. Members serve on these committees until their resignation or until otherwise determined by our board of directors.
Audit Committee
Our audit committee is composed of Karen Boone, Jack Cogen, and Margaret C. Whitman. Ms. Boone is the chair of our audit committee. The members of our audit committee meet the independence requirements under Nasdaq and SEC rules. Each member of our audit committee is financially literate. In addition, our board of directors has determined that Ms. Boone is an audit committee financial expert as that term is defined in Item 407(d)(5)(ii) of Regulation S-K promulgated under the Securities Act. This designation does not, however, impose on him or her any supplemental duties, obligations, or liabilities beyond those that are generally applicable to the other members of our audit committee and board of directors. Our audit committees principal functions are to assist our board of directors in its oversight of:
| selecting a firm to serve as our independent registered public accounting firm to audit our consolidated financial statements; |
| ensuring the independence of the independent registered public accounting firm; |
| discussing the scope and results of the audit with the independent registered public accounting firm, and reviewing, with management and that firm, our interim and year-end operating results; |
| establishing procedures for employees to anonymously submit concerns about questionable accounting or audit matters; |
| considering the adequacy of our internal controls; |
| reviewing related party transactions that are material or otherwise implicate disclosure requirements; and |
| approving, or as permitted, pre-approving all audit and non-audit services to be performed by the independent registered public accounting firm. |
172
Compensation Committee
Our compensation committee is composed of Karen Boone and Glenn Hutchins. Mr. Hutchins is the chair of our compensation committee. The members of our compensation committee meet the independence requirements under Nasdaq and SEC rules. Each member of this committee is also a non-employee director within the meaning of Rule 16b-3 under the Exchange Act. Our compensation committee is responsible for, among other things:
| evaluating, recommending, approving and reviewing executive officer and director compensation arrangements, plans, policies and programs maintained by the Company; |
| administering the Companys cash- and equity-based compensation plans; and |
| reviewing with management the Companys organization and people activities. |
Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee
Our nominating and corporate governance committee is composed of Jack Cogen, Glenn Hutchins, and Margaret C. Whitman. Ms. Whitman is the chair of our nominating and corporate governance committee. The members of our nominating and corporate governance committee meet the independence requirements under Nasdaq and SEC rules. Our nominating and corporate governance committees principal functions include:
| identifying, considering, and recommending candidates for membership on our board of directors; |
| developing and recommending our corporate governance guidelines and policies; |
| overseeing the evaluation of our board of directors and our committees; |
| advising our board of directors on corporate governance matters; and |
| advising on any related matters required by federal securities laws. |
Compensation Committee Interlocks and Insider Participation
None of the members of the compensation committee is currently, or has been at any time, one of our officers or employees. None of our executive officers has served as a member of the board of directors, or as a member of the compensation or similar committee, of any entity that has one or more executive officers who served on our board or compensation committee during the year ended December 31, 2024.
Director Compensation
2024 Director Compensation
In the year ended December 31, 2024, no compensation was paid to our non-employee members of our board of directors, and as of December 31, 2024, none of our non-employee directors held unvested equity awards.
2025 Director Compensation
Karen Boone
In January 2025, we granted Karen Boone two awards of RSUs: the first award for 17,560 RSUs in connection with the commencement of her service on our board of directors (the First Boone Award) and the second award for 1,060 RSUs in connection with the commencement of her service as chair of our audit committee (the Second Boone Award, and, together with the First Boone Award, the Boone RSU Awards), each under the 2019 Plan, which may vest and be settled for shares of our Class A common stock. Each of the Boone RSU Awards has a ten-year term and will vest based on the satisfaction of service-based and performance-based vesting conditions.
173
The service-based vesting condition for the First Boone Award will be satisfied as to 1/12th of the total award quarterly over three years, with the first vesting date scheduled for April 6, 2025 and each subsequent vesting date occurring on the quarterly anniversary thereof, subject to Ms. Boones continued service with us. The service-based vesting condition for the Second Boone Award will be satisfied as to 1/4th of the total award quarterly over one year, with the first vesting date scheduled for April 6, 2025 and each subsequent vesting date occurring on the quarterly anniversary thereof, subject to Ms. Boones continued service with us.
The performance-based vesting condition for the Boone RSU Awards will be satisfied upon the earlier of the completion of this offering or a Change of Control, as defined in the 2019 Plan. Ms. Boone will also receive an annual cash fee of $25,000 in connection with her service on our board of directors, to be paid quarterly and in arrears and to be pro-rated for partial quarters served.
Glenn Hutchins
In February 2025, we granted Glenn Hutchins four awards of RSUs: the first award for 17,340 RSUs in connection with the commencement of his service on our board of directors (the First Hutchins Award), the second award for 1,040 RSUs in connection with the commencement of his service as our lead independent director (the Second Hutchins Award), the third award for 520 RSUs in connection with the commencement of his service as the chair of our compensation committee (the Third Hutchins Award), and the fourth award for 520 RSUs in connection with the commencement of his service as the interim chair of our nominating and corporate governance committee (the Fourth Hutchins Award, and, together with the First Hutchins Award, the Second Hutchins Award, and the Third Hutchins Award, the Hutchins RSU Awards), each under the 2019 Plan, which may vest and be settled for shares of our Class A common stock. Each of the Hutchins RSU Awards has a ten-year term and will vest based on the satisfaction of service-based and performance-based vesting conditions.
The service-based vesting condition for the First Hutchins Award will be satisfied as to 1/12th of the total award quarterly over three years, with the first vesting date scheduled for May 10, 2025 and each subsequent vesting date occurring on the quarterly anniversary thereof, subject to Mr. Hutchinss continued service with us. The service-based vesting condition for the Second Hutchins Award, Third Hutchins Award, and Fourth Hutchins Award will each be satisfied as to 1/4th of the total award quarterly over one year, with the first vesting date scheduled for May 10, 2025 and each subsequent vesting date occurring on the quarterly anniversary thereof, subject to Mr. Hutchinss continued service with us.
The performance-based vesting condition for the Hutchins RSU Awards will be satisfied upon the earlier of the completion of this offering or a Change of Control, as defined in the 2019 Plan. Mr. Hutchins will also receive an annual cash fee of $25,000 in connection with his service on our board of directors, to be paid quarterly and in arrears and to be pro-rated for partial quarters served.
Margaret C. Whitman
In March 2025, we granted Margaret C. Whitman two awards of RSUs: the first award for 14,340 RSUs in connection with the commencement of her service on our board of directors (the First Whitman Award) and the second award for 420 RSUs in connection with the commencement of her service as the chair of our nominating and corporate governance committee (the Second Whitman Award, and, together with the First Whitman Award, the Whitman RSU Awards), each under the 2019 Plan, which may vest and be settled for shares of our Class A common stock. Each of the Whitman RSU Awards has a ten-year term and will vest based on the satisfaction of service-based and performance-based vesting conditions.
The service-based vesting condition for the First Whitman Award will be satisfied as to 1/12th of the total award quarterly over three years, with the first vesting date scheduled for June 14, 2025 and each subsequent vesting date occurring on the quarterly anniversary thereof, subject to Ms. Whitmans continued service with us. The service-based vesting condition for the Second Whitman Award will be satisfied as to 1/4th of the total
174
award quarterly over one year, with the first vesting date scheduled for June 14, 2025 and each subsequent vesting date occurring on the quarterly anniversary thereof, subject to Ms. Whitmans continued service with us.
The performance-based vesting condition for the Whitman RSU Awards will be satisfied upon the earlier of the completion of this offering or a Change of Control, as defined in the 2019 Plan. Ms. Whitman will also receive an annual cash fee of $25,000 in connection with her service on our board of directors, to be paid quarterly and in arrears and to be pro-rated for partial quarters served.
Jack Cogen
In March 2025, we granted Jack Cogen one award for 4,780 RSUs (the Cogen RSU Award) in connection with his service on our board of directors, which is equivalent to the annual award to be granted to non-employee directors pursuant to the non-employee director compensation policy adopted in connection with this offering, as described below. The Cogen RSU Award was granted under the 2019 Plan, has a ten-year term and will be settled for shares of our Class A common stock based on the satisfaction of service-based and performance-based vesting conditions.
The service-based vesting condition for the Cogen RSU Award will be satisfied on the earlier of (i) the date of the next annual meeting of our stockholders and (ii) the first anniversary of the grant date, subject to Mr. Cogens continued service with us.
The performance-based vesting condition for the Cogen RSU Award will be satisfied upon the earlier of the completion of this offering or a Change of Control, as defined in the 2019 Plan. Mr. Cogen will also receive the cash compensation pursuant to the non-employee director compensation policy adopted in connection with this offering, as described below.
Non-Employee Director Compensation Policy
Before this offering, we did not have a formal policy to provide any cash or equity compensation to our non-employee directors for their service on our board of directors or committees of our board of directors. See the section titled Director Compensation above for a description of compensation paid to our non-employee directors during the year ended December 31, 2024 and year ending December 31, 2025.
In connection with this offering, our board of directors approved a non-employee director compensation policy, pursuant to which our non-employee directors will be eligible to receive the fees and equity awards described below. As described above, Mr. Hutchins and Mses. Boone and Whitman received equity grants in 2025, prior to this offering and in connection with their joining our board of directors. As a result, they will not be eligible to receive the fees and equity awards under our non-employee director compensation policy until the date of our first annual meeting of our stockholders that occurs following the completion of this offering.
Employee directors will receive no additional compensation for their service as members of our board of directors. Michael Intrator and Brian Venturo are each compensated as employees for their service as our Chief Executive Officer and President and Chief Strategy Officer, respectively, and neither receives additional compensation for their service as members of our board of directors. See the section titled Executive CompensationSummary Compensation Table for information regarding each of Michael Intrators and Brian Venturos compensation as our employee.
Cash Compensation
Following the completion of this offering, each non-employee director will be entitled to receive the annual cash compensation set forth below, payable quarterly in arrears and prorated for partial quarters of service.
General Board Service Fee: $25,000.
175
Lead Independent Director Fee (in addition to the general service fee): $60,000.
Committee Chair Service Fee (in addition to the general service fee):
| Audit committee chair: $30,000. |
| Compensation committee chair: $20,000. |
| Nominating and governance committee chair: $15,000. |
Our non-employee directors may elect, on an annual basis, to convert all of his or her earned cash fees into a number of RSUs granted under the 2025 Plan, which will be fully vested on the date of grant.
Equity Compensation
Following the completion of this offering, each non-employee director will be entitled to receive certain equity awards as set forth below. All such equity awards will be granted under the 2025 Plan.
Initial Grant. Each non-employee director who joins our board of directors following the completion of this offering will be granted, upon the date of his or her initial election or appointment to be a non-employee director (or as soon as practicable thereafter), an initial award of a number of restricted stock units determined by dividing (i) $800,000 by (ii) by the average closing price of our Class A common stock for the 30 calendar day period ending on the last day prior to the date of grant, rounded down to the nearest whole share. The initial award will vest quarterly with respect to 1/12th of the total number of RSUs subject to the award, so long as the non-employee director provides continuous service to us through each vesting date.
Annual Grant. On the date of each annual meeting of our stockholders that occurs following the completion of this offering, each non-employee director who is then-serving, and will continue to serve, on our board of directors will be granted an annual award of a number of RSUs determined by dividing (i) $275,000 by (ii) by the average closing price of our Class A common stock for the 30 calendar day period ending on the last day prior to the date of grant, rounded down to the nearest whole share. The annual award will fully vest on the earliest to occur of (i) the date of the next annual meeting of our stockholders and (ii) the first anniversary of the grant date, in each case subject to the non-employee directors continuous service through such date.
Each non-employee directors then-outstanding equity awards granted under the non-employee director compensation policy will become fully vested upon a change in control (as defined in the 2025 Plan), subject to the non-employee director remaining in continuous service until immediately prior to the closing of the change in control.
Limitations on Liability and Indemnification Matters
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering contains provisions that will limit the liability of our directors and officers for monetary damages to the fullest extent permitted by the DGCL. Consequently, our directors and officers will not be personally liable to us or our stockholders for monetary damages for any breach of fiduciary duties as directors or officers, except liability for:
| any breach of the directors or officers duty of loyalty to us or our stockholders; |
| any act or omission not in good faith or that involves intentional misconduct or a knowing violation of law; |
| unlawful payments of dividends or unlawful stock repurchases or redemptions as provided in Section 174 of the DGCL; |
| any transaction from which the director or officer derived an improper personal benefit; and |
| with respect to officers, any action by or in the right of the corporation. |
176
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws that will become effective immediately prior to this offering will require us to indemnify our directors and officers to the maximum extent not prohibited by the DGCL and allow us to indemnify other employees and agents as set forth in the DGCL. Subject to certain limitations, our amended and restated bylaws will also require us to advance expenses incurred by our directors and officers for the defense of any action for which indemnification is required or permitted, subject to very limited exceptions.
We have entered, and intend to continue to enter, into separate indemnification agreements with our directors, officers, and certain of our other employees. These agreements, among other things, require us to indemnify our directors, officers, and key employees for certain expenses, including attorneys fees, judgments, fines, and settlement amounts actually and reasonably incurred by such director, officer, or key employee in any action or proceeding arising out of their service to us or any of our subsidiaries or any other company or enterprise to which the person provides services at our request. Subject to certain limitations, our indemnification agreements also require us to advance expenses incurred by our directors, officers, and key employees for the defense of any action for which indemnification is required or permitted.
We believe that these provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and indemnification agreements are necessary to attract and retain qualified persons such as directors, officers, and key employees. We also maintain directors and officers liability insurance.
The limitation of liability and indemnification provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may discourage stockholders from bringing a lawsuit against our directors and officers for breaches of their fiduciary duties. They may also reduce the likelihood of derivative litigation against our directors and officers, even though an action, if successful, might benefit us and other stockholders. Further, a stockholders investment may be adversely affected to the extent that we pay the costs of settlement and damage awards against directors and officers as required by these indemnification provisions.
Insofar as indemnification for liabilities arising under the Securities Act may be permitted to directors, executive officers or persons controlling us, we have been informed that in the opinion of the SEC such indemnification is against public policy as expressed in the Securities Act and is therefore unenforceable.
177
Our named executive officers, consisting of our principal executive officer and the next two most highly compensated executive officers, as of December 31, 2024, were:
| Michael Intrator, Chief Executive Officer and President; |
| Brian Venturo, Chief Strategy Officer; and |
| Brannin McBee, Chief Development Officer. |
Summary Compensation Table
The following table presents summary information regarding the total compensation for services rendered in all capacities that was awarded to, earned by, or paid to our named executive officers for the year ended December 31, 2024.
Name and Principal Position |
Fiscal Year |
Salary($) | Bonus ($)(1) | Stock Awards(2) |
All Other Compensation ($) |
Total($) | ||||||||||||||||||
Michael Intrator, |
2024 | 750,000 | 2,000,000 | | 18,252 | (3) | 2,768,252 | |||||||||||||||||
Brian Venturo, |
2024 | 750,000 | 2,000,000 | | 8,865 | (4) | 2,758,865 | |||||||||||||||||
Brannin McBee, |
2024 | 400,000 | 2,000,000 | | 6,154 | (5) | |
2,406,154 |
|
(1) | The amounts presented represent discretionary bonuses paid for contributions to our performance. |
(2) | Each named executive officer was granted an RSU award that was subject to a time-based component and performance-based component (which constitutes the performance condition). As of the applicable grant date, we had not recognized stock-based compensation expense for these awards because achievement of the performance-based vesting component, as the performance condition, was not deemed probable. As a result, no value is included in the table for these awards. Assuming achievement of the performance-based vesting component, the aggregate grant-date fair values of the RSU awards for each of Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo, and Mr. McBee would have been $83,230,875, computed in accordance with ASC Topic 718, and representing the highest level of performance condition achievement for these awards. The aggregate grant date fair values assuming achievement of the performance-based component are not calculable as of the date of this submission and are expected to be determined in the first quarter of 2025. For information regarding the assumptions used in determining the fair value of these awards, please refer to Note 11 of the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. |
(3) | Amounts reported in this column for Mr. Intrator represent the following: $12,692 for company contributions to our 401(k) plan and $5,560 for spousal travel expenses incurred by us. |
(4) | Amounts reported in this column for Mr. Venturo represent $8,865 for company contributions to our 401(k) plan. |
(5) | Amounts reported in this column for Mr. McBee represent $6,154 for company contributions to our 401(k) plan. |
Narrative to Summary Compensation Table
Base Salaries
Our named executive officers receive a base salary to provide a fixed component of compensation reflecting the executives skill set, experience, role, and responsibilities. Mr. Intrators annual base salary for 2024 was $750,000, Mr. Venturos annual base salary for 2024 was $750,000 and Mr. McBees annual base salary for 2024 was $400,000.
Annual Bonuses
We offer our named executive officers the opportunity to earn discretionary cash bonuses based upon individual performance. As described above in the Summary Compensation Table in the column titled Bonus, each of our named executive officers received a discretionary cash bonus equal to $2,000,000 with respect to their service during 2024.
178
Equity Compensation
From time to time, we have granted equity awards in the form of stock options and restricted stock units to our named executive officers, which are subject to vesting based on each named executive officers continued service with us. Our stock options generally allow employees to purchase shares of our Class A common stock at an exercise price equal to the fair market value of a share on the date of grant, as determined by the board of directors. Our stock options typically vest over a four-year period, with new hire grants vesting as to 25% of the underlying shares on the first anniversary of the date of grant and in equal monthly installments over the following three-year period, and refresh, promotion, or merit-based grants vesting in equal monthly installments over the four-year period following the date of grant, in each case, subject to the holders continued service with us. Our restricted stock unit grants generally vest based on the satisfaction of a time-based vesting component and a performance-based vesting component. The performance-based vesting component will be satisfied upon completion of this offering. The time-based vesting component for newly hired employees is generally satisfied as to 25% of the restricted stock units on the first anniversary of the applicable vesting commencement date and in equal quarterly installments over the subsequent three years, and the time-based component for refresh, promotion, or merit-based grants is generally satisfied in equal quarterly installments over four years. From time to time, our board of directors may also construct alternate vesting schedules as it determines are appropriate to motivate particular employees.
Each of our named executive officers currently holds outstanding stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock that were granted under our 2019 Plan, as set forth in the Outstanding Equity Awards at Fiscal 2024 Year-End below. The options we grant to employees are intended to qualify as incentive stock options to the extent permitted under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. Pursuant to certain equity exchange right agreements entered into with Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, and Brannin McBee, each of Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo, and Mr. McBee has been granted Equity Exchange Rights in connection with the shares of Class A common stock underlying their outstanding options to require us to exchange any shares of Class A common stock that the named executive officer acquires upon the exercise of such stock option awards for an equivalent number (or value) of shares of our Class B common stock. See the section titled Certain Relationships and Related Party TransactionsOther TransactionsEquity Exchange Right Agreements for more information on the Equity Exchange Rights.
In December 2024, our board of directors granted RSU awards in respect of 1,750,000 shares of our Class A common stock to each of Messrs. Intrator, Venturo, and McBee. The RSU awards vest upon satisfaction of both a service-based condition and a performance-based condition. The service-based condition is satisfied in 16 quarterly installments beginning on March 31, 2025 through December 31, 2028, subject to continued service with us as of each such date. The performance-based condition will be satisfied in connection with this offering.
In connection with this offering, we have adopted the 2025 Plan in order to facilitate the grant of cash and equity incentives to directors, employees (including our named executive officers), and consultants of our company and to enable our company to obtain and retain services of these individuals. Following the effective date of the 2025 Plan, we will not make any further grants under our 2019 Plan, However, the 2019 Plan will continue to govern the terms and conditions of the outstanding awards granted under it. For additional information about the 2025 Plan, please see the section titled Stock Plans below.
Other Elements of Compensation
Welfare and Other Benefits
We provide health, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance benefits to our named executive officers, on the same terms and conditions as provided to all other eligible U.S. employees.
We also sponsor a broad-based 401(k) plan intended to provide eligible U.S. employees with an opportunity to defer eligible compensation up to certain annual limits. As a tax-qualified retirement plan, contributions (if
179
any) made by us are deductible by us when made, and contributions and earnings on those amounts are generally not taxable to the employees until withdrawn or distributed from the 401(k) plan. Our named executive officers are eligible to participate in our employee benefit plans, including our 401(k) plan, on the same basis as our other employees. During the year ended December 31, 2024, we made matching contributions of up to 1.7% of each of our named executive officers base salary.
Outstanding Equity Awards at Fiscal 2024 Year-End
The following table presents, for each of our named executive officers, information regarding outstanding stock options to purchase shares of Class A common stock held as of December 31, 2024.
Option Awards(1) | Stock Awards(1) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name |
Vesting Commencement Date |
Grant Date |
Number of Securities Underlying Unexercised Options (#) Exercisable |
Number of Securities Underlying Unexercised Options (#) Unexercisable |
Option Exercise Price ($) |
Option Expiration Date |
Number of Shares or Units of Stock That Have Not Vested (#) |
Market Value of Shares or Units of Stock That Have Not Vested ($) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Michael Intrator |
2/26/2021 | 2/26/2021 | (2) | 500,000 | | 0.38 | 2/25/2031 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chief Executive Officer |
12/29/2022 | 12/29/2022 | (3) | 250,000 | 250,000 | 1.07 | 12/28/2027 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
6/28/2023 | 6/28/2023 | (4) | 1,120 | 1,880 | 2.80 | 6/27/2028 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
7/16/2023 | 7/16/2023 | (5) | 708,320 | 1,291,680 | 2.80 | 7/15/2028 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
12/31/2024 | 12/31/2024 | (6) | 1,750,000 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brian Venturo |
8/31/2020 | 8/31/2020 | (7) | 2,400,000 | | 0.13 | 8/30/2030 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chief Strategy Officer |
12/29/2022 | 12/29/2022 | (8) | 250,000 | 250,000 | 1.07 | 12/28/2027 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
6/28/2023 | 6/28/2023 | (9) | 1,120 | 1,880 | 2.80 | 6/27/2028 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
7/16/2023 | 7/16/2023 | (10) | 708,320 | 1,291,680 | 2.80 | 7/15/2028 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
12/31/2024 | 12/31/2024 | (11) | 1,750,000 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brannin McBee |
12/29/2022 | 12/29/2022 | (12) | 100,000 | 100,000 | 1.07 | 12/28/2027 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chief Development Officer |
6/28/2023 | 6/28/2023 | (13) | 1,120 | 1,880 | 2.54 | 6/27/2033 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
7/16/2023 | 7/16/2023 | (12) | 354,160 | 645,840 | 2.54 | 7/15/2033 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
12/31/2024 | 12/31/2024 | (14) | 1,750,000 |
(1) | All outstanding equity awards were granted under the 2019 Plan. |
(2) | The fully vested option award vested as to 1/3rd of the total award on the first anniversary of the vesting commencement date and as to 1/36th of the total award on each monthly anniversary thereafter, subject to Mr. Intrators continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. |
(3) | The option award vests as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, subject to Mr. Intrators continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. |
(4) | The option award vests as to 1/4th of the total award on the first anniversary of the vesting commencement date and as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary thereafter, subject to Mr. Intrators continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. Mr. Intrator was a holder of greater than 10% of our shares of common stock at the time of grant so, pursuant to Section 422 of the Code (as defined below), the exercise price of this incentive stock option award reflects 110% of the fair market value of our common stock at the time of grant. |
(5) | The option award vests as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, subject to Mr. Intrators continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. Mr. Intrator was a holder of greater than 10% of our shares of common stock at the time of grant so, pursuant to Section 422 of the Code, the exercise price of this incentive stock option award reflects 110% of the fair market value of our common stock at the time of grant. |
(6) | The RSUs vest based on the satisfaction of both a service-based vesting condition and a performance-based vesting condition. The service-based vesting condition and performance-based vesting condition were not satisfied as to any of the RSUs as of December 31, 2024. The RSUs vest as to 1/16th of the total award and may be settled for shares of Class A common stock on each quarterly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, once the performance-based vesting condition has been satisfied and subject to Mr. Intrators continued service with us. The performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon completion of this offering. The fair value of our Class A common stock underlying this award as of December 31, 2024 is not available as of the date of this submission and is expected to be determined in the first quarter of 2025. |
180
(7) | The fully vested option award vested as to 1/3rd of the total award on the first anniversary of the vesting commencement date and as to 1/36th of the total award on each monthly anniversary thereafter, subject to Mr. Venturos continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. |
(8) | The option award vests as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, subject to Mr. Venturos continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. |
(9) | The option award vests as to 1/4th of the total award on the first anniversary of the vesting commencement date and as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary thereafter, subject to Mr. Venturos continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. Mr. Venturo was a holder of greater than 10% of our shares of common stock at the time of grant so, pursuant to Section 422 of the Code, the exercise price of this incentive stock option award reflects 110% of the fair market value of our common stock at the time of grant. |
(10) | The option award vests as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, subject to Mr. Venturos continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. Mr. Venturo was a holder of greater than 10% of our shares of common stock at the time of grant so, pursuant to Section 422 of the Code, the exercise price of this incentive stock option award reflects 110% of the fair market value of our common stock at the time of grant. |
(11) | The RSUs vest based on the satisfaction of both a service-based vesting condition and a performance-based vesting condition. The service-based vesting condition and performance-based vesting condition were not satisfied as to any of the RSUs as of December 31, 2024. The RSUs vest as to 1/16th of the total award and may be settled for shares of Class A common stock on each quarterly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, once the performance-based vesting condition has been satisfied and subject to Mr. Venturos continued service with us. The performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon completion of this offering. The fair value of our Class A common stock underlying this award as of December 31, 2024 is not available as of the date of this submission and is expected to be determined in the first quarter of 2025. |
(12) | The option award vests as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, subject to Mr. McBees continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. |
(13) | The option award vests as to 1/4th of the total award on the first anniversary of the vesting commencement date and as to 1/48th of the total award on each monthly anniversary thereafter, subject to Mr. McBees continued service with us. The shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of this option award are exchangeable for shares of Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights. |
(14) | The RSUs vest based on the satisfaction of both a service-based vesting condition and a performance-based vesting condition. The service-based vesting condition and performance-based vesting condition were not satisfied as to any of the RSUs as of December 31, 2024. The RSUs vest as to 1/16th of the total award and may be settled for shares of Class A common stock on each quarterly anniversary of the vesting commencement date, once the performance-based vesting condition has been satisfied and subject to Mr. McBees continued service with us. The performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon completion of this offering. The fair value of our Class A common stock underlying this award as of December 31, 2024 is not available as of the date of this submission and is expected to be determined in the first quarter of 2025. |
Executive Compensation Arrangements
Executive Offer Letters
As our Co-Founders, our named executive officers did not enter into offer letters or any other formal arrangements or understandings with us regarding their employment. We currently do not have employment agreements or offer letters with any of our named executive officers. All of our named executive officers are employed on an at-will basis, with no fixed term of employment. Each of our named executive officers will receive benefits upon certain qualifying terminations as described in the section titled Change of Control and Severance Arrangements.
Executive Severance and Change in Control Plan
In connection with this offering, we adopted an executive severance and change in control plan, under which each of our named executive officers will participate. The executive severance and change in control plan will become effective upon the completion of this offering.
181
The executive severance and change in control plan provides that, upon a termination by us of an executive without cause or by the executive due to good reason (each as defined in the executive severance and change in control plan), the executive will receive (i) a lump sum payment equal to 12 months of such executives base salary and (ii) continued payment of COBRA premiums for 12 months (or, if earlier, until the date that the executive is eligible for substantially equivalent coverage under a subsequent employers plan).
The executive severance and change in control plan also provides that, if such termination of employment occurs within three months prior to, or 12 months following, a change in control (as defined in the executive severance and change in control plan), the executive will receive (i) a lump sum payment equal to 12 months of base salary, (ii) continued payment of COBRA premiums for 12 months (or, if earlier, when the executive is eligible for substantially equivalent coverage under a subsequent employers plan), and (iii) full accelerated vesting of all outstanding and unvested equity award held by the executive, provided that any outstanding and unvested equity awards subject to performance conditions will instead be subject to the terms set forth in the applicable award agreements.
If our named executive officers are entitled to any benefits other than the benefits under the executive severance and change in control plan, each of his benefits under the executive severance and change in control plan shall be provided only to the extent more favorable than the corresponding benefit under such other arrangement. All such severance payments and benefits under the executive severance and change in control plan will be subject to each executives execution of a general release of claims against us.
Stock Plans
We believe that our ability to grant equity-based awards is a valuable compensation tool that enables us to attract, retain, and motivate our employees, consultants, and members of our board of directors by aligning their financial interests with those of our stockholders. The principal features of our equity incentive plans are summarized below. These summaries are qualified in their entirety by reference to the actual text of the plans, which are filed as exhibits to the registration statement of which this prospectus is a part.
2019 Stock Option Plan
In July 2019, we adopted our 2019 Plan as most recently amended on December 6, 2023. The purpose of the 2019 Plan is to attract, retain, and motivate eligible employees, directors, and consultants whose contributions are important to the success of our business.
Share Reserve. As of December 31, 2024, we had 73,637,600 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance pursuant to grants under our 2019 Plan of which 3,750,480 shares remained available for grant. As of December 31, 2024, options to purchase 7,213,820 shares had been exercised and options to purchase 47,218,580 shares remained outstanding, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.75 per share. As of December 31, 2024, 15,454,720 awards of RSUs were granted under the 2019 Plan. As of December 31, 2024, no shares of restricted stock and no stock appreciation rights (SARs) were granted under the 2019 Plan, and no such awards are expected to be granted prior to this offering; provided that certain options granted under the 2019 Plan are early exercisable and may be exercised for unvested shares of our common stock subject to a repurchase right. No new awards will be granted under the 2019 Plan after this offering.
Administration. Our 2019 Plan is administered by our board of directors or a committee appointed by our board of directors, referred to herein as the administrator. Subject to the terms of the 2019 Plan, the administrator has the authority to, among other things, select the persons to whom awards will be granted, construe and interpret our 2019 Plan as well as to prescribe, amend and rescind rules and regulations relating to the 2019 Plan and awards granted thereunder. The administrator may modify awards subject to the terms of the 2019 Plan.
182
Eligibility. Pursuant to the 2019 Plan, we may grant incentive stock options (ISOs) only to our employees or the employees of our parent or subsidiaries, as applicable (including officers and directors who are also employees). We may grant non-statutory stock options (NQSOs), RSUs, SARs, and shares of restricted stock to our employees (including officers and directors who are also employees), non-employee directors, and consultants, or the employees, directors, and consultants of our parent and subsidiaries, as applicable.
Stock Options. The 2019 Plan provides for the grant of both (i) ISOs, which are intended to qualify for tax treatment as set forth under Section 422 of the Code and (ii) NQSOs to purchase shares of our Class A common stock, each at a stated exercise price. The exercise price of each option must be at least equal to the fair market value of our common stock on the date of grant (unless otherwise determined by the administrator). However, the exercise price of any ISO granted to an individual who owns more than ten percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of our capital stock must be at least equal to 110% of the fair market value of our common stock on the date of grant. The administrator will determine the vesting schedule applicable to each option. The maximum permitted term of options granted under our 2019 Plan is ten years from the date of grant, except that the maximum permitted term of ISOs granted to an individual who owns more than ten percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of our capital stock is five years from the date of grant.
Restricted Stock Units. The 2019 Plan also allows for the grant of restricted stock units, or RSUs, with terms as generally determined by the administrator (in accordance with the 2019 Plan) and to be set forth in an award agreement. RSUs represent the right to receive shares of our Class A common stock at a specified date in the future, subject to forfeiture of that right because of termination of employment or failure to achieve certain performance conditions. Generally, the vesting of our RSUs granted under the 2019 Plan is upon satisfaction of both a performance-based vesting condition and a time-based vesting schedule on or before the expiration date of such RSUs. RSUs will be forfeited in case of a termination of employment or service before the satisfaction of both the performance-based vesting condition and the time-based vesting schedule or, otherwise, generally in case of non-satisfaction of either the performance-based vesting condition or the time-based vesting schedule. The performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the earlier of (i) the effective date of the registration statement filed by us for purposes of this offering and (ii) a change of control (as defined in the 2019 Plan). Following the satisfaction of the performance-based vesting condition, RSUs that remain unvested as of the date of such liquidity event due to the RSUs time-based vesting schedule will continue to vest after the performance-based vesting condition for so long as the holder remains in continuous service status through each such time-based vesting date.
Restricted Stock, Stock Appreciation Rights. In addition, the 2019 Plan allows for the grant of restricted stock awards (RSAs) and SARs, with terms as generally determined by the administrator (in accordance with the 2019 Plan) and to be set forth in an award agreement. We have not granted any shares of restricted stock or any SARs under the 2019 Plan and no such awards are expected to be granted prior to this offering; provided that certain options granted under the 2019 Plan are early exercisable and may be exercised for unvested shares of our common stock subject to a repurchase right.
Limited Transferability. Unless otherwise determined by the administrator, awards granted under the 2019 Plan generally may not be sold, pledged, assigned, hypothecated, transferred, or disposed of in any manner other than by will, the laws of descent and distribution and, with respect to NQSOs, by instrument to an inter vivos or testamentary trust in which the NQSOs are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the trustor, or by gift to a qualified family member.
Change of Control. In the event that we are subject to an acquisition or other combination (as defined in the 2019 Plan and generally meaning, collectively, a merger, a sale or transfer of more than 50% of the voting power of all of our outstanding securities, or a sale of all or substantially all of the assets of ours), the 2019 Plan provides that awards will be subject to the agreement evidencing such acquisition or other combination, which agreement need not treat all awards in a similar manner. Such agreement may, without the participants consent, provide for the continuation of outstanding awards, the assumption or substitution of awards, the acceleration of vesting of awards, the settlement of awards (whether or not vested) in cash, securities, or other consideration, or the cancellation of such awards for no consideration.
183
Adjustments. In the event that the number of outstanding shares of our Class A common stock is changed by a stock dividend, recapitalization, stock split, reverse stock split, subdivision, combination, reclassification, or other change in our capital structure affecting our shares without consideration, then in order to prevent diminution or enlargement of the benefits or potential benefits intended to be made available under the 2019 Plan (i) the number of shares reserved for issuance under the 2019 Plan, (ii) the exercise prices of and number of shares subject to outstanding options and SARs, and (iii) the purchase prices of and/or number of shares subject to other outstanding awards will (to the extent appropriate) be proportionately adjusted (subject to required action by the board or our stockholders).
Exchange, repricing, and buyout of awards. The administrator may modify, extend, or renew awards or issue new awards in exchange for the surrender and cancellation of any or all outstanding awards, provided that any such action will require the consent of the respective participants to the extent that any such action would impair any of the participants existing rights. The administrator may, without prior stockholder approval, reduce the exercise price of options or SARs or buy an award previously granted with payment in cash, shares or other consideration, in each case, subject to the terms of the 2019 Plan.
Amendment; Termination. Our board of directors may amend or terminate the 2019 Plan at any time and may terminate any and all outstanding options, RSUs, or SARs upon a dissolution or liquidation of us, provided that certain amendments will require shareholder approval or participant consent. We expect to terminate the 2019 Plan and will cease issuing awards thereunder upon the effective date of our 2025 Plan (described below), which is the date immediately prior to the date of the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. Any outstanding awards granted under the 2019 Plan will remain outstanding following this offering, subject to the terms of our 2019 Plan and applicable award agreements, until such awards are exercised or until they terminate or expire by their terms.
2025 Equity Incentive Plan
In February 2025, our board of directors and our stockholders approved our 2025 Plan as a successor to our 2019 Plan, which will become effective on the date immediately prior to the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. The 2025 Plan authorizes the award of both ISOs, which are intended to qualify for tax treatment under Section 422 of the Code, and NQSOs, as well for the award of RSAs, SARs, RSUs, and performance and stock bonus awards. Pursuant to the 2025 Plan, ISOs may be granted only to our employees. We may grant all other types of awards to our employees, directors, and consultants.
Share Reserve. We have initially reserved 50,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock, plus any reserved shares of our Class A common stock not issued or subject to outstanding grants under the 2019 Plan on the effective date of the 2025 Plan, for issuance as our Class A common stock pursuant to awards granted under our 2025 Plan. The number of shares reserved for issuance under our 2025 Plan will increase automatically on January 1 of each of 2026 through 2035 by the number of shares equal to the lesser of (a) five percent of the aggregate number of outstanding shares of all classes of our common stock plus the total number of shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock (if any), in each case as of the immediately preceding December 31, or (b) such number of shares of our Class A common stock as may be determined by our board of directors or our compensation committee.
In addition, the shares set forth below will again be available for issuance pursuant to awards granted under our 2025 Plan:
| shares subject to options or SARs granted under our 2025 Plan that cease to be subject to the option or SAR for any reason other than exercise of the option or SAR; |
| shares subject to awards granted under our 2025 Plan that are subsequently forfeited or repurchased by us at the original issue price; |
184
| shares subject to awards granted under our 2025 Plan that otherwise terminate without such shares being issued; |
| shares subject to awards granted under our 2025 Plan that are surrendered, cancelled, or exchanged for cash or a different award (or combination thereof); |
| shares issuable upon the exercise of options granted under our 2019 Plan that, after the effective date of the 2025 Plan, are forfeited; |
| shares issued pursuant to awards granted under our 2019 Plan that are forfeited or repurchased by us at the original price after the effective date of the 2025 Plan; and |
| shares subject to awards under our 2019 Plan or our 2025 Plan that are used to pay the exercise price of an option or withheld to satisfy the tax withholding obligations related to any award. |
Shares of our Class A common stock that were either reserved, but not issued under the 2019 Plan as of the date of this prospectus, or issued under the 2019 Plan and later become available for grant under our 2025 Plan, either as set forth above, shall be issued under the 2025 Plan only as shares of our Class A common stock.
Administration. Our 2025 Plan will be administered by our compensation committee or by our board of directors acting in place of our compensation committee. Subject to the terms and conditions of the 2025 Plan, the administrator will have the authority, among other things, to select the persons to whom awards may be granted, construe and interpret our 2025 Plan as well as to determine the terms of such awards and prescribe, amend, and rescind the rules and regulations relating to the 2025 Plan or any award granted thereunder. The 2025 Plan provides that the administrator may delegate its authority, including the authority to grant awards, to one or more executive officers to the extent permitted by applicable law, provided that awards granted to non-employee directors may only be determined by our board of directors.
Options. The 2025 Plan provides for the grant of both ISOs intended to qualify under Section 422 of the Code, and NQSOs to purchase shares of our Class A common stock at a stated exercise price. ISOs may only be granted to employees, including officers and directors who are also employees. The exercise price of stock options granted under the 2025 Plan must be at least equal to the fair market value of our Class A common stock on the date of grant. ISOs granted to an individual who holds, directly or by attribution, more than ten percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of our capital stock must have an exercise price of at least 110% the fair market value of our Class A common stock on the date of grant.
Options may vest based on service and/or achievement of performance conditions, as determined by the administrator. The administrator may provide for options to be exercised only as they vest or to be immediately exercisable, with any shares issued on exercise being subject to our right of repurchase that lapses as the shares vest. No more than 150,000,000 shares may be issued pursuant to ISOs. The maximum term of options granted under our 2025 Plan is ten years from the date of grant, except that the maximum permitted term of ISOs granted to an individual who holds, directly or by attribution, more than ten percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of our capital stock is five years from the date of grant.
Restricted Stock Awards. An RSA is an offer by us to grant or sell shares of our Class A common stock subject to restrictions, which may lapse based on the satisfaction of service and/or achievement of performance conditions. The price, if any, of an RSA will be determined by the administrator. Holders of RSAs, unlike holders of options, will have the right to vote and any dividends or distributions paid with respect to such shares will be subject to the same vesting terms and other restrictions as the RSA and will be accrued and paid when the vesting terms on such shares lapse. Unless otherwise determined by the administrator, vesting will cease on the date the participant no longer provides services to us and unvested shares may be forfeited to or repurchased by us.
Stock Appreciation Rights. An SAR provides for a payment, in cash or shares of our Class A common stock (up to a specified maximum of shares, if determined by the administrator), to the participant based upon the
185
difference between the fair market value of our Class A common stock on the date of exercise and a predetermined exercise price, multiplied by the number of shares. SARs may vest based on service and/or achievement of performance conditions. No SAR may have a term that is longer than ten years from the date of grant.
Restricted Stock Units. An RSU represents the right to receive shares of our Class A common stock at a specified date in the future and may be subject to vesting based on service and/or achievement of performance conditions. RSUs may be settled in cash, shares of our Class A common stock, or a combination of both as soon as practicable following vesting or on a later date subject to the terms of the 2025 Plan and any applicable award agreement (which may provide for settlement only in shares). No RSU may have a term that is longer than ten years from the date of grant.
Performance Awards. A performance award granted pursuant to the 2025 Plan may be in the form of a cash bonus, or an award of performance shares or performance units denominated in shares of our Class A common stock that may be settled in cash, property, or by issuance of those shares, subject to the satisfaction or achievement of specified performance conditions.
Stock Bonus Awards. A stock bonus award provides for payment in the form of cash, shares of our Class A common stock, or a combination thereof, based on the fair market value of shares subject to such award as determined by the administrator. The awards may be granted as consideration for services already rendered, or at the discretion of the administrator, may be subject to vesting restrictions based on continued service and/or performance conditions.
Dividend Equivalent Rights. Dividend equivalent rights may be granted at the discretion of the administrator and represent the right to receive the value of dividends, if any, paid by us in respect of the number of shares of our Class A common stock underlying an award. Dividend equivalent rights will be subject to the same vesting or performance conditions as the underlying award and will be paid only when the underlying award becomes vested or may be deemed to have been reinvested by us.
Change of Control. Our 2025 Plan provides that, in the event of a corporate transaction that constitutes a change of control of our company under the terms of the plan, outstanding awards will be subject to the agreement evidencing the change of control, which need not treat all outstanding awards in an identical manner, and may include one or more of the following: (1) the continuation of the outstanding awards, (2) the assumption of the outstanding awards by the surviving corporation or a parent or subsidiary of the surviving corporation, (3) the substitution by the surviving corporation or a parent or subsidiary of the surviving corporation of new options or substantially equivalent equity awards for the outstanding awards, (4) the full or partial acceleration of exercisability or vesting or lapse of our right to repurchase or other terms of forfeiture and accelerated expiration of the award, or (5) may be settled for their intrinsic value (whether or not then vested or exercisable) in cash, cash equivalents, or equity (including cash or equity subject to deferred vesting and delivery consistent with vesting restrictions applicable to such awards or the underlying shares) followed by the cancellation of such awards, provided however, that such awards may be cancelled without consideration if such awards have no value, as determined by our compensation committee, in its discretion, in each case without the participants consent. The successor corporation may also issue, as replacement of our outstanding shares held by a participant, substantially similar shares, or other property subject to repurchase restrictions no less favorable to the participant. In the event such successor corporation refuses to assume, substitute, or replace any award in accordance with the 2025 Plan, then notwithstanding any other provision in the 2025 Plan to the contrary, each such award shall become fully vested and, as applicable, exercisable and any rights of repurchase or forfeiture restrictions thereon will lapse, immediately prior to the consummation of the corporate transaction. Awards subject to performance-based vesting that are not assumed pursuant to the foregoing shall be deemed earned and vested at 100% of target level, unless otherwise indicated pursuant to the terms and conditions of the applicable award agreement.
If an award vests in lieu of assumption or substitution in connection with a corporate transaction as provided above, our board of directors or our compensation committee will notify the holder of such award in writing or
186
electronically that such award will be exercisable for a period of time determined by our board of directors or our compensation committee, in its sole discretion, and such award will terminate upon the expiration of such period without consideration. Any determinations by our board of directors or our compensation committee need not treat all outstanding awards in an identical manner, and shall be final and binding on each applicable participant. Our board of directors shall have full power and authority to assign our right to repurchase, right to re-acquire, and/or forfeiture rights to such successor or acquiring corporation.
The vesting of all awards granted to our non-employee directors under our 2025 Plan shall accelerate in full in the event of a corporate transaction.
Adjustment. In the event of a change in the number or class of outstanding shares of our Class A common stock, without consideration, by reason of a stock dividend, extraordinary dividend, or distribution (whether in cash, shares, or other property, other than a regular cash dividend), recapitalization, stock split, reverse stock split, subdivision, combination, consolidation, reclassification, spin-off or similar change in our capital structure, proportional adjustments will be made to the number and class of shares reserved for issuance under our 2025 Plan; the exercise prices, number, and class of shares subject to outstanding options or SARs; the number and class of shares subject to other outstanding awards; and any applicable maximum award limits with respect to ISOs.
Exchange, Repricing, and Buyout of Awards. The administrator may, without prior stockholder approval, (1) reduce the exercise price of outstanding options or SARs without the consent of any participant (provided that written notice of the repricing is provided to such participants) and (2) pay cash or issue new awards in exchange for the surrender and cancellation of any, or all, outstanding awards, subject to the consent of any affected participant to the extent required by the terms of the 2025 Plan.
Director Compensation Limits. No non-employee director may receive awards under our 2025 Plan in consideration for such directors service as a non-employee director with a grant date value that when combined with cash compensation received for such directors service as a non-employee director, exceeds $1 million in a calendar year or $1.5 million in the calendar year of his or her initial service as a non-employee director with us. Awards granted, or cash compensation paid, to an individual while he or she was serving in the capacity as an employee or in consideration of services as a consultant will not count for purposes of this limitation.
Clawback; Transferability. All awards will be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by our board of directors or required by law, to the extent set forth in such policy or applicable agreement. Except in limited circumstances, awards granted under our 2025 Plan may generally not be transferred in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent and distribution.
Sub-plans. Subject to the terms of the 2025 Plan, the plan administrator may establish a sub-plan under the 2025 Plan and/or modify the terms of awards granted to participants outside of the United States to comply with any laws or regulations applicable to any such jurisdiction.
Amendment; Termination. Our board of directors or compensation committee may amend our 2025 Plan at any time, subject to stockholder approval as may be required. Our 2025 Plan will terminate ten years from the date our board of directors adopts the plan, unless it is terminated earlier by our board of directors. No termination or amendment of the 2025 Plan may adversely affect any then-outstanding award without the consent of the affected participant, except as is necessary to comply with applicable laws or as otherwise provided by the terms of the 2025 Plan.
2025 Employee Stock Purchase Plan
In February 2025, our board of directors and our stockholders approved our 2025 ESPP, which will become effective upon the date the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part becomes effective to enable eligible employees to purchase shares of our Class A common stock with accumulated payroll deductions.
187
The 2025 ESPP includes two components: a 423 Component and a Non-423 Component. We intend the 423 Component to qualify as options issued under an employee stock purchase plan as that term is defined in Section 423(b) of the Code. Except as otherwise provided in the 2025 ESPP or determined by the board of directors or the compensation committee, the Non-423 Component (if any) will operate and be administered in the same manner as the 423 Component.
Share Reserve. We have initially reserved 10,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock for issuance and sale under our 2025 ESPP. The number of shares reserved for issuance and sale under our 2025 ESPP will increase automatically on January 1st of each of 2026 through 2035 by the number of shares equal to the lesser of (a) the number of shares equal to 1% of the sum of the total number of outstanding shares of all classes of our common stock plus the total number of shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock (if any), in each case outstanding as of the immediately preceding December 31 and (b) such number of shares of our Class A common stock determined by our board of directors or compensation committee; provided, that our board of directors or our compensation committee may in its sole discretion reduce the amount of the increase in any particular calendar year. Subject to stock splits, recapitalizations, or similar events, no more than 100,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock may be issued over the term of our 2025 ESPP.
Administration. Our 2025 ESPP will be administered by our compensation committee or by our board of directors acting in place of our compensation committee, subject to the terms and conditions of our 2025 ESPP. Among other things, the administrator will have the authority to determine eligibility for participation in our 2025 ESPP (to the extent permitted by applicable law), designate separate offerings under the plan (and determine the length of such offerings), and construe, interpret, and apply the terms of the plan.
Eligibility. Employees eligible to participate in any offering pursuant to our 2025 ESPP generally include any employee that is employed by us or certain of our designated subsidiaries at the beginning of the offering period. However, the administrator may exclude employees who have been employed for less than two years, are customarily employed for 20 hours or less per week, are customarily employed for five months or less in a calendar year, are certain highly compensated employees as determined in accordance with applicable tax laws or are certain employees who are citizens or residents of a foreign jurisdiction if such participation is prohibited under applicable local laws or would violate the requirements of Section 423 of the Code (with respect to an offering under a 423 Component). In addition, any employee who owns (or is deemed to own because of attribution rules) 5% or more of the total combined voting power or value of all classes of our capital stock, or the capital stock of one of our qualifying subsidiaries, or who will own such amount because of participation in our 2025 ESPP, will not be eligible to participate in our 2025 ESPP. The administrator may impose additional restrictions on eligibility from time to time.
Offerings. Under our 2025 ESPP, eligible employees will be offered the option to purchase shares of our Class A common stock at a discount over a series of offering periods through accumulated payroll deductions over the period. Each offering period may itself consist of one or more purchase periods. No offering period may be longer than 27 months. The purchase price for shares purchased under our 2025 ESPP during any given purchase period will be 85% of the lesser of the fair market value of our Class A common stock on (1) the first trading day of the applicable offering period or (2) the last trading day of the applicable purchase period.
No participant may purchase more than 5,000 shares of our Class A common stock (or such greater or lesser number as our compensation committee may determine) during any one purchase period and may not subscribe for more than $25,000 in fair market value of shares of our Class A common stock (determined as of the date the offering period commences) in any calendar year in which the offering is in effect.
Adjustments Upon Recapitalization. If the number or class of outstanding shares of our Class A common stock is changed by stock dividend, recapitalization, stock split, reverse stock split, subdivision, combination, reclassification or similar change in our capital structure without consideration, then the administrator will
188
proportionately adjust the number or class of shares of our Class A common stock that are available under our 2025 ESPP, the purchase price and number or class of shares any participant has elected to purchase as well as the maximum number of shares which may be purchased by participants.
Change of Control. If we experience a change of control transaction as determined under the terms of our 2025 ESPP, any offering period then in effect will be assumed or an equivalent option substituted by the successor corporation or a parent or a subsidiary of the successor corporation. In the event that the successor corporation refuses to assume or substitute for the purchase right, any offering period then in effect will be shortened and terminated on a final purchase date established by the administrator. The final purchase date will occur on or prior to the effective date of the change of control transaction, and our 2025 ESPP will terminate on the closing of the change of control.
Transferability. Participants may generally not assign, transfer, pledge, or otherwise dispose of payroll deductions credited to their account or any rights regarding an election to purchase shares pursuant to our 2025 ESPP other than by will or the laws of descent or distribution.
Amendment; Termination. The board of directors or compensation committee may amend, suspend, or terminate our 2025 ESPP at any time without stockholder consent, except as required by law. Unless earlier terminated, our 2025 ESPP will terminate upon the earlier to occur of the issuance of all shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2025 ESPP, or the tenth anniversary of the effective date.
Compensation Recovery Policy
In February 2025, we adopted a Compensation Recovery Policy (the Compensation Recovery Policy). The Compensation Recovery Policy is in accordance with the final rules regarding recovery of erroneously awarded executive officer compensation in connection with an accounting restatement, as adopted by the SEC in October 2022, and consistent with the corresponding Nasdaq listing standards (together, the Clawback Rules). Pursuant to the Compensation Recovery Policy, and subject to certain limited exceptions in the Clawback Rules, in the event we are required to restate our financial statements, we are required to recoup erroneously awarded incentive-based compensation (as described in the Clawback Rules, including both cash and equity compensation) paid to any current or former executive officer (as described in the Clawback Rules) during the three completed fiscal years immediately prior to the date the accounting restatement was required. The amount recoverable is the amount of any incentive-based compensation received by the executive officer based on the financial statements prior to the restatement that exceeds the amount that such executive officer would have received had the incentive-based compensation been determined based on the financial restatement.
189
CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS
In addition to the compensation arrangements discussed in the sections titled Management and Executive Compensation, the following is a description of each transaction since January 1, 2022 and each currently proposed transaction in which:
| we have been or are to be a participant; |
| the amount involved exceeded or will exceed $120,000; and |
| any of our directors, executive officers, or holders of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, or any immediate family member of, or person sharing the household with, any of these individuals, had or will have a direct or indirect material interest. |
Tender Offers
2024 Tender Offer
In October 2024, certain existing stockholders and new stockholders offered to purchase shares of our Class A common stock (including certain shares of our Class A common stock issued upon (i) exercise of vested options to purchase common stock; and/or (ii) conversion of shares of our convertible preferred stock and Class B common stock), Class B common stock, and convertible preferred stock, from certain of our securityholders for $47.00 per share in cash (the 2024 Tender Offer). An aggregate of 13,851,240 shares of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and convertible preferred stock were tendered for an aggregate purchase price of $651 million. Each share of our Class B common stock and convertible preferred stock sold in the 2024 Tender Offer was automatically converted into one share of Class A common stock immediately prior to each purchase.
We did not receive any consideration from the sale proceeds of the 2024 Tender Offer, except for amounts received upon the net exercise of employee stock options by certain of our employees who exercised vested options to sell the subsequently issued shares in the 2024 Tender Offer. The aggregate amount received by us in respect of these net exercises for shares sold in the 2024 Tender Offer was $1 million.
Certain funds affiliated with Glenn Hutchins, who joined as a member of our board of directors in February 2025, participated in the 2024 Tender Offer as purchasers of our Class A common stock. Other than Mr. Hutchins, none of our directors or officers participated as purchasers in the 2024 Tender Offer. Certain funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar and certain entities affiliated with FMR LLC (Fidelity), each beneficial owners of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, participated in the 2024 Tender Offer as purchasers of our Class A common stock. The following table summarizes the shares of Class A common stock purchased by our directors and officers and holders of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock:
Stockholder |
Shares of Class A Common Stock |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Entities affiliated with Fidelity(1) |
1,416,340 | $ | 66,557,577 | |||||
Funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar(2) |
1,934,980 | $ | 90,929,848 | |||||
Funds affiliated with Glenn Hutchins(3) |
212,780 | $ | 9,999,097 |
(1) | Consists of shares held by certain affiliates of Fidelity, which beneficially owns more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. |
(2) | Consists of shares held by certain funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, which beneficially owns more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. Ernie Rogers, a former member of our board of directors, is the Chief Operating Officer of Magnetar. |
(3) | Consists of shares held by certain funds for which Glenn Hutchins, a member of our board of directors, serves as investment manager. |
Certain of our directors and officers and their affiliates participated as sellers in the 2024 Tender Offer. The following table summarizes the shares of our Class A common stock, our Class B common stock, and our convertible preferred stock sold by our directors and officers and their affiliated parties in the 2024 tender offer.
190
The amounts set forth in the column titled Total Purchase Price represent the gross sales proceeds realized by the seller, before any reduction for transaction costs, tax withholding, or amounts remitted to us in respect of the net exercise of employee stock options:
Stockholder |
Shares of Class A Common Stock(6) |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Michael Intrator(1) |
1,063,980 | $ | 49,999,245 | |||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Brian Venturo(2) |
2,241,560 | $ | 105,336,856 | |||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Brannin McBee(3) |
2,075,080 | $ | 97,513,519 | |||||
Kristen McVeety |
135,660 | $ | 5,257,701 | |||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Jack Cogen(4) |
1,110,080 | $ | 52,165,606 | |||||
KOPACC, LLC(5) |
245,740 | $ | 11,547,975 |
(1) | Consists of shares held by Michael Intrator, our Chief Executive Officer, President, and chairman of our board of directors, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(2) | Consists of shares held by Brian Venturo, our Chief Strategy Officer and a member of our board of directors, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(3) | Consists of shares held by Brannin McBee, our Chief Development Officer, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(4) | Consists of shares held by Jack Cogen, a member of our board of directors, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(5) | Consists of 245,740 shares directly held of record and sold by KOPACC, LLC, a holder of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. Stephen Jamison, a former member of our board of directors who served until April 2023, is a managing member of KOPACC, LLC. |
(6) | All shares of our Class B common stock and convertible preferred stock were converted into shares of our Class A common stock immediately prior to being sold in the 2024 Tender Offer. |
2023 Tender Offer
In December 2023, certain existing stockholders and new stockholders offered to purchase shares of our Class A common stock (including certain shares of our Class A common stock issued upon (i) exercise of vested options to purchase common stock and (ii) conversion of shares of our convertible preferred stock) and convertible preferred stock from certain of our securityholders for $15.50 per share in cash (the 2023 Tender Offer). An aggregate of 41,476,000 shares of our Class A common stock and convertible preferred stock were tendered for an aggregate purchase price of $643 million. Each share of our convertible preferred stock sold in the 2023 Tender Offer was automatically converted into one share of Class A common stock immediately prior to each purchase.
None of our directors or officers participated as purchasers in the 2023 Tender Offer. We did not receive any consideration from the sale proceeds of the 2023 Tender Offer, except for amounts received upon the net exercise of employee stock options by certain of our employees who exercised vested options to sell the subsequently issued shares in the 2023 Tender Offer. The aggregate amount received by us in respect of these net exercises for shares sold in the 2023 Tender Offer was $354,436.
Certain entities affiliated with Fidelity participated in the 2023 Tender Offer as purchasers of our Class A common stock. Upon completion of the tender offer in December 2023, certain entities affiliated with Fidelity were deemed to beneficially own more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, on an aggregated basis. The following table summarizes the shares of our Class A common stock purchased by holders of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock:
Stockholder |
Shares of Class A Common Stock(2) |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Entities affiliated with Fidelity(1) |
20,009,040 | $ | 310,000,057 |
(1) | Consists of shares held by certain affiliates of Fidelity, which beneficially owns more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. |
(2) | All shares of our convertible preferred stock were converted into shares of our Class A common stock immediately prior to being sold in the 2024 Tender Offer. |
Certain of our directors and officers and their affiliates participated as sellers in the 2023 Tender Offer. Upon completion of the 2023 Tender Offer, Stephen Jamison, a former member of our board of directors who
191
served until April 2023, and his affiliates ceased to be beneficial owners of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, on an aggregated basis. No other holder of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock sold shares in the 2023 Tender Offer.
The following table summarizes the shares of our Class A common stock sold by our directors and officers and their affiliated parties in the 2023 Tender Offer. The amounts set forth in the column titled Total Purchase Price represent the gross sales proceeds realized by the seller, before any reduction for transaction costs, tax withholding, or amounts remitted to us in respect of the net exercise of employee stock options:
Stockholder |
Shares of Class A Common Stock(7) |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Michael Intrator(1) |
7,098,620 | $ | 109,978,920 | |||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Brian Venturo(2) |
4,622,520 | $ | 71,616,703 | |||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Brannin McBee(3) |
3,447,360 | $ | 53,409,948 | |||||
Kristen McVeety(4) |
83,480 | $ | 1,293,356 | |||||
Persons and entities affiliated with Jack Cogen(5) |
8,002,260 | $ | 123,979,015 | |||||
Entities affiliated with Stephen Jamison(6) |
3,140,480 | $ | 48,655,457 |
(1) | Consists of shares held by Michael Intrator, our Chief Executive Officer and chairman of our board of directors, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(2) | Consists of shares held by Brian Venturo, our Chief Strategy Officer and a member of our board of directors, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(3) | Consists of shares held by Brannin McBee, our Chief Development Officer, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(4) | Consists of 83,480 shares directly held of record and sold by Kristen McVeety, our General Counsel and Secretary. The total purchase price reported in the table above includes $45,664 Ms. McVeety paid to us in connection with her net exercise of employee stock options concurrent with her sale in the 2023 tender offer. |
(5) | Consists of held by Jack Cogen, a member of our board of directors, and certain related persons and affiliates. |
(6) | Consists of 3,140,480 shares directly held of record and sold by KOPACC, LLC, a holder of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. Stephen Jamison, a former member of our board of directors who served until April 2023, is a managing member of KOPACC, LLC. |
(7) | All shares of our convertible preferred stock were converted into shares of our common stock immediately prior to being sold in the 2023 Tender Offer. |
In connection with the 2023 Tender Offer, we granted to Fidelity an option to purchase up to 15% of the shares offered by this prospectus at the initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, which option is exercisable until immediately prior to the consummation of this offering.
Convertible Preferred Stock Financings
Series C Convertible Preferred Stock Financing
In May 2024, we sold an aggregate of 29,523,120 shares of our Series C convertible preferred stock at a purchase price of $38.96 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.2 billion. Each share of our Series C convertible preferred stock will convert automatically into shares of our Class A common stock immediately prior to the completion of this offering.
The following table summarizes the shares of our Series C convertible preferred stock purchased by entities affiliated with certain of our directors and holders of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock:
Stockholder |
Shares of Series C Convertible Preferred Stock(3) |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar(1) |
8,985,300 | $ | 349,999,898 | |||||
Entities affiliated with Fidelity(2) |
1,283,620 | $ | 50,000,208 |
(1) | Consists of shares held by funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, which beneficially owns more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. Ernie Rogers, a former member of our board of directors, is the Chief Operating Officer of Magnetar. |
192
(2) | Consists of shares held by certain affiliates of Fidelity, which beneficially own more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. |
(3) | Each share of our Series C convertible preferred stock is convertible into such number of shares of our Class A common stock as adjusted for all accrued dividends that are not timely paid in cash at our election with respect to each quarterly dividend payment period. Interest on each share of our Series C convertible preferred stock held by each individual holder with respect to such accrued dividends accrues on a daily basis from the date of issuance of such shares through June 30, 2024. |
In addition, 29,874,066 shares of our Series C convertible preferred stock are subject to a right to be put to us on the first trading day immediately after the earlier to occur of (i) August 15, 2029 and (ii) the second anniversary of the closing of this offering. Upon exercise of the Put Right (as defined herein), holders of the Put Shares (as defined herein) would be entitled to receive from us an amount in cash equal to the original issue price per share of the Series C convertible preferred stock, of $38.95, representing an aggregate payment of $1.2 billion. There will be no accrued and unpaid dividends with respect to the shares of Series C convertible preferred stock following the date of closing of this offering. For additional information relating to the Put Right, please see the section titled Description of Capital StockSeries C Preferred Stock Put Right.
Series B Convertible Preferred Stock Financing
Between April 2023 and January 2024, we sold an aggregate of 79,978,760 shares of our Series B convertible preferred stock at a purchase price of $5.58 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $446 million. Each share of our Series B convertible preferred stock will convert automatically into shares of our Class A common stock immediately prior to the completion of this offering.
The following table summarizes the shares of our Series B convertible preferred stock purchased by entities affiliated with certain of our directors and holders of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock:
Stockholder |
Shares of Series B Convertible Preferred Stock |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar(1) |
60,253,060 | $ | 336,000,014 |
(1) | Consists of shares held by funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, which beneficially owns more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. Ernie Rogers, a former member of our board of directors, is the Chief Operating Officer of Magnetar. |
Series B-1 Convertible Preferred Stock Financing
In April 2023, we issued an aggregate of 12,484,540 shares of our Series B-1 convertible preferred stock at a purchase price of $0.41 per share upon conversion of convertible notes previously issued to several accredited private investors for an aggregate principal amount of $4 million and which bore a PIK interest rate of 7% per annum. Each outstanding share of our Series B-1 convertible preferred stock will convert automatically into shares of our Class A common stock immediately prior to the completion of this offering.
The following table summarizes the shares of our Series B-1 convertible preferred stock acquired by certain of our directors and holders of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock and their affiliates:
Stockholder |
Shares of Series B-1 Convertible Preferred Stock |
Total Purchase Price | ||||||
Michael Intrator(1) |
1,458,680 | $ | 584,959 | |||||
Jack Cogen and affiliated entities(2) |
1,458,720 | $ | 584,961 | |||||
Stephen Jamison(3) |
1,458,720 | $ | 584,961 |
(1) | Consists of shares directly held of record by Michael Intrator. Mr. Intrator is our Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors. Mr. Intrator and certain of his affiliates beneficially own more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. |
(2) | Consists of shares acquired by entities affiliated with Jack Cogen, a member of our board of directors. Additionally, Mr. Cogen and certain of his affiliates beneficially own more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock. |
193
(3) | Consists of shares acquired by KOPACC, LLC. Stephen Jamison, a former member of our board of directors who served until April 2023, is a managing member of KOPACC, LLC. As of April 2023, Mr. Jamison and certain of his affiliates were deemed to beneficially own more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, on an aggregated basis. |
Other Transactions
Equity Exchange Right Agreements
In September 2024, we entered into an Equity Exchange Right Agreement with each of our Co-Founders, Messrs. Intrator, Venturo, and McBee, pursuant to which each of our Co-Founders have a right (but not an obligation), to require us to exchange, for shares of our Class B common stock, any shares of our Class A common stock received upon by him upon the exercise or settlement of equity awards for shares of our Class A common stock (the Equity Exchange Rights). The Equity Exchange Rights only apply to equity awards granted to our Co-Founders prior to September 2024. As of December 31, 2024, there were 9,109,000 shares of our Class A common stock subject to outstanding stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock held by our Co-Founders and that may be exchanged, upon exercise, for an equivalent number of shares of our Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights.
The Equity Exchange Rights terminate (a) with respect to shares of our Class A common stock subject to equity awards that are held by our Co-Founders, on the date on which such shares are forfeited pursuant to the terms of the applicable equity award, and (b) with respect to shares of our Class A common stock issued upon the exercise or settlement of equity awards held by a Co-Founder, (i) when the Co-Founder sells, transfers, or otherwise disposes of such shares of our Class A common stock or (ii) upon the earlier of (i) a date that is fixed by our board of directors that is no more than 61 days following the seventh anniversary of this offering, (ii) the date specified by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the outstanding voting power of the Class B common stock, or (iii) no more than 61 days following Michael Intrators Service Termination (as defined herein).
NVIDIA Master Services Agreement
In April 2023, we entered into a Master Services Agreement (the Master Services Agreement) with NVIDIA, a beneficial owner of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, pursuant to which we provide NVIDIA with our infrastructure and platform services through fulfillment of order forms submitted to us by NVIDIA. As of December 31, 2024, NVIDIA has paid us an aggregate of approximately $320 million pursuant to the Master Services Agreement and related order forms. Either party may terminate the Master Services Agreement (i) upon 30 days written notice to the other party of a breach or (ii) if the other party becomes subject to a bankruptcy petition or other insolvency proceeding, receivership, liquidation or assignment for the benefit of creditors and such proceedings are not dismissed within 90 days.
Employment Arrangement with an Immediate Family Member
Michael McBee, the brother of Brannin McBee, our Chief Development Officer, has been employed by us in a non-executive role since November 2024. For the year ended December 31, 2024, Mr. Michael McBees annual base salary was $190,000, in addition to equity compensation. Mr. Michael McBees compensation was based on reference to external market practice of similar positions or internal pay equity when compared to the compensation paid to employees in similar positions who were not related to our Chief Development Officer. Mr. Michael McBee was also eligible for equity awards on the same general terms and conditions as applicable to employees in similar positions who were not related to our Chief Development Officer.
Magnetar Related Party Transactions
We have entered into certain transactions, as further described below, with Magnetar and certain funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar. Magnetar beneficially owns more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock.
194
AI Computing Service Reserved Capacity and Prepayment Agreement
In August 2024, we entered into an agreement (as amended, the MagAI Capacity Agreement) with a fund managed by Magnetar (MagAI Ventures). Under the MagAI Capacity Agreement, we will provide certain portfolio companies of MagAI Ventures with a predetermined amount of cloud computing services at a pre-negotiated hourly rate. The specific amount of cloud computing services to be used by each portfolio company, if any, will be negotiated individually with each portfolio company, and will be subject to final approval by MagAI Ventures.
We received a refundable deposit of approximately $230 million in connection with the MagAI Capacity Agreement. Any consumption of cloud services by MagAI Ventures, including by their portfolio companies, under this arrangement is deducted from this deposit amount, with the unused portion refunded back to MagAI Ventures at the end of the term of the arrangement.
Throughout the term of the arrangement, if MagAI Ventures portfolio companies do not contract for the full amount of the predetermined cloud computing services, we may agree with MagAI Ventures to instead use this available capacity for other customers, and share profits with MagAI Ventures for any revenues realized above the revenues that would have been generated by charging these customers the MagAI Ventures pre-negotiated rate.
The MagAI Capacity Agreement runs for an initial period of four years, with an option for MagAI Ventures to extend the arrangement for two additional years, and the arrangement can be terminated by either party out of convenience. If the arrangement is terminated out of convenience, we are required to pay MagAI Ventures a breakup fee equal to the unused portion of the deposit multiplied by a factor that increases from 1.06x to 1.73x over the term of the arrangement. As of December 31, 2024, approximately $230 million of this refundable deposit is included within other current liabilities in the consolidated balance sheet, as no services had yet been provided under this arrangement.
Preferred Stock Investment
On June 14, 2024, we contributed an aggregate amount of $50 million to a fund managed by Magnetar (MAIV) in connection with MAIVs purchase of shares of preferred stock in a private company. In connection with this investment, upon the earlier of (a) the one year anniversary of the closing of MAIV and (b) the date that we certify in writing to Magnetar that we intend to file a registration statement with the SEC in respect of an initial public offering within 30 calendar days, and ending upon the expiration of the seventh anniversary of the closing date of the preferred stock offering, we may, at any month-end upon 30 days written notice, request that MAIV make a distribution in kind to us of up to, in the aggregate, 99% of our interest in MAIV. Any such request will be satisfied by MAIV either (i) distributing to us shares of the private companys preferred stock, or (ii) providing payment to us of the aggregate sale price of such shares following MAIVs sale of the shares, in each case, as promptly as reasonably practicable.
To the extent there is an in-kind distribution of the private companys preferred stock to us and following such distribution we sell any shares of such preferred stock (or any securities into which such stock is converted or exchanged), we will allocate the net proceeds from such sale as follows (i) 100% of the net proceeds to us until we receive an amount equal to our aggregate capital contribution to MAIV and (ii) thereafter, 75% of the net proceeds to us and 25% to an affiliate of Magnetar.
Delayed Draw Term Loan 2.0 Facility
On May 16, 2024, CCAC IV, our direct, wholly-owned subsidiary, as borrower, entered into a credit agreement with U.S. Bank National Association, as depository bank, U.S. Bank Trust Company, National Association, as administrative agent and collateral agent, Blackstone Alternative Credit Advisors LP, Blackstone Alternative Solutions L.L.C., Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Advisors L.L.C., and Blackstone Private
195
Investments Advisors L.L.C., as lead lenders and co-lead investors, Magnetar, as a co-lead investor, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $7.6 billion delayed draw term loan facility (as amended, the DDTL 2.0 Facility). Our DDTL 2.0 Facility was entered into primarily to finance capital expenditures required to perform customer contracts, including the acquisition of GPU servers and related infrastructure.
Additional loans are available to be drawn under our DDTL 2.0 Facility until the commitment termination date in June 2025, which may be extended for an additional three months with the consent of the required lenders. The aggregate amount of loans available to be drawn under our DDTL 2.0 Facility in connection with any borrowing request are limited to a percentage of the depreciated purchase price of GPU servers and related infrastructure for the contract that the loans are being used to finance, with such percentage based upon the credit rating of the applicable customer.
Amounts borrowed under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 5.0% to 12.0%, depending on the credit rating of the customer whose contract is being financed) plus a base rate (subject to a 0.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the federal funds effective rate plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (b) for term SOFR loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 6.0% to 13.0%, depending on the credit rating of the customer whose contract is being financed) plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a three month interest period.
All obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of the subsidiarys assets and a pledge of 100% of the equity interests in the subsidiary.
Each loan under our DDTL 2.0 Facility matures 5 years after funding. As of December 31, 2024, $3.8 billion of our DDTL 2.0 Facility was drawn and $3.8 billion remained available for borrowing under our DDTL 2.0 Facility. As of December 31, 2024, we have paid $0 million and $21 million in principal and in interest on outstanding amounts under our Delayed Draw Term Loan 2.0 Facility, respectively.
For additional information regarding the DDTL 2.0 Facility, see Description of Material Indebtedness DDTL 2.0 Facility.
Delayed Draw Term Loan 1.0 Facility
On July 30, 2023, CCAC II, our direct, wholly-owned subsidiary, as borrower, entered into a credit agreement with U.S. Bank National Association, as depository bank, U.S. Bank Trust Company, National Association, as administrative agent and collateral agent, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Advisors L.L.C., and Magnetar, on behalf of certain lenders as the lead lenders, and the arrangers, bookrunners, and lenders party thereto, providing for a $2.3 billion delayed draw term loan facility (as amended, the DDTL 1.0 Facility). Our DDTL 1.0 Facility was entered into primarily to finance capital expenditures required to perform customer contracts, including the acquisition of GPU servers and related infrastructure.
Amounts borrowed under our DDTL 1.0 Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (i) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 8.6196% plus a base rate (subject to a 0.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (a) the prime rate, (b) the federal funds effective rate plus 0.50%, and (c) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (ii) for term SOFR loans, an applicable margin of 9.6196% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a three month interest period.
All obligations under our DDTL 1.0 Facility are secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of the subsidiarys assets and a pledge of 100% of the equity interests in the subsidiary.
The maturity date of our DDTL 1.0 Facility is March 28, 2028. As of December 31, 2024, our DDTL 1.0 Facility was fully drawn, and we had $2.0 billion outstanding under our DDTL 1.0 Facility. As of December 31,
196
2024, we have paid $288 million and $255 million in principal and in interest on outstanding amounts under our DDTL 1.0 Facility, respectively.
For additional information regarding the DDTL 1.0 Facility, see Description of Material Indebtedness Delayed Draw Term Loan 1.0 Facility.
Convertible Senior Secured Notes due 2025
In October 2021, we entered into a Note Issuance Agreement with Magnetar, pursuant to which we issued to funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar (the 2025 Convertible Note Purchasers) $50 million aggregate principal amount of Convertible Senior Secured Notes due 2025 (the 2025 Convertible Notes). In 2023, the aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Convertible Notes was increased to $55 million as a result of the payment of certain interest payments in kind.
Effective as of September 17, 2024, the 2025 Convertible Note Purchasers caused the 2025 Convertible Notes to be converted into shares of our Class A common stock pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Note Issuance Agreement. As a result of the conversion, 24,543,980 shares of our Class A common stock were issued to the 2025 Convertible Note Purchasers, and all our obligations under the Note Issuance Agreement and related documents were satisfied and discharged in full (except customary surviving obligations and as otherwise discussed herein).
In connection with the issuance of the 2025 Convertible Notes, we granted to Magnetar (a) an option to purchase $15.0 million of our Class A common stock at the initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, which option is exercisable until the one-year anniversary of the listing of our Class A common stock and (b) the right (using our commercially reasonable efforts) to subscribe for and purchase at least 5% of our capital stock issued in any future public equity offering by us, including our Class A common stock to be sold and issued in this offering.
Senior Secured Notes due 2025
In October 2022, we entered into a Note Issuance Agreement with Magnetar, pursuant to which we issued to funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar (the 2025 Note Purchasers) $125 million aggregate principal amount of Senior Secured Notes due 2025 (the 2025 Notes). In connection with the 2025 Notes issuance, we also issued to the 2025 Note Purchasers the following warrants:
| warrants to purchase 4,337,386 shares of our common stock with an exercise price determined as of the exercise date equal to the lower of (i) the deemed purchase price per share in connection with a qualified equity financing equal to $1.0 billion that is completed or (ii) the purchase price per share determined based on a valuation of us ranging from $1.5 billion (if the 2025 Notes were repaid within 120 days) to $1.0 billion (if the 2025 Notes remained outstanding more than 360 days) (the Regular Warrants, and such exercise price, the Regular Warrants Exercise Price); and |
| warrants to purchase 7,807,282 shares of common stock with an exercise price of $0.0005 per share (the Penny Warrants). |
On July 17, 2024, we paid approximately $136 million to redeem the 2025 Notes in full from the 2025 Note Purchasers, which amount represented the aggregate outstanding principal amount of the 2025 Notes plus accrued and unpaid interest and prepayment premiums, and all our obligations under the Note Issuance Agreement and related documents were satisfied and discharged in full (except customary surviving obligations and as otherwise discussed herein).
In connection with the issuance of the 2025 Notes, we granted to the 2025 Note Purchasers the right to subscribe for and purchase at least 5% of our capital stock issued in this offering. Pursuant to the terms of each
197
Regular Warrant and Penny Warrant, the 2025 Note Purchaser holding such Regular Warrant or Penny Warrant has a right of first offer with respect to its pro rata portion of any future issuances of our Class A common stock (other than, among other things, Class A common stock issued in an underwritten public offering that is not available due to underwriter cutbacks), including our Class A common stock to be sold and issued in this offering, which right terminates upon the earlier of (a) the full exercise of such Regular Warrant or Penny Warrant or (b) October 18, 2029.
Director Nomination Letter
In May 2024, we entered into a Director Nomination Agreement with the Magnetar DNL Parties to provide certain rights with respect to their ability to designate a member of our board of directors. See the section titled ManagementDirector Nomination Letter for additional information regarding the Director Nomination Letter.
Hiring of Magnetar Executives
Ernie Rogers, a former member of our board of directors and the Chief Operating Officer of Magnetar, has been offered a position as our Chief Architect, Strategic Financing. In this position, Mr. Rogers would be granted 600,000 RSUs vesting over two years and would be entitled to an annual base salary of $450,000 and a target bonus of 100% of his annual base salary, subject to achievement of performance metrics. Upon a termination of Mr. Rogers employment with us without cause or his resignation for good reason, Mr. Rogers RSUs would accelerate in full, subject to him signing a release of claims. Mr. Rogers has agreed in principle to these terms, subject to reaching agreement with Magnetar with respect to his separation therefrom. Prior to his start date with us, and assuming he and Magnetar can reach such agreement, Mr. Rogers would resign from his position as Chief Operating Officer of Magnetar.
Jessica Damrat, the Chief Financial Officer, Management Company, of Magnetar, has been offered a position as our SVP, Strategic Financing. In this position, Ms. Damrat would be granted 200,000 RSUs vesting over two years and would be entitled to an annual base salary of $450,000 and a target bonus of 100% of her annual base salary, subject to achievement of performance metrics. Upon a termination of Ms. Damrats employment with us without cause or her resignation for good reason, Ms. Damrats RSUs would accelerate in full, subject to her signing a release of claims. Ms. Damrat has agreed in principle to these terms, subject to reaching agreement with Magnetar with respect to her separation therefrom. Prior to her start date with us, and assuming she and Magnetar can reach such agreement, Ms. Damrat would resign from her position as Chief Financial Officer, Management Company, of Magnetar.
Registration Rights Agreements
Investors Rights Agreement
We are party to a Third Amended and Restated Investors Rights Agreement between us and other parties, dated May 16, 2024 (the Rights Agreement), which provides, among other things, that certain holders of our capital stock, including funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar and NVIDIA, each beneficial owners of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, as well as certain affiliates of Jack Cogen, a member of our board of directors, and Michael Intrator, our Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors, and Brian Venturo, our Chief Strategy Officer, have the right to demand that we file a registration statement or request that their shares of our capital stock be included on a registration statement that we are otherwise filing. See the section titled Description of Capital StockRegistration Rights for more information regarding these registration rights.
198
Magnetar Amended and Restated Registration Rights Agreement
We are party to an Amended and Restated Registration Rights Agreement between us and the 2025 Convertible Note Purchasers and the 2025 Note Purchasers and certain other funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar (collectively, the Magnetar RRA Parties), dated October 17, 2022 (as amended, the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement), which provides, among other things, that the Magnetar RRA Parties will be entitled to rights with respect to the registration of (i) the shares of our Class A common stock into which the 2025 Convertible Notes were converted, (ii) the Regular Warrants, the Penny Warrants, (iii) the shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of the Regular Warrants and the Penny Warrants, and (iv) any shares of our Class A common stock held by any Magnetar RRA Party as of the date any class or series of our securities become listed on a national securities exchange which, as of the date of this prospectus, collectively constitute an aggregate of 107,962,916 shares of our Class A common stock assuming exercise of the Regular Warrants and the Penny Warrants (collectively, the Magnetar Registrable Securities) under the Securities Act. See the section titled Description of Capital StockRegistration Rights for more information regarding these registration rights.
Voting Agreement
Pursuant to our Voting Agreement, certain holders of our capital stock have agreed to vote their shares on certain matters, including with respect to the election of members of our board of directors. See the section titled ManagementBoard of Directors for more information regarding the election of members of our board of directors pursuant to our Voting Agreement. Holders of our capital stock, including funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, certain entities affiliated with Fidelity, and NVIDIA, each beneficial owners of more than 5% of our outstanding capital stock, as well as Jack Cogen, a member of our board of directors, and certain of his affiliates, and Michael Intrator, our Chief Executive Officer and President, and certain of his affiliates, Brian Venturo, our Chief Strategy Officer, and certain of his affiliates, and certain affiliates of Brannin McBee, our Chief Development Officer, are parties to our Voting Agreement. Our Voting Agreement will terminate upon the completion of this offering.
Indemnification Agreements
We have entered into, and intend to continue to enter into, separate indemnification agreements with each of our executive officers and directors, including those affiliated with certain of our 5% stockholders. The indemnification agreements and our amended and restated bylaws will require us to indemnify our directors to the fullest extent not prohibited by DGCL. Subject to very limited exceptions, our amended and restated bylaws will also require us to advance expenses incurred by our directors and officers. For more information regarding these agreements, see ManagementLimitations on Liability and Indemnification Matters.
Directed Share Program
At our request, the underwriters have reserved for sale, at the initial public offering price, up to 2,450,000 shares of our Class A common stock, or 5% of the shares being offered pursuant to this prospectus, to our current employees, including management, other service providers, and other individuals and entities as determined by certain of our authorized officers. The directed share program will not limit the ability of our directors, officers and their family members, or holders of more than 5% of our capital stock, to purchase more than $120,000 in value of our Class A common stock. We do not currently know the extent to which these related persons will participate in our directed share program, if at all, or the extent to which they will purchase more than $120,000 in value of our Class A common stock.
Policies and Procedures for Related Party Transactions
Following the completion of this offering, our audit committee will have the primary responsibility for reviewing and approving or disapproving related party transactions, which are transactions between us and
199
related persons in which the aggregate amount involved exceeds or may be expected to exceed $120,000 and in which a related person has or will have a direct or indirect material interest.
Upon completion of this offering, our written policy regarding transactions between us and related persons will provide that a related person is defined as a director, executive officer, nominee for director or 5% stockholder, in each case since the beginning of the most recently completed year, and any of their immediate family members. Our audit committee charter that will be in effect upon completion of this offering will provide that our audit committee shall review and approve or disapprove any related party transactions. In approving or rejecting any such transactions, our audit committee will consider the relevant facts and circumstances available and deemed relevant to our audit committee, including, but not limited to, the commercial reasonableness of the terms of the transaction and the materiality and character of the related persons direct or indirect interest in the transaction.
200
PRINCIPAL AND SELLING STOCKHOLDERS
The following table sets forth certain information with respect to the beneficial ownership of our common stock as of March 15, 2025 and as adjusted to reflect the sale of our Class A common stock in this offering, assuming no exercise of the underwriters option to purchase additional shares, and the issuance of shares of our Class A common stock in the concurrent share issuance for:
| each of our named executive officers; |
| each of our directors; |
| all of our current directors and executive officers as a group; |
| each of the selling stockholders; and |
| each person known by us to be the beneficial owner of more than 5% of the outstanding shares of our Class A common stock or Class B common stock. |
We have determined beneficial ownership in accordance with the rules of the SEC, and the information is not necessarily indicative of beneficial ownership for any other purpose. Except as indicated by the footnotes below, we believe, based on information furnished to us, that the persons and entities named in the table below have sole voting and sole investment power with respect to all shares of common stock that they beneficially owned, subject to applicable community property laws.
Applicable percentage ownership of our common stock before this offering and the concurrent share issuance is based on 300,753,906 shares of our Class A common stock, 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding, and no shares of our Class C common stock outstanding, in each case as of March 15, 2025. For purposes of the table below, we have assumed the (i) occurrence of the Capital Stock Conversion, the Class B Conversion, the Option Exercise, and the RSU Net Settlement and (ii) that 54,041,405 shares of our Class A common stock will be issued in this offering and the concurrent share issuance. The exact number of shares of our Class A common stock that will be withheld from a stockholder in connection with the RSU Net Settlement may differ based on the stockholders personal tax rates. In computing the number of shares of common stock beneficially owned by a person and the percentage ownership of that person, we deemed to be outstanding all shares of common stock subject to options held by that person or entity that are currently exercisable or that will become exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025 and RSUs that are expected to vest and settle within 60 days of March 15, 2025. In addition, we have assumed the exchange for shares of our Class B common stock, pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights, of all shares of our Class A common stock receivable upon exercise of stock options held by our Co-Founders, and that are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025. We did not deem these shares outstanding, however, for the purpose of computing the percentage ownership of any other person. In addition, the following table does not reflect any shares of our Class A common stock that may be purchased in this offering, including through our directed share program described under Underwriters (Conflicts of Interest)Directed Share Program.
Unless otherwise indicated, the address of each beneficial owner in the table below is c/o CoreWeave, Inc., 290 W Mt. Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100, Livingston, NJ 07039.
201
Shares Beneficially Owned Before this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class A |
Shares Beneficially Owned Before this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class B |
% Total Voting Power before this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance |
Number of Shares Being Offered |
Shares Beneficially Owned After this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class A |
Shares Beneficially Owned After this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class B |
% Total Voting Power after this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name of Beneficial |
Shares | % | Shares | % | Shares | % | Shares | % | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Named Executive Officers and Directors: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Michael Intrator(1) |
7,072,260 | 2.35 | % | 56,689,580 | 47.33 | % | 38.30 | % | | 7,072,260 | 1.99 | % | 56,689,580 | 47.33 | % | 36.97 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brannin McBee(2) |
61,800 | * | 28,742,100 | 24.22 | % | 19.33 | % | | 61,800 | * | 28,742,100 | 24.22 | % | 18.65 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brian Venturo(3) |
718,320 | * | 38,461,920 | 31.61 | % | 25.39 | % | | 718,320 | * | 38,461,920 | 31.61 | % | 24.52 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Karen Boone(4) |
12,040 | * | | | * | | 12,040 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jack Cogen(5) |
22,241,600 | 7.40 | % | | | 1.50 | % | | 22,241,600 | 6.27 | % | | | 1.45 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Glenn Hutchins(6) |
424,960 | * | | | * | | 424,960 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Margaret C. Whitman |
| | | | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All executive officers and directors as a group (10 persons)(7) |
32,592,220 | 10.77 | % | 123,893,600 | 100.00 | % | 82.48 | % | 174,360 | 32,417,860 | 9.09 | % | 123,893,600 | 100.00 | % | 79.68 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other 5% or Greater Stockholders: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar Financial LLC(8) |
107,962,916 | 34.50 | % | | | 7.23 | % | | 107,962,916 | 29.42 | % | | | 6.97 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Entities affiliated with FMR LLC(9) |
22,724,460 | 7.56 | % | | | 1.53 | % | | 22,724,460 | 6.40 | % | | | 1.48 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
KOPACC, LLC(10) |
18,422,720 | 6.13 | % | | | 1.24 | % | | 18,422,720 | 5.19 | % | | | 1.20 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Linden West Trust(11) |
18,252,500 | 6.07 | % | | | 1.23 | % | | 18,252,500 | 5.14 | % | | | 1.19 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NVIDIA Corporation(12) |
17,932,460 | 5.96 | % | | | 1.21 | % | | 17,932,460 | 5.05 | % | | | 1.17 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other Selling Stockholders |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peter Salanki(13) |
11,931,980 | 3.84 | % | | | * | | 11,931,980 | 3.27 | % | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Max Hjelm(14) |
3,241,980 | 1.07 | % | | | * | 316,880 | 2,925,100 | * | | | * | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kristen McVeety(15) |
1,571,940 | * | | | * | 148,920 | 1,423,020 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nitin Agrawal(16) |
489,300 | * | | | * | 25,440 | 463,860 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other selling stockholders that beneficially own less than 80,000 shares of Class A common stock(17) |
2,903,840 | * | | | * | 246,580 | 2,657,260 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other selling stockholders that beneficially own between 80,001 and 190,000 shares of Class A common stock(17) |
2,701,760 | * | | | * | 226,920 | 2,474,840 | * | | | * |
202
Shares Beneficially Owned Before this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class A |
Shares Beneficially Owned Before this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class B |
% Total Voting Power before this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance |
Number of Shares Being Offered |
Shares Beneficially Owned After this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class A |
Shares Beneficially Owned After this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance Class B |
% Total Voting Power after this Offering and the Concurrent Share Issuance |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name of Beneficial Owner |
Shares | % | Shares | % | Shares | % | Shares | % | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other selling stockholders that beneficially own between 190,001 and 300,000 shares of Class A common stock(17) |
1,982,860 | * | | | * | 160,980 | 1,821,880 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other selling stockholders that beneficially own between 300,001 and 400,000 shares of Class A common stock(17) |
2,417,500 | * | | | * | 229,860 | 2,187,640 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other selling stockholders that beneficially own between 400,001 and 700,000 shares of Class A common stock(17) |
1,788,320 | * | | | * | 177,500 | 1,610,820 | * | | | * | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other selling stockholders that beneficially own between 700,001 and 1,500,000 shares of Class A common stock(17) |
2,526,220 | * | | | * | 288,260 | 2,237,960 | * | | | * |
* | Represents beneficial ownership of less than one percent of the shares of our common stock. |
(1) | Consists of (i) 7,072,260 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Michael Intrator; (ii) 22,103,520 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Mr. Intrator; (iii) 1,668,020 shares of our Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options directly held by Mr. Intrator which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025; (iv) 365,200 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Mr. Intrators spouse; (v) 25,649,280 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Omnadora Capital LLC (Omnadora); (vi) 30,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the PMI 2024 F&F GRAT (PMI), (vii) 7,240 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Silver Thimble Resulting Trust (Silver Thimble); (viii) 4,576,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Intrator Family GST-Exempt Trust (the Intrator GST Trust); and (ix) 2,290,320 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Intrator Family Trust (together with the Intrator GST Trust, the Intrator Family Trusts). Mr. Intrator serves as the sole manager of Omnadora Management LLC, which is the manager of Omnadora, and therefore may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by Omnadora. Mr. Intrators spouse is the trustee of PMI and co-trustee of the Intrator Family Trusts and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by them. Mr. Intrator serves as investment manager with respect to Silver Thimble and in such capacity exercises voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. |
(2) | Consists of (i) 11,642,260 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Brannin McBee; (ii) 555,520 shares of our Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options directly held by Mr. McBee which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025; (iii) 2,300,300 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Mr. McBees spouse; (iv) 6,666,020 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Brannin J. McBee 2022 Irrevocable Trust (McBee Trust); (v) 6,000,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Canis Major 2025 GRAT (the Canis Major GRAT); (vi) 104,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Canis Major 2025 Family Trust LLC (Canis Major LLC); (vii) 360,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Meghan Q. Bennett 2024 Delaware Family Trust (Bennett Family Trust); (viii) 1,000,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Canis Minor 2025 GRAT (the Canis Minor GRAT); (ix) 114,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Canis Minor 2025 Family Trust LLC (the Canis Minor LLC); (x) 1,800 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mr. McBees minor child; and (xi) 60,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Canis Major SM Trust (the Canis SM Trust). Mr. McBees spouse serves as trustee of the McBee Trust and the Canis Minor GRAT and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by each of them. Mr. McBee serves as investment adviser to the Bennett Family Trust, trustee of the Canis Major GRAT, and as manager of each of Canis Major LLC and Canis Minor LLC and, therefore, may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by each of them. Mr. McBee may be deemed to have beneficial ownership with respect to the shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Canis SM Trust by virtue of his power to replace its professional trustee. |
203
(3) | Consists of (i) 123,820 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Brian Venturo; (ii) 14,284,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Mr. Venturo; (iii) 3,568,020 shares of our Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options directly held by Mr. Venturo which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025; (iv) 2,001,900 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by Mr. Venturos spouse; (v) 6,837,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by West Clay Capital LLC (West Clay); (vi) 5,500,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the 2023 Venturo Family GRAT dated June 30, 2023 (Venturo GRAT I); (vii) 2,000,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Venturo Family 2024 Friends and Family GRAT (Venturo GRAT II); (viii) 4,271,000 shares of our Class B common stock directly held by the Venturo Family GST Exempt Trust dated June 30, 2023 (the Venturo GST Trust); (ix) 22,500 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Estate of Patricia Shafi; (x) 286,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the YOLO ECV Trust; and (xi) 286,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the YOLO APV Trust. Mr. Venturo serves as managing member of West Clay and as trustee of Venturo GRAT I and Venturo GRAT II and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by each of them. Mr. Venturos spouse serves as trustee of the Venturo GST Trust and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. A member of Mr. Venturos household serves as executor of the Estate of Patricia Shafi and may therefore be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. Mr. Venturo may be deemed have beneficial ownership with respect to the shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the YOLO ECV Trust and the YOLO APV Trust, by virtue of his power to replace their professional trustee. |
(4) | Consists of (i) 10,520 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by The Boone Family Trust, dated August 6, 2015 (the Boone Trust); and (ii) 1,520 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of restricted stock units within 60 days of March 15, 2025. Karen Boone and her spouse are co-trustees of the Boone Trust and as such may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. |
(5) | Consists of (i) 261,140 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Jack Cogen; (ii) 136,560 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mr. Cogens spouse; (iii) 1,200,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Cogen Family Trust, dated December 17, 2012 (Cogen 2012 Trust); (iv) 19,200 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Jack D. Cogen 2020 Family Trust (Cogen 2020 Trust); (v) 126,220 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Cherry Tree 2024 GRAT; (vi) 16,997,680 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by CW Holding 987 LLC; (vii) 875,200 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Birch Tree Trust LLC; (viii) 875,200 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Chestnut Tree Trust LLC; (ix) 875,200 shares of Class A common stock directly held by Maple Tree Trust LLC; and (x) 875,200 shares of Class A common stock directly held by Willow Tree Trust LLC (together with Birch Tree Trust LLC, Chestnut Tree Trust LLC, and Maple Tree Trust LLC, the Tree LLCs). Mr. Cogens spouse is co-trustee of the Cogen 2012 Trust and as such may be deemed to exercise shared voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. Mr. Cogen may be deemed have beneficial ownership with respect to the shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Cogen 2020 Trust, by virtue of his power to replace its trustee. Mr. Cogen serves as trustee of the Cherry Tree 2024 GRAT and as manager of CW Holding 987 LLC and each of the Tree LLCs and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by each of them. |
(6) | Consists of (i) 10,640 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by North Island Inferno Fund II LLC (North Island Inferno); (ii) 27,540 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by North Island SPV CW LLC (North Island SPV); (iii) 384,840 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Tide Mill LLC (Tide Mill); and (iv) 1,940 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of restricted stock units within 60 days of March 15, 2025. Glenn Hutchins serves as investment manager for North Island Inferno and North Island SPV and as such may be deemed to exercise shared voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. The managing member of Tide Mill is North Island Management, LLC (NIM). Mr. Hutchins serves as chairman of NIM and may be deemed to directly or indirectly exercise voting and investment discretion over the investments of NIM and Tide Mill. The business address of each of the aforementioned parties is: 330 Madison Avenue, 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10017. |
(7) | The reported amounts represent the total of all securities beneficially owned by our directors and officers, consisting of (i) 30,627,520 shares of our Class A common stock; (ii) 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock; (iii) 1,471,940 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025; (iv) 5,791,560 shares of our Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025; and (v) 492,760 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of restricted stock units within 60 days of March 15, 2025. |
(8) | Consists of (i) 7,792,568 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by CW Opportunity 2 LP; (ii) 29,545,300 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by CW Opportunity LLC; (iii) 4,417,607 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Longhorn Special Opportunities Fund LP; (iv) 2,537,600 shares of our Class A common stock and 1,335,913 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar Alpha Star Fund LLC; (v) 400,484 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Magnetar Capital Master Fund Ltd; (vi) 7,177,289 shares of our Class A common stock and 1,457,361 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar Constellation Master Fund Ltd; (vii) 9,184,380 shares of our Class A common stock and 2,550,383 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar Lake Credit Fund LLC; (viii) 10,182,360 shares of our Class A common stock and 242,891 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar Longhorn Fund LP; (ix) 2,021,480 shares of our Class A common stock and 1,335,913 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar SC Fund Ltd; (x) 11,732,080 shares of our Class A common stock and 728,678 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar Structured Credit Fund, LP; (xi) 5,118,220 shares of our Class A common stock and 2,671,831 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Magnetar Xing He Master Fund Ltd; (xii) 4,523,780 shares of our Class A common stock and 1,700,255 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Purpose Alternative Credit Fund - F |
204
LLC; and (xiii) 1,185,100 shares of our Class A common stock and 121,443 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of vested warrants directly held by Purpose Alternative Credit Fund - T LLC. Magnetar Financial LLC (MFL) serves as the investment manager to each of the aforementioned funds and entities other than: (i) Magnetar Lake Credit Fund LLC, for which MFL is the manager, (ii) CW Opportunity LLC, for which MFL is the manager, and (iii) Magnetar Structured Credit Fund, LP (together with all of the foregoing funds, the Magnetar Funds), for which MFL is the general partner. In such capacities, MFL exercises voting and investment discretion over the securities listed above held for the accounts of the Magnetar Funds. MFL is a registered investment adviser under Section 203 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended (the 1940 Act). Magnetar Capital Partners LP (MCP) is the sole member and parent holding company of MFL. Supernova Management LLC (Supernova) is the sole general partner of MCP. The manager of Supernova is David J. Snyderman, a citizen of the U.S. The business address of each of the aforementioned parties is 1603 Orrington Avenue, 13th Floor, Evanston, IL 60201. |
(9) | Consists of (i) 3,402 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Booth & Co fbo Fidelity Concord Street Trust: Fidelity Founders Fund; (ii) 541,480 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Booth & Co FBO Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund K6; (iii) 656,796 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Booth & Co FBO Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth K6 Fund; (iv) 60,504 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Booth & Co., LLC fbo Variable Insurance Products Fund III: VIP Growth Opportunities Portfolio; (v) 224,553 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by BRIDGEBOARD & CO FBO Fidelity Venture Capital Fund I LP; (vi) 358,300 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by FLAPPER CO fbo FIAM Target Date Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool; (vii) 388,557 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Advisor Series I: Fidelity Advisor Growth Opportunities Fund; (viii) 400,150 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool; (ix) 877,320 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool; (x) 208,780 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub A; (xi) 645,460 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub B; (xii) 2,242,040 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund; (xiii) 178,960 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Series Opportunistic Insights Fund; (xiv) 3,557,885 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Growth Company Commingled Pool; (xv) 237,732 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity New Millennium Fund; (xvi) 637,282 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Series Growth Company Fund; (xvii) 3,153,469 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund; (xviii) 1,216,143 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Fidelity Select Portfolios: Select Technology Portfolio; (xix) 235,740 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Variable Insurance Products Fund II: VIP Contrafund Portfolio - Subportfolio A; (xx) 200,205 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co fbo Variable Insurance Products Fund IV: VIP Technology Portfolio; (xxi) 491,997 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mag & Co. fbo Fidelity Advisor Series VII: Fidelity Advisor Technology Fund; (xxii) 961,346 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Powhatan & Co., LLC fbo Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Growth Company K6 Fund; (xxiii) 2,371,078 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Powhatan & Co., LLC fbo Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Growth Company Fund; (xxiv) 88,644 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by ROWBOAT & CO. fbo Fidelity Destiny Portfolios: Fidelity Advisor Diversified Stock Fund; (xxv) 709,234 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by THISBE & CO fbo Fidelity Canadian Growth Company Fund; (xxvi) 15,740 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Thisbe & Co fbo Fidelity Global Growth and Value Investment Trust - Sub A; (xxvii) 1,011,674 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by THISBE & CO fbo Fidelity Global Innovators Investment Trust; (xxviii) 191,020 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Thisbe & Co fbo Fidelity Insights Investment Trust; (xxix) 15,026 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by THISBE & CO fbo Fidelity NorthStar Fund - Sub D; (xxx) 226,644 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by THISBE & CO fbo Fidelity Special Situations Fund; (xxxi) 3,521 shares of Class A common stock directly held by THISBE & CO fbo Fidelity U.S. Growth Opportunities Investment Trust; (xxxii) 13,069 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by THISBE & Co: FBO Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Institutional Trust; (xxxiii) 11,047 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by THISBE CO FBO Fidelity Founders Investment Trust; (xxxiv) 16,306 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by WARMWIND + CO fbo Fidelity Advisor Series I: Fidelity Advisor Series Growth Opportunities Fund; and (xxxv) 573,356 shares of Class A common stock directly held by WAVECHART + CO fbo Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Series Blue Chip Growth Fund. These funds and accounts are managed by direct or indirect subsidiaries of FMR LLC. Abigail P. Johnson is a Director, the Chairman, and the Chief Executive Officer of FMR LLC. Members of the Johnson family, including Abigail P. Johnson, are the predominant owners, directly or through trusts, of Series B voting common shares of FMR LLC, representing 49% of the voting power of FMR LLC. The Johnson family group and all other Series B shareholders have entered into a shareholders voting agreement under which all Series B voting common shares will be voted in accordance with the majority vote of Series B voting common shares. Accordingly, through their ownership of voting common shares and the execution of the shareholders voting agreement, members of the Johnson family may be deemed, under the 1940 Act to form a controlling group with respect to FMR LLC. Neither FMR LLC nor Abigail P. Johnson has the sole power to vote or direct the voting of the shares owned directly by the various investment companies registered under the 1940 Act (collectively, the Fidelity Funds) advised by Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC (FMR Co. LLC), a wholly owned subsidiary of FMR LLC, which power resides with the Fidelity Funds Boards of Trustees. FMR Co. LLC carries out the voting of the shares under written guidelines established by the Fidelity Funds Boards of Trustees. The address of these funds and accounts and of FMR LLC is 245 Summer Street, Boston, MA 02210. |
(10) | Consists of 18,422,720 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by KOPACC, LLC. The managing member of KOPACC, LLC is Koppenberg Management LLC, and the manager of Koppenberg Management LLC is Luchetti Street Investment Management, LLC |
205
(Luchetti Street). Stephen Jamison, a former member of our board of directors who served until April 2023, and Wesley Jamison are the managers of Luchetti Street and as such may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. The business address of each of the aforementioned parties is 1373 Luchetti Street #501, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00907. |
(11) | Consists of 18,252,500 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by The Linden West Trust. The sole trustee of The Linden West Trust is Matthew S. Zeiger and as such Mr. Zeiger may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. The business address of each of the aforementioned parties is 31 East 79th St., New York, NY 10075. |
(12) | Consists of 17,932,460 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by NVIDIA Corporation, a publicly traded company listed on Nasdaq. The address of NVIDIA Corporation is 2788 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95051. |
(13) | Consists of (i) 132,600 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Peter Salanki; (ii) 10,230,820 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options directly held by Mr. Salanki which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025; (iii) 109,360 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of restricted stock units within 60 days of March 15, 2025; (iv) 29,200 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Mr. Salankis spouse; (v) 100,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Robinson Ascending F&F Trust (the Robinson Trust); and (vi) 1,330,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by Robinson Ascending LLC (Robinson LLC). Mr. Salanki serves as investment manager with respect to the Robinson Trust and in such capacity exercises voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. Mr. Salanki is the sole manager of Robinson LLC and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. As discussed above herein, Mr. Salanki serves as our Chief Technology Officer. |
(14) | Consists of (i) 111,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Max Hjelm 2024 Friends and Family GRAT (the Hjelm GRAT) and (ii) 3,130,980 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options directly held by Max Hjelm which are exercisable within 60 days of March 15, 2025. Mr. Hjelms spouse is the trustee of the Hjelm GRAT and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. As discussed above herein, Mr. Hjelm serves as our Senior Vice President of Revenue. |
(15) | Consists of (i) 100,000 shares of our Class A common stock directly held by the Jackfruit 2024 GRAT (the Jackfruit GRAT) and (ii) 1,471,940 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options directly held by Kristen McVeety. Ms. McVeety is the trustee of the Jackfruit GRAT and may be deemed to exercise voting and investment discretion over securities held by it. As discussed above herein, Ms. McVeety serves as our General Counsel and Secretary. |
(16) | Consists of 489,300 shares of our Class A common stock issuable to Nitin Agrawal upon the vesting and settlement of restricted stock units within 60 days of March 15, 2025. As discussed above herein, Mr. Agrawal serves as our Chief Financial Officer. |
(17) | Consists of employees not otherwise listed in this table who, within the groups indicated, collectively own less than 1% of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock, respectively. |
206
DESCRIPTION OF MATERIAL INDEBTEDNESS
The following description is a summary of the material terms of our material indebtedness. We refer you to the credit agreements, security documents and other loan documents governing our material indebtedness, copies of which are filed as exhibits to the registration statement of which this prospectus is a part.
Revolving Credit Facility
On June 21, 2024, we, as borrower (Parent), entered into a credit agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as administrative agent and collateral agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders and issuing banks party thereto. On October 7, 2024, the credit agreement was amended to provide for a $650 million senior revolving credit facility consisting of (i) a $500 million secured facility and (ii) a $150 million unsecured facility. On December 2, 2024, the credit agreement was further amended to make the senior revolving credit facility fully secured. Our Revolving Credit Facility may be increased by the sum of $300 million plus an unlimited amount that does not result in our total net leverage ratio exceeding 6.00x or our secured net leverage ratio exceeding 4.00x, pursuant to the exercise of an uncommitted accordion feature through which existing and new lenders may, at their option, agree to provide additional financing. The proceeds of our Revolving Credit Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and investments). Our Revolving Credit Facility includes a $175 million letter of credit sub-facility.
As of December 31, 2024, we had not drawn from our Revolving Credit Facility.
The material terms of our Revolving Credit Facility are described below.
Interest Rate and Fees
Amounts borrowed under our Revolving Credit Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 0.75% plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (a) the federal funds effective rate and (b) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin of 1.75% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three or six month interest period.
The unused portion of our Revolving Credit Facility accrues unused commitment fees at a rate per annum equal to 0.25%, and letters of credit issued under our Revolving Credit Facility accrue participation fees on the stated amount of the letters of credit at a rate per annum equal to 1.75%.
Voluntary Repayments
We may voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under our Revolving Credit Facility at any time without premium or penalty, other than customary breakage costs.
Maturity Date
The maturity date of our Revolving Credit Facility is June 21, 2027.
Guarantees and Security
The obligations under our Revolving Credit Facility are required to be unconditionally guaranteed by our restricted subsidiaries, which generally includes our direct and indirect wholly-owned domestic subsidiaries which are not designated by us as unrestricted subsidiaries.
207
All obligations under our Revolving Credit Facility, and the guarantees of those obligations, are secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of Parents assets and the assets of its subsidiary guarantors.
As of December 31, 2024, CoreWeave Cash Management LLC was the only subsidiary guarantor under our Revolving Credit Facility.
Financial Covenants
We are required to comply with certain financial covenants under our Revolving Credit Facility which are described below.
Total Net Leverage Ratio. We are required to maintain a total net leverage ratio as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters that does not exceed 6.00x. However, our total net leverage ratio is permitted to increase from 6.00x to 7.00x for the four fiscal quarters ending after consummation of certain material acquisitions, subject to certain limitations.
Total net leverage ratio is the ratio of: (i) interest-bearing debt minus unrestricted cash; to (ii) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for the prior four fiscal quarter period, subject to certain additional adjustments and limitations set forth in the credit agreement governing the Revolving Credit Facility (Adjusted EBITDA). Total net leverage ratio is calculated on a consolidated basis among Parent and its consolidated subsidiaries and Adjusted EBITDA is permitted to be annualized based on the most recent fiscal quarter (if the next two fiscal quarters are projected to be higher than the prior two fiscal quarters).
Minimum Contracted Revenue. We are required to have binding customer contracts with contracted revenues of $1.0 billion or more as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters. For purposes of compliance with the covenant, contracted revenue is calculated based on the sum of (i) 1.00x of the projected contracted revenues from contracts between Parent or any consolidated subsidiary and customers which have an investment grade rating plus (ii) 0.75x of the projected contracted revenues from contracts between Parent or any consolidated subsidiary and customers which do not have an investment grade rating.
Certain Other Covenants and Events of Default
Our Revolving Credit Facility contains a number of other covenants that, among other things and subject to certain exceptions, restrict the ability of Parent and its restricted subsidiaries to:
| incur additional indebtedness, including capital leases; |
| create liens; |
| consolidate or merge; |
| sell assets, including the capital stock of our restricted subsidiaries; |
| pay dividends on our capital stock or redeem, repurchase, or retire our capital stock; |
| engage in transactions with our affiliates; |
| create restrictions on our ability to create certain liens, have our restricted subsidiaries pay dividends or other amounts to us or make certain guarantees; and |
| make investments, loans, advances, and acquisitions. |
The credit agreement governing our Revolving Credit Facility contains customary events of default, including payment defaults, failure to perform or observe covenants, cross-defaults with certain other indebtedness, a change of control, and certain bankruptcy events, among others. This offering will not constitute a change of control under the credit agreement governing our Revolving Credit Facility.
208
Delayed Draw Term Loan 1.0 Facility
On July 30, 2023, CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. II, LLC, a direct, wholly-owned subsidiary of Parent, as borrower (CCAC II), entered into a credit agreement with U.S. Bank National Association, as depository bank, U.S. Bank Trust Company, National Association, as administrative agent and collateral agent, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Advisors L.L.C., and Magnetar, on behalf of certain lenders as the lead lenders, and the arrangers, bookrunners, and lenders party thereto, providing for a $2.3 billion delayed draw term loan facility (as amended, the DDTL 1.0 Facility). Our DDTL 1.0 Facility was entered into primarily to finance capital expenditures required to perform customer contracts, including the acquisition of GPU servers and related infrastructure.
As of December 31, 2024 our DDTL 1.0 Facility was fully drawn.
Interest Rate
Amounts borrowed under our DDTL 1.0 Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (i) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 8.6196% plus a base rate (subject to a 0.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (a) the prime rate, (b) the federal funds effective rate plus 0.50%, and (c) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (ii) for term SOFR loans, an applicable margin of 9.6196% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a three month interest period.
Mandatory Repayments
The loans outstanding under our DDTL 1.0 Facility are required to be repaid quarterly in an amount equal to the greater of (i) fixed amortization amounts, (ii) the amount required to reduce the remaining principal amount of outstanding loans to an amount based on projected contracted cash flows, and (iii) beginning in January 2025, the amount required to reduce the remaining principal amount of outstanding loans to an amount based on the depreciated purchase price of the GPU servers and infrastructure.
The credit agreement governing our DDTL 1.0 Facility requires us to prepay outstanding loans, subject to certain exceptions, with (i) 100% of the net proceeds of any disposition of uncontracted GPU servers, (ii) 100% of the net proceeds of any indebtedness not permitted under our DDTL 1.0 Facility, (iii) 100% of the net proceeds of certain asset sales and casualty events, and (iv) upon a change of control.
Voluntary Repayments
We may voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under our DDTL 1.0 Facility at any time, subject to payment of the prepayment fees discussed below and customary breakage costs.
Prepayment Fees
Upon any mandatory prepayment (except as a result of a casualty event) or voluntary prepayment prior to the fourth anniversary of the commitment termination date under our DDTL 1.0 Facility, we are required to pay prepayment fees equal to: (i) with respect to prepayments made prior to the third anniversary of the commitment termination date, an amount equal to the present value of future interest payments that would have accrued on the principal amount of the loans being prepaid through the third anniversary of the commitment termination date based on the interest rate in effect plus 1.00% of the principal amount of the loans being prepaid; and (ii) with respect to prepayments made between the third and fourth anniversary of the commitment termination date, an amount equal to 1.00% of the principal amount of the loans being prepaid.
Maturity Date
The maturity date of our DDTL 1.0 Facility is March 28, 2028.
209
Guarantees and Security
The obligations under our DDTL 1.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by Parent. The guaranty agreement with respect to our DDTL 1.0 Facility contains covenants that, among other things and subject to certain exceptions, restrict the ability of Parent to incur additional indebtedness, including capital leases, create liens, pay dividends on its capital stock or redeem, repurchase or retire its capital stock, consolidate or merge, make acquisitions, and take certain actions with respect to its material project contracts.
All obligations under our DDTL 1.0 Facility are secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of CCAC IIs assets and a pledge of 100% of the equity interests in CCAC II.
Financial Covenants
CCAC II is required to maintain a minimum liquidity level under our DDTL 1.0 Facility as of the last day of each month equal to the greater of (i) $19 million and (ii) 4.0% of the principal amount of loans outstanding under our DDTL 1.0 Facility; provided, that following the earlier of (x) a qualified IPO and (y) the date that the principal amount of loans outstanding under our DDTL 1.0 Facility is reduced to 30% of the principal amount of loans outstanding under our DDTL 1.0 Facility as of the commitment termination date, the liquidity requirement cannot be less than $25 million. In no event can the liquidity requirement be greater than $56 million.
Certain Other Covenants and Events of Default
Our DDTL 1.0 Facility contains a number of other covenants that, among other things and subject to certain exceptions, restrict the ability of CCAC II to:
| incur additional indebtedness, including capital leases; |
| create liens; |
| make investments, loans, and advances; |
| consolidate or merge, sell assets, or make acquisitions; |
| pay dividends on its capital stock or redeem, repurchase, or retire its capital stock; |
| engage in transactions with our affiliates; |
| have any subsidiaries; |
| create restrictions on its ability to create certain liens; and |
| take certain actions with respect to its material project contracts. |
The credit agreement governing our DDTL 1.0 Facility contains customary events of default, including payment defaults, failure to perform or observe covenants, cross-defaults with certain other indebtedness, a change of control, and certain bankruptcy events, among others. This offering will not constitute a change of control under the credit agreement governing our DDTL 1.0 Facility. The credit agreement governing our DDTL 1.0 Facility also contains events of default related to certain adverse events with respect to certain material contracts.
Delayed Draw Term Loan 2.0 Facility
On May 16, 2024, CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. IV, LLC, a direct, wholly-owned subsidiary of Parent, as borrower (CCAC IV), entered into a credit agreement with U.S. Bank National Association, as depository bank, U.S. Bank Trust Company, National Association, as administrative agent and collateral agent, Blackstone Alternative Credit Advisors LP, Blackstone Alternative Solutions L.L.C., Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Advisors L.L.C., and Blackstone Private Investments Advisors L.L.C., as lead lenders and co-lead
210
investors, Magnetar, as a co-lead investor, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $7.6 billion delayed draw term loan facility (as amended, the DDTL 2.0 Facility). Our DDTL 2.0 Facility was entered into primarily to finance capital expenditures required to perform customer contracts, including the acquisition of GPU servers and related infrastructure.
As of December 31, 2024, $3.8 billion of our DDTL 2.0 Facility was drawn and $3.8 billion remained available for borrowing under our DDTL 2.0 Facility. Approximately $500 million of the net proceeds from this offering will be held as restricted cash in escrow to secure our obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility.
Additional Availability
Additional loans are available to be drawn under our DDTL 2.0 Facility until the commitment termination date in June 2025, which may be extended for an additional three months with the consent of the required lenders. The aggregate amount of loans available to be drawn under our DDTL 2.0 Facility in connection with any borrowing request are limited to a percentage of the depreciated purchase price of GPU servers and related infrastructure for the contract that the loans are being used to finance, with such percentage based upon the credit rating of the applicable customer.
Interest Rate and Fees
Amounts borrowed under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 5.0% to 12.0% depending on the credit rating of the customer whose contract is being financed) plus a base rate (subject to a 0.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the federal funds effective rate plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (b) for term SOFR loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 6.0% to 13.0% depending on the credit rating of the customer whose contract is being financed) plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a three month interest period.
Our DDTL 2.0 Facility provides for payment of the following fees: (i) commitment fees in an amount equal to 2.50% of the difference between $6.1 billion and the total amount drawn under our DDTL 2.0 Facility as of the commitment termination date; (ii) upfront fees in an amount equal to 1.50% of the aggregate amount of loans actually funded to CCAC IV on each funding date; and (iii) undrawn fees in an amount equal to 0.50% of the difference between $7.6 billion and the greater of the average aggregate principal amount of loans outstanding and $6.1 billion, which undrawn fees accrue and are earned monthly prior to the commitment termination date.
Mandatory Repayments
The loans outstanding under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are required to be repaid quarterly, commencing in October 2025, in an amount equal to the greater of (i) the amount required to reduce the remaining principal amount of outstanding loans to an amount based on projected contracted cash flows and (ii) the amount required to reduce the remaining principal amount of outstanding loans based on the depreciated purchase price of the GPU servers and infrastructure.
The credit agreement governing our DDTL 2.0 Facility requires us to prepay outstanding loans, subject to certain exceptions, with (i) 100% of the net proceeds of any disposition of uncontracted infrastructure, (ii) 100% of the net proceeds of any indebtedness not permitted under our DDTL 2.0 Facility, (iii) 100% of the net proceeds of certain asset sales and casualty events, and (iv) upon a change of control.
Voluntary Repayments
We may voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under our DDTL 2.0 Facility at any time, subject to payment of the prepayment fees discussed below and customary breakage costs.
211
Prepayment Fees
Upon any mandatory prepayment (except as a result of a casualty event) or voluntary prepayment prior to the date that is 30 months after the commitment termination date under our DDTL 2.0 Facility, we are required to pay prepayment fees equal to the present value of future interest payments that would have accrued on the principal amount of the loans being prepaid through the date that is 30 months after the commitment termination date based on the interest rate in effect.
Maturity Date
The maturity date of our DDTL 2.0 Facility is, with respect to each loan, the date that is five years after the date each such loan was funded.
Guarantees and Security
The obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by Parent. The guaranty agreement with respect to our DDTL 2.0 Facility contains covenants that, among other things and subject to certain exceptions, restrict the ability of Parent to incur additional indebtedness, including capital leases, create liens, pay dividends on its capital stock or redeem, repurchase, or retire its capital stock, consolidate or merge, make acquisitions and take certain actions with respect to its material project contracts.
All obligations under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are secured, subject to certain exceptions, by substantially all of CCAC IVs assets and a pledge of 100% of the equity interests in CCAC IV.
Financial Covenants
CCAC IV is required to comply with certain financial covenants under our DDTL 2.0 Facility which are described below.
Contract Coverage Ratios. Beginning in January 2026, CCAC IV is required to maintain contract coverage ratios under our DDTL 2.0 Facility (each the ratio of projected contracted cash flows for different categories of customer contracts to the debt service related to the financing of those categories of customer contracts) of 1.4x or more as of each quarterly payment date. The contract coverage ratios under our DDTL 2.0 Facility are measured against contracts with a specified customer, contracts with customers with an investment grade rating and contracts with customers without an investment grade rating.
Maximum Non-IG Collateral Ratio. CCAC IV is required to maintain a non-IG collateral ratio under our DDTL 2.0 Facility (the ratio of (i) the depreciated purchase price of the GPU servers and infrastructure owned by, and related capital expenditures made by, CCAC IV to perform contracts with customers without an investment grade rating to (ii) the depreciated purchase price of the GPU servers and infrastructure owned by, and related capital expenditures made by, CCAC IV to perform all customer contracts) as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters of 0.35x or less.
Maximum Non-IG Revenue Ratio. CCAC IV is required to maintain a non-IG revenue ratio under our DDTL 2.0 Facility (the ratio of (i) the projected contracted cash flows with respect to contracts with customers without an investment grade rating to (ii) the projected contracted cash flows with respect to all customer contracts) as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters of 0.35x or less.
Minimum Liquidity. CCAC IV is required to maintain a minimum liquidity level under our DDTL 2.0 Facility as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters equal to 2.0% of the principal amount of loans outstanding under our DDTL 2.0 Facility; provided, that following the earlier of (i) a qualified IPO and (ii) the date that the principal amount of loans outstanding under our DDTL 2.0 Facility is reduced to 30% of the principal amount of
212
loans outstanding under our DDTL 2.0 Facility as of the commitment termination date, the liquidity requirement cannot be less than the greater of (x) $25 million and (y) 1.0% of the principal amount of loans outstanding under our DDTL 2.0 Facility.
Certain Other Covenants and Events of Default
Our DDTL 2.0 Facility contains a number of other covenants that, among other things and subject to certain exceptions, restrict the ability of CCAC IV to:
| incur additional indebtedness, including capital leases; |
| create liens; |
| make investments, loans, and advances; |
| consolidate or merge, sell assets, or make acquisitions; |
| pay dividends on its capital stock or redeem, repurchase, or retire its capital stock; |
| engage in transactions with our affiliates; |
| have any subsidiaries; |
| create restrictions on its ability to create certain liens; and |
| take certain actions with respect to its material project contracts. |
The credit agreement governing our DDTL 2.0 Facility contains customary events of default, including payment defaults, failure to perform or observe covenants, cross-defaults with certain other indebtedness, a change of control, and certain bankruptcy events, among others. This offering will not constitute a change of control under the credit agreement governing our DDTL 2.0 Facility. The credit agreement governing our DDTL 2.0 Facility also contains events of default related to certain adverse events with respect to certain material contracts.
2024 Term Loan Facility
On December 16, 2024, we, as borrower, entered into a credit agreement (the 2024 Term Loan Credit Agreement) with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as administrative agent and collateral agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $1.0 billion term loan facility consisting of (a) a $229 million secured facility secured by substantially all of our assets and the assets of our subsidiary guarantors and (b) a $771 million unsecured facility (the 2024 Term Loan Facility). The 2024 Term Loan Facility may be increased up to $500 million pursuant to the exercise of an accordion feature and the obligations under our 2024 Term Loan Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by our subsidiary guarantors as described in the 2024 Term Loan Credit Agreement. On December 16, 2024, we borrowed the full $1.0 billion of loans available under the 2024 Term Loan Facility. The proceeds of our 2024 Term Loan Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and investments). The 2024 Term Loan Facility will mature on December 16, 2025.
As of December 31, 2024, we had $1.0 billion outstanding under our 2024 Term Loan Facility.
Interest Rate and Fees
Amounts borrowed under our 2024 Term Loan Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 4.25% to 5.25%, depending on how long the loans are outstanding) plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (y) the federal funds effective rate and (z) the overnight bank funding rate,
213
in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR rate plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin (ranging from 5.25% to 6.25%, depending on how long the loans are outstanding) plus the term SOFR rate (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three or six month interest period.
Repayments
The 2024 Term Loan Facility is required to be prepaid upon the occurrence of an event of default, or with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions, incurrences of indebtedness or equity issuances, including a requirement to be prepaid with some or all of the proceeds of this offering. We may also voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under our 2024 Term Loan Facility at any time without premium or penalty, other than customary breakage costs.
Covenants and Events of Default
The 2024 Term Loan Credit Agreement includes customary covenants and events of default for agreements of this type, including various reporting, affirmative and negative covenants. We are also required to comply with certain financial covenants including maintenance of a total net leverage ratio of 6.00x or lower as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters and a requirement to have binding customer contracts with contracted revenues of $1.0 billion or more as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters, each subject to certain exceptions, limitations and calculations as described in the 2024 Term Loan Credit Agreement.
2025 Term Loan Facility
On March 7, 2025, we, as borrower, entered into the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement with Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as administrative agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $300.0 million unsecured term loan facility. The obligations under our 2025 Term Loan Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by our subsidiary guarantors as described in the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement. Amounts borrowed under the 2025 Term Loan Facility may only be borrowed in a single funding. As of the date of this prospectus, there have been no borrowings under the 2025 Term Loan Facility. The proceeds of our 2025 Term Loan Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and other investments). The 2025 Term Loan Facility will mature on December 16, 2025. All unfunded commitments of the lenders under the 2025 Term Loan Facility shall terminate upon the earlier to occur of (i) April 7, 2025 and (ii) the closing of the offering of our Class A common stock to which this prospectus relates.
Interest Rate and Fees
Amounts borrowed under our 2025 Term Loan Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at our option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 0.75% plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (x) the federal funds effective rate and (y) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin of 1.75% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three, or six month interest period plus, in the case of either of clauses (a) or (b), a fee of 2.25% payable to the lenders thereof.
Repayments
The 2025 Term Loan Facility is required to be prepaid with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions, incurrences of indebtedness or equity issuances, including a requirement to be prepaid with some or all of the proceeds of this offering. We may also voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under our 2025 Term Loan Facility at any time without premium or penalty, other than customary breakage costs.
214
Covenants and Events of Default
The 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement includes customary covenants and events of default for agreements of this type, including various reporting, affirmative and negative covenants. We are also required to comply with certain financial covenants including maintenance of a total net leverage ratio of 6.00x or lower as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters and a requirement to have binding customer contracts with contracted revenues of $1.0 billion or more as of the last day of each of our fiscal quarters, each subject to certain exceptions, limitations and calculations as described in the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement.
OEM Financing Arrangements
Between February and December 2024, we, as borrower, entered into various agreements with an OEM whereby we obtained financing for certain equipment with an aggregate notional balance of $1.3 billion as of December 31, 2024 (the OEM Financing Agreements). Related to the OEM Financing Agreements, we granted a security interest for the financed equipment. The OEM Financing Agreements are accounted for as financing arrangements, with terms between two to three years. The OEM Financing Agreements have a stated repayment schedule over the term with effective interest rates between 9% to 11%.
215
General
The following description summarizes the most important terms of our capital stock, as they will be in effect following this offering. Because it is only a summary, it does not contain all the information that may be important to you. We expect to adopt an amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering, and this description summarizes provisions that are expected to be included in these documents. For a complete description, you should refer to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, amended and restated bylaws, and our Rights Agreement, which are included as exhibits to the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, and to the applicable provisions of Delaware law.
Upon the completion of this offering, our authorized capital stock will consist of (a) 3,400,000,000 shares of common stock, $0.000005 par value per share, of which (i) 3,000,000,000 shares will be designated as Class A common stock, $0.000005 par value per share, (ii) 200,000,000 shares will be designated as Class B common stock, $0.000005 par value per share, and (iii) 200,000,000 shares will be designated as Class C common stock, $0.000005 par value per share, and (b) 100,000,000 shares of undesignated preferred stock, $0.000005 par value per share.
Assuming the occurrence of the Capital Stock Conversion, the Class B Conversion, the Option Exercise, and the RSU Net Settlement as of December 31, 2024, there were outstanding:
| 301,337,486 shares of our Class A common stock, held by 391 stockholders of record; |
| 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock, held by 17 stockholders of record; |
| no shares of our Class C common stock; |
| no shares of preferred stock; |
| 45,897,500 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.76 per share, of which 9,109,000 shares will be exchangeable for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock at the election of our Co-Founders upon exercise; |
| 14,982,220 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting and settlement of RSUs outstanding; and |
| 12,144,668 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of warrants to purchase shares of our Class A common stock, of which 7,807,282 had an exercise price of $0.0005 per share and 4,337,386 had an exercise price equal to the Regular Warrants Exercise Price. |
We have no current plans to issue any shares of our Class C common stock. Our board of directors is authorized, without stockholder approval except as required by the rules of Nasdaq, to issue additional shares of our capital stock.
Common Stock
We have three series of authorized common stock: Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock. The rights of holders of shares of Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock are identical, except with respect to voting and conversion rights.
Dividend Rights
Subject to preferences that may apply to any shares of preferred stock outstanding at the time, the holders of shares of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock are entitled to receive dividends out of funds legally available if our board of directors, in its discretion, determines to issue dividends and then only at the times and in the amounts that our board of directors may determine. See the section titled Dividend Policy.
216
Voting Rights
Holders of shares of our Class A common stock are entitled to one vote for each share of our Class A common stock held on all matters submitted to a vote of stockholders, holders of our Class B common stock are entitled to ten votes for each share of our Class B common stock held on all matters submitted to a vote of stockholders, and holders of our Class C common stock are entitled to no votes for each share of our Class C common stock held on all matters submitted to a vote of stockholders, except as otherwise required by law.
Immediately following the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, and assuming no exercise of the underwriters over-allotment option, Michael Intrator, our Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of our board of directors, will hold approximately 37.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, Brian Venturo, our Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer and a member of our board of directors, will hold approximately 23.2% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, and Brannin McBee, our Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer, will hold approximately 18.7% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, which voting power may increase over time upon the exercise or settlement and exchange of equity awards held by our Co-Founders pursuant to their Equity Exchange Rights.
If all stock options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock held by our Co-Founders outstanding as of December 31, 2024 were exercised and exchanged for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock pursuant to the Equity Exchange Rights, then immediately following the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, Mr. Intrator, Mr. Venturo, and Mr. McBee would hold approximately 38.2%, 25.6%, and 19.4%, respectively, of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock.
Holders of shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock vote together as a single class on all matters (including the election of directors) submitted to a vote of stockholders, unless otherwise required by Delaware law. Delaware law could require holders of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, or Class C common stock to vote separately as a single class if we were to seek to amend our restated certificate of incorporation in a manner that alters or changes the powers, preferences, or special rights of a class of our capital stock in a manner that affected its holders adversely.
In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will provide that a separate vote of the holders of our Class B common stock will be required in connection with any amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that would alter the rights of the Class B common stock, reclassify any shares of our Class A common stock into shares senior to the Class B common stock, or authorize the issuance of any shares of capital stock with voting rights greater than one vote per share (other than the Class B common stock). We have not provided for cumulative voting for the election of directors in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering.
No Preemptive or Similar Rights
Our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock are not entitled to preemptive rights and are not subject to redemption (except for the put-right described below under Series C Preferred Stock Put Right) or sinking fund provisions.
Right to Receive Liquidation Distributions
Upon our liquidation, dissolution, or winding-up, the assets legally available for distribution to our stockholders would be distributable ratably among the holders of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock and any participating preferred stock outstanding at that time, subject to prior satisfaction of all outstanding debt and liabilities and the preferential rights of and the payment of liquidation preferences, if any, on any outstanding shares of preferred stock.
217
Conversion
Class B Common Stock. Each outstanding share of our Class B common stock held by a Co-Founder or certain permitted affiliates (collectively, the Applicable Holders) is convertible at any time at the option of the applicable Co-Founder into one share of our Class A common stock. In addition, each share of our Class B common stock held by an Applicable Holder will convert automatically into one share of our Class A common stock (i) upon any transfer, whether or not for value, which occurs after the closing of this offering, except for certain permitted transfers described in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, including transfers to spouses, trusts for which the stockholder or their spouse serves as trustee, and partnerships, corporations, and other entities exclusively owned by the Co-Founder or their spouse; (ii) upon the date fixed by the board of directors, which date will be no more than 61 days following the first date on which the applicable Co-Founder and his permitted affiliates hold less than 50% of the aggregate outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock (including shares underlying outstanding options or other convertible securities) held on the date on which this registration statement is declared effective by the SEC; (iii) upon the date fixed by the board of directors following the first date the applicable Co-Founder is no longer providing services that occupy substantially all of his working time and business efforts to us as an officer, employee, or consultant, as determined by the board of directors (other than as a result of termination of such Co-Founders employment without cause) (a Service Termination), which date will be no more than 61 days following such Service Termination; (iv) upon the date the applicable Co-Founders employment is terminated for cause; and (v) upon the date fixed by the board of directors after the death or disability of the applicable Co-Founder, which date will be no more than 61 days following such Service Termination. Once converted or transferred and converted into our Class A common stock, the Class B common stock will not be reissued.
All the outstanding shares of our Class B common stock will convert automatically into shares of our Class A common stock upon the earlier of (x) a date that is fixed by our board of directors that is no more than 61 days following the seventh anniversary of this offering, (y) the date specified by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the outstanding voting power of the Class B common stock, or (z) no more than 61 days following Michael Intrators Service Termination. Following such conversion, each share of Class A common stock will have one vote per share and the rights of the holders of all outstanding common stock will be identical. Once converted into our Class A common stock, the Class B common stock may not be reissued.
Class C Common Stock. All of the outstanding shares of our Class C common stock will automatically convert into shares of our Class A common stock following both (a) the earliest of (i) the conversion or exchange of all then-outstanding shares of our Class B common stock into or for shares of our Class A common stock, (ii) the Class B Automatic Conversion, and (iii) the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class B common stock and upon (b) the date and time or occurrence of an event specified by the vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class A common stock. We have no current plans to issue any Class C common stock.
Class C Common Stock
Our authorized but unissued shares of Class C common stock are available for issuance with the approval of our board of directors without stockholder approval, except as may be required by the rules of Nasdaq. We have no current plans to issue any shares of our Class C common stock. However, we may in the future issue shares of our Class C common stock for a variety of corporate purposes, including financings, acquisitions, investments, and equity incentives to our employees, consultants, and directors. Our Class C common stock provides us with the flexibility to do so without diluting the existing voting power of the outstanding shares of our Class A and Class B common stock. Because our Class C common stock carries no voting rights (except as otherwise required by law) and is not listed for trading on an exchange or registered for sale with the SEC, shares of our Class C common stock may be less liquid and less attractive to any future recipients of these shares than shares of our Class A common stock, although we may seek to list shares of our Class C common stock for trading and register shares of our Class C common stock for sale in the future. In addition, because our Class C common stock carries no voting rights (except as otherwise required by law), if we issue shares of our Class C common
218
stock in the future, the holders of our Class B common stock may be able to hold significant voting control and determine the outcome of most matters submitted to a vote of our stockholders for a longer period of time than would be the case if we issued shares of our Class A common stock rather than shares of our Class C common stock in such transactions. In addition, if we issue shares of our Class C common stock in the future, such issuances would have a dilutive effect on the economic interests of our Class A and Class B common stock.
Preferred Stock
Pursuant to the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as currently in effect, each currently outstanding share of our convertible preferred stock will automatically be converted into one share of our Class A common stock in connection with the closing of this offering. Following this offering, no shares of our convertible preferred stock will be outstanding.
Following this offering, our board of directors will be authorized, subject to limitations prescribed by Delaware law, to issue preferred stock in one or more series, to establish from time to time the number of shares to be included in each series, and to fix the designation, powers, preferences, and rights of the shares of each series and any of its qualifications, limitations, or restrictions, in each case without further vote or action by our stockholders. Our board of directors can also increase or decrease the number of shares of any series of preferred stock, but not below the number of shares of that series then outstanding, without any further vote or action by our stockholders. The number of authorized shares of our preferred stock may be increased or decreased (but not below the number of shares thereof then outstanding) by the vote of the holders of our capital stock entitled to vote thereon, without a separate vote of the holders of the preferred stock, irrespective of the provisions of Section 242(b)(2) of the DGCL, unless a separate vote of the holders of one or more series is required pursuant to the terms of any applicable certificate of designation. Our board of directors may authorize the issuance of preferred stock with voting or conversion rights that could adversely affect the voting power or other rights of the holders of our common stock. The issuance of preferred stock, while providing flexibility in connection with possible acquisitions and other corporate purposes, could, among other things, have the effect of delaying, deferring, or preventing a change in our control and might adversely affect the market price of our Class A common stock and the voting and other rights of the holders of our Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock. We have no current plan to issue any shares of preferred stock.
Options
As of December 31, 2024, we had outstanding stock options to purchase an aggregate of 47,218,580 shares of our Class A common stock under our 2019 Plan, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.74 per share, of which 9,109,000 shares will be exchangeable for an equal number of shares of our Class B common stock at the election of our Co-Founders upon exercise.
In connection with the Option Exercise, 1,321,080 shares of our Class A common stock will be cash exercised, with a weighted-average exercise price of $1.37 per share.
Warrants
As of December 31, 2024, we had outstanding warrants to purchase 12,144,668 shares of our Class A common stock, of which 7,807,282 had an exercise price of $0.0005 per share and 4,337,386 had an exercise price equal to the Regular Warrants Exercise Price.
RSUs
As of December 31, 2024, we had outstanding RSUs that may be settled for an aggregate of 15,454,720 shares of our Class A common stock under our 2019 Plan. After December 31, 2024, we granted RSUs that may be settled for an aggregate of 8,753,320 shares of our Class A common stock under our 2019 Plan.
219
In connection with the RSU Net Settlement, we will issue 245,700 shares of our Class A common, after withholding an aggregate of 226,800 shares of Class A common stock, to satisfy associated estimated tax withholding and remittance obligations.
Registration Rights
Rights Agreement
Following the completion of this offering, certain holders of shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock or their permitted transferees will be entitled to rights with respect to the registration of their shares under the Securities Act. These rights are provided under the terms of our Rights Agreement, which was entered into in connection with our convertible preferred stock financings, and include demand registration rights, Form S-3 registration rights, and piggyback registration rights. In any registration made pursuant to our Rights Agreement, all fees, costs, and expenses of underwritten registrations will be borne by us and all selling expenses, including estimated underwriting discounts, selling commissions, stock transfer taxes, and fees and disbursements of counsel for any holder will be borne by the holders of the shares being registered, provided, however, that we will pay the reasonable fees and disbursements of one counsel to any selling holders not to exceed $50,000.
The registration rights terminate (i) four years following the completion of this offering, (ii) upon a deemed liquidation event (as defined in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as currently in effect), or (iii) with respect to any particular stockholder, at the time that such stockholder can sell all of its registrable securities (as defined in our Rights Agreement) without any restriction on volume or manner of sale in any three-month period pursuant to Rule 144 of the Securities Act or any successor rule thereto.
Demand Registration Rights
Following the completion of this offering, holders of 375,927,734 shares of our Class A common stock will be entitled to demand registration rights at any time after 180 days after the effective date of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. Under the terms of our Rights Agreement, we will be required, upon the request of holders representing a majority of the then-outstanding shares that are entitled to registration rights under our Rights Agreement, to file a registration statement on Form S-1 to register, as soon as practicable and in any event within 60 days of the date of the request, all or a portion of these shares for public resale, if the aggregate price to the public of the shares offered is at least $10 million, net of selling expenses. We are required to effect only two registrations pursuant to this provision of the Rights Agreement. We may postpone the filing of a registration statement no more than once during any 12-month period for a period of not more than 90 days if our board of directors determines in good faith that the filing would be materially detrimental to us. We are not required to effect a demand registration under certain additional circumstances specified in our Rights Agreement.
Form S-3 Registration Rights
Following the completion of this offering, holders of 375,927,734 shares of our Class A common stock will be entitled to Form S-3 registration rights. The holders representing at least 20% of the then-outstanding shares having registration rights can request that we register all or part of their shares on Form S-3 if we are eligible to file a registration statement on Form S-3 and if the aggregate price to the public of the shares offered is at least $4 million. The holders may only require us to effect at most two registration statements on Form S-3 in any 12-month period. We may postpone the filing of a registration statement on Form S-3 no more than once during any 12-month period for a period of not more than 90 days if our board of directors determines that the filing would be materially detrimental to us.
Piggyback Registration Rights
If we register any of our securities for public sale, holders of 375,927,734 shares of our Class A common stock having registration rights will have the right to include their shares in the registration statement. However,
220
this right does not apply to a registration relating to employee benefit plans, a registration relating to an SEC Rule 145 transaction, a registration on any form that does not include substantially the same information as would be required to be included in a registration statement covering the sale of our common stock, or a registration in which the only common stock being registered is common stock issuable upon conversion of debt securities that are also being registered. The underwriters of any underwritten offering will have the right to limit the number of shares registered by these holders if they determine that marketing factors require limitation, in which case the number of shares to be registered will be apportioned pro rata among these holders, according to the total amount of securities entitled to be included by each holder. However, the number of shares to be registered by these holders cannot be reduced (i) unless all other securities (other than securities to be sold by us) are first excluded from this offering or (ii) below 30% of the total shares covered by the registration statement, other than in the IPO.
Magnetar Amended and Restated Registration Rights Agreement
Pursuant to the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement, the Magnetar RRA Parties will be entitled to rights with respect to the registration of the Magnetar Registrable Securities under the Securities Act. The registration rights will terminate five years following the completion of this offering.
Each of the Magnetar RRA Parties is subject to a lock-up agreement with the underwriters pursuant to which it has agreed, among other things, that without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley, it will not make any demand for, or exercise any right with respect to, the registration of any shares of our Class A common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our Class A common stock during the Lock-up Period.
Shelf Takedown Rights
At any time and from time to time after the effective date of any shelf registration statement, the Magnetar RRA Parties may request to sell in an underwritten offering that is registered pursuant to the shelf registration statement all or a portion of the Magnetar Registrable Securities having an aggregate offering price in excess of $15 million, net of selling expenses, or otherwise constituting the total aggregate Magnetar Registrable Securities then held by the Magnetar RRA Parties. We are required to effect two such shelf takedowns.
Demand Registration Rights
Pursuant to the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement, as amended, if we receive a request from the Magnetar RRA Parties following the closing of this offering, we will be required to file a registration statement on Form S-1 or Form S-3, if available (the Initial Shelf), to register the resale of the Magnetar Registrable Securities no later than 45 days following such request, and to use our reasonable best efforts to have the Initial Shelf declared effective as soon as practicable after the filing thereof, but no later than 75 days following such request (or 90 days if the SEC notifies us of its intention to review the Initial Shelf).
For each monthly delay in the filing or effectiveness of the Initial Shelf, subject to certain exceptions as provided in the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement, we will be required to pay to the Magnetar RRA Parties an amount in cash, as partial liquidated damages, equal to the product of 0.25% multiplied by the aggregate principal amounts of the 2025 Notes and the 2025 Convertible Notes; provided that such amount will be capped at 3.0% of such aggregate principal amount for any delay beyond one year.
If at any time after the date that is 180 days after the effective date of the Initial Shelf, we receive a request from the Magnetar RRA Parties that we file a Form S-1 registration statement with respect to Magnetar Registrable Securities (1) having an anticipated aggregate offering price in excess of $15 million, net of selling expenses, or (2) constituting the total aggregate Magnetar Registrable Securities then held by all Magnetar RRA Parties, then we will, as soon as practicable, and in any event within 60 days after the date such request is given, file a Form S-1 registration statement under the Securities Act covering all Magnetar Registrable Securities that
221
the initial requesting Magnetar RRA Parties requested to be registered and any additional Magnetar Registrable Securities or equivalent securities requested to be included in such registration statement by any other Magnetar RRA Parties, or other holders of our securities, as specified by notice given by the Magnetar RRA Parties or other holders to us within 20 days of the date the demand notice is given, and in each case, subject to applicable limitations provided in the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement; provided that we may use a Form S-3 registration statement instead of a Form S-1 registration statement if we would qualify to use a Form S-3 registration statement within 60 days after the date on which the request from Magnetar RRA Parties is received.
In addition, if at any time when we are eligible to use a Form S-3 registration statement, we receive a request from the Magnetar RRA Parties holding Magnetar Registrable Securities that we file a Form S-3 registration statement with respect to outstanding Magnetar Registrable Securities having an anticipated aggregate offering price of at least $5 million, net of selling expenses, then we will, as soon as practicable, and in any event within 45 days after the date such request is given, file a Form S-3 registration statement under the Securities Act covering all Magnetar Registrable Securities or equivalent securities requested to be included in such registration statement by the Magnetar RRA Parties or other holders of our securities, as specified by notice given by the Magnetar RRA Parties or other holders to us within 20 days of the date the demand notice is given, and in each case, subject to the applicable limitations provided in the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement.
We may postpone the filing of a registration statement on Form S-1 or S-3, including the Initial Shelf, no more than once during any 12-month period for a period of not more than 60 days if our board of directors determines in good faith that the filing would be materially detrimental to us.
Piggyback Registration Rights
If we propose to register any of our securities under the Securities Act or consummate an underwritten offering pursuant to a previously filed registration statement (including pursuant to the Rights Agreement), subject to certain exceptions as described in the Magnetar Registration Rights Agreement, we will, at such time, promptly give each Magnetar RRA Party notice of such registration or underwritten offering. Upon the request of each Magnetar RRA Party given within 20 days after such notice is given by us, we will cause to be registered for resale all of the Magnetar Registrable Securities that each such Magnetar RRA Party has requested to be included in such registration and/or use our reasonable best efforts to include all of the Magnetar Registrable Securities that each such Magnetar RRA Party has requested to be included in such underwritten offering. The underwriters of any underwritten offering will have the right to limit the number of shares registered by these holders, including the Magnetar RRA Parties, if they determine that marketing factors require limitation, in which case the number of shares to be registered will be apportioned pro rata among the holders, according to the total amount of securities entitled to be included by each holder; provided, that the number of Magnetar Registrable Securities held by the Magnetar RRA Parties to be included in such underwriting shall not be reduced unless all other securities are first entirely excluded from the underwriting.
Series C Preferred Stock Put Right
29,874,066 Put Shares are subject to the Put Right on the first trading day immediately after the earlier to occur of (i) August 15, 2029 and (ii) the Public Sale Date which would be on the second anniversary of the closing of this offering. Upon exercise of the Put Right, holders of the Put Shares would be entitled to receive from us an amount in cash equal to the Series C OIP of $38.95, representing an aggregate payment of $1.2 billion. There will be no accrued and unpaid dividends with respect to the shares of Series C convertible preferred stock following the date of closing of this offering.
The Put Right shall automatically terminate (on a share by share basis) on the date on which (i) such share is assigned, sold, or transferred publicly or (ii) our Class A common stock has a 20 day volume-weighted average price in any consecutive 30 trading day period of at least 175% of the Series C OIP at any point following this offering and on or prior to the Public Sale Date during which Coatue Management, L.L.C. is not subject to a contractual lock-up agreement (clauses (i) and (ii) collectively, an Exercise Termination Event).
222
Upon the exercise of a Put Right by a holder of Put Shares, (i) we will be deemed to issue an unsecured note senior in the right of payment to all our outstanding equity securities to such holder having a principal amount equal to the amount payable to such holder pursuant to such Put Right to satisfy its obligations (each, a Put Note), which Put Note shall be due and payable 15 days after the Public Sale Date (the Note Payment Date), and (ii) the applicable Put Shares shall be placed into an escrow account. The Put Note shall accrue interest on the principal amount thereof beginning on the date of issuance at a rate of 10% per annum (compounding quarterly), provided that the interest rate shall increase to 14% per annum if we fail to pay the principal amount on or before the Note Payment Date. In the event a Put Note is not fully satisfied on or prior to the Note Payment Date, the escrow agent or other party shall be instructed to liquidate the shares held in such escrow account commencing on the Note Payment Date and distribute the proceeds in respect thereof ratably to the unsatisfied exercising holders, which distributed proceeds shall be applied against the amounts owing in respect of the applicable Put Notes.
If (i) there is a sale of us prior to the Public Sale Date and (ii) there has not yet occurred an Exercise Termination Event, the holders of our Class A common stock still holding Put Shares shall be entitled in such sale transaction to receive the greater of (x) the consideration received per share the holders of our Class A common stock are entitled to receive in such sale transaction and (y) an amount in cash equal to the Series C OIP per share.
Anti-Takeover Provisions
The provisions of the DGCL, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, and our amended and restated bylaws that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering could have the effect of delaying, deferring, or discouraging another person from acquiring control of our company. These provisions, which are summarized below, are expected to discourage certain types of coercive takeover practices and inadequate takeover bids and encourage persons seeking to acquire control of our company to first negotiate with our board of directors. We believe that the benefits of increased protection of our potential ability to negotiate with an unfriendly or unsolicited acquirer outweigh the disadvantages of discouraging a proposal to acquire us because negotiation of these proposals could result in an improvement of their terms.
Delaware Law
We are subject to the provisions of Section 203 of the DGCL regulating corporate takeovers. In general, Section 203 prohibits a publicly held Delaware corporation from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a three-year period following the time that this stockholder becomes an interested stockholder, unless the business combination is approved in a prescribed manner. Under Section 203, a business combination between a corporation and an interested stockholder is prohibited unless it satisfies one of the following conditions:
| before the stockholder became interested, our board of directors approved either the business combination or the transaction, which resulted in the stockholder becoming an interested stockholder; |
| upon consummation of the transaction, which resulted in the stockholder becoming an interested stockholder, the interested stockholder owned at least 85% of the voting stock of the corporation outstanding at the time the transaction commenced, excluding for purposes of determining the voting stock outstanding, shares owned by persons who are directors and also officers, and employee stock plans in some instances, but not the outstanding voting stock owned by the interested stockholder; or |
| at or after the time the stockholder became interested, the business combination was approved by our board and authorized at an annual or special meeting of the stockholders by the affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of the outstanding voting stock, which is not owned by the interested stockholder. |
Section 203 defines a business combination to include:
| any merger or consolidation involving the corporation and the interested stockholder; |
223
| any sale, transfer, lease, pledge, or other disposition involving the interested stockholder of 10% or more of the assets of the corporation; |
| subject to exceptions, any transaction that results in the issuance of transfer by the corporation of any stock of the corporation to the interested stockholder; |
| subject to exceptions, any transaction involving the corporation that has the effect of increasing the proportionate share of the stock of any class or series of the corporation beneficially owned by the interested stockholder; and |
| the receipt by the interested stockholder of the benefit of any loans, advances, guarantees, pledges, or other financial benefits provided by or through the corporation. |
In general, Section 203 defines an interested stockholder as any entity or person beneficially owning 15% or more of the outstanding voting stock of the corporation and any entity or person affiliated with or controlling or controlled by the entity or person.
Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation and Amended and Restated Bylaw Provisions
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws that will become effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering will include a number of provisions that may have the effect of deterring hostile takeovers, or delaying or preventing changes in control of our management team or changes in our board of directors or our governance or policy, including the following:
| Multi-Class Common Stock. As described above in the section titled Common StockVoting Rights, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will provide for a multi-class common stock structure pursuant to which holders of our Class B common stock may have significant influence over the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, even if they own significantly less than a majority of the shares of our outstanding common stock, including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets. Our Co-Founders will have the ability to exercise significant influence over those matters. |
| Board of Directors Vacancies. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws will authorize generally only our board of directors to fill vacant directorships resulting from any cause or created by the expansion of our board of directors. In addition, the number of directors constituting our board of directors may be set only by resolution adopted by a majority vote of our entire board of directors. These provisions prevent a stockholder from increasing the size of our board of directors and gaining control of our board of directors by filling the resulting vacancies with its own nominees. |
| Classified Board. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws will provide that our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors. The existence of a classified board of directors could delay a successful tender offeror from obtaining majority control of our board of directors, and the prospect of that delay might deter a potential offeror. For additional information, see the section titled ManagementClassified Board of Directors. |
| Directors Removed Only for Cause. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will provide that stockholders may remove directors only for cause and only by the affirmative vote of the holders of at least two-thirds of the voting power of the then-outstanding capital stock. |
| Supermajority Requirements for Amendments of Our Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation and Amended and Restated Bylaws. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will further provide that the affirmative vote of holders of at least two-thirds of the voting power of all of the then outstanding shares of capital stock will be required to amend certain provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, including provisions relating to the classified board, the size of our board of directors, removal of directors, special meetings, and actions by written |
224
consent. The affirmative vote of holders of at least two-thirds of the voting power of all of the then outstanding shares of capital stock will be required to amend or repeal our amended and restated bylaws, although our amended and restated bylaws may be amended by a simple majority vote of our board of directors. Additionally, in the case of any proposed adoption, amendment, or repeal of any provisions of the amended and restated bylaws that is approved by our board of directors and submitted to the stockholders for adoption, if two-thirds of our board of directors elects to submit such adoption, amendment, or repeal of any provisions of our amended and restated bylaws to our stockholders for adoption, then only the affirmative vote of a majority of the voting power of all of the then outstanding shares of capital stock shall be required to adopt, amend, or repeal any provision of our amended and restated bylaws. |
| Stockholder Action; Special Meetings of Stockholders. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will provide that our stockholders may not take action by written consent but may only take action at annual or special meetings of our stockholders; provided that stockholder action by written consent of a majority of the voting power of all then-outstanding shares of our capital stock is permitted so long as the voting power of all then-outstanding shares of Class B common stock represents greater than a majority of the combined voting power of all then-outstanding shares of our capital stock. As a result, holders of our capital stock, other than holders of a majority of then-outstanding shares of Class B common stock as previously described, would not be able to amend our amended and restated bylaws or remove directors without holding a meeting of our stockholders called in accordance with our amended and restated bylaws. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws will provide that special meetings of our stockholders may be called only by a majority of our board of directors, the chairperson of our board of directors, our chief executive officer, or our lead independent director, thus prohibiting a stockholder from calling a special meeting. These provisions might delay the ability of our stockholders to force consideration of a proposal or for stockholders to take any action, including the removal of directors. |
| Advance Notice Requirements for Stockholder Proposals and Director Nominations. Our amended and restated bylaws will provide advance notice procedures for stockholders seeking to bring business before our annual meeting of stockholders or to nominate candidates for election as directors at our annual meeting of stockholders. Our amended and restated bylaws also will specify certain requirements regarding the form and content of a stockholders notice. These provisions may preclude our stockholders from bringing matters before our annual meeting of stockholders or from making nominations for directors at our annual meeting of stockholders. We expect that these provisions might also discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirers own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our company. |
| No Cumulative Voting. The DGCL provides that stockholders are not entitled to the right to cumulate votes in the election of directors unless a corporations certificate of incorporation provides otherwise. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws will not provide for cumulative voting. |
| Issuance of Undesignated Preferred Stock. We anticipate that after the filing of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, our board of directors will have the authority, without further action by the stockholders, to issue up to 100,000,000 shares of undesignated preferred stock with rights and preferences, including voting rights, designated from time to time by our board of directors. The existence of authorized but unissued shares of preferred stock enables our board of directors to render more difficult or to discourage an attempt to obtain control of us by means of a merger, tender offer, proxy contest or otherwise. |
| Choice of Forum. In addition, our amended and restated bylaws will provide that, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be the exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty; any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the DGCL, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws; any action asserting a claim against us |
225
that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine or asserting an internal corporate claim, as defined by the DGCL; or any to interpret, apply, enforce, or determine the validity of the amended and restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated bylaws. The enforceability of similar choice of forum provisions in other companies certificates of incorporation has been challenged in legal proceedings, and it is possible that a court could find these types of provisions to be inapplicable or unenforceable. Our amended and restated bylaws will also contain a Federal Forum Provision. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow the holding of the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware which recently found that such provisions are facially valid under Delaware law or determine that the Federal Forum Provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of the Federal Forum Provision means that suits brought by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court. As Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations thereunder, there is uncertainty as to whether a court would enforce such provision. Further, Section 27 of the Exchange Act creates exclusive federal jurisdiction over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. In addition, the Federal Forum Provision applies, to the fullest extent permitted by law, to suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Accordingly, actions by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder must be brought in federal court. Our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the regulations promulgated thereunder. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in any of our securities shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to our exclusive forum provisions, including the Federal Forum Provision. These provisions may limit a stockholders ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum of their choosing for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers, and other employees. If a court were to find the Federal Forum Provision in our amended and amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur further significant additional costs associated with resolving the dispute in other jurisdictions, all of which could harm our business. |
Transfer Agent and Registrar
Upon the completion of this offering, the transfer agent and registrar for our Class A common stock and Class B common stock will be Computershare Trust Company, N.A. The transfer agents address is 150 Royall Street, Canton, Massachusetts 02021.
Exchange Listing
We have applied to list our Class A common stock on Nasdaq the under the symbol CRWV. This offering is contingent upon final approval of our listing of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq.
226
SHARES ELIGIBLE FOR FUTURE SALE
Before this offering, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock, and we cannot predict the effect, if any, that market sales of shares of our Class A common stock or the availability of shares of our Class A common stock for sale will have on the market price of our Class A common stock prevailing from time to time.
Nevertheless, sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock, including shares issued upon exercise of outstanding stock options or settlement of RSUs, in the public market following this offering and the concurrent share issuance, or the possibility of these sales or issuances occurring, could adversely affect market prices prevailing from time to time and could impair our ability to raise equity capital.
Upon the completion of this offering and the concurrent share issuance, based on the 473,480,931 shares of our capital stock outstanding as of December 31, 2024, and after giving effect to (i) the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, which will occur immediately prior to the completion of this offering, (ii) the Capital Stock Conversion, (iii) the Class B Conversion, (iv) the Option Exercise and (v) the RSU Net Settlement, we will have a total of 355,378,891 shares of our Class A common stock outstanding, 118,102,040 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding, and no shares of our Class C common stock outstanding. Of these outstanding shares, all of the shares of our Class A common stock sold in this offering will be freely tradable, except that any shares purchased in this offering by our affiliates, as that term is defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act, only would be able to be sold in compliance with the Rule 144 limitations described below. In addition, we may, from time to time, enter into separate lock-up agreements with some of the investors in this offering. These separate lock-up agreements may provide for a restricted period that is longer than the period described above that is applicable to existing stockholders other than the Management Holders. If there is a separate lock-up agreement on certain shares sold in this offering, our shares available for sale in the public market will be reduced during the term of these lock-up agreements.
The remaining outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock, including the shares of Class A common stock to be issued in the concurrent share issuance, will be deemed restricted securities as defined in Rule 144. Restricted securities may be sold in the public market only if they are registered under the Securities Act or if they qualify for an exemption from registration under Rule 144 or Rule 701 promulgated under the Securities Act, which rules are summarized below. There will be no shares of Class C common stock outstanding upon the completion of this offering.
As a result of the lock-up and market standoff agreements described herein and the provisions of our Rights Agreement described in the section titled Description of Capital StockRegistration Rights, and subject to the provisions of Rule 144 or Rule 701, shares of our common stock will be available for sale in the public market as follows:
Earliest Date Available for Sale in the Public Market | Number of Shares of Common Stock | |
The close of trading on the second trading day immediately following our public release of earnings for the first quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus; provided that the closing price of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq for any five trading days out of the ten consecutive trading day period including at least one day occurring after the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date is at least 25% greater than the initial public offering price per share set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. |
Approximately 963,140 shares. Includes shares held by our current employees and other service providers (excluding the Management Holders and directors). Includes all available for sale shares described above. |
227
Earliest Date Available for Sale in the Public Market | Number of Shares of Common Stock | |
The earlier of (i) the close of trading on the second trading day immediately following our public release of earnings for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus and (ii) the 180th day after the date of this prospectus. |
All remaining shares held by our stockholders not previously eligible for sale, subject to volume limitations applicable to affiliates under Rule 144 as described below. |
In addition, pursuant to certain exceptions to the lock-up agreements and market standoff agreements, up to approximately 727,342 shares of our Class A common stock will be eligible for sale in the open market during the Lock-up Period in sell-to-cover transactions in order to satisfy tax withholding obligations. We expect the settlement of these RSUs to begin on June 25, 2025 and vest on a schedule based on the recipients new hire date. In addition, the exact number of shares of our Class A common stock eligible for sale in the open market in connection with such tax withholding obligations may differ based on our stockholders personal tax rates.
Lock-Up and Market Standoff Agreements
In connection with this offering, all of our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other holders that together represent approximately 84.0% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to lock-up agreements with the underwriters pursuant to which they have agreed, subject to certain exceptions, that without the prior written consent of Magnetar and Morgan Stanley, on behalf of the underwriters, they will not, in accordance with the terms of such agreements during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the close of trading on the second trading day after the date that we publicly announce earnings for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus, and (ii) 180 days after the date of this prospectus:
(1) | offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, lend, make any short sale or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our common stock; |
(2) | enter into any swap, hedging transaction, or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of our common stock, whether any such transaction described above is to be settled by delivery of our common stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise; |
(3) | publicly disclose the intention to take any of the actions restricted by clause (1) or (2) above; or |
(4) | make any demand for, or exercise any right with respect to, the registration of any shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock. |
Furthermore, an additional approximately 14.3% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to the market standoff provisions, pursuant to which such holders agreed to not lend, offer, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our Class A common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our Class A common stock held immediately prior to the effectiveness of this registration statement, or enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of such Class A common stock during the Lock-up Period. The forms and specific restrictive provisions within these market standoff provisions vary among security holders. For example, although some of these market standoff agreements do not specifically restrict hedging transactions and others may be subject to different interpretations between us and security holders as to whether they restrict hedging, our insider trading policy prohibits hedging by all of our
228
current directors, officers, employees, contractors, and consultants. Sales, short sales, or hedging transactions involving our equity securities, whether before or after this offering and whether or not we believe them to be prohibited, could adversely affect the price of our Class A common stock.
As a result of the foregoing, substantially all of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to a lock-up agreement or market standoff provisions during the Lock-up Period. We have agreed to enforce all such market standoff restrictions on behalf of the underwriters and not to amend or waive any such market standoff provisions during the Lock-up Period without the prior written consent of Magnetar and Morgan Stanley, on behalf of the underwriters, provided that we may release shares from such restrictions to the extent such shares would be entitled to release under the form of lock-up agreement with the underwriters entered into by our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other holders of our securities as described herein.
Certain of our security holders that are not bound by market standoff restrictions or lock-up agreements could enter into transactions with respect to those shares of our Class A common stock that negatively impact our stock price. In addition, a security holder who is neither subject to market standoff restrictions with us nor a lock-up agreement with the underwriters may be able to sell, short sell, transfer, pledge, or otherwise dispose of or attempt to sell, short sell, transfer, hedge, pledge, or otherwise dispose of their equity interests at any time, subject to our insider trading policy, as applicable, and applicable securities laws.
In addition, pursuant to certain exceptions to the lock-up agreements and market standoff agreements, up to approximately 727,342 shares of our Class A common stock will be eligible for sale in the open market during the Lock-up Period in sell-to-cover transactions in order to satisfy tax withholding obligations. Furthermore, approximately 963,140 shares of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our common stock held by our current employees and service providers (excluding the Management Holders and directors) may be sold at the close of trading of the second trading day after the date that we publicly announce earnings for the first quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus, if the closing price per share of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq for any five trading days out of the ten consecutive trading day period including at least one day occurring after the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date is at least 25% greater than the initial public offering price of our Class A common stock set forth on the cover of this prospectus.
The restrictions imposed by the lock-up agreements and market standoff provisions are subject to certain exceptions, including with respect to:
(a) | transactions relating to shares of our common stock or other securities acquired in the this offering or in open market transactions after the completion of this offering, provided that no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of our common stock, shall be required or shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period in connection with subsequent sales of our Class A common stock or other securities acquired either in this offering or in such open market transactions; |
(b) | transfers of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for shares of our common stock (i) as a bona fide gift or to a charitable organization or educational institution or (ii) for bona fide estate planning purposes, in each case, in a transfer not involving a disposition for value; |
(c) | transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to (i) any member of the immediate family of the lock-up party or any trust for the direct or indirect benefit of the lock-up party or the immediate family of the lock-up party, or if the lock-up party is a trust, to a trustor, trustee or any beneficiary (including such trustor, trustee or beneficiarys estate), and (ii) in a transaction not involving a disposition for value; |
(d) | distributions, transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or other securities to any corporation, partnership, limited liability company, other entity that is an affiliate of the lock-up party, investment fund |
229
sponsored, managed, advised or sub-advised by the investment manager or advisor of the lock-up party or of which all of the beneficial ownership interests of which are held by the lock-up party or the immediate family of the lock-up party in a transaction not involving a disposition for value; |
(e) | transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock (i) by will, other testamentary document or intestate succession and (ii) by operation of law including, without limitation, pursuant to orders of a court or regulatory agency, in connection with a negotiated divorce settlement, pursuant to a qualified domestic relations order or by other court order; |
(f) | to a nominee or custodian of a person or entity to whom a disposition or transfer would be permissible under clauses (b) through (e) above; |
(g) | if the lock-up party is a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, trust or other entity, (x) transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or other securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to another corporation, member, managers, partnership, limited liability company, trust or other entity (or in each case its nominee or custodian) that is a direct or indirect affiliate (as defined under Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act) of the lock-up party, or to an investment fund or other entity that controls, manages, advises or sub-advises, or is under common control with, the lock-up party or affiliates of the lock-up party, or (y) distributions of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to current or former partners (general or limited), members, managers, stockholders, beneficiaries or other equity holders of the lock-up party (or in each case its nominee or custodian) or to the estate of any such partners, members, managers, stockholders, beneficiaries or other equity holders; |
(h) | (i) the receipt by the lock-up party from us of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for common stock upon the exercise of options, settlement of restricted stock units or other equity awards or the exercise of warrants which are outstanding as of the date of this prospectus and are disclosed in this prospectus, or (ii) transfers or dispositions to us in connection with the vesting, settlement or exercise of restricted stock units, options, warrants or other rights to purchase shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock (including, in each case, by way of net or cashless exercise), including any transfer to us for the payment of tax withholdings or remittance payments due as a result of the vesting, settlement or exercise of such restricted stock units, options, warrants or other rights, or in connection with the conversion of convertible securities, in all such cases pursuant to equity awards granted under a stock incentive plan or other equity award plan, or pursuant to the terms of convertible securities, each as described in herein; provided that (i) any such shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock received by the lock-up party shall be subject to the terms of the lock-up agreement, (ii) except as set forth in (iii), no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of our common stock, shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period and (iii) to the extent a filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act is required during the Lock-up Period as a result of such transfers or dispositions pursuant to clause (h)(ii), it shall clearly indicate that the filing relates to the circumstances described in this clause (h)(ii); |
(i) | sales in open market transactions during the Lock-up Period to generate such amount of net proceeds to the lock-up party from such sales (after deducting commissions) in an aggregate amount up to the total amount of taxes or estimated taxes (as applicable) that become due as a result of the vesting and/or settlement of Company equity awards held by the lock-up party and issued pursuant to a plan or arrangement described in this prospectus that vest and/or settle during the Lock-up Period, provided that, for the avoidance of doubt, any shares of our common stock or other securities retained by the lock-up party after giving effect to this provision shall be subject to the terms of the lockup agreement; provided that in the case of any sale pursuant to this clause (i), filings under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act shall only be permissible during the Lock-up Period if such filing shall clearly indicates in the footnotes thereto that the filing relates to securities being sold to generate net proceeds solely to cover taxes or estimated taxes (as applicable) that became due as a result of the vesting and/or settlement of a Company equity award; |
230
(j) | the establishment of a trading plan on behalf of a stockholder, officer or director pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act for the transfer of shares of our common stock, provided that (i) such plan does not provide for the transfer of our common stock during the Lock-up Period (except as otherwise allowed pursuant to clause (i) above) and (ii) to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by or on behalf of the lock-up party or us regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect that no transfer of our common stock may be made under such plan during the Lock-up Period (except as otherwise allowed pursuant to clause (i) above); |
(k) | transfers of shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to us pursuant to arrangements under which we have the option to repurchase such shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock or a right of first refusal with respect to such securities; provided to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by or on behalf of the lock-up party or by us regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect such transfer was to us in connection with the repurchase of shares of our common stock; |
(l) | the conversion of the outstanding preferred stock or warrants to acquire preferred stock into shares of our common stock or the exercise of warrants to acquire shares of our common stock prior to or in connection with the consummation of this offering, or the conversion exchange, retirement or reclassification of the outstanding shares of preferred stock or other classes of capital stock into shares of our common stock, provided that any such shares of our common stock received upon such conversion, exchange, retirement or reclassification shall be subject to the terms of the lock-up agreement; |
(m) | (i) transfers of shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock pursuant to a bona fide third-party tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction, that is approved by the Board of Directors, made to all holders of our capital stock involving a Change of Control (as defined below) and (ii) entry into any lock-up, voting or similar agreement pursuant to which the lock-up party may agree to transfer, sell, tender or otherwise dispose of shares of our common stock or such other securities in connection with a transaction described in (i) above; provided, that, in the event that such tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction is not completed, the shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock beneficially owned by the signatory shall remain subject to the restrictions contained in the lock-up agreement. For purposes of this clause (m), Change of Control shall mean the transfer (whether by tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction), in one transaction or a series of related transactions, the result of which is that any person (as defined in Section 13(d)(3) of the Exchange Act), or group of persons, other than us or an underwriter pursuant to this offering, becomes the beneficial owner (as defined in Rules 13d-3 and 13d-5 of the Exchange Act) of more than 50% of the total voting power of our voting stock (or the surviving entity); |
(n) | with the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley on behalf of the underwriters; |
(o) | to the underwriters pursuant to the underwriting agreement; |
(p) | any transfer of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock pledged in a bona fide transaction to third parties as collateral to secure obligations pursuant to lending or other arrangements in effect as of the date hereof between such third parties (or their affiliates or designees) and the lock-up party and/or its affiliates or any existing or future similar arrangement relating to a financing arrangement for the benefit of the lock-up party and/or its affiliates, provided that in the case of pledges or similar arrangements under this clause (p), any such pledgee or other party shall, upon foreclosure on the pledged securities, sign and deliver a lock-up agreement substantially in the form of the lock-up agreement, and provided further that no filing under the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure, of such transfer by or on behalf of the lock-up party, shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period and to the extent a filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act is required during the Lock-up Period as a result of such transfers or dispositions pursuant to clause (p), it shall clearly indicate that the filing relates to the circumstances described in this clause (p); or |
231
(q) | to any underwriters pursuant to any underwriting agreement entered into in connection with any offering of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock undertaken by us with the prior written consent delivered by Morgan Stanley to us in accordance with the underwriting agreement and for which the lock-up party has exercised its registration rights; |
provided, in the case of any transfer, disposition or distribution pursuant to clauses (b) through (g), that (i) each transferee, donee or distributee shall sign and deliver a lock-up agreement substantially in the form of the lock-up agreement and (ii) no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of our common stock, shall be required or shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period with respect to such transfer, disposition or distribution (other than, in the case of a transfer or other disposition pursuant to clause (b), (e), (f), to the extent such transfer or other disposition is to a nominee or custodian of a person or entity to whom a disposition or transfer would be permissible under clause (b) or (e), and (g), above, if the lock-up party is subject to Section 16 reporting with us under the Exchange Act and any Form 4 or Form 5 is required to be filed under the Exchange Act, any such filing will indicate by footnote disclosure or otherwise the nature of the transfer or disposition). Further, any transfer, disposition, or distribution pursuant to clause (n) is subject to the prior written consent of Magnetar.
Upon the expiration of the Lock-up Period, substantially all of the shares subject to such lock-up restrictions will become eligible for sale, subject to the limitations discussed above. For a further description of these lock-up agreements, please see Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest).
In connection with the offering, and during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the closing of trading on the second trading day immediately following our release of earnings for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus and (ii) 180 days after the date of this prospectus (the Restricted Period), we will be subject to certain restrictions on our ability to: (1) offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right or warrant to purchase, lend, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for common stock or (2) enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of our common stock, whether any such transaction described in clause (1) or (2) above is to be settled by delivery of common stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise or (3) file any registration statement with the SEC relating to the offering of any shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for common stock, subject to certain exceptions as described in Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest).
In addition to the lock-up agreement with the underwriters, each of Mike Intrator, Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee and Peter Salanki have entered into a Founder Lock-up Agreement which provides that each Management Holder and their permitted affiliates (as defined in our current amended and restated certificate of incorporation) will not (i) lend, offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or any directly, any shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable (directly or indirectly) for our common stock held by each Management Holder and all permitted affiliates of such Management Holder on the effective date of this registration statement or (ii) enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of such securities, whether any such transaction described above in (i) or (ii) is to be settled by delivery of our securities, in cash, or otherwise, during the period commencing on the effective date of this registration statement and ending on the twelve-month anniversary thereto.
The Founder Lock-Up Agreement is subject to certain exceptions, including (a) the sale of shares to the underwriters pursuant to the underwriting agreement, (b) the transfer of any shares to any permitted affiliates for the direct or indirect benefit of the Management Holder or the immediate family of the Management Holder, provided that any such transfer shall not involve a disposition for value, or (c) the sales of up to 2.5% of the
232
securities held by such Management Holder and all of such Management Holders permitted affiliates, in the aggregate, on the effective date of this registration statement, if, following the expiration of the lock-up agreement entered into with the underwriters in this offering, the closing price per share of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq imputes a market capitalization to us of $150 billion or greater for at least five trading days in any ten-day consecutive trading day period occurring after the expiration of the lock-up agreement entered into with the underwriters in this offering.
Notwithstanding the above, the Founder Lock-up Agreement shall be of no further force and effect with respect to a Management Holder in the event that such Management Holder has entered into a lock-up agreement with the underwriters, does not participate as a selling stockholder in this offering and does not engage in a concurrent private sale in connection with this offering.
In addition, we may, from time to time, enter into separate lock-up agreements with some of the investors in this offering. These separate lock-up agreements may provide for a restricted period that is longer than the period described above that is applicable to existing stockholders other than the Management Holders. If there is a separate lock-up agreement on certain shares sold in this offering, our shares available for sale in the public market will be reduced during the term of these lock-up agreements.
The remaining holders of our outstanding common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our common stock, have not entered into lock-up agreements with the underwriters and, therefore, are not subject to the restrictions described above. These holders are subject to market standoff agreements with us that restrict their ability to transfer shares of our outstanding common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our common stock, and we will not waive any of the restrictions of such market standoff agreements with respect to our employees prior to the expiration of the Lock-up Period.
The shares issued in the concurrent share issuance to OpenAI will be subject to a market standoff agreement with us for a period of up to 180 days after the date of this prospectus and will be subject to a lock-up agreement with the underwriters for a period of up to 180 days after the date of this prospectus.
Rule 144
In general, under Rule 144 as currently in effect, once we have been subject to public company reporting requirements of Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act for at least 90 days, a person who is not deemed to have been one of our affiliates for purposes of the Securities Act at any time during the 90 days preceding a sale and who has beneficially owned the shares proposed to be sold for at least six months, including the holding period of any prior owner other than our affiliates, is entitled to sell those shares without complying with the manner of sale, volume limitation or notice provisions of Rule 144, subject to compliance with the public information requirements of Rule 144. If such a person has beneficially owned the shares proposed to be sold for at least one year, including the holding period of any prior owner other than our affiliates, then that person would be entitled to sell those shares without complying with any of the requirements of Rule 144.
In general, under Rule 144, as currently in effect, our affiliates or persons selling shares on behalf of our affiliates are entitled to sell upon expiration of the lock-up and market standoff agreements described above, within any three-month period, a number of shares that does not exceed the greater of:
| 1% of the number of shares of our Class A common stock then outstanding, which will equal approximately 3,553,789 shares immediately after this offering and the concurrent share issuance; or |
| the average weekly trading volume of our Class A common stock during the four calendar weeks preceding the filing of a notice on Form 144 with respect to that sale. |
Sales under Rule 144 by our affiliates or persons selling shares on behalf of our affiliates are also subject to certain manner of sale provisions and notice requirements and to the availability of current public information about us.
233
Rule 701
Rule 701 generally allows a stockholder who purchased shares of our capital stock pursuant to a written compensatory plan or contract and who is not deemed to have been an affiliate of our company during the immediately preceding 90 days to sell these shares in reliance upon Rule 144, but without being required to comply with the public information, holding period, volume limitation, or notice provisions of Rule 144. Rule 701 also permits affiliates of our company to sell their Rule 701 shares under Rule 144 without complying with the holding period requirements of Rule 144. All holders of Rule 701 shares, however, are required by that rule to wait until 90 days after the date of this prospectus before selling those shares pursuant to Rule 701, subject to the expiration of the lock-up and market standoff agreements described herein.
Registration Statements
As soon as practicable after the completion of this offering, we intend to file one or more registration statements on Form S-8 under the Securities Act covering all of the shares of our Class A common stock subject to outstanding options and RSUs and the shares of our Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our equity incentive plans. We expect to file this registration statement as soon as permitted under the Securities Act. However, the shares registered on Form S-8 may be subject to the volume limitations and the manner of sale, notice, and public information requirements of Rule 144 and will not be eligible for resale until expiration of the lock-up and market standoff agreements to which they are subject.
Registration Rights
We have granted demand, piggyback, and Form S-3 registration rights to certain of our stockholders to sell our common stock. Registration of the sale of these shares under the Securities Act would result in these shares becoming freely tradable without restriction under the Securities Act immediately upon the effectiveness of the registration, except for shares purchased by affiliates. For a further description of these rights, see the section titled Description of Capital StockRegistration Rights.
234
MATERIAL U.S. FEDERAL INCOME TAX CONSIDERATIONS FOR NON-U.S. HOLDERS OF OUR CLASS A COMMON STOCK
The following summary describes the material U.S. federal income tax consequences of the acquisition, ownership, and disposition of our Class A common stock acquired in this offering by Non-U.S. Holders (as defined below). This discussion does not address all aspects of U.S. federal income taxes, does not discuss the potential application of any alternative minimum tax or the Medicare contribution tax on net investment income, or the special tax accounting rules under Section 451(b) of the Code, and does not deal with any state or local taxes, U.S. federal gift or estate tax laws (except to the limited extent provided below), or any non-U.S. tax consequences that may be relevant to Non-U.S. Holders in light of their particular circumstances.
Special rules different from those described below may apply to certain Non-U.S. Holders that are subject to special treatment under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), such as:
| insurance companies, banks, and other financial institutions; |
| tax-exempt organizations (including private foundations) and tax-qualified retirement plans; |
| qualified foreign pension funds as defined in Section 897(l)(2) of the Code and entities all of the interests of which are held by qualified foreign pension funds; |
| non-U.S. governments and international organizations; |
| dealers and traders in securities; |
| U.S. expatriates and certain former citizens or long-term residents of the United States; |
| persons that own, or are deemed to own, more than 5% of our Class A common stock; |
| controlled foreign corporations, passive foreign investment companies, and corporations that accumulate earnings to avoid U.S. federal income tax; |
| persons that hold our Class A common stock as part of a straddle, hedge, conversion transaction, synthetic security, or integrated investment or other risk reduction strategy; |
| persons who do not hold our Class A common stock as a capital asset within the meaning of Section 1221 of the Code (generally, for investment purposes); and |
| partnerships and other pass-through entities and arrangements, and investors in such pass-through entities and arrangements (regardless of their places of organization or formation). |
Such Non-U.S. Holders are urged to consult their tax advisors to determine the U.S. federal, state, local, and other tax consequences that may be relevant to them of the acquisition, ownership, and disposition of our Class A common stock.
Furthermore, the discussion below is based upon the provisions of the Code, Treasury Regulations promulgated thereunder, judicial decisions thereunder, and rulings and administrative pronouncements of the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) all as of the date hereof, and such authorities may be repealed, revoked, or modified, possibly retroactively, and are subject to differing interpretations which could result in U.S. federal income tax consequences different from those discussed below. We have not requested a ruling from the IRS with respect to the statements made and the conclusions reached in the following summary, and there can be no assurance that the IRS will not take a contrary position regarding the tax consequences described herein or that any such contrary position would not be sustained by a court.
PERSONS CONSIDERING THE PURCHASE OF OUR CLASS A COMMON STOCK PURSUANT TO THIS OFFERING SHOULD CONSULT THEIR TAX ADVISORS CONCERNING THE U.S. FEDERAL INCOME TAX CONSEQUENCES OF ACQUIRING, OWNING, AND DISPOSING OF OUR CLASS A
235
COMMON STOCK IN LIGHT OF THEIR PARTICULAR SITUATIONS AS WELL AS ANY TAX CONSEQUENCES ARISING UNDER THE LAWS OF ANY OTHER TAXING JURISDICTION, INCLUDING ANY STATE, LOCAL, OR NON-U.S. TAX CONSEQUENCES OR ANY U.S. FEDERAL NON-INCOME TAX CONSEQUENCES, AND THE POSSIBLE APPLICATION OF TAX TREATIES.
For purposes of this discussion, a Non-U.S. Holder is a beneficial owner of our Class A common stock that is not a U.S. Holder or a partnership or other pass-through entity or arrangement for U.S. federal income tax purposes. A U.S. Holder means a beneficial owner of our Class A common stock that is, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, (1) an individual who is a citizen or resident of the United States, (2) a corporation (or other entity taxable as a corporation for U.S. federal income tax purposes) created or organized in or under the laws of the United States, any state thereof, or the District of Columbia, (3) an estate the income of which is subject to U.S. federal income taxation regardless of its source, or (4) a trust if it (i) is subject to the primary supervision of a court within the United States and one or more United States persons (within the meaning of Section 7701(a)(30) of the Code) have the authority to control all substantial decisions of the trust or (ii) has a valid election in effect under applicable Treasury Regulations to be treated as a United States person.
If you are an individual non-U.S. citizen, you may be deemed to be a resident alien (as opposed to a nonresident alien) by virtue of being present in the United States for at least 31 days in the calendar year and for an aggregate of at least 183 days during a three-year period ending in the current calendar year. Generally, for this purpose, all the days present in the current year, one-third of the days present in the immediately preceding year, and one-sixth of the days present in the second preceding year are counted. Resident aliens are generally subject to U.S. federal income tax as if they were U.S. citizens. Individuals who are uncertain of their status as resident or nonresident aliens for U.S. federal income tax purposes are urged to consult their tax advisors regarding the U.S. federal income tax consequences of the acquisition, ownership, and disposition of our Class A common stock.
Distributions
We do not have current plans to pay any dividends on our Class A common stock in the foreseeable future. If we do make distributions on our Class A common stock, however, such distributions made to a Non-U.S. Holder will constitute dividends for U.S. tax purposes to the extent paid out of our current or accumulated earnings and profits (as determined under U.S. federal income tax principles). Distributions in excess of our current and accumulated earnings and profits will constitute a return of capital that is applied against and reduces, but not below zero, a Non-U.S. Holders adjusted tax basis in our Class A common stock. Any remaining excess will be treated as gain realized on the sale or exchange of our Class A common stock as described below under the section titled Gain on Disposition of Our Class A Common Stock.
Any distribution on our Class A common stock that is treated as a dividend paid to a Non-U.S. Holder that is not effectively connected with the holders conduct of a trade or business in the United States will generally be subject to withholding tax at a 30% rate or such lower rate as may be specified by an applicable income tax treaty between the United States and the Non-U.S. Holders country of residence. To obtain a reduced rate of withholding tax under an applicable income tax treaty, a Non-U.S. Holder generally will be required to provide the applicable withholding agent with a properly executed IRS Form W-8BEN, IRS Form W-8BEN-E, or other appropriate form, certifying the Non-U.S. Holders entitlement to benefits under that income tax treaty. Such form must be provided prior to the payment of dividends and must be updated periodically. If a Non-U.S. Holder holds stock through a financial institution or other agent acting on the holders behalf, the holder will be required to provide appropriate documentation to such agent. The holders agent will then be required to provide certification to the applicable withholding agent, either directly or through other intermediaries. If you are eligible for a reduced rate of U.S. withholding tax under an income tax treaty, you should consult with your tax advisor to determine if you are able to obtain a refund or credit of any excess amounts withheld by timely filing an appropriate claim for a refund with the IRS.
236
We generally are not required to withhold tax on dividends paid to a Non-U.S. Holder that are effectively connected with the holders conduct of a trade or business within the United States (and, if required by an applicable income tax treaty, are attributable to a permanent establishment that the holder maintains in the United States) if a properly executed IRS Form W-8ECI, stating that the dividends are so connected, is furnished to the applicable withholding agent. In general, such effectively connected dividends will be subject to U.S. federal income tax on a net income basis at the regular rates applicable to United States persons. A corporate Non-U.S. Holder receiving effectively connected dividends may also be subject to an additional branch profits tax, which is imposed, under certain circumstances, at a rate of 30% (or such lower rate as may be specified by an applicable treaty) on the corporate Non-U.S. Holders effectively connected earnings and profits, subject to certain adjustments.
See also the sections titled Backup Withholding and Information Reporting and Foreign Accounts for additional withholding rules that may apply to dividends, including dividends paid to certain foreign financial institutions or non-financial foreign entities.
Gain on Disposition of Our Class A Common Stock
Subject to the discussions below under the sections titled Backup Withholding and Information Reporting and Foreign Accounts, a Non-U.S. Holder generally will not be subject to U.S. federal income or withholding tax with respect to gain realized on a sale or other disposition of our Class A common stock unless (1) the gain is effectively connected with a trade or business of the Non-U.S. Holder in the United States (and, if required by an applicable income tax treaty, is attributable to a permanent establishment that the Non-U.S. Holder maintains in the United States), (2) the Non-U.S. Holder is a nonresident alien individual and is present in the United States for 183 or more days in the taxable year of the disposition and certain other conditions are met, or (3) we are or have been a United States real property holding corporation within the meaning of Section 897(c)(2) of the Code at any time within the shorter of the five-year period preceding such disposition or the Non-U.S. Holders holding period in our Class A common stock.
If you are a Non-U.S. Holder, gain described in (1) above will be subject to tax on the net gain derived from the sale at the regular U.S. federal income tax rates applicable to United States persons. If you are a corporate Non-U.S. Holder, gain described in (1) above may also be subject to the additional branch profits tax at a 30% rate or such lower rate as may be specified by an applicable income tax treaty. If you are an individual Non-U.S. Holder described in (2) above, you will be required to pay a flat 30% income tax on the gain derived from the sale, which gain may be offset by certain U.S. source capital losses (even though you are not considered a resident of the United States), provided you have timely filed U.S. federal income tax returns with respect to such losses. With respect to (3) above, in general, we would be a United States real property holding corporation if United States real property interests (as defined in the Code and the Treasury Regulations) comprised (by fair market value) at least half of our worldwide real property and our other assets which are used or held for use in a trade or business. We believe that we are not, and do not anticipate becoming, a United States real property holding corporation. However, there can be no assurance that we will not become a United States real property holding corporation in the future. Even if we are treated as a United States real property holding corporation, gain realized by a Non-U.S. Holder on a disposition of our Class A common stock will not be subject to U.S. federal income tax so long as (1) the Non-U.S. Holder owned, directly, indirectly, and constructively, no more than five percent of our Class A common stock at all times within the shorter of (i) the five-year period preceding the disposition or (ii) the Non-U.S. Holders holding period and (2) our Class A common stock is regularly traded on an established securities market for purposes of the relevant rules. There can be no assurance that our Class A common stock will qualify as regularly traded on an established securities market for this purpose.
U.S. Federal Estate Tax
The estates of nonresident alien individuals generally are subject to U.S. federal estate tax on property with a U.S. situs. Because we are a U.S. corporation, our Class A common stock will be U.S. situs property and,
237
therefore, will be included in the taxable estate of a nonresident alien decedent, unless an applicable estate tax treaty between the United States and the decedents country of residence provides otherwise. The terms resident and nonresident are defined differently for U.S. federal estate tax purposes than for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Investors are urged to consult their tax advisors regarding the U.S. federal estate tax consequences of the acquisition, ownership, or disposition of our Class A common stock.
Backup Withholding and Information Reporting
Generally, we or an applicable withholding agent must report information to the IRS with respect to any distributions we pay on our Class A common stock (whether or not the distribution constitutes a dividend), including the amount of any such distributions, the name and address of the recipient, and the amount, if any, of tax withheld. A similar report is sent to the holder to whom any such distributions are paid. Pursuant to tax treaties or certain other agreements, the IRS may make its reports available to tax authorities in the recipients country of residence.
Dividends paid by us (or our paying agents) to a Non-U.S. Holder may also be subject to U.S. backup withholding. U.S. backup withholding generally will not apply to a Non-U.S. Holder who provides a properly executed IRS Form W-8BEN or IRS Form W-8BEN-E, as applicable, or otherwise establishes an exemption, provided that the applicable withholding agent does not have actual knowledge or reason to know the holder is a United States person.
Under current U.S. federal income tax law, U.S. information reporting and backup withholding requirements generally will apply to the proceeds of a disposition of our Class A common stock effected by or through a U.S. office of any broker, U.S. or non-U.S., unless the Non-U.S. Holder provides a properly executed IRS Form W-8BEN or IRS Form W-8BEN-E, as applicable, or otherwise meets documentary evidence requirements for establishing non-U.S. person status or otherwise establishes an exemption. Generally, U.S. information reporting and backup withholding requirements will not apply to a payment of disposition proceeds to a Non-U.S. Holder where the transaction is effected outside the United States through a non-U.S. office of a non-U.S. broker. Information reporting and backup withholding requirements may, however, apply to a payment of disposition proceeds if the broker has actual knowledge, or reason to know, that the holder is, in fact, a United States person. For information reporting purposes only, certain brokers with substantial U.S. ownership or operations will generally be treated in a manner similar to U.S. brokers.
Backup withholding is not an additional tax. If backup withholding is applied to you, you should consult with your tax advisor to determine whether you are able to obtain a tax refund or credit of the overpaid amount.
Foreign Accounts
In addition, U.S. federal withholding taxes may apply under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) on certain types of payments, including dividends on our Class A common stock, made to non-U.S. financial institutions and certain other non-U.S. entities. Specifically, a 30% withholding tax may be imposed on dividends on our Class A common stock paid to a foreign financial institution or a non-financial foreign entity (each as defined in the Code), unless (1) the foreign financial institution agrees to undertake certain diligence and reporting obligations, (2) the non-financial foreign entity either certifies it does not have any substantial United States owners (as defined in the Code) or furnishes identifying information regarding each substantial United States owner, or (3) the foreign financial institution or non-financial foreign entity otherwise qualifies for an exemption from these rules. The 30% federal withholding tax described in this paragraph is not generally subject to reduction under income tax treaties with the United States. If the payee is a foreign financial institution and is subject to the diligence and reporting requirements in (1) above, it must enter into an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury requiring, among other things, that it undertake to identify accounts held by certain specified United States persons or United States-owned foreign entities (each as defined in the Code), annually report certain information about such accounts, and withhold 30% tax on certain payments to
238
non-compliant foreign financial institutions and certain other account holders. Foreign financial institutions located in jurisdictions that have an intergovernmental agreement with the United States governing FATCA may be subject to different rules. While under the applicable Treasury Regulations and administrative guidance, withholding taxes under FATCA generally also would have applied to payments of gross proceeds from the sale or other disposition of our Class A common stock, proposed Treasury Regulations eliminate FATCA withholding on payments of gross proceeds entirely. The preamble to the proposed regulations specifies that taxpayers are permitted to rely on such proposed regulations pending finalization.
Prospective investors should consult their tax advisors regarding the potential application of withholding taxes under FATCA to their investment in our Class A common stock.
EACH PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR SHOULD CONSULT ITS TAX ADVISOR REGARDING THE TAX CONSEQUENCES OF ACQUIRING, OWNING, AND DISPOSING OF OUR CLASS A COMMON STOCK, INCLUDING THE CONSEQUENCES OF ANY PROPOSED CHANGE IN APPLICABLE LAW, AS WELL AS TAX CONSEQUENCES ARISING UNDER ANY STATE, LOCAL, NON-U.S. OR U.S. FEDERAL NON-INCOME TAX LAWS SUCH AS ESTATE AND GIFT TAX, AND THE POSSIBLE APPLICATION OF TAX TREATIES.
239
UNDERWRITING (CONFLICTS OF INTEREST)
Under the terms and subject to the conditions in an underwriting agreement dated the date of this prospectus, the underwriters named below, for whom Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC are acting as representatives, have severally agreed to purchase, and we and the selling stockholders have agreed to sell to them, severally, the number of shares of our Class A common stock indicated below:
Name |
Number of |
|||
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC |
||||
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC |
||||
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC |
||||
Barclays Capital Inc. |
||||
Citigroup Global Markets Inc. |
||||
MUFG Securities Americas Inc. |
||||
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. |
||||
Jefferies LLC |
||||
Mizuho Securities USA LLC |
||||
Wells Fargo Securities, LLC |
||||
BofA Securities, Inc. |
||||
Guggenheim Securities, LLC |
||||
The Klein Group, LLC |
||||
Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc. |
||||
Needham & Company, LLC |
||||
Santander US Capital Markets LLC |
||||
Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated |
||||
Galaxy Digital Partners LLC |
||||
|
|
|||
Total |
49,000,000 | |||
|
|
The underwriters and the representatives are collectively referred to as the underwriters and the representatives, respectively. The underwriters are offering the shares of our Class A common stock subject to their acceptance of the shares from us and the selling stockholders and subject to prior sale. The underwriting agreement provides that the obligations of the several underwriters to pay for and accept delivery of the shares of our Class A common stock offered by this prospectus are subject to the approval of certain legal matters by their counsel and to certain other conditions. The underwriters are obligated to take and pay for all of the shares of our Class A common stock offered by this prospectus if any such shares are taken. However, the underwriters are not required to take or pay for the shares covered by the underwriters over-allotment option described below.
The underwriters initially propose to offer part of the shares of our Class A common stock directly to the public at the offering price listed on the cover page of this prospectus and part to certain dealers. After the initial offering of the shares of our Class A common stock, the offering price and other selling terms may from time to time be varied by the representatives.
We have granted to the underwriters an option, exercisable for 30 days from the date of this prospectus, to purchase up to 7,350,000 additional shares of our Class A common stock at the public offering price listed on the cover page of this prospectus, less underwriting discounts and commissions. The underwriters may exercise this option solely for the purpose of covering over-allotments, if any, made in connection with the offering of the shares of our Class A common stock offered by this prospectus. To the extent the option is exercised, each underwriter will become obligated, subject to certain conditions, to purchase about the same percentage of the additional shares of our Class A common stock as the number listed next to the underwriters name in the preceding table bears to the total number of shares of Class A common stock listed next to the names of all underwriters in the preceding table.
The following table shows the per share and total public offering price, underwriting discounts and commissions, and proceeds before expenses to us and the selling stockholders. These amounts are shown
240
assuming both no exercise and full exercise of the underwriters option to purchase up to an additional 7,350,000 shares of Class A common stock.
Total | ||||||||||||
Per Share | No Exercise | Full Exercise | ||||||||||
Public offering price |
$ | $ | $ | |||||||||
Underwriting discounts and commissions to be paid by us |
$ | $ | $ | |||||||||
Underwriting discounts and commissions to be paid by the selling stockholders |
$ | $ | $ | |||||||||
Proceeds, before expenses, to us |
$ | $ | $ | |||||||||
Proceeds, before expenses, to the selling stockholders |
$ | $ | $ |
The estimated offering expenses payable by us, exclusive of the underwriting discounts and commissions, are approximately $25 million. We have agreed to reimburse the underwriters for certain of their expenses up to $60,000. In addition, the underwriters are expected to reimburse us for approximately $2 million of our expenses in connection with this offering, assuming an initial public offering price per share of $51.00 (which is the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus) and no exercise of the over-allotment option.
The underwriters have informed us that they do not intend sales to discretionary accounts to exceed 5% of the total number of shares of our Class A common stock offered by them.
We have applied to list our Class A common stock on Nasdaq under the trading symbol CRWV. This offering is contingent upon final approval of our listing of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq.
At our request, the underwriters may allocate up to shares of our Class A common stock to investors that have indicated an interest in purchasing shares of our Class A common stock in this offering at the initial public offering price. However, because indications of interest are not binding agreements or commitments to purchase, the underwriters may determine to sell more, fewer or no shares in this offering to any or all of these parties, or any or all of these parties may determine to purchase more, fewer or no shares in this offering. The underwriters will receive the same underwriting discount on any shares purchased by these parties as they will on any other shares sold to the public in this offering.
In connection with this offering, all of our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other holders that together represent approximately 84.0% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to lock-up agreements with the underwriters pursuant to which they have agreed, subject to certain exceptions, that without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley, on behalf of the underwriters, and Magnetar, they will not, in accordance with the terms of such agreements during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the close of trading on the second trading day after the date that we publicly announce earnings for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus, and (ii) 180 days after the date of this prospectus:
(1) | offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, lend, make any short sale, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our common stock; |
(2) | enter into any swap, hedging transaction, or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of our common stock, whether any such transaction described above is to be settled by delivery of our common stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise; |
(3) | publicly disclose the intention to take any of the actions restricted by clause (1) or (2) above; or |
(4) | make any demand for, or exercise any right with respect to, the registration of any shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock. |
241
Furthermore, an additional approximately 14.3% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to the market standoff provisions, pursuant to which such holders agreed to not lend, offer, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our Class A common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our Class A common stock held immediately prior to the effectiveness of this registration statement, or enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of such Class A common stock during the Lock-up Period. The forms and specific restrictive provisions within these market standoff provisions vary among security holders. For example, although some of these market standoff agreements do not specifically restrict hedging transactions and others may be subject to different interpretations between us and security holders as to whether they restrict hedging, our insider trading policy prohibits hedging by all of our current directors, officers, employees, contractors, and consultants. Sales, short sales, or hedging transactions involving our equity securities, whether before or after this offering and whether or not we believe them to be prohibited, could adversely affect the price of our Class A common stock.
As a result of the foregoing, substantially all of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to a lock-up agreement or market standoff provisions during the Lock-up Period. We have agreed to enforce all such market standoff restrictions on behalf of the underwriters and not to amend or waive any such market standoff provisions during the Lock-up Period without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, on behalf of the underwriters, and Magnetar, provided that we may release shares from such restrictions to the extent such shares would be entitled to release under the form of lock-up agreement with the underwriters entered into by our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other record holders of our securities as described herein.
The restrictions imposed by the lock-up agreements and market standoff provisions are subject to certain exceptions, including with respect to:
(a) | transactions relating to shares of our common stock or other securities acquired in the this offering or in open market transactions after the completion of this offering, provided that no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of our common stock, shall be required or shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period in connection with subsequent sales of our Class A common stock or other securities acquired either in this offering or in such open market transactions; |
(b) | transfers of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for shares of our common stock (i) as a bona fide gift or to a charitable organization or educational institution or (ii) for bona fide estate planning purposes, in each case, in a transfer not involving a disposition for value; |
(c) | transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to (i) any member of the immediate family of the lock-up party or any trust for the direct or indirect benefit of the lock-up party or the immediate family of the lock-up party, or if the lock-up party is a trust, to a trustor, trustee or any beneficiary (including such trustor, trustee or beneficiarys estate), and (ii) in a transaction not involving a disposition for value; |
(d) | distributions, transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or other securities to any corporation, partnership, limited liability company, other entity that is an affiliate of the lock-up party, investment fund sponsored, managed, advised or sub-advised by the investment manager or advisor of the lock-up party or of which all of the beneficial ownership interests of which are held by the lock-up party or the immediate family of the lock-up party in a transaction not involving a disposition for value; |
(e) | transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock (i) by will, other testamentary document or intestate succession and |
242
(ii) by operation of law including, without limitation, pursuant to orders of a court or regulatory agency, in connection with a negotiated divorce settlement, pursuant to a qualified domestic relations order or by other court order; |
(f) | to a nominee or custodian of a person or entity to whom a disposition or transfer would be permissible under clauses (b) through (e) above; |
(g) | if the lock-up party is a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, trust or other entity, (x) transfers or dispositions of shares of our common stock or other securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to another corporation, member, managers, partnership, limited liability company, trust or other entity (or in each case its nominee or custodian) that is a direct or indirect affiliate (as defined under Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act) of the lock-up party, or to an investment fund or other entity that controls, manages, advises or sub-advises, or is under common control with, the lock-up party or affiliates of the lock-up party, or (y) distributions of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to current or former partners (general or limited), members, managers, stockholders, beneficiaries or other equity holders of the lock-up party (or in each case its nominee or custodian) or to the estate of any such partners, members, managers, stockholders, beneficiaries or other equity holders; |
(h) | (i) the receipt by the lock-up party from us of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for common stock upon the exercise of options, settlement of restricted stock units or other equity awards or the exercise of warrants which are outstanding as of the date of this prospectus and are disclosed in this prospectus, or (ii) transfers or dispositions to us in connection with the vesting, settlement or exercise of restricted stock units, options, warrants or other rights to purchase shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock (including, in each case, by way of net or cashless exercise), including any transfer to us for the payment of tax withholdings or remittance payments due as a result of the vesting, settlement or exercise of such restricted stock units, options, warrants or other rights, or in connection with the conversion of convertible securities, in all such cases pursuant to equity awards granted under a stock incentive plan or other equity award plan, or pursuant to the terms of convertible securities, each as described in herein; provided that (i) any such shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock received by the lock-up party shall be subject to the terms of the lock-up agreement, (ii) except as set forth in (iii), no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of our common stock, shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period and (iii) to the extent a filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act is required during the Lock-up Period as a result of such transfers or dispositions pursuant to clause (h)(ii), it shall clearly indicate that the filing relates to the circumstances described in this clause (h)(ii); |
(i) | sales in open market transactions during the Lock-up Period to generate such amount of net proceeds to the lock-up party from such sales (after deducting commissions) in an aggregate amount up to the total amount of taxes or estimated taxes (as applicable) that become due as a result of the vesting and/or settlement of Company equity awards held by the lock-up party and issued pursuant to a plan or arrangement described in this prospectus that vest and/or settle during the Lock-up Period, provided that, for the avoidance of doubt, any shares of our common stock or other securities retained by the lock-up party after giving effect to this provision shall be subject to the terms of the lockup agreement; provided that in the case of any sale pursuant to this clause (i), filings under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act shall only be permissible during the Lock-up Period if such filing shall clearly indicates in the footnotes thereto that the filing relates to securities being sold to generate net proceeds solely to cover taxes or estimated taxes (as applicable) that became due as a result of the vesting and/or settlement of a Company equity award; |
(j) | the establishment of a trading plan on behalf of a stockholder, officer or director pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act for the transfer of shares of our common stock, provided that (i) such plan does not provide for the transfer of our common stock during the Lock-up Period (except as otherwise allowed pursuant to clause (i) above) and (ii) to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, |
243
if any, is required of or voluntarily made by or on behalf of the lock-up party or us regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect that no transfer of our common stock may be made under such plan during the Lock-up Period (except as otherwise allowed pursuant to clause (i) above); |
(k) | transfers of shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock to us pursuant to arrangements under which we have the option to repurchase such shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock or a right of first refusal with respect to such securities; provided to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by or on behalf of the lock-up party or by us regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect such transfer was to us in connection with the repurchase of shares of our common stock; |
(l) | the conversion of the outstanding preferred stock or warrants to acquire preferred stock into shares of our common stock or the exercise of warrants to acquire shares of our common stock prior to or in connection with the consummation of this offering, or the conversion exchange, retirement or reclassification of the outstanding shares of preferred stock or other classes of capital stock into shares of our common stock, provided that any such shares of our common stock received upon such conversion, exchange, retirement or reclassification shall be subject to the terms of the lock-up agreement; |
(m) | (i) transfers of shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock pursuant to a bona fide third-party tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction, that is approved by the Board of Directors, made to all holders of our capital stock involving a Change of Control (as defined below) and (ii) entry into any lock-up, voting or similar agreement pursuant to which the lock-up party may agree to transfer, sell, tender or otherwise dispose of shares of our common stock or such other securities in connection with a transaction described in (i) above; provided, that, in the event that such tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction is not completed, the shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock beneficially owned by the signatory shall remain subject to the restrictions contained in the lock-up agreement. For purposes of this clause (m), Change of Control shall mean the transfer (whether by tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction), in one transaction or a series of related transactions, the result of which is that any person (as defined in Section 13(d)(3) of the Exchange Act), or group of persons, other than us or an underwriter pursuant to this offering, becomes the beneficial owner (as defined in Rules 13d-3 and 13d-5 of the Exchange Act) of more than 50% of the total voting power of our voting stock (or the surviving entity); |
(n) | with the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley on behalf of the underwriters; |
(o) | to the underwriters pursuant to the underwriting agreement; |
(p) | any transfer of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock pledged in a bona fide transaction to third parties as collateral to secure obligations pursuant to lending or other arrangements in effect as of the date hereof between such third parties (or their affiliates or designees) and the lock-up party and/or its affiliates or any existing or future similar arrangement relating to a financing arrangement for the benefit of the lock-up party and/or its affiliates, provided that in the case of pledges or similar arrangements under this clause (p), any such pledgee or other party shall, upon foreclosure on the pledged securities, sign and deliver a lock-up agreement substantially in the form of the lock-up agreement, and provided further that no filing under the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure, of such transfer by or on behalf of the lock-up party, shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period and to the extent a filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act is required during the Lock-up Period as a result of such transfers or dispositions pursuant to clause (p), it shall clearly indicate that the filing relates to the circumstances described in this clause (p); or |
(q) | to any underwriters pursuant to any underwriting agreement entered into in connection with any offering of shares of our common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common |
244
stock undertaken by us with the prior written consent delivered by Morgan Stanley to us in accordance with the underwriting agreement and for which the lock-up party has exercised its registration rights; |
provided, in the case of any transfer, disposition or distribution pursuant to clauses (b) through (g), that (i) each transferee, donee or distributee shall sign and deliver a lock-up agreement substantially in the form of the lock-up agreement and (ii) no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of our common stock, shall be required or shall be voluntarily made during the Lock-up Period with respect to such transfer, disposition or distribution (other than, in the case of a transfer or other disposition pursuant to clause (b), (e), (f), to the extent such transfer or other disposition is to a nominee or custodian of a person or entity to whom a disposition or transfer would be permissible under clause (b) or (e), and (g), above, if the lock-up party is subject to Section 16 reporting with us under the Exchange Act and any Form 4 or Form 5 is required to be filed under the Exchange Act, any such filing will indicate by footnote disclosure or otherwise the nature of the transfer or disposition). Further, any transfer, disposition or distribution pursuant to clause (n) is subject to the prior written consent of Magnetar.
In connection with the offering, and during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the closing of trading on the second trading day immediately following our release of earnings for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus and (ii) 180 days after the date of this prospectus (the Restricted Period), we will be subject to certain restrictions on our ability to: (1) offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right or warrant to purchase, lend, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for common stock or (2) enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of our common stock, whether any such transaction described in clause (1) or (2) above is to be settled by delivery of common stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise or (3) file any registration statement with the SEC relating to the offering of any shares of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for common stock.
The restrictions on issuances by us during the Restricted Period are subject to certain exceptions, including with respect to: (a) shares to be sold pursuant to the underwriting agreement, (b) upon the exercise of an option or warrant or the conversion of a security outstanding as of the date of this prospectus or the settlement of restricted stock units (including net settlement) as described herein, (c) grants of stock options, stock awards, restricted stock, restricted stock units or other equity awards and the issuance of our common stock or securities convertible into or exercisable for our common stock (whether upon the exercise of stock options or otherwise) to our employees, officers, directors, advisors, or consultants pursuant to the terms of a plan in effect on the date of this prospectus and described herein, (d) the filing of a registration statement on Form S-8 relating to the issuance, vesting, exercise, settlement, or resale of, equity awards granted or to be granted pursuant to any employee benefit plan in effect on the date of this prospectus and described herein, (e) the issuance of shares of our common stock as payment of accrued dividends in connection with the conversion of our shares of preferred stock in this offering, (f) the sale or issuance of or entry into an agreement to sell or issue our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock in connection with one or more mergers; acquisitions of securities, businesses, property or other assets, products or technologies; joint ventures; commercial relationships or other strategic corporate transactions or alliances; provided that the aggregate amounts of our common stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock (on an as-converted, as-exercised or as-exchanged basis) that we may sell or issue or agree to sell or issue shall not exceed 10% of the total number of shares of our common stock issued and outstanding immediately following the completion of this offering determined on a fully-diluted basis (the M&A Cap); provided, however, that those shares of common stock that may be issued in connection with our acquisition of Weights and Biases, Inc., as described herein, shall not be subject to the M&A Cap, (g) the sale and issuance of shares of our common stock in a private placement to affiliates of Magnetar upon exercise of Magnetars option to purchase $15.0 million of Class A common stock as described herein, (h) shares of our Class A common stock
245
issued in a private placement to OpenAI, Inc., as described herein, (i) facilitating the establishment of a trading plan on behalf of a stockholder, officer or director pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act for the transfer of shares of our common stock, provided that (A) such plan does not provide for the transfer of our common stock during the Restricted Period (except as otherwise permitted under the form of lock-up agreement) and (B) to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by us regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect that no transfer of our common stock may be made under such plan during the Restricted Period; provided that, with respect to clauses (b) and (f) above, the recipients thereof provide to the underwriters a signed lock-up agreement.
In addition, as further described and subject to the conditions set forth in this section and the section titled Shares Eligible for Future Sale, at the close of trading of the second trading day after the date that we publicly announce earnings for the first quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in this prospectus, if the closing price per share of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq for any five trading days out of the ten consecutive trading day period including at least one day occurring after the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date is at least 25% greater than the initial public offering price of our Class A common stock set forth on the cover of this prospectus, up to approximately 963,140 shares of Class A common stock held by our current employees and service providers (excluding officers and directors, including the Management Holders) will be immediately available for sale in the public market. Morgan Stanley, in its sole discretion, may release the securities subject to the lock-up agreements with the underwriters or the market standoff agreements with us described above in whole or in part at any time.
In addition, we may, from time to time, enter into separate lock-up agreements with some of the investors in this offering. These separate lock-up agreements may provide for a restricted period that is longer than the period described above that is applicable to existing stockholders other than the Management Holders. If there is a separate lock-up agreement on certain shares sold in this offering, our shares available for sale in the public market will be reduced during the term of these lock-up agreements.
In order to facilitate the offering of our Class A common stock, the underwriters may engage in transactions that stabilize, maintain, or otherwise affect the price of our Class A common stock. Specifically, the underwriters may sell more shares than they are obligated to purchase under the underwriting agreement, creating a short position. A short sale is covered if the short position is no greater than the number of shares available for purchase by the underwriters under the over-allotment option. The underwriters can close out a covered short sale by exercising the over-allotment option or purchasing shares in the open market. In determining the source of shares to close out a covered short sale, the underwriters will consider, among other things, the open market price of shares compared to the price available under the over-allotment option. The underwriters may also sell shares in excess of the over-allotment option, creating a naked short position. The underwriters must close out any naked short position by purchasing shares in the open market. A naked short position is more likely to be created if the underwriters are concerned that there may be downward pressure on the price of our Class A common stock in the open market after pricing that could adversely affect investors who purchase in this offering. As an additional means of facilitating this offering, the underwriters may bid for, and purchase, shares of our Class A common stock in the open market to stabilize the price of our Class A common stock. These activities may raise or maintain the market price of our Class A common stock above independent market levels or prevent or slow a decline in the market price of our Class A common stock. The underwriters are not required to engage in these activities and may end any of these activities at any time.
We, the selling stockholders, and the underwriters have agreed to indemnify each other against certain liabilities, including liabilities under the Securities Act.
A prospectus in electronic format may be made available on websites maintained by one or more underwriters, or selling group members, if any, participating in this offering. The representatives may agree to allocate a number of shares of our Class A common stock to underwriters for sale to their online brokerage account holders. Internet
246
distributions will be allocated by the representatives to underwriters that may make Internet distributions on the same basis as other allocations.
Conflicts of Interest
An affiliate of each of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. is a lender under our 2024 Term Loan Facility. As described in Use of Proceeds, net proceeds from this offering will be used to repay outstanding borrowings under our 2024 Term Loan Facility, and an affiliate of each of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. will receive 5% or more of the net proceeds of this offering due to the repayment of borrowings under the 2024 Term Loan Facility. Therefore, each of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. is deemed to have a conflict of interest under FINRA Rule 5121. Accordingly, this offering is being conducted in compliance with the requirements of Rule 5121, which requires, among other things, that a qualified independent underwriter participate in the preparation of, and exercise the usual standards of due diligence with respect to, the registration statement and this prospectus. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC has agreed to act as a qualified independent underwriter for this offering and to undertake the legal responsibilities and liabilities of an underwriter under the Securities Act, specifically including those inherent in Section 11 thereof. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC will not receive any additional fees for serving as a qualified independent underwriter in connection with this offering. We have agreed to indemnify Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC against liabilities incurred in connection with acting as a qualified independent underwriter, including liabilities under the Securities Act. Each of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. will not confirm any sales to any account over which it exercises discretionary authority without the specific written approval of the account holder. See Use of Proceeds for additional information.
Other Relationships
The underwriters and their respective affiliates are full service financial institutions engaged in various activities, which may include securities trading, commercial and investment banking, financial advisory, investment management, investment research, principal investment, hedging, financing, and brokerage activities. Certain of the underwriters and their respective affiliates have, from time to time, performed, and may in the future perform, various financial advisory and investment banking services for us, for which they received or will receive customary fees and expenses. In addition, certain of the underwriters also serve as lenders under the Revolving Credit Facility.
In addition, in the ordinary course of their various business activities, the underwriters and their respective affiliates may make or hold a broad array of investments and actively trade debt and equity securities (or related derivative securities) and financial instruments (including bank loans) for their own account and for the accounts of their customers and may at any time hold long and short positions in such securities and instruments. Such investment and securities activities may involve our securities and instruments. The underwriters and their respective affiliates may also make investment recommendations or publish or express independent research views in respect of such securities or instruments and may at any time hold, or recommend to clients that they acquire, long or short positions in such securities and instruments.
Pricing of the Offering
Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock. The initial public offering price was determined by negotiations between us and the representatives. Among the factors considered in determining the initial public offering price were our prospects and those of our industry in general, our sales, earnings, and certain other financial and operating information in recent periods, and the price-earnings ratios, price-sales ratios, market prices of securities, and certain financial and operating information of companies engaged in activities similar to ours.
247
Directed Share Program
At our request, the underwriters have reserved up to 2,450,000 shares of our Class A common stock, or 5% of the shares to be issued by us and offered by this prospectus, for sale, at the initial public offering price, to certain of our current employees, including management, other service providers, and other individuals and entities as determined by certain of our authorized officers. The sales will be made at our direction by Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and its affiliates through a directed share program. Any shares sold in the directed share program to our directors or officers who have entered into lock-up agreements described above will be subject to the provisions of such lock-up agreements. The number of shares of our Class A common stock available for sale to the general public will be reduced to the extent such persons purchase such reserved shares. Any reserved shares that are not so purchased will be offered by the underwriters to the general public on the same basis as the other shares offered by this prospectus.
Sales to Retail Investors
In addition to allocations made to retail investors by the underwriters and through our directed share program discussed above, we anticipate that a portion of our Class A common stock offered hereby will, at our request, be offered to retail investors through Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and Robinhood Financial LLC (Robinhood), via their respective online brokerage platforms. Robinhood will act as a selling group member for this offering. These platforms are not affiliated with us. Purchases through these platforms will be subject to the terms, conditions, and requirements set by such platforms. Any purchase of shares of our Class A common stock in this offering through these platforms will initially be offered at the offering price listed on the cover page of this prospectus. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, such brokerage platforms does not constitute part of this prospectus.
Selling Restrictions
Other than in the United States, no action has been taken by us or the underwriters that would permit a public offering of the securities offered by this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required. The shares of our Class A common stock offered by this prospectus may not be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, nor may this prospectus or any other offering material or advertisements in connection with the offer and sale of our Class A common stock be distributed or published in any jurisdiction, except under circumstances that will result in compliance with the applicable rules and regulations of that jurisdiction. Persons into whose possession this prospectus comes are advised to inform themselves about and to observe any restrictions relating to this offering and the distribution of this prospectus. This prospectus does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy Class A common stock offered by this prospectus in any jurisdiction in which such an offer or a solicitation is unlawful.
Notice to prospective investors in the European Economic Area
In relation to each Member State of the EEA (each a Relevant State), no shares of our Class A common stock have been offered or will be offered pursuant to this offering to the public in that Relevant State prior to the publication of a prospectus in relation to the shares of our Class A common stock which has been approved by the competent authority in that Relevant State or, where appropriate, approved in another Relevant State and notified to the competent authority in that Relevant State, all in accordance with the Prospectus Regulation, except that offers of shares of our Class A common stock may be made to the public in that Relevant State at any time under the following exemptions under the Prospectus Regulation:
1. | to any legal entity which is a qualified investor as defined under Article 2 of the Prospectus Regulation; |
2. | to fewer than 150 natural or legal persons (other than qualified investors as defined under Article 2 of the Prospectus Regulation), subject to obtaining the prior consent of the underwriters; or |
3. | in any other circumstances falling within Article 1(4) of the Prospectus Regulation; |
248
provided that no such offer of shares of our Class A common stock shall require us or any underwriter to publish a prospectus pursuant to Article 3 of the Prospectus Regulation or supplement a prospectus pursuant to Article 23 of the Prospectus Regulation, and each person who initially acquires any shares of our Class A common stock or to whom any offer is made will be deemed to have represented, acknowledged, and agreed to and with each of the underwriters and to us that it is a qualified investor within the meaning of Article 2(e) of the Prospectus Regulation. In the case of any shares of our Class A common stock being offered to a financial intermediary as that term is used in the Prospectus Regulation, each such financial intermediary will be deemed to have represented, acknowledged, and agreed that the shares of our Class A common stock acquired by it in the offer have not been acquired on a non-discretionary basis on behalf of, nor have they been acquired with a view to their offer or resale to, persons in circumstances which may give rise to an offer of any shares of our Class A common stock to the public other than their offer or resale in a Relevant State to qualified investors as so defined or in circumstances in which the prior consent of the underwriters have been obtained to each such proposed offer or resale.
For the purposes of this provision, the expression an offer to the public in relation to shares of our Class A common stock in any Relevant State means the communication in any form and by any means of sufficient information on the terms of the offer and any shares of our Class A common stock to be offered so as to enable an investor to decide to purchase or subscribe for any shares of our Class A common stock, and the expression Prospectus Regulation means Regulation (EU) 2017/1129.
Notice to prospective investors in the United Kingdom
No shares of our Class A common stock have been offered or will be offered pursuant to this offering to the public in the United Kingdom prior to the publication of a prospectus in relation to the shares of our Class A common stock which (i) has been approved by the Financial Conduct Authority or (ii) is to be treated as if it had been approved by the Financial Conduct Authority in accordance with the transitional provisions in Article 74 (transitional provisions) of the Prospectus Amendment etc (EU Exit) Regulations 2019/1234, except that the shares of our Class A common stock may be offered to the public in the United Kingdom at any time:
1. | to any legal entity which is a qualified investor as defined under Article 2 of the UK Prospectus Regulation; |
2. | to fewer than 150 natural or legal persons (other than qualified investors as defined under Article 2 of the UK Prospectus Regulation), subject to obtaining the prior consent of underwriters for any such offer; or |
3. | in any other circumstances falling within Section 86 of the FSMA; |
provided that no such offer of the shares of our Class A common stock shall require the Issuer or any Manager to publish a prospectus pursuant to Section 85 of the FSMA or supplement a prospectus pursuant to Article 23 of the UK Prospectus Regulation. For the purposes of this provision, the expression an offer to the public in relation to the shares of our Class A common stock in the United Kingdom means the communication in any form and by any means of sufficient information on the terms of the offer and any shares to be offered so as to enable an investor to decide to purchase or subscribe for any shares of our Class A common stock and the expression UK Prospectus Regulation means Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
In addition, in the United Kingdom, this document is being distributed only to, and is directed only at, and any offer subsequently made may only be directed at persons who are qualified investors (as defined in the Prospectus Regulation) (i) who have professional experience in matters relating to investments falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the Order) and/or (ii) who are high net worth companies (or persons to whom it may otherwise be lawfully communicated) falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as relevant persons) or otherwise in circumstances which have not resulted and will not result in an offer to the public of the shares of our Class A common stock in the United Kingdom within the meaning of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
249
Any person in the United Kingdom that is not a relevant person should not act or rely on the information included in this document or use it as basis for taking any action. In the United Kingdom, any investment or investment activity that this document relates to may be made or taken exclusively by relevant persons.
Notice to prospective investors in Canada
The shares of our Class A common stock may be sold only to purchasers purchasing, or deemed to be purchasing, as principal that are accredited investors, as defined in National Instrument 45-106 Prospectus Exemptions or subsection 73.3(1) of the Securities Act (Ontario), and are permitted clients, as defined in National Instrument 31-103 Registration Requirements, Exemptions and Ongoing Registrant Obligations. Any resale of the shares of our Class A common stock must be made in accordance with an exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, the prospectus requirements of applicable securities laws.
Securities legislation in certain provinces or territories of Canada may provide a purchaser with remedies for rescission or damages if this prospectus (including any amendment thereto) contains a misrepresentation, provided that the remedies for rescission or damages are exercised by the purchaser within the time limit prescribed by the securities legislation of the purchasers province or territory. The purchaser should refer to any applicable provisions of the securities legislation of the purchasers province or territory for particulars of these rights or consult with a legal advisor.
Pursuant to section 3A.3 of National Instrument 33-105 Underwriting Conflicts (NI 33-105), the underwriters are not required to comply with the disclosure requirements of NI 33-105 regarding underwriter conflicts of interest in connection with this offering.
Notice to prospective investors in Switzerland
This prospectus does not constitute an offer to the public or a solicitation to purchase or invest in any shares of our Class A common stock. No shares of our Class A common stock have been offered or will be offered to the public in Switzerland, except that offers of shares of our Class A common stock may be made to the public in Switzerland at any time under the following exemptions under the Swiss Financial Services Act (FinSA):
1. | to any person which is a professional client as defined under the FinSA; |
2. | to fewer than 500 persons (other than professional clients as defined under the FinSA), subject to obtaining the prior consent of the representatives of the underwriters for any such offer; or |
3. | in any other circumstances falling within Article 36 FinSA in connection with Article 44 of the Swiss Financial Services Ordinance, provided that no such offer of shares shall require us or any investment bank to publish a prospectus pursuant to Article 35 FinSA. |
The shares of our Class A common stock have not been and will not be listed or admitted to trading on a trading venue in Switzerland.
Neither this document nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the shares of our Class A common stock constitutes a prospectus as such term is understood pursuant to the FinSA and neither this document nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the shares of our Class A common stock may be publicly distributed or otherwise made publicly available in Switzerland.
Notice to prospective investors in the Dubai International Financial Centre
This document relates to an Exempt Offer in accordance with the Markets Law, DIFC Law No. 1 of 2012, as amended. This document is intended for distribution only to persons of a type specified in the Markets Law, DIFC Law No. 1 of 2012, as amended. It must not be delivered to, or relied on by, any other person. The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has no responsibility for reviewing or verifying any documents in connection with
250
Exempt Offers. The DFSA has not approved this prospectus supplement nor taken steps to verify the information set forth herein and has no responsibility for this document. The shares of our Class A common stock to which this document relates may be illiquid and/or subject to restrictions on their resale. Prospective purchasers of the shares of our Class A common stock offered should conduct their own due diligence on such shares. If you do not understand the contents of this document, you should consult an authorized financial advisor.
In relation to its use in the DIFC, this document is strictly private and confidential and is being distributed to a limited number of investors and must not be provided to any person other than the original recipient, and it may not be reproduced or used for any other purpose. The interests in the shares of our Class A common stock may not be offered or sold directly or indirectly to the public in the DIFC.
Notice to prospective investors in the United Arab Emirates
The shares of our Class A common stock have not been, and are not being, publicly offered, sold, promoted, or advertised in the United Arab Emirates (including the Dubai International Financial Centre) other than in compliance with the laws of the United Arab Emirates (and the Dubai International Financial Centre) governing the issue, offering and sale of securities. Further, this prospectus does not constitute a public offer of securities in the United Arab Emirates (including the Dubai International Financial Centre) and is not intended to be a public offer. This prospectus has not been approved by or filed with the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Securities and Commodities Authority, Financial Services Regulatory Authority or the DFSA.
Notice to prospective investors in Australia
This prospectus:
1. | does not constitute a disclosure document or a prospectus under Chapter 6D.2 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (the Corporations Act); |
2. | has not been, and will not be, lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), as a disclosure document for the purposes of the Corporations Act and does not purport to include the information required of a disclosure document for the purposes of the Corporations Act; and |
3. | may only be provided in Australia to select investors who are able to demonstrate that they fall within one or more of the categories of investors, available under section 708 of the Corporations Act (Exempt Investors). |
The shares of our Class A common stock may not be directly or indirectly offered for subscription or purchased or sold, and no invitations to subscribe for or buy the shares of our Class A common stock may be issued, and no draft or definitive offering memorandum, advertisement, or other offering material relating to any shares of our Class A common stock may be distributed in Australia, except where disclosure to investors is not required under Chapter 6D of the Corporations Act or is otherwise in compliance with all applicable Australian laws and regulations. By submitting an application for the shares of our Class A common stock, you represent and warrant to us that you are an Exempt Investor.
As any offer of shares of our Class A common stock under this prospectus will be made without disclosure in Australia under Chapter 6D.2 of the Corporations Act, the offer of those shares for resale in Australia within 12 months may, under section 707 of the Corporations Act, require disclosure to investors under Chapter 6D.2 if none of the exemptions in section 708 applies to that resale. By applying for the shares of our Class A common stock you undertake to us that you will not, for a period of 12 months from the date of issue of such shares, offer, transfer, assign, or otherwise alienate those shares of our Class A common stock to investors in Australia except in circumstances where disclosure to investors is not required under Chapter 6D.2 of the Corporations Act or where a compliant disclosure document is prepared and lodged with ASIC.
251
Notice to prospective investors in Japan
The shares of our Class A common stock have not been and will not be registered pursuant to Article 4, Paragraph 1 of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. Accordingly, none of the shares of our Class A common stock nor any interest therein may be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, in Japan or to, or for the benefit of, any resident of Japan (which term as used herein means any person resident in Japan, including any corporation or other entity organized under the laws of Japan), or to others for re-offering or resale, directly or indirectly, in Japan or to or for the benefit of a resident of Japan, except pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of, and otherwise in compliance with, the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and any other applicable laws, regulations and ministerial guidelines of Japan in effect at the relevant time.
Notice to prospective investors in Hong Kong
The shares of our Class A common stock have not been offered or sold and will not be offered or sold in Hong Kong, by means of any document, other than (i) to professional investors as defined in the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Cap. 571 of the Laws of Hong Kong) (the SFO) of Hong Kong and any rules made thereunder; or (ii) in other circumstances which do not result in the document being a prospectus as defined in the Companies (Winding Up and Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance (Cap. 32) of Hong Kong (the CO) or which do not constitute an offer to the public within the meaning of the CO. No advertisement, invitation, or document relating to the shares of our Class A common stock has been or may be issued or has been or may be in the possession of any person for the purposes of issue, whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere, which is directed at, or the contents of which are likely to be accessed or read by, the public of Hong Kong (except if permitted to do so under the securities laws of Hong Kong) other than with respect to shares of our Class A common stock which are or are intended to be disposed of only to persons outside Hong Kong or only to professional investors as defined in the SFO and any rules made thereunder.
Notice to prospective investors in Singapore
Each underwriter has acknowledged that this prospectus has not been registered as a prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Accordingly, each underwriter has represented and agreed that it has not offered or sold any shares of our Class A common stock or caused such shares to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase and will not offer or sell any shares of our Class A common stock or cause such shares to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase, and has not circulated or distributed, nor will it circulate or distribute, this prospectus or any other document or material in connection with the offer or sale, or invitation for subscription or purchase, of the shares of our Class A common stock, whether directly or indirectly, to any person in Singapore other than:
1. | to an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the Securities and Futures Act (Chapter 289) of Singapore, as modified or amended from time to time (the SFA)) pursuant to Section 274 of the SFA; |
2. | to a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA) pursuant to Section 275(1) of the SFA, or any person pursuant to Section 275(1A) of the SFA, and in accordance with the conditions specified in Section 275 of the SFA; or |
3. | otherwise pursuant to, and in accordance with the conditions of, any other applicable provision of the SFA. |
Where the shares of our Class A common stock are subscribed or purchased under Section 275 of the SFA by a relevant person which is:
1. | a corporation (which is not an accredited investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA)) the sole business of which is to hold investments and the entire share capital of which is owned by one or more individuals, each of whom is an accredited investor; or |
252
2. | a trust (where the trustee is not an accredited investor) whose sole purpose is to hold investments and each beneficiary of the trust is an individual who is an accredited investor, |
securities or securities-based derivatives contracts (each term as defined in Section 2(1) of the SFA) of that corporation or the beneficiaries rights and interest (howsoever described) in that trust shall not be transferred within six months after that corporation or that trust has acquired the shares pursuant to an offer made under Section 275 of the SFA except:
1. | to an institutional investor or to a relevant person, or to any person arising from an offer referred to in Section 275(1A) or Section 276(4)(c)(ii) of the SFA; |
2. | where no consideration is or will be given for the transfer; |
3. | where the transfer is by operation of law; |
4. | as specified in Section 276(7) of the SFA; or |
5. | as specified in Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018. |
Singapore SFA Product ClassificationIn connection with Section 309B of the SFA and the CMP Regulations 2018, unless otherwise specified before an offer of shares of our Class A common stock, we have determined, and hereby notify all relevant persons (as defined in Section 309A(1) of the SFA), that the shares of Class A common stock are prescribed capital markets products (as defined in the CMP Regulations 2018) and Excluded Investment Products (as defined in MAS Notice SFA 04-N12: Notice on the Sale of Investment Products and MAS Notice FAA-N16: Notice on Recommendations on Investment Products).
Notice to prospective investors in Bermuda
Shares of our Class A common stock may be offered or sold in Bermuda only in compliance with the provisions of the Investment Business Act of 2003 of Bermuda which regulates the sale of securities in Bermuda. Additionally, non-Bermudian persons (including companies) may not carry on or engage in any trade or business in Bermuda unless such persons are permitted to do so under applicable Bermuda legislation.
Notice to prospective investors in Saudi Arabia
This document may not be distributed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia except to such persons as are permitted under the Rules on the Offer of Securities and Continuing Obligations Regulations as issued by the board of the Saudi Arabian Capital Market Authority (CMA) pursuant to resolution number 3-123-2017 dated 27 December 2017, as amended (the CMA Regulations). The CMA does not make any representation as to the accuracy or completeness of this document and expressly disclaims any liability whatsoever for any loss arising from, or incurred in reliance upon, any part of this document. Prospective purchasers of the shares of our Class A common stock offered hereby should conduct their own due diligence on the accuracy of the information relating to the shares of our Class A common stock. If you do not understand the contents of this document, you should consult an authorised financial adviser.
Notice to prospective investors in the British Virgin Islands
The shares of our Class A common stock are not being, and may not be, offered to the public or to any person in the British Virgin Islands for purchase or subscription by or on behalf of us. The shares of our Class A common stock may be offered to companies incorporated under the BVI Business Companies Act, 2004 (British Virgin Islands) (BVI Companies), but only where the offer will be made to, and received by, the relevant BVI Company entirely outside of the British Virgin Islands.
253
Notice to prospective investors in China
This prospectus will not be circulated or distributed in the PRC and the shares of our Class A common stock will not be offered or sold, and will not be offered or sold to any person for re-offering or resale directly or indirectly, to any residents of the PRC (for such purposes, not including the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions or Taiwan), except pursuant to any applicable laws and regulations of the PRC. Neither this prospectus nor any advertisement or other offering material may be distributed or published in the PRC, except under circumstances that will result in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Notice to prospective investors in Korea
The shares of our Class A common stock have not been and will not be registered under the Financial Investments Services and Capital Markets Act of Korea and the decrees and regulations thereunder (the FSCMA), and the shares of our Class A common stock have been and will be offered in Korea as a private placement under the FSCMA. None of the shares of our Class A common stock may be offered, sold or delivered directly or indirectly, or offered or sold to any person for re-offering or resale, directly or indirectly, in Korea or to any resident of Korea except pursuant to the applicable laws and regulations of Korea, including the FSCMA and the Foreign Exchange Transaction Law of Korea and the decrees and regulations thereunder (the FETL). Furthermore, the purchaser of the shares of our Class A common stock shall comply with all applicable regulatory requirements (including but not limited to requirements under the FETL) in connection with the purchase of the shares of our Class A common stock. By the purchase of the shares of our Class A common stock, the relevant holder thereof will be deemed to represent and warrant that if it is in Korea or is a resident of Korea, it purchased the shares of our Class A common stock pursuant to the applicable laws and regulations of Korea.
Notice to prospective investors in Malaysia
No prospectus or other offering material or document in connection with the offer and sale of the shares of our Class A common stock has been or will be registered with the Securities Commission of Malaysia (Commission) for the Commissions approval pursuant to the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007. Accordingly, this prospectus and any other document or material in connection with the offer or sale, or invitation for subscription or purchase, of the shares of our Class A common stock may not be circulated or distributed, nor may the shares of our Class A common stock be offered or sold, or be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase, whether directly or indirectly, to persons in Malaysia other than (i) a closed end fund approved by the Commission; (ii) a holder of a Capital Markets Services Licence; (iii) a person who acquires the shares, as principal, if the offer is on terms that the shares may only be acquired at a consideration of not less than RM250,000 (or its equivalent in foreign currencies) for each transaction; (iv) an individual whose total net personal assets or total net joint assets with his or her spouse exceeds RM3 million (or its equivalent in foreign currencies), excluding the value of the primary residence of the individual; (v) an individual who has a gross annual income exceeding RM300,000 (or its equivalent in foreign currencies) per annum in the preceding twelve months; (vi) an individual who, jointly with his or her spouse, has a gross annual income of RM400,000 (or its equivalent in foreign currencies), per annum in the preceding twelve months; (vii) a corporation with total net assets exceeding RM10 million (or its equivalent in a foreign currencies) based on the last audited accounts; (viii) a partnership with total net assets exceeding RM10 million (or its equivalent in foreign currencies); (ix) a bank licensee or insurance licensee as defined in the Labuan Financial Services and Securities Act 2010; (x) an Islamic bank licensee or takaful licensee as defined in the Labuan Financial Services and Securities Act 2010; and (xi) any other person as may be specified by the Commission; provided that, in the each of the preceding categories (i) to (xi), the distribution of the shares is made by a holder of a Capital Markets Services License who carries on the business of dealing in securities. The distribution in Malaysia of this prospectus is subject to Malaysian laws. This prospectus does not constitute and may not be used for the purpose of public offering or an issue, offer for subscription or purchase, invitation to subscribe for or purchase any securities requiring the registration of a prospectus with the Commission under the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007.
254
Notice to prospective investors in Taiwan
The shares of our Class A common stock have not been and will not be registered with the Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan pursuant to relevant securities laws and regulations and may not be sold, issued, or offered within Taiwan through a public offering or in circumstances which constitutes an offer within the meaning of the Securities and Exchange Act of Taiwan that requires a registration or approval of the Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan. No person or entity in Taiwan has been authorised to offer, sell, give advice regarding, or otherwise intermediate the offering and sale of the shares of our Class A common stock in Taiwan.
Notice to prospective investors in South Africa
Due to restrictions under the securities laws of South Africa, no offer to the public (as such term is defined in the South African Companies Act, No. 71 of 2008 (as amended or re-enacted) (the South African Companies Act)) is being made in connection with the issue of the shares of our Class A common stock in South Africa. Accordingly, this document does not, nor is it intended to, constitute a registered prospectus (as that term is defined in the South African Companies Act) prepared and registered under the South African Companies Act and has not been approved by, and/or filed with, the South African Companies and Intellectual Property Commission or any other regulatory authority in South Africa. The shares of our Class A common stock are not offered, and the offer shall not be transferred, sold, renounced, or delivered, in South Africa or to a person with an address in South Africa, unless one or other of the following exemptions stipulated in section 96 (1) applies:
Section 96 (1) (a). The offer, transfer, sale, renunciation or delivery is to:
1. | persons whose ordinary business, or part of whose ordinary business, is to deal in securities, as principal or agent; |
2. | the South African Public Investment Corporation; |
3. | persons or entities regulated by the Reserve Bank of South Africa; |
4. | authorised financial service providers under South African law; |
5. | financial institutions recognized as such under South African law; |
6. | a wholly-owned subsidiary of any person or entity contemplated in (c), (d) or (e), acting as agent in the capacity of an authorised portfolio manager for a pension fund, or as manager for a collective investment scheme (in each case duly registered as such under South African law); or |
7. | any combination of the person in (i) to (vi); or |
Section 96 (1) (b). The total contemplated acquisition cost of the securities, for any single addressee acting as principal is equal to or greater than ZAR1,000,000 or such higher amount as may be promulgated by notice in the Government Gazette of South Africa pursuant to section 96(2)(a) of the South African Companies Act.
Information made available in this prospectus should not be considered as advice as defined in the South African Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, 2002.
Notice to prospective investors in Israel
This prospectus does not constitute a prospectus under the Israeli Securities Law, 5728-1968, or the Israeli Securities Law, and has not been filed with or approved by the Israel Securities Authority. In Israel, this prospectus is being distributed only to, and is directed only at, and any offer of the shares is directed only at, (i) a limited number of persons in accordance with the Israeli Securities Law and (ii) investors listed in the first addendum, or the Addendum, to the Israeli Securities Law, consisting primarily of joint investment in trust funds, provident funds, insurance companies, banks, portfolio managers, investment advisors, members of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, underwriters, venture capital funds, entities with equity in excess of NIS 50 million and
255
qualified individuals, each as defined in the Addendum (as it may be amended from time to time), or, collectively referred to as qualified investors (in each case, purchasing for their own account or, where permitted under the Addendum, for the accounts of their clients who are investors listed in the Addendum). Qualified investors are required to submit written confirmation that they fall within the scope of the Addendum, are aware of the meaning of the same and agree to it.
256
Immediately subsequent to the closing of this offering, we will issue to OpenAI, in accordance with the OpenAI Master Services Agreement and pursuant to the OpenAI Stock Issuance Agreement, a number of shares of our Class A common stock equal to $350.0 million valued at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price. Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $51.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the estimated offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, this would be 6,862,745 shares. We will not receive any proceeds from the issuance of these shares to OpenAI. The issuance of the shares will be completed through a private placement that is contingent upon the completion of this offering. The issuance of these shares to OpenAI will not be registered in this offering and will be subject to a market standoff agreement with us for a period of up to 180 days after the date of this prospectus and lock-up agreement with the underwriters for a period of up to 180 days after the date of this prospectus.
257
Fenwick & West LLP, New York, New York, which has acted as our counsel in connection with this offering, will pass upon the validity of the issuance of the shares of our Class A common stock offered by this prospectus. Latham & Watkins LLP, New York, New York, is acting as counsel to the underwriters. Whalen LLP, Newport Beach, California, has acted as counsel for the selling stockholders in connection with certain legal matters related to this offering.
258
CHANGE IN INDEPENDENT ACCOUNTANT
On June 4, 2024, we dismissed RSM US LLP (RSM) as our independent accountant and subsequently engaged Deloitte & Touche LLP (Deloitte) to audit our consolidated financial statements in accordance with the auditing standards of the PCAOB and generally accepted auditing standards in the United States of America (GAAS) as of and for the years ended December 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023. We previously engaged RSM to audit our consolidated financial statements in accordance with GAAS as of and for the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022. The decision to dismiss RSM and engage Deloitte was approved by our board of directors.
The reports of RSM on our consolidated financial statements as of and for the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, did not contain an adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion and were not qualified or modified as to uncertainties, audit scope or accounting principles.
During the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, and through the period ended June 4, 2024, there were:
| no disagreements (as defined in Item 304(a)(1)(iv) of Regulation S-K and the related instructions thereto) with RSM on any matter of accounting principles or practices, financial statement disclosure, or auditing scope or procedure, which disagreements, if not resolved to its satisfaction, would have caused RSM to make reference in connection with its opinion to the subject matter of the disagreement. |
| no reportable events as such term is defined in Item 304(a)(1)(v) of Regulation S-K and the related instructions thereto other than the material weakness in the internal control over financial reporting relating to a lack of sufficient number of qualified personnel within our accounting, finance, and operations functions who possessed an appropriate level of expertise to provide reasonable assurance that transactions were being appropriately recorded and disclosed. |
We have provided RSM with a copy of the foregoing disclosures and have requested that RSM furnish us with a letter addressed to the SEC stating whether it agrees with the statements made by us as set forth above and, if not, stating the respects in which it does not agree. A copy of RSMs letter, dated December 16, 2024, is filed as Exhibit 16.1 to this Registration Statement on Form S-1.
During the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, and through the period ended June 4, 2024, neither we, nor anyone acting on our behalf, consulted with Deloitte on matters that involved the application of accounting principles to a specified transaction, either completed or proposed, the type of audit opinion that might be rendered on our financial statements, or any other matter that was the subject of a disagreement as that term is used in Item 304 (a)(1)(iv) of Regulation S-K and the related instructions to Item 304 of Regulation S-K or a reportable event as that term is used in Item 304(a)(1)(v) and the related instructions to Item 304 of Regulation S-K.
The financial statements of CoreWeave, Inc. as of December 31, 2024 and 2023, and for each of the two years in the period ended December 31, 2024, included in this Prospectus, have been audited by Deloitte & Touche LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, as stated in their report. Such financial statements are included in reliance upon the report of such firm given their authority as experts in accounting and auditing.
The financial statements of CoreWeave, Inc. for the year ended December 31, 2022 included in this prospectus have been audited by RSM US LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, as stated in their report. Such financial statements are included in reliance upon the report of such firm given their authority as experts in accounting and auditing.
259
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
We have filed with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-1 under the Securities Act with respect to the shares of our Class A common stock offered hereby. This prospectus, which constitutes a part of the registration statement, does not contain all of the information set forth in the registration statement or the exhibits filed therewith. For further information about us and our Class A common stock offered hereby, reference is made to the registration statement and the exhibits filed therewith. Statements contained in this prospectus regarding the contents of any contract or any other document that is filed as an exhibit to the registration statement are not necessarily complete, and in each instance, we refer you to the copy of such contract or other document filed as an exhibit to the registration statement. We currently do not file periodic reports with the SEC.
Upon completion of this offering, we will be required to file periodic reports, proxy statements, and other information with the SEC pursuant to the Exchange Act. The SEC maintains a website that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding registrants that file electronically with the SEC. The address of the website is www.sec.gov.
We also maintain a website at www.coreweave.com. Upon the completion of this offering, you may access these materials at our website free of charge as soon as reasonably practicable after they are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Information contained in, or that can be accessed through, our website is not a part of, and is not incorporated into, this prospectus.
260
COREWEAVE, INC.
INDEX TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Page | ||||
F-2 | ||||
F-4 | ||||
F-6 | ||||
F-7 | ||||
Consolidated Statements of Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock and Stockholders Deficit |
F-8 | |||
F-10 | ||||
F-12 |
F-1
REPORT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM
To the stockholders and the Board of Directors of CoreWeave, Inc.
Opinion on the Financial Statements
We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of CoreWeave, Inc. and subsidiaries (the Company) as of December 31, 2024 and 2023, the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive loss, redeemable convertible preferred stock and stockholders deficit, and cash flows, for each of the two years in the period ended December 31, 2024, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the financial statements). In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2024 and 2023, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the two years in the period ended December 31, 2024, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
Basis for Opinion
These financial statements are the responsibility of the Companys management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Companys financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Companys internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.
Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.
/s/ Deloitte & Touche LLP
San Jose, California
March 3, 2025 (March 19, 2025 as to the effects of the stock split described in Note 1)
We have served as the Companys auditor since 2024.
F-2
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
To the Stockholders and the Board of Directors of CoreWeave, Inc.
Opinion on the Financial Statements
We have audited the accompanying consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive loss, redeemable convertible preferred stock and stockholders deficit, and cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2022, and the related notes to the consolidated financial statements (collectively, the financial statements) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company). In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the results of operations of the Company and its cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2022, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
Basis for Opinion
These financial statements are the responsibility of the Companys management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Companys financial statements based on our audit. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. Our audit included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audit also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.
/s/ RSM US LLP
We served as the Companys auditor from 2022 through 2025.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
January 22, 2025, except for the effects of the stock split described in Note 1, as to which the date is March 19, 2025
F-3
COREWEAVE, INC.
(in thousands, except per share data)
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Assets |
||||||||
Current assets |
||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 217,147 | $ | 1,361,083 | ||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
42,940 | 37,394 | ||||||
Accounts receivable, net |
165,379 | 416,526 | ||||||
Prepaid expenses and other current assets |
76,526 | 101,246 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total current assets |
501,992 | 1,916,249 | ||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, non-current |
219,988 | 637,356 | ||||||
Restricted marketable securities, non-current |
171,734 | 29,308 | ||||||
Property and equipment, net |
3,483,990 | 11,914,774 | ||||||
Operating lease right-of-use assets |
461,966 | 2,589,547 | ||||||
Intangible assets, net |
7,003 | 4,909 | ||||||
Goodwill |
19,544 | 19,544 | ||||||
Other non-current assets(a) |
110,758 | 720,912 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total assets |
$ | 4,976,975 | $ | 17,832,599 | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Liabilities, Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock, and Stockholders Deficit |
||||||||
Current liabilities |
||||||||
Accounts payable |
$ | 455,563 | $ | 868,259 | ||||
Accrued liabilities |
77,782 | 355,821 | ||||||
Debt, current(a) |
171,865 | 2,468,425 | ||||||
Deferred revenue, current |
249,831 | 768,927 | ||||||
Operating lease liabilities, current |
39,789 | 213,104 | ||||||
Finance lease liabilities, current |
3,534 | 57,801 | ||||||
Other current liabilities(a) |
97 | 230,244 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total current liabilities |
998,461 | 4,962,581 | ||||||
Debt, non-current(a) |
1,351,389 | 5,457,915 | ||||||
Derivative and warrant liabilities |
527,047 | 200,089 | ||||||
Deferred revenue, non-current |
1,754,873 | 3,294,977 | ||||||
Operating lease liabilities, non-current |
432,653 | 2,388,912 | ||||||
Finance lease liabilities, non-current |
510 | 34,120 | ||||||
Deferred tax liabilities, non-current |
36,447 | 149,232 | ||||||
Other non-current liabilities |
7,496 | 36,260 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total liabilities |
5,108,876 | 16,524,086 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Commitments and contingencies (Note 9) |
||||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock(a) |
||||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock, $0.000005 par value per share, 176,646 and 206,169 shares authorized as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively; 154,678 and 184,635 shares issued and outstanding as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively |
464,690 | 1,722,111 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
F-4
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Stockholders deficit |
||||||||
Class A common stock, $0.000005 par value per share, 469,031 and 540,680 shares authorized as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively; 208,003 and 121,277 shares issued as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively; and 203,520 and 114,689 shares outstanding as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively |
1 | 1 | ||||||
Class B common stock, $0.000005 par value per share, no and 150,000 shares authorized as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively; no and 118,198 shares issued and outstanding as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively |
| 0 | ||||||
Treasury stock, at cost, 4,483 and 6,588 shares as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively |
(32,054 | ) | (33,524 | ) | ||||
Additional paid-in capital |
48,397 | 1,096,160 | ||||||
Accumulated other comprehensive loss |
(148 | ) | | |||||
Accumulated deficit |
(612,787 | ) | (1,476,235 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total stockholders deficit |
(596,591 | ) | (413,598 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total liabilities, redeemable convertible preferred stock, and stockholders deficit |
$ | 4,976,975 | $ | 17,832,599 | ||||
|
|
|
|
(a) | Refer to Note 14Related-Party Transactions for further information on related party arrangements. |
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-5
COREWEAVE, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
(in thousands, except per share data)
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating expenses: |
||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
12,122 | 68,780 | 493,350 | |||||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
18,106 | 131,855 | 960,685 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing |
2,481 | 12,917 | 18,389 | |||||||||
General and administrative |
6,001 | 29,842 | 118,644 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total operating expenses |
38,710 | 243,394 | 1,591,068 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating income (loss) |
(22,880 | ) | (14,451 | ) | 324,358 | |||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
(2,884 | ) | (533,952 | ) | (755,929 | ) | ||||||
Interest expense, net(a) |
(9,444 | ) | (28,404 | ) | (360,824 | ) | ||||||
Other income, net |
192 | 18,760 | 48,194 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(35,016 | ) | (558,047 | ) | (744,201 | ) | ||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
(4,150 | ) | 35,701 | 119,247 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from continuing operations |
$ | (30,866 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from discontinued operations, net of tax |
$ | (189 | ) | $ | | $ | | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (937,765 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from continuing operations per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (0.17 | ) | $ | (3.09 | ) | $ | (4.30 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from discontinued operations per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | 0.00 | $ | | $ | | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (0.17 | ) | $ | (3.09 | ) | $ | (4.30 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Weighted-average shares used in computing net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
180,632 | 192,164 | 217,854 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
(a) | Refer to Note 14Related-Party Transactions for further information on related party arrangements. |
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-6
COREWEAVE, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE LOSS
(in thousands)
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
Other comprehensive income (loss): |
||||||||||||
Unrealized (loss) gain on available-for-sale marketable securities, net |
(156 | ) | 8 | 148 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total comprehensive loss |
$ | (31,211 | ) | $ | (593,740 | ) | $ | (863,300 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-7
COREWEAVE, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF REDEEMABLE CONVERTIBLE PREFERRED STOCK AND STOCKHOLDERS DEFICIT
(in thousands)
Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock |
Common Stock | Treasury Stock |
Additional paid-in capital |
Accumulated other comprehensive loss |
Accumulated Deficit |
Total Stockholders Deficit |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Shares | Amount | Shares | Amount | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Balance at January 1, 2022 |
83,775 | $ | 5,290 | 180,000 | $ | 1 | $ | | $ | 1,001 | $ | | $ | 12,016 | $ | 13,018 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of common stock warrants in connection with debt financing |
| | | | | 6,027 | | | 6,027 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense |
| | | | | 1,560 | | | 1,560 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Unrealized loss on available-for-sale marketable securities |
| | | | | | (156 | ) | | (156 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Net loss |
| | | | | | | (31,055 | ) | (31,055 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Balance, December 31, 2022 |
83,775 | $ | 5,290 | 180,000 | $ | 1 | $ | | $ | 8,588 | $ | (156 | ) | $ | (19,039 | ) | $ | (10,606 | ) | |||||||||||||||||
Conversion of convertible promissory notes to Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock |
12,485 | 5,006 | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock, net of issuance costs of $0 million and Series B Tranche Liability of $10 million |
75,496 | 410,465 | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Partial settlement of Series B tranche option |
| 45,531 | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Conversion of redeemable convertible preferred stock to common stock for secondary offering |
(17,078 | ) | (1,842 | ) | 17,078 | | | 1,842 | | | 1,842 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of common stock for private placement |
| | 4,483 | | | 14,837 | | | 14,837 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of common stock for business combination |
| | 2,105 | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Exercise of stock options |
| | 4,337 | | | 1,669 | | | 1,669 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Repurchase of common stock |
| | (4,483 | ) | | (32,054 | ) | | | | (32,054 | ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of common stock warrants in connection with debt financing |
| | | | | 3,959 | | | 3,959 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Settlement of notes due from employees |
| 240 | | | | 132 | | | 132 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense |
| | | | | 17,370 | | | 17,370 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other comprehensive income |
| | | | | | 8 | | |
8 |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Net loss |
| | | | | | | (593,748 | ) | (593,748 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Balance, December 31, 2023 |
154,678 | $ | 464,690 | 203,520 | $ | 1 | $ | (32,054 | ) | $ | 48,397 | $ | (148 | ) | $ | (612,787 | ) | $ | (596,591 | ) | ||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-8
Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock |
Common Stock | Treasury Stock |
Additional paid-in capital |
Accumulated other comprehensive loss |
Accumulated Deficit |
Total Stockholders Deficit |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Shares | Amount | Shares | Amount | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Balance, December 31, 2023 |
154,678 | $ | 464,690 | 203,520 | $ | 1 | $ | (32,054 | ) | $ | 48,397 | $ | (148 | ) | $ | (612,787 | ) | $ | (596,591 | ) | ||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock |
4,483 | 25,000 | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Closing settlement of Series B tranche option |
| 69,598 | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issuance of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock, net of issuance costs of $3 million |
29,523 | 1,147,476 | | | | | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock accretion to redemption value |
| 73 | | | | (73 | ) | | | (73 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cash dividend on Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock |
| | | | | (58,662 | ) | | | (58,662 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Paid-in-kind dividend on Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock |
| 15,582 | | | | (15,582 | ) | | | (15,582 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Conversion of convertible notes to common stock |
| | 24,544 | | | 1,080,295 | | | 1,080,295 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Exercise of stock options |
| | 2,879 | | | 2,890 | | | 2,890 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Repurchase of common stock for business combination |
| | (2,105 | ) | | | | | | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Repurchases of common stock from an employee |
| | | | (1,470 | ) | | | | (1,470 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Conversion of redeemable convertible preferred stock to common stock for secondary offering |
(4,049 | ) | (308 | ) | 4,049 | | | 308 | | | 308 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense |
| | | | | 38,587 | | | 38,587 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other comprehensive income |
| | | | | | 148 | | 148 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Net loss |
| | | | | | | (863,448 | ) | (863,448 | ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Balance, December 31, 2024 |
184,635 | $ | 1,722,111 | 232,887 | $ | 1 | $ | (33,524 | ) | $ | 1,096,160 | $ | | $ | (1,476,235 | ) | $ | (413,598 | ) | |||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-9
COREWEAVE, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS
(in thousands)
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Cash flows from operating activities: |
||||||||||||
Net loss |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
Net loss from discontinued operations, net of tax |
(189 | ) | | | ||||||||
Net loss from continuing operations |
(30,866 | ) | (593,748 | ) | (863,448 | ) | ||||||
Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash provided by operating activities |
||||||||||||
Depreciation and amortization |
11,695 | 103,210 | 863,413 | |||||||||
Non-cash lease expense |
16 | 20,404 | 122,748 | |||||||||
Amortization of debt discounts and issuance costs |
3,803 | 16,533 | 33,376 | |||||||||
Loss on fair value adjustments |
2,884 | 533,952 | 755,929 | |||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
1,490 | 15,154 | 31,487 | |||||||||
Debt extinguishment loss |
| | 11,708 | |||||||||
Deferred income taxes |
(1,284 | ) | 35,816 | 112,785 | ||||||||
Other non-cash reconciling items |
| 632 | 3,286 | |||||||||
Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of effect of business acquisition: |
||||||||||||
Accounts receivable |
(1,893 | ) | (162,413 | ) | (279,720 | ) | ||||||
Prepaid expenses and other current assets |
(1,047 | ) | (71,964 | ) | (29,200 | ) | ||||||
Accounts payable and accrued expenses |
1,404 | 26,807 | 510,568 | |||||||||
Deferred revenue |
9,354 | 1,986,304 | 2,049,068 | |||||||||
Lease liabilities |
| (9,302 | ) | (87,611 | ) | |||||||
Other non-current assets |
87 | (67,317 | ) | (485,332 | ) | |||||||
Other liabilities |
| (1,418 | ) | 111 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net cash (used in) provided by continuing operations |
(4,357 | ) | 1,832,650 | 2,749,168 | ||||||||
Net cash provided by operating activitiesdiscontinued operations |
5,267 | | | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net cash provided by operating activities |
$ | 910 | $ | 1,832,650 | $ | 2,749,168 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Cash flows from investing activities: |
||||||||||||
Purchase of property and equipment, including capitalized internal-use software |
(72,404 | ) | (2,943,130 | ) | (8,702,078 | ) | ||||||
Sale of available-for-sale marketable securities |
7,000 | 5,689 | 2,470 | |||||||||
Maturities of marketable securities |
| | 185,218 | |||||||||
Purchase of restricted marketable securities |
| (171,734 | ) | (34,053 | ) | |||||||
Purchase of strategic investments |
| (33,000 | ) | (50,000 | ) | |||||||
Issuance of notes receivable |
| | (59,615 | ) | ||||||||
Other investing activities |
(14,852 | ) | (5,535 | ) | | |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net cash used in investing activities by continuing operations |
(80,256 | ) | (3,147,710 | ) | (8,658,058 | ) | ||||||
Net cash provided by investing activitiesdiscontinued operations |
1,073 | | | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net cash used in investing activities |
$ | (79,183 | ) | $ | (3,147,710 | ) | $ | (8,658,058 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-10
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Cash flows from financing activities: |
||||||||||||
Proceeds from issuance of debt |
60,000 | 1,415,862 | 7,022,291 | |||||||||
Proceeds from issuance of convertible debt |
30,000 | | | |||||||||
Repayments of debt |
(3,055 | ) | (2,180 | ) | (588,555 | ) | ||||||
Payment of debt issuance costs |
(1,651 | ) | (12,053 | ) | (3,786 | ) | ||||||
Issuance of redeemable convertible preferred stock, net of issuance costs |
| 420,765 | 1,172,476 | |||||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock cash dividends paid |
| | (57,745 | ) | ||||||||
Proceeds from exercise of stock options |
| 1,669 | 2,890 | |||||||||
Common stock repurchased |
| (32,054 | ) | (1,470 | ) | |||||||
Proceeds from issuance of common stock |
| 14,837 | | |||||||||
Other financing activities |
(3,840 | ) | (19,095 | ) | (81,453 | ) | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net cash provided by financing activities |
$ | 81,454 | $ | 1,787,751 | $ | 7,464,648 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net increase in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash |
$ | 3,181 | $ | 472,691 | $ | 1,555,758 | ||||||
Cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cashbeginning of period |
4,203 | 7,384 | 480,075 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cashend of period |
$ | 7,384 | $ | 480,075 | $ | 2,035,833 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Supplemental disclosures of cash flow information: |
||||||||||||
Cash paid for interest, net of capitalized amounts |
$ | 5,124 | $ | 105 | $ | 183,657 | ||||||
Cash paid for income taxes |
$ | 255 | $ | 214 | $ | 14,332 | ||||||
Non-cash investing and financing activities: |
||||||||||||
Capitalized interest |
$ | | $ | 41,376 | $ | 31,714 | ||||||
Operating lease right-of-use assets acquired through lease liability |
1,210 | 481,145 | 2,222,257 | |||||||||
Right-of-use assets for lease modification and renewals |
| | 18,987 | |||||||||
Finance lease right-of-use assets acquired through lease liability |
14,622 | | 141,916 | |||||||||
Derivative liabilities from issuance of convertible notes |
10,841 | | | |||||||||
Accounts payable and accrued expenses related to property and equipment additions |
| 482,330 | 892,632 | |||||||||
Issuance of common stock in connection with conversion of convertible notes |
| | 1,080,295 | |||||||||
Settlement of Series B tranche liability |
| 45,531 | 69,598 | |||||||||
Non-cash investments |
| | 10,133 | |||||||||
Stock-based compensation capitalized as internal-use software |
| 2,216 | 7,100 | |||||||||
Deferred offering costs not yet paid |
| | 7,951 | |||||||||
Reconciliation of cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash to consolidated balance sheets: |
||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 7,384 | $ | 217,147 | $ | 1,361,083 | ||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
| 42,940 | 37,394 | |||||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, non-current |
| 219,988 | 637,356 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash |
$ | 7,384 | $ | 480,075 | $ | 2,035,833 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements.
F-11
NOTES TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
1. Overview and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies
Organization and Description of Business
CoreWeave, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (the Company or CoreWeave), was originally formed as a Delaware limited liability company in 2017 and then converted to a Delaware corporation in 2018. The Company is headquartered in Livingston, New Jersey. The Company is a modern cloud infrastructure technology company which offers the CoreWeave Cloud Platform that consists of proprietary software and cloud services that deliver the automation and efficiency needed to manage complex AI infrastructure at scale. Previously, the Company had Blockchain Mining and Management Services business which ceased operations in September 2022 and the Company is reporting this as discontinued operations in these consolidated financial statements. Refer to Note 16Discontinued Operations for additional information.
Basis of Presentation and Consolidation
The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (U.S. GAAP) and include the accounts of the Company and its wholly and majority-owned subsidiaries. All intercompany balances and transactions have been eliminated in consolidation.
The Company determines at inception of each arrangement whether an entity in which the Company has made an investment or in which the Company has other variable interests is considered a variable interest entity (VIE). Investments that are considered VIEs are evaluated to determine whether the Company is the primary beneficiary of the VIE, in which case it would be required to consolidate the entity. The Company evaluates whether it has (1) the power to direct the activities that most significantly impact the VIEs economic performance, and (2) the obligation to absorb losses or the right to receive benefits from the VIE that could potentially be significant to the VIE. If the Company is not the primary beneficiary of the VIE, the investment or other variable interest is accounted for in accordance with applicable U.S. GAAP.
In circumstances where an entity does not have the characteristics of a VIE, it would be considered a voting interest entity (VOE). The Company would consolidate a VOE when the Company has a majority equity interest and has control over significant operating, financial, and investing decisions of the entity.
Stock Split
On March 14, 2025, the Company effected a twenty-for-one stock split of its common stock and redeemable convertible preferred stock. All share and per share information has been retroactively adjusted to reflect the stock split for all periods presented.
Use of Estimates
The preparation of consolidated financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP requires the Company to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in the consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes. Actual results could differ materially from these estimates. Significant estimates include the fair value of financial assets and liabilities; useful lives assigned to property and equipment; the discount rates used for operating and finance leases; valuation of derivative and warrant liabilities; stock-based compensation, including the determination of the fair value of the Companys common stock; and accounting for income taxes, including the valuation allowance on deferred tax assets and the measurement of uncertain tax positions. Assumptions are reviewed regularly to ensure they remain relevant and reasonable, particularly in areas of high subjectivity. The Company bases its estimates on historical experience and assumptions that management considers reasonable.
F-12
Foreign Currency
The reporting currency of the Company is the U.S. dollar. The functional currency of the Companys foreign subsidiaries is the U.S. dollar.
Monetary assets and liabilities denominated in currencies other than the functional currency are remeasured to the functional currency at period-end exchange rates. Foreign currency transaction gains and losses resulting from remeasurement are recognized in other income, net in the consolidated statements of operations, and have not been material for any of the periods presented.
Concentration of Risk
The Company is subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could have a material adverse effect on its business, financial condition, results of operations, or cash flows primarily due to concentration of credit risk, significant customers, and supplier concentration.
Concentration of Credit Risk
Financial instruments that potentially expose the Company to significant concentration of credit risk consist primarily of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, accounts receivable, and marketable securities. The Company maintains its cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and marketable securities with high-quality financial institutions mainly in the United States, where the composition and maturities of which are regularly monitored by the Company. The Company grants credit to its customers in the normal course of business, exposing it to credit risk in the event of nonrepayment by customers. The Company has not experienced any material losses in such accounts.
Significant Customers
The following customers accounted for 10% or more of the Companys revenue for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024:
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Customer A |
* | 35 | % | 62 | % | |||||||
Customer B |
* | 21 | % | * | ||||||||
Customer C |
* | 17 | % | 15 | % | |||||||
Customer D |
16 | % | * | * | ||||||||
Customer E |
13 | % | * | * | ||||||||
Customer F |
12 | % | * | * | ||||||||
Customer G |
* | * | * |
* | Customer did not represent 10% or more of revenue |
Customer A, C, and G accounted for 15%, 13%, and 56% of accounts receivable, net, respectively, as of December 31, 2023. Customer A accounted for 66% of accounts receivable, net as of December 31, 2024.
Supplier Concentration
Certain materials and products used by the Company in its operations are available from a limited number of suppliers. Three suppliers accounted for 23%, 16%, and 10% of total purchases for the year ended December 31, 2022. Three suppliers accounted for 57%, 22%, and 11% of total purchases for the year ended December 31, 2023. Three suppliers accounted for 46%, 16%, and 14% of total purchases for the year ended December 31, 2024.
F-13
Cash, Cash Equivalents, Restricted Cash, and Restricted Cash Equivalents
Cash primarily consists of cash in banks and bank deposits. The Company considers all highly liquid investments with an original maturity of three months or less at the date of purchase to be cash equivalents. Cash equivalents consist of money market funds in the Companys investment accounts maintained in financial institutions. The Company maintains cash balances in bank deposit accounts that, at times, may exceed federally insured limits. The Company has not experienced any losses in such accounts.
The Company has restricted cash and cash equivalents that consist of bank deposits related to a collateralized loan facility and letters of credit. Restricted cash is classified as current and non-current assets based on the term of the remaining restriction.
Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information on restricted cash.
Accounts Receivable and Allowance for Credit Losses
Accounts receivable primarily consist of amounts billed that are currently due from customers. Accounts receivable are recorded at the invoiced amount, net of an allowance for credit losses. The Companys accounts receivable balances are subject to collection risk and the Company regularly assesses the collectability of outstanding accounts receivable on an ongoing basis and maintains an allowance for credit losses for accounts receivable deemed uncollectible. The allowance for credit losses reflects the best estimate of probable losses in the accounts receivable balance. The Company determines the allowance based on known troubled accounts; historical experience; current and anticipated macroeconomic conditions that could impact the Companys customers, such as unemployment, inflation, and regulation matters; and other currently available information. The Companys allowance for expected credit losses was not material as of December 31, 2023 and 2024. Additions to and write-offs against the allowance for expected credit losses were not material for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Notes Receivable
Notes receivable are related to the DCSP Financing Arrangements (as defined in Note 10Debt) and reported at the outstanding principal value plus accrued and unpaid interest. An allowance for credit losses on notes receivable is established when, based on current information and events, it is probable that the Company will be unable to collect all amounts due according to the contractual terms of the agreement. The Company considers certain factors, including the credit risk and financial condition of the borrower, the borrowers ability to pay current obligations, historical trends, and macroeconomic conditions. The Company evaluates the extent and impact of any credit deterioration that could affect the performance and the value of the assets, as well as the financial and operating capability of the borrower. As of December 31, 2024, the Company determined the carrying amount of the notes receivable to be fully collectible. The Company did not have any outstanding notes receivable as of December 31, 2023.
The Companys note receivable meets the criteria for right of setoff under the DCSP Financing Arrangements. The Company will recognize interest income under certain conditions due to the setoff nature of the DCSP Financing Arrangements.
Fair Value Measurements
The Company measures certain financial assets and liabilities at fair value on a recurring basis. Fair value is determined based on assumptions that market participants would use in pricing an asset or liability at the measurement date. The Company maximizes the use of observable inputs when available and minimizes the use of unobservable inputs when determining fair value.
F-14
The Companys financial instruments include cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, accounts receivable, marketable securities, accounts payable, accrued liabilities, derivatives, warrant liabilities, and Series B tranche liabilities. Cash, restricted cash, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and accrued liabilities are stated at their carrying value, which approximates fair value due to the short time to the expected receipt or payment date. Cash equivalents, restricted marketable securities, derivatives, and warrant liabilities are stated at fair value on a recurring basis. Adjustments to the fair value of certain financial liabilities, such as derivative, warrant, and Series B tranche liabilities, are recorded as fair value adjustments within the consolidated statements of operations.
Marketable Securities
Marketable securities consist of certificates of deposit and marketable debt securities that the Company has classified and accounted for as available for sale. The Company determines the appropriate classification of its investments in these securities at the time of purchase and reevaluates such designation at each consolidated balance sheet date. After consideration of its risk versus reward objectives, as well as its liquidity requirements, the Company may sell these debt securities prior to their effective maturities.
The Company classifies its investments with maturities within 12 months as current within other current assets on the consolidated balance sheets. The Company classifies its investments with maturities beyond 12 months as non-current within restricted marketable securities, non-current on the consolidated balance sheets.
The Company carries these securities at fair value and reports the unrealized gains and losses, net of taxes, as a component of stockholders deficit, except for changes in allowance for expected credit losses, which are recorded in other income, net, within the consolidated statements of operations.
The Company periodically evaluates its available-for-sale debt securities for impairment. If the amortized cost of an individual security exceeds its fair value, the Company considers its intent to sell the security or whether it is more likely than not that the Company will be required to sell the security before recovery of its amortized basis. If either of these criteria are met, the Company writes down the security to its fair value and records the impairment charge in other income, net, within the consolidated statements of operations. If neither of these criteria are met, the Company determines whether a credit loss exists. Credit loss is estimated by considering changes to the rating of the security by a rating agency, any adverse conditions specifically related to the security, as well as other factors.
Strategic Investments
The Company holds strategic investments in the form of privately held equity securities to support its business and strategic objectives in which the Company does not have a controlling interest. Privately held equity securities that do not have a readily determinable fair value and for which the Company does not have a controlling financial interest or exercise significant influence are measured at cost, with subsequent adjustments for observable price changes or impairments. These adjustments are recognized through other income, net, in the Companys statements of operations. The Company periodically reviews these investments for impairment. If indicators of impairment exist, the Company evaluates the investment for write-down to fair value. There were no subsequent adjustments for observable price changes or impairments for the periods presented.
The Company reports the strategic investments in other non-current assets on the consolidated balance sheets. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the carrying value of the Companys strategic investments was $42 million and $102 million, respectively.
Property and Equipment, Net
Property and equipment, net is stated at historical cost less accumulated depreciation and amortization. Construction in progress is related to the construction or development of property and equipment that has not yet
F-15
been placed into service for its intended use. Depreciation and amortization are calculated utilizing the straight-line method over the estimated useful lives of the respective assets. Expenditures for maintenance and repairs that do not extend the lives of the respective assets are expensed as incurred. The carrying value of property and equipment is reviewed for impairment whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying amount of the assets may not be recoverable.
Effective January 1, 2023, the Company changed its estimate of the useful life for its computing equipment utilized in data centers from five to six years, reflecting continuous advancements in hardware performance, software optimization, and data center design improvements. The effects of this change in estimate for the year ended December 31, 2023 on computing equipment that was included in property and equipment, net on the consolidated balance sheets as of December 31, 2023 was a reduction in total expenses of $20 million. The per share impact of the change in estimate was a $0.10 increase for the year ended December 31, 2023.
The estimated useful lives of the Companys property and equipment are as follows:
Technology equipment |
6 years | |
Software |
3-6 years | |
Data center equipment |
8-12 years | |
Furniture, fixtures, and other assets |
3-5 years | |
Leasehold improvements |
Shorter of remaining lease term or estimated useful life |
Capitalized Interest Costs
The Company capitalizes certain interest costs associated with the construction of data centers and purchases of related technology equipment during the period in which expenditures have been made and activities are in progress to prepare the assets for their intended use. The interest cost incurred in the construction of the data centers is considered a part of the assets historical cost and are depreciated over the estimated useful lives of the underlying assets.
Capitalized Internal-Use Software
The Company capitalizes costs incurred to develop or modify software solely for the Companys internal use, including hosted applications used to deliver the Companys support services, and certain implementation costs incurred in a hosting arrangement that is a service contract. This capitalization occurs when the preliminary project stage is complete, management, with the relevant authority, authorizes and commits to the funding of the software project, and it is probable the project will be completed and used to perform the intended function. Capitalized costs primarily consist of salaries and payroll-related costs for employees directly involved in development efforts. Costs incurred during the preliminary project stage and during the post-implementation operational stage, including maintenance costs, are expensed as incurred. Costs incurred for software upgrades are capitalized if they result in additional functionalities or substantial enhancements. Capitalized software development costs are included in property and equipment, net on the consolidated balance sheets, are amortized on a straight-line basis over the softwares estimated useful life, which is between three and six years, and amortization is recorded in technology and infrastructure within the consolidated statements of operations. The Company capitalized $1 million, $12 million, and $27 million of qualifying software development costs during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
Asset Retirement Obligations
An asset retirement obligation represents a legal obligation associated with the retirement of a tangible long-lived asset that is incurred upon the acquisition, construction, development or normal operation of that long-lived asset. The Company recognizes asset retirement obligations in the period in which they are placed in service, if a
F-16
reasonable estimate of fair value can be made. The asset retirement obligation is subsequently adjusted for changes in fair value. The associated estimated asset retirement costs are capitalized in equipment and depreciated over their useful lives. The Companys asset retirement obligations relate to the future removal of certain equipment related to its data center fit outs.
Deferred Offering Costs
Deferred offering costs consist primarily of accounting, legal, and other fees directly related to the Companys proposed initial public offering (IPO). These costs are capitalized as other non-current assets on the consolidated balance sheets until the offering is completed. The deferred offering costs will be reclassified to stockholders deficit and recorded against the proceeds from the offering upon the consummation of an IPO. In the event the offering is aborted, deferred offering costs will be expensed. The Company did not capitalize any deferred offering costs as of December 31, 2023, and capitalized $10 million of deferred offering costs as of December 31, 2024.
Business Combinations
When the Company acquires a business, the purchase price is allocated to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated respective fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require management to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users and acquired technology from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates, and the cost savings expected to be derived from acquiring an asset. These estimates are inherently uncertain and unpredictable. During the measurement period, which may be up to one year from the acquisition date, adjustments to the fair value of these tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed may be recorded, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period or final determination of the fair value of assets acquired or liabilities assumed, whichever comes first, any subsequent adjustments are recorded in the Companys consolidated statements of operations. The Company includes the results of operations of the business that it acquires as of the acquisition date. Acquisition-related expenses are expensed as incurred and are typically included in general and administrative expenses in the consolidated statements of operations.
Goodwill and Intangible Assets
Goodwill represents the excess of the purchase price consideration over the estimated fair value of the tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed in a business combination. Goodwill is evaluated for impairment annually on December 1 for the Companys single reporting unit, and whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value of goodwill may not be recoverable. Goodwill impairment is recognized when the quantitative assessment results in the carrying value exceeding the fair value; in which case, an impairment charge is recorded to the extent the carrying value exceeds the fair value.
The Companys definite-lived intangible assets are carried at cost, net of accumulated amortization. Intangible assets are amortized on a straight-line basis over their estimated useful lives. The Company estimates the useful life by estimating the expected period of economic benefit. The estimated useful lives for each class of intangible assets are as follows:
Acquired technologies |
3 years | |||
Customer relationships |
13 years | |||
Trade names |
5 years |
Amortization of intangible assets is recognized in the consolidated statements of operations based on the function of the related asset. Specifically, amortization is allocated to cost of revenue, technology and infrastructure, or sales and marketing, depending on the use of the underlying intangible asset.
F-17
Impairment of Long-Lived Assets
The Company reviews long-lived assets, including property and equipment and intangible assets subject to amortization, for impairment whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying amount of the asset may not be recoverable. The recoverability of the long-lived assets is assessed by comparing the undiscounted future cash flows expected to be generated by the asset to its carrying value.
If the carrying amount of a long-lived asset exceeds the expected undiscounted cash flows, an impairment loss is recognized in an amount equal to the excess of the assets carrying value over its fair value. Fair value is determined using valuation techniques such as discounted cash flow models, market comparisons, and, where applicable, independent third-party appraisals.
For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, no material impairment charges were recorded.
Leases
The Company has lease agreements primarily for data centers, office buildings, storage spaces and equipment. The Company accounts for leases in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 842, Leases (Topic 842). The Company determines if an arrangement meets the definition of a lease at the inception and leases are classified at commencement as either operating or finance leases.
Right-of-use (ROU) assets represent the right to use an underlying asset for the lease term, and lease liabilities represent the Companys obligation to make lease payments arising from the lease agreement. ROU assets are measured based on the discounted present value of the remaining lease payments, initial direct costs incurred, and prepaid lease payments, excluding lease incentives received prior to lease commencement. Lease liabilities are measured based on the discounted present value of the remaining lease payments at commencement date. As most of the leases do not provide an implicit rate, the Company uses the incremental borrowing rate based on the estimated interest rate for collateralized borrowing with similar terms and payments and in economic environments where the leased asset was located.
Many of the Companys leases include renewal options, and termination options that are factored into the determination of lease payments when it is reasonably certain that the Company would exercise that option. When assessing the reasonableness of exercising lease renewal options, the Company takes into account all relevant facts and circumstances that contribute to the economic benefits associated with exercising the lease renewal options, which includes the expected changes in facts and circumstances between the commencement of the lease term and the exercise date of the options. Payments under the Companys lease agreements are primarily fixed; however, certain lease agreements contain variable payments, which generally relate to costs associated with common area maintenance, utilities reimbursed to the landlord, and physical security expenses within certain lease agreements. These are not included in operating or finance lease cost and are expensed as incurred. The interest component of a finance lease is included in interest expense and recognized using the effective interest method over the lease term.
The Company made an accounting policy election for lease agreements with a term of 12 months or less and does not recognize ROU assets and lease liabilities in respect of those agreements. Any payments related to short-term leases are expensed as incurred. The Company has currently elected the practical expedient to not separate lease and nonlease components across all asset classes. Operating lease expense is recognized on a straight-line basis within total operating expenses in the consolidated statements of operations over the lease term. Amortization expense of finance lease ROU assets is recognized on a straight-line basis over the lease term and the interest component of a finance lease is recognized utilizing the effective interest method over the lease term and included in interest expense, net in the consolidated statements of operations. The Company currently does not have any lease arrangements with residual value guarantees.
F-18
Derivative Financial Instruments
The Company does not enter into derivatives for trading or speculative purposes. However, certain debt and equity financing transactions are derivatives in their entirety or include embedded features that are bifurcated and accounted for as embedded derivatives. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information about derivatives associated with financing transactions.
Additionally, in 2023 and 2024, the Company entered into power purchase agreements (PPAs) to secure power capacity for existing, under construction, and planned data center builds. These agreements are specifically designed to support the Company in managing its energy needs as it encounters rapidly increasing energy demands. Agreements that do not meet a scope exception, contain a notional amount and are for delivery of electricity in markets where notional amounts are readily convertible to cash are classified as derivative instruments.
The PPAs which meet the definition of a derivative are measured at fair value using a discounted cash flow model. Significant assumptions in the model include forward energy prices and discount rates. The Company reassesses the fair value of the PPAs at each reporting period, and any changes in value are recorded within the consolidated statements of operations. While the Company considered the normal purchases and normal sales scope exception to derivative accounting, the PPAs do not qualify for this exception, as the contracts allow for, and the Company has a practice of net settlement in the event of consumption shortfalls relative to the contracted quantities. As such, the Company recognizes these PPAs as derivatives and applies mark-to-market accounting for them and did not elect hedge accounting.
Derivative assets and liabilities, including those related to the PPAs, are classified as either current or non-current based on the timing of expected cash flows. The non-current position is included in other non-current assets and derivative and warrant liabilities on the consolidated balance sheets. Cash flows from the PPAs are classified as operating activities reflecting their use to secure and hedge energy needs in operations. The Company applies Level 3 valuation techniques, including discounted cash flow models, to determine fair value due to the significant unobservable inputs. Refer to Note 3 Fair Value Measurements below for additional information.
Revenue Recognition
The Company accounts for revenue in accordance with ASC 606, Revenue From Contracts with Customers. Revenue is recognized when services are delivered. The amount of revenue recognized reflects the consideration that the Company expects to receive in exchange for services. The Company determines revenue recognition by applying the following five steps:
1. | Identification of the contract, or contracts, with the customer |
2. | Identification of the performance obligations in the contract |
3. | Determination of the transaction price |
4. | Allocation of the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract |
5. | Recognition of the revenue when, or as, a performance obligation is satisfied |
The Company generates revenue by providing cloud computing services for customers in several verticals, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual effects rendering, platforms, pixel streaming, and batch processing. These services are offered both on a committed contract and on-demand basis. Customers do not take possession of software or hardware used to provide the services.
Committed ContractsThese service arrangements provide customers with access to cloud computing capacity across the Companys various data centers over a specified duration. Revenue is recognized ratably over the contract period. The initial contract period generally ranges from two to five years. The terms of these
F-19
contracts are typically structured as take-or-pay agreements, requiring payment regardless of the level of utilization. Additionally, customers under committed contracts typically make a prepayment that is recorded as deferred revenue and consumed based on the terms of the contract.
On-DemandThese service arrangements provide customers with access to the Companys cloud computing capacity on a consumption basis, with billing occurring monthly in arrears based on actual hourly usage of compute, storage, and other services. Revenue is recognized as the services are consumed.
Customers may also prepay for on-demand services. The prepayments are initially recorded as deferred revenue and recognized as the cloud computing services are transferred to the customer. Prepayments are typically consumed within a few months.
The Companys contracts with customers may contain multiple promised services. To the extent a customer contract includes multiple promised services, the Company determines whether promised services should be accounted for as a separate performance obligation. The Company allocates revenue to each performance obligation based on its relative stand-alone selling price (SSP). The SSP reflects the price the Company would charge for a specific service if it were sold separately in similar circumstances and to similar customers. When determining the SSP, the Company maximizes the use of observable inputs.
The Company applied the practical expedient in ASC 606 and did not evaluate payment terms of one year or less for the existence of a significant financing component. Revenue is recognized net of any taxes collected from customers (e.g., sales tax and other indirect taxes), which are subsequently remitted to governmental entities. The Company generally does not offer a right of refund in its contracts other than for cases of the Companys uncured material breach of the agreement, bankruptcy or insolvency.
Contract Balances
Contract assets represent the Companys rights to consideration in exchange for cloud computing services that the Company has transferred to a customer but where the right to consideration is conditional on something other than the passage of time. In some arrangements, a right to consideration for the Companys performance under the customer contract may occur before invoicing the customer, resulting in an unbilled accounts receivable. These unbilled accounts receivable represent amounts earned but not yet invoiced and are recognized in accordance with the performance obligations satisfied. Such amounts have been immaterial for the periods presented.
Contract liabilities consist of deferred revenue. Revenue is deferred when the Company invoices in advance of performance under a contract. The current portion of the deferred revenue balance will be recognized as revenue during the 12-month period after the consolidated balance sheet date. The non-current portion of the deferred revenue balance will be recognized as revenue following the 12-month period after the consolidated balance sheet date.
Remaining performance obligations (RPO) represent the aggregate amount of the transaction price, net of estimated variable consideration, allocated to performance obligations not delivered, or partially undelivered, as of the end of the reporting period. Variable consideration consists of potential reductions to the transaction price in the future related to estimates of future potential credits to customers under availability of service agreements and amounts that may not be recognized to revenue due to delivery delays. The Companys estimate of such variable consideration is based on both historical experience and the specific facts and circumstances of the committed contracts included in the Companys RPO. RPO includes both billed and unbilled consideration from the Companys committed contracts.
Costs to Obtain a Contract
The Company capitalizes sales commissions and associated payroll taxes paid to sales personnel that are incremental to the acquisition of customer contracts. The Company determines whether costs should be deferred
F-20
based on its sales compensation plans and if the commissions are incremental and would not have occurred absent the customer contract. Total capitalized costs to obtain a contract are immaterial during the periods presented and are included in other non-current assets on the consolidated balance sheets.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of direct costs for data centers, including costs associated with the Companys facilities, such as rent, utilities including power, personnel costs for employees involved in data center operations and customer success, including salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock-based compensation expense and other related expenses, and depreciation and amortization, including depreciation of power installation and distribution systems.
The Company operates data centers across the country and has co-location service agreements with several well-established data center vendors. These agreements generally commit the Company to pay monthly fees plus additional fees for bandwidth usage above the committed level. Certain co-location agreements do not meet the definition of a lease and are expensed under cost of revenue. However, those that do meet the definition of a lease are recognized as operating lease ROU assets and operating lease liabilities and are amortized over the lease term.
Technology and Infrastructure
Technology and infrastructure expense consists of costs associated with the Companys infrastructure, such as depreciation and amortization related to the Companys servers, switches, networking equipment and internally developed software, personnel costs for employees associated with research and development of new and existing products and services or with maintaining the Companys computing infrastructure, such as salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock-based compensation expense, travel expenses, and other related expenses; and costs related to software subscriptions. The Companys technology and infrastructure efforts are dedicated towards developing new services, improving the Companys existing infrastructure, adding new features, bringing the latest compute technology to market and improving the accessibility of the Companys services. Research and development costs were $5 million, $21 million, and $56 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists of personnel costs associated with selling and marketing the Companys CoreWeave Cloud Platform, such as salaries, stock-based compensation expense, commissions, bonuses, and other related expenses, third-party professional services costs, and advertising costs associated with marketing programs. Advertising costs, which are expensed as incurred are also included in sales and marketing expenses in the consolidated statements of operations. Advertising expense was immaterial for all periods presented.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists of costs associated with corporate functions including the Companys finance, legal, human resources, and facilities. These costs include personnel costs, such as salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock-based compensation expense and other related expenses, third-party professional services costs, such as legal, accounting, and audit services, corporate facilities, depreciation for equipment, furniture, and fixtures, and other costs necessary to operate the Companys corporate functions, including expenses for non-income taxes, insurance, and office rental.
Stock-Based Compensation
Stock-based compensation expense related to stock-based awards is recognized based on the fair value of the awards granted. The fair value of each stock option award is estimated on the grant date utilizing the Black-Scholes option-pricing model. The related stock-based compensation expense is recognized on a straight-line
F-21
basis over the requisite service period of the awards, including the awards with graded vesting and no additional conditions for vesting other than service conditions. Forfeitures are accounted for as they occur.
The Black-Scholes option-pricing model requires the input of highly subjective assumptions, including the fair value of the underlying common stock, the expected term of the stock option, the expected volatility of the price of the Companys common stock, risk-free interest rates, and the expected dividend yield of common stock. The assumptions used to determine the fair value of the option awards represent managements best estimates. These estimates involve inherent uncertainties and the application of managements judgment.
The Company has also granted to employees restricted stock units (RSU), that vest upon the satisfaction of service-based and performance-based vesting conditions. The fair value of each RSU award is based on the fair value of the underlying common stock as of the grant date. The service-based vesting condition has varying terms, but is generally satisfied over four years. The performance-based vesting condition is satisfied upon the occurrence of a qualifying liquidation event which is defined as the earlier to occur of (i) an acquisition of the Company or (ii) the effective date of a registration statement of the Company filed for the IPO of the Companys common stock. As of December 31, 2024, all RSU awards outstanding were subject to a performance-based vesting condition, and such performance-based vesting condition was not probable of being satisfied as a liquidation event such as a change in control or an IPO is not considered probable until it occurs. As a result, no stock-based compensation expense related to these RSU awards has been recorded to date.
Employee Benefit Plan
The Company has a defined contribution plan intended to qualify under Section 401 of the Internal Revenue Code (the 401(k) Plan). Participants may contribute a portion of their annual compensation limited to a maximum annual amount set by the Internal Revenue Service. The Company sponsors a 401(k) defined contribution plan covering all eligible U.S. employees. Contributions to the 401(k) Plan are discretionary.
Income Taxes
Income taxes are accounted for under the asset and liability method. Deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the future tax consequences attributable to differences between the consolidated financial statements carrying amounts of existing assets and liabilities and their respective tax bases and operating loss and tax credit carryforwards. Deferred tax assets and liabilities are measured using enacted tax rates expected to apply to taxable income in the years in which those temporary differences are expected to be recovered or settled. The Company evaluates the likelihood of realizing deferred tax assets based on projections of future taxable income and considers a valuation allowance if it is more likely than not that some or all deferred tax assets may not be realized. The effect on deferred tax assets and liabilities of a change in tax rates is recognized in income in the period that includes the enactment date.
A valuation allowance is recorded for deferred tax assets if it is more likely than not that some portion, or all, of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. In assessing the need for a valuation allowance, the Company considers all available evidence for each jurisdiction, including past operating results, estimates of future taxable income, and the feasibility of ongoing tax-planning strategies. This evaluation is updated quarterly to reflect new information and trends that may affect the realization of tax benefits. In the event the Company determines that all, or part, of the net deferred tax assets are not realizable in the future, it will make an adjustment in the valuation allowance that will be charged to earnings in the period in which such a determination is made.
The Company recognizes the effect of income tax positions only if those positions are more likely than not of being sustained. Recognized income tax positions are measured at the largest amount that is greater than 50% likely of being realized. Changes in recognition or measurement are reflected in the period in which the change in judgment occurs. The Company recognizes interest and penalties related to uncertain income tax benefits as a component of the provision (benefit) for income taxes in the consolidated statements of operations. The
F-22
Companys effective tax rates will vary depending on the amount of nondeductible items such as fair value adjustments, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, use of tax credits, the relative proportion of foreign to domestic income, and changes in tax laws.
Net Loss per Share Attributable to Common Stockholders
The Company computes net loss per share utilizing the two-class method required for participating securities. The two-class method determines net loss per share for each class of common stock and participating securities according to dividends declared or accumulated and participation rights in undistributed income. The rights, including the liquidation and dividend rights, of the holders of the Companys Class A common stock and Class B common stock are identical, except with respect to voting. As a result, the basic and diluted net loss per share of Class A common stock and Class B common stock are the same and therefore presented on a combined basis. The two-class method requires income available to common stockholders for the period to be allocated between common stock and participating securities based upon their respective rights to receive dividends as if all income for the period had been distributed. The Company considers its redeemable convertible preferred stock, non-recourse notes to purchase common and preferred stock, and regular warrants to be participating securities as the holders of these securities are contractually entitled to participate in income but not contractually required to participate in losses. As such, net loss for the periods presented was not allocated to the Companys participating securities.
The Companys basic net loss per share attributable to common stockholders is calculated by dividing net loss attributable to common stockholders by the weighted-average number of common stock outstanding for the period, without consideration of potentially dilutive securities. The diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders is calculated by giving effect to all potentially dilutive securities outstanding for the period utilizing the treasury stock method or the if-converted method based on the nature of such securities. Potential shares of common stock that are issuable for little or no consideration are included in the calculation of basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders once they become exercisable. Diluted net loss per share is the same as basic net loss per share in periods when the effects of potentially dilutive shares of common stock are antidilutive.
Segment Information
The Companys chief operating decision maker, the chief executive officer, reviews discrete financial information presented on a consolidated basis for purposes of regularly making operating decisions, allocation of resources, and assessing financial performance. The Company operates its business in one operating segment and, therefore, has one reportable segment.
The CODM uses consolidated net loss to measure segment profit or loss in order to identify underlying trends in the performance of the business for purposes of allocating resources and evaluating financial performance. The Companys objective in making resource allocation decisions is to optimize the consolidated financial results. Significant segment expenses that the CODM reviews and utilizes to manage the Companys operations are cost of revenue, technology and infrastructure, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses at the consolidated level, which are presented in the Companys consolidated statements of operations. Other segment items included in consolidated net loss include loss on fair value adjustments, interest expense, net, other income, net, provision for (benefit from) income taxes, and loss from discontinued operations, net of tax, which are presented in the Companys consolidated statements of operations.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements Adopted
As an emerging growth company (EGC), the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the JOBS Act) allows the Company to delay adoption of new or revised accounting pronouncements applicable to public companies until such pronouncements are made applicable to private companies. The JOBS Act does not
F-23
preclude an EGC from early adopting new or revised accounting standards codification. The Company has elected to use extended transition periods permissible under the JOBS Act, while also early adopting certain accounting pronouncements. The adoption dates discussed below reflect these elections.
In June 2016, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2016-13, Financial InstrumentsCredit Losses (Topic 326): Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial Instruments, which requires organizations to measure all expected credit losses for financial instruments held at the reporting date. Also, in April 2019, the FASB issued ASU No. 2019-04, Codification Improvements to Topic 326, Financial InstrumentsCredit Losses, Topic 815, Derivatives and Hedging, and Topic 825, Financial Instruments, to clarify the inclusion of recoveries of trade receivables previously written off when estimating an allowance for credit losses. In November 2019, the FASB issued ASU No. 2019-10, Financial InstrumentsCredit Losses (Topic 326), Derivatives and Hedging (Topic 815), and Leases (Topic 842): Effective Dates, which amended the effective date for certain companies. This guidance is effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2022, and for interim periods within the fiscal years, with early adoption permitted. Upon adoption, the guidance should be applied prospectively. The Company adopted this guidance effective on January 1, 2023, without a material impact on its consolidated financial statements.
In August 2020, the FASB issued ASU No. 2020-06, DebtDebt with Conversion and Other Options (Subtopic 470-20) and Derivatives and HedgingContracts in Entitys Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40): Accounting for Convertible Instruments and Contracts in an Entitys Own Equity, which simplifies the accounting for certain financial instruments with characteristics of liabilities and equity. ASU No. 2020-06 reduces the number of accounting models for convertible debt instruments and convertible preferred stock and enhances information transparency by making targeted improvements to the disclosures for convertible instruments and earnings per share guidance. This guidance is effective for the annual periods beginning after December 15, 2023, and for interim periods within the fiscal years, with early adoption permitted. Upon adoption, the guidance should be applied retrospectively. The Company adopted this guidance effective on January 1, 2023, without a material impact on its consolidated financial statements.
In November 2023, the FASB issued ASU No. 2023-07, Segment Reporting (Topic 280): Improvements to Reportable Segment Disclosures, which requires additional segment-related disclosures on an annual and interim basis, to enable investors in developing more informed and actionable analyses. This guidance is effective for the annual periods beginning after December 15, 2023, and for interim periods beginning after December 15, 2024 with early adoption permitted. Upon adoption, the guidance should be applied retrospectively to all prior periods presented in the consolidated financial statements. The Company adopted this guidance effective on January 1, 2024, without a material impact on its consolidated financial statements.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements Not Yet Adopted
In December 2023, the FASB issued ASU No. 2023-09, Income Taxes (Topic 740): Improvements to Income Tax Disclosures, which improves the transparency of income tax disclosures by requiring (1) consistent categories and greater disaggregation of information in the effective tax rate reconciliation and (2) income taxes paid disaggregated by jurisdiction. It also includes certain other amendments to improve the effectiveness of income tax disclosures. This guidance will be effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2024. Early adoption is permitted. Upon adoption, the guidance can be applied prospectively or retrospectively. The Company is currently evaluating the impact this amended guidance may have on its consolidated financial statements.
In November 2024, the FASB issued ASU No. 2024-03, Income StatementReporting Comprehensive IncomeExpense Disaggregation Disclosures (Subtopic 220-40): Disaggregation of Income Statement Expenses, which requires more detailed disclosures, on an annual and interim basis, about specified categories of expenses (including employee compensation, depreciation, and amortization) included in certain expense captions presented on the consolidated statements of operations. This guidance as further clarified through ASU No. 2025-01, Income Statement
F-24
- Reporting Comprehensive Income - Expense Disaggregation Disclosures (Subtopic 220-40) will be effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2026, and for interim periods within fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2027. Early adoption is permitted. Upon adoption, the guidance can be applied either prospectively or retrospectively. The Company is currently evaluating the impact this amended guidance may have on its consolidated financial statements.
2. Revenue
Disaggregation of Revenue
The Company primarily generates its revenue through providing cloud computing services, which include both committed contracts and on-demand services. Revenue recognized related to customer commitments, including revenue from delivering capacity prior to commitment start dates, represented 20%, 88%, and 96% of total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
Deferred Revenue
Deferred revenue, including current and non-current balances as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, was $2.0 billion and $4.1 billion, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, revenue recognized from deferred revenue at the beginning of the period was $0 million, $4 million, and $225 million, respectively. The increase in deferred revenue balances as of December 31, 2024 as compared to December 31, 2023 is attributed to the growth in revenue from committed contracts, which typically provide for certain prepayments at contract inception.
Remaining Performance Obligations
As of December 31, 2023, the Company had $9.9 billion of unsatisfied RPO, of which 41% is expected to be recognized over the initial 24 months ending December 31, 2025, 40% between months 25 and 48, and the remaining balance recognized between months 49 and 72.
As of December 31, 2024, the Company had $15.1 billion of unsatisfied RPO, of which 54% is expected to be recognized over the initial 24 months ending December 31, 2026, 42% between months 25 and 48, and the remaining balance recognized between months 49 and 72.
3. Fair Value Measurements
The Company measures certain financial assets and liabilities at fair value on a recurring basis in accordance with ASC 820, Fair Value Measurement, which establishes a framework for measuring fair value and a fair value hierarchy based on the observability of inputs. This hierarchy prioritizes the use of observable inputs and minimizes the use of unobservable inputs when determining fair value as follows:
Level 1Observable inputs such as quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities.
Level 2Inputs other than Level 1 that are observable, either directly or indirectly, such as quoted prices for similar assets or liabilities, quoted prices in markets that are not active, or other inputs that are observable or can be corroborated by observable market data for substantially the full term of the assets or liabilities.
Level 3Unobservable inputs that are supported by little or no market activity, which require management judgment or estimation.
F-25
The following tables presents the hierarchy fair value as of the end of each reporting period (in thousands):
Fair Value Hierarchy |
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
||||||||||
Financial assets: |
||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
||||||||||||
Money market funds |
Level 1 | $ | 87,258 | $ | 2,411 | |||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
||||||||||||
Money market funds |
Level 1 | 42,940 | 24,185 | |||||||||
Prepaid expenses and other current assets |
||||||||||||
Available-for-sale marketable securities |
Level 2 | 2,368 | | |||||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, non-current |
||||||||||||
Money market funds |
Level 1 | 206,846 | 56,250 | |||||||||
Restricted marketable securities, non-current |
||||||||||||
Certificates of deposit |
Level 2 | 171,734 | 29,308 | |||||||||
Other non-current assets |
||||||||||||
Power purchase agreements |
Level 3 | 1,459 | 2,562 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Total financial assets |
$ | 512,605 | $ | 114,716 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Financial liabilities: |
||||||||||||
Derivative and warrant liabilities |
||||||||||||
Bifurcated embedded derivative liabilities |
Level 3 | $ | 386,469 | $ | | |||||||
Warrant liabilities |
Level 3 | 70,930 | 199,645 | |||||||||
Series B tranche liability |
Level 3 | 69,648 | | |||||||||
Power purchase agreements |
Level 3 | | 444 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Total financial liabilities |
$ | 527,047 | $ | 200,089 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
F-26
The following tables present information about the Companys financial assets that are measured at fair value on a recurring basis as of the end of each reporting period (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 | ||||||||||||||||
Adjusted Cost |
Gross Unrealized Gains |
Gross Unrealized Losses |
Fair Value | |||||||||||||
Financial assets: |
||||||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
||||||||||||||||
Money market funds |
$ | 87,258 | $ | | $ | | $ | 87,258 | ||||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
||||||||||||||||
Money market funds |
42,940 | | | 42,940 | ||||||||||||
Prepaid expenses and other current assets |
||||||||||||||||
Available-for-sale marketable securities |
2,354 | 14 | | 2,368 | ||||||||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, non-current |
||||||||||||||||
Money market funds |
206,846 | | | 206,846 | ||||||||||||
Restricted marketable securities, non-current |
||||||||||||||||
Certificates of deposit |
171,734 | | | 171,734 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Total |
$ | 511,132 | $ | 14 | $ | | $ | 511,146 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
December 31, 2024 | ||||||||||||||||
Adjusted Cost |
Gross Unrealized Gains |
Gross Unrealized Losses |
Fair Value | |||||||||||||
Financial assets: |
||||||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
||||||||||||||||
Money market funds |
$ | 2,411 | $ | | $ | | $ | 2,411 | ||||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, current |
||||||||||||||||
Money market funds |
24,185 | | | 24,185 | ||||||||||||
Restricted cash and cash equivalents, non-current |
||||||||||||||||
Money market funds |
56,250 | | | 56,250 | ||||||||||||
Restricted marketable securities, non-current |
||||||||||||||||
Certificates of deposit |
29,308 | | | 29,308 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Total |
$ | 112,154 | $ | | $ | | $ | 112,154 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following is a summary of the valuation techniques and key inputs used in the valuation of instruments of Level 3 fair value measurements as of the end of each reporting period.
The Companys valuation of the warrant liabilities utilized the Black-Scholes option-pricing model that relied on the following significant inputs:
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Stock price |
$18 | $48 | ||||||
Volatility |
55% | 60% | ||||||
Risk-free rate |
4% | 4% | ||||||
Dividend yield |
0% | 0% |
F-27
The Companys valuation of the embedded derivative liabilities utilized the binomial lattice model that relied on the following significant inputs:
December 31, 2023 |
||||
Stock price |
$18 | |||
Volatility |
40% | |||
Risk-free rate |
4% | |||
Lattice or Monte Carlo model projection period (years) |
2 |
As discussed in Note 10Debt, the 2021 Convertible Notes were converted into common stock on September 17, 2024. The following table is a summary of the significant unobservable inputs to value the embedded derivative liability immediately before conversion:
September 17, 2024 |
||||
Stock price |
$44 | |||
Discount rate |
12% |
The Companys valuation of the Series B tranche liability utilized the Black-Scholes option-pricing model that relied on the following significant inputs:
December 31, 2023 |
||||
Series B stock price |
$21 | |||
Volatility |
21% | |||
Risk-free rate |
5% |
The following table presents a summary of the changes in the fair value of the Companys Level 3 financial instruments (in thousands):
Power Purchase Agreements Asset |
Warrant Liabilities |
Bifurcated Embedded Derivative Liabilities |
Power Purchase Agreements Liability |
Series B Tranche Liability |
||||||||||||||||
Balance at January 1, 2023 |
$ | | $ | 3,887 | $ | 4,901 | $ | | $ | | ||||||||||
Additions |
1,040 | 1,716 | 20,829 | | 10,300 | |||||||||||||||
Adjustment to fair value |
419 | 68,334 | 360,739 | | 104,879 | |||||||||||||||
Settlements |
| (3,007 | ) | | | (45,531 | ) | |||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||
Balance at December 31, 2023 |
1,459 | 70,930 | 386,469 | | 69,648 | |||||||||||||||
Additions |
| | | 770 | | |||||||||||||||
Adjustment to fair value |
1,103 | 128,715 | 627,263 | (326 | ) | (49 | ) | |||||||||||||
Settlements |
| | (1,013,732 | ) | |
|
|
(69,599 | ) | |||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||
Balance at December 31, 2024 |
$ | 2,562 | $ | 199,645 | $ | | $ | 444 | $ | | ||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
DCSP Financing Arrangements
As discussed in the Note 10Debt, the Company has a Note Receivable outstanding as of December 31, 2024, related to the DCSP Financing Arrangements. The Company determined that the fair value of the Note Receivable approximates the carrying value.
F-28
Available-For-Sale Marketable Securities
The following table summarizes the estimated fair value of investments in available-for-sale marketable debt securities by effective contractual maturity dates (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 |
||||
Due in one year or less |
$ | | ||
Due over one year |
2,368 | |||
|
|
|||
Total available-for-sale marketable securities |
$ | 2,368 | ||
|
|
For short-term investments with an unrealized loss as of December 31, 2023, the unrealized losses were not due to credit-related factors. As of December 31, 2023, the Company did not intend to sell these short-term investments, and it was more likely than not that the Company would hold these short-term investments until maturity or a recovery of the cost basis. Therefore, no allowance for expected credit losses was recorded as of December 31, 2023. In November 2024, the Company sold all of its available-for-sale marketable debt securities. As a result, the Company reclassified an immaterial amount to other income, net in the consolidated statements of operations that was previously recorded in accumulated other comprehensive income (loss).
4. Business Combination
On January 1, 2023, the Company acquired 100% of the equity of Conductor Technologies, Inc. (Conductor), a company that develops cloud-based task management services designed to simplify access to cloud resources at scale. This acquisition aligns with the Companys strategy to expand its cloud capabilities and strengthen its presence in the media and entertainment sector. The Company expects growth opportunities through further investment in product capabilities, among other factors. The purchase consideration for the Conductor acquisition was $27 million, which consisted of cash consideration of $17 million and equity consideration of $10 million in the form of a liability to issue shares. In May 2024, the Company exercised its call option to settle the liability in cash.
The allocation of purchase consideration to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed based upon their estimated fair values as of the acquisition date is as follows (in thousands):
Amount | ||||
Identifiable assets |
$ | 8,802 | ||
Total liabilities assumed |
(1,023 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Net assets acquired |
7,779 | |||
Goodwill recognized |
19,447 | |||
|
|
|||
Total purchase price |
$ | 27,226 | ||
|
|
For the year ended December 31, 2023, the results of operations for Conductor and acquisition-related costs were not material to the Companys consolidated statement of operations. Additionally, the pro forma results of operations reflecting the acquisition of Conductor are not presented as the impact on the consolidated financial results would not have been material.
F-29
5. Property and Equipment, Net
Property and equipment, net, consisted of the following (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Technology equipment |
$ | 1,298,127 | $ | 9,146,575 | ||||
Software |
14,937 | 139,508 | ||||||
Data center equipment and leasehold improvements |
29,332 | 384,372 | ||||||
Furniture, fixtures, and other assets |
1,717 | 8,684 | ||||||
Construction in progress |
2,256,673 | 3,200,866 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total property and equipment |
3,600,786 | 12,880,005 | ||||||
Less: accumulated depreciation and amortization |
(116,796 | ) | (965,231 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total property and equipment, net |
$ | 3,483,990 | $ | 11,914,774 | ||||
|
|
|
|
Depreciation and amortization on property and equipment was $12 million, $101 million, and $861 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
As discussed in Note 1Overview and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, the Company capitalizes interest associated with the construction of data centers and purchases of related technology equipment. There was $0 million, $41 million, and $159 million of interest capitalized during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
Asset Retirement Obligations
The following is a summary of activity relating to the liability for asset retirement obligations, included in other non-current liabilities on the consolidated balance sheets, which the Company expects to incur primarily in connection with the expected removal of certain equipment related to its data center fit outs (in thousands):
December 31, | December 31, | |||||||
2023 | 2024 | |||||||
Beginning balance |
$ | | $ | 7,496 | ||||
Additions |
7,254 | 26,293 | ||||||
Accretion expense |
242 | 2,364 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Ending balance |
$ | 7,496 | $ | 36,153 | ||||
|
|
|
|
6. Goodwill and Intangible Assets
Goodwill
The following table summarizes the changes to goodwill (in thousands):
Amount | ||||
Balance at January 1, 2023 |
$ | 97 | ||
Addition from the acquisition of Conductor |
19,447 | |||
|
|
|||
Balance at December 31, 2023 and 2024 |
$ | 19,544 | ||
|
|
There were no impairment charges recorded to goodwill for any of the periods presented.
F-30
Intangible Assets, Net
Intangible assets, net consisted of the following (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 | December 31, 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Acquired Intangibles, Gross |
Accumulated Amortization |
Acquired Intangibles, Net |
Acquired Intangibles, Gross |
Accumulated Amortization |
Acquired Intangibles, Net |
|||||||||||||||||||
Acquired technologies |
$ | 5,453 | $ | (1,600 | ) | $ | 3,853 | $ | 5,453 | $ | (3,611 | ) | $ | 1,842 | ||||||||||
Other (1) |
3,897 | (747 | ) | 3,150 | 3,897 | (830 | ) | 3,067 | ||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total |
$ | 9,350 | $ | (2,347 | ) | $ | 7,003 | $ | 9,350 | $ | (4,441 | ) | $ | 4,909 | ||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(1) | Included in Other are customer relationships and trade names. |
Amortization expenses for intangible assets were $0 million, $2 million, and $2 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
As of December 31, 2024, the expected future amortization expense related to intangible assets was as follows (in thousands):
Years Ending December 31, |
Amount | |||
2025 |
$ | 2,058 | ||
2026 |
441 | |||
2027 |
427 | |||
2028 |
261 | |||
2029 |
246 | |||
Thereafter |
1,476 | |||
|
|
|||
Total expected future amortization expense |
$ | 4,909 | ||
|
|
7. Consolidated Balance Sheets Components
Prepaid Expenses and Other Current Assets
Prepaid expenses and other current assets consisted of the following (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Prepaid expenses |
$ | 54,338 | $ | 67,393 | ||||
Tax receivables |
17,647 | 9,145 | ||||||
Available-for-sale marketable securities |
2,368 | | ||||||
Other current assets |
2,173 | 24,708 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total prepaid expenses and other current assets |
$ | 76,526 | $ | 101,246 | ||||
|
|
|
|
Other Non-current Assets
Other non-current assets consisted of the following (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Escrow funds |
$ | | $ | 336,055 | ||||
Prepaid expenses |
51,193 | 145,424 | ||||||
Notes receivable |
| 107,597 | ||||||
Strategic investments |
42,087 | 102,220 | ||||||
Other non-current assets |
17,478 | 29,616 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total other non-current assets |
$ | 110,758 | $ | 720,912 | ||||
|
|
|
|
F-31
8. Leases
The Company enters into leases as a lessee for data centers, office buildings, and equipment. The Company determines if an arrangement is a lease or contains a lease at inception and whether that lease meets the classification criteria for a finance or operating lease in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The Company applied judgment in performing the lease classification tests related to transfer of ownership, bargain purchase option, lease term assessment, estimated fair value, and the specialized nature of the underlying asset.
Leases for offices generally have an initial term of four to ten years, often with multi-year renewal periods. Data center leases generally have an initial term from three to fifteen years, some of which include options to extend the leases for up to ten years. Additionally, the Companys equipment leases generally have an initial term of two years and include the option to purchase the asset. Variable costs generally relate to costs associated with Common Area Maintenance (CAM), utilities reimbursed to the landlord, and physical security expenses within certain lease agreements. These are not included in operating or finance lease cost and are expensed as incurred.
The components of total lease cost related to leases for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 were as follows (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Operating lease cost: |
||||||||||||
Operating lease cost |
$ | 236 | $ | 41,515 | $ | 288,628 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Finance lease cost: |
||||||||||||
Amortization of ROU assets |
$ | 1,904 | $ | 3,050 | $ | 18,565 | ||||||
Interest on lease liabilities |
903 | 868 | 8,709 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total finance lease cost |
$ | 2,807 | $ | 3,918 | $ | 27,274 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Variable lease cost |
$ | 370 | $ | 16,028 | $ | 54,633 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total lease cost |
$ | 3,413 | $ | 61,461 | $ | 370,535 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Supplemental consolidated balance sheet information related to leases were as follows (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Operating leases: |
||||||||
Operating lease ROU assets |
$ | 461,966 | $ | 2,589,547 | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Operating lease liabilities, current |
$ | 39,789 | $ | 213,104 | ||||
Operating lease liabilities, non-current |
432,653 | 2,388,912 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total operating lease liabilities |
$ | 472,442 | $ | 2,602,016 | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Finance leases: |
||||||||
Property and equipment |
$ | 15,250 | $ | 157,146 | ||||
Less: amortization |
(4,954 | ) | (23,544 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Property and equipment, net |
$ | 10,296 | $ | 133,602 | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Finance lease liabilities, current |
$ | 3,534 | $ | 57,801 | ||||
Finance lease liabilities, non-current |
510 | 34,120 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total finance lease liabilities |
$ | 4,044 | $ | 91,921 | ||||
|
|
|
|
F-32
Supplemental consolidated cash flow and other information related to leases for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 were as follows (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Cash paid for amounts included in the measurement of lease liabilities: |
||||||||||||
Operating cash flows from operating leases |
$ | 456 | $ | 30,381 | $ | 253,285 | ||||||
Operating cash flows from finance leases |
903 | 868 | 8,709 | |||||||||
Financing cash flows from finance leases |
3,840 | 7,606 | 54,052 |
Information relating to the lease term and discount rate for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 were as follows:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Weighted-average remaining lease term (in years): |
||||||||||||
Operating leases |
6 | 8 | 9 | |||||||||
Finance leases |
2 | 1 | 2 | |||||||||
Weighted-average discount rate: |
||||||||||||
Operating leases |
12 | % | 12 | % | 12 | % | ||||||
Finance leases |
11 | % | 11 | % | 11 | % |
The future lease payments included in the measurement of the Companys operating lease liabilities and finance lease liabilities as of December 31, 2024, were as follows (in thousands):
Future Payments | ||||||||
Years Ending December 31, |
Operating Leases |
Finance Leases |
||||||
2025 |
$ | 507,855 | $ | 64,267 | ||||
2026 |
525,805 | 35,000 | ||||||
2027 |
538,988 | | ||||||
2028 |
544,028 | | ||||||
2029 |
475,670 | | ||||||
Thereafter |
1,775,509 | | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total undiscounted lease payments |
4,367,855 | 99,267 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Less: imputed interest |
(1,765,839 | ) | (7,346 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Present value of lease liabilities |
$ | 2,602,016 | $ | 91,921 | ||||
|
|
|
|
The Company incurred interest expense on its finance leases of $1 million, $1 million, and $9 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
As of December 31, 2024, the Company executed additional lease agreements, primarily for data centers and office buildings, that had not yet commenced. The aggregate amount of estimated future undiscounted lease payments associated with such leases is $15.0 billion. These leases will commence between 2025 and 2026 with estimated lease terms of five to sixteen years.
As of December 31, 2024, the Company had additional lease agreements for various data center locations with commencement dates subject to regulatory approvals and completion of landlord improvements. The Company may be required to make fixed lease payments up to $1.1 billion over the next seventeen years. The Company will assess the lease classification upon lease commencement.
F-33
Additionally, in August 2024, the Company entered into a lease agreement for various buildings located at a single site intended to be used as data centers. The agreement provides access to 50 MW of electrical power, which is expected to be delivered in phases between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the fourth quarter of 2026. The Company will pay a portion of the construction costs incurred by the lessor during the construction period and during the lease term, which are considered variable lease payments. The Company will assess the lease classification upon lease commencement, estimated to be in 2027.
9. Commitments and Contingencies
Letters of Credit
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company had outstanding Letters of Credit (LOC) in the aggregate amount of $174 million and $533 million, respectively. These LOC guarantee the Companys ability to fulfill its lease obligations, per the lease agreements. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company has not drawn on any of its LOC and is in compliance with the terms and conditions set forth by the financial institution. These LOC renew annually and expire on various dates through 2041.
Employee Benefit Plan
For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, the Company contributed $0 million, $1 million, and $3 million, respectively, to the 401(k) Plan, which are allocated to cost of revenue, technology and infrastructure, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses in the consolidated statements of operations.
Indemnifications
The Company enters into indemnification provisions under certain agreements with other parties in the ordinary course of business. In its customer agreements, the Company has agreed to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the indemnified party for third party claims and related losses suffered or incurred by the indemnified party from actual or threatened third-party intellectual property infringement claims. For certain large or strategic customers, the Company has agreed to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the indemnified party for noncompliance with certain additional representations and warranties made by the Company. In addition, the Company indemnifies its officers, directors, and certain key employees while they are serving in good faith in their respective capacities.
While the Company has entered into various indemnification agreements, it has not incurred any material costs or claims under these agreements to date, and management does not expect any future claims to have a material adverse effect on the Companys financial position or results of operations. It is not possible to determine the maximum potential amount under these indemnification provisions due to the Companys limited history of prior indemnification claims and the unique facts and circumstances involved in each particular provision. To date, there have been no claims under any indemnification provisions.
Litigation
From time to time, the Company may be subject to various proceedings, lawsuits, disputes, or claims in the ordinary course of business. The Company investigates these claims as they arise. Although claims are inherently unpredictable, the Company is currently not aware of any matters that would, individually or taken together, have a material adverse effect on its business, financial position, results of operations, or cash flows. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company has not accrued any material potential loss.
F-34
10. Debt
The total debt obligations are as follows (in thousands):
Maturities | Effective Interest Rates |
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||||||||
2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes |
October 2025 | 17 | % | $ | 55,125 | $ | | |||||||||
2022 Senior Secured Notes |
|
October 2025 April 2026 |
|
10 | % | 125,000 | | |||||||||
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 1.0 |
March 2028 | 15 | % | 1,374,924 | 2,012,500 | |||||||||||
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 2.0 |
May 2029 | 11 | % | | 3,843,819 | |||||||||||
2024 Term Loan Facility |
December 2025 | 12 | % | | 1,000,000 | |||||||||||
Original Equipment Manufacturer financing arrangements |
|
February 2026 October 2027 |
|
9% 11 | % | | 1,177,158 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total principal of debt |
1,555,049 | 8,033,477 | ||||||||||||||
Less: Unamortized discount and issuance costs |
(31,795 | ) | (107,137 | ) | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total debt, net of unamortized discount and issuance costs |
1,523,254 | 7,926,340 | ||||||||||||||
Less: Debt, current |
(171,865 | ) | (2,468,425 | ) | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total debt, non-current |
$ | 1,351,389 | $ | 5,457,915 | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
As of December 31, 2024, the future principal payments for the Companys total debt were as follows (in thousands):
Years Ending December 31, |
Amount | |||
2025 |
$ | 2,483,202 | ||
2026 |
3,102,384 | |||
2027 |
1,771,071 | |||
2028 |
548,093 | |||
2029 |
128,727 | |||
|
|
|||
Total |
$ | 8,033,477 | ||
|
|
For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, total interest expense for the Companys debt obligations was as follows (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Contractual interest expense |
$ | 4,914 | $ | 30,189 | $ | 474,844 | ||||||
Amortization of debt discounts and issuance costs and accretion of redemption premiums |
3,803 | 16,533 | 33,376 | |||||||||
PIK interest |
| 21,621 | | |||||||||
Less: capitalized interest |
(343 | ) | (41,376 | ) | (159,017 | ) | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total |
$ | 8,374 | $ | 26,967 | $ | 349,203 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
F-35
2021 Unsecured Senior Subordinated Convertible Promissory Notes
In 2020 and 2021, the Company entered into unsecured bridge loan agreements with various investors, for a total principal amount of $4 million, carrying an annual interest rate of 7.00%. In April 2021, the loans were exchanged, pursuant to the original terms of the agreements, into convertible promissory notes with a principal balance of $4 million, an interest rate of 7.00% per annum, compounded annually, and convertible into shares of stock similar to shares of stock issued in the next round of financing. In April 2023, concurrent with the Series B round of financing, the convertible promissory notes were automatically converted pursuant to the original terms of the conversion feature into 12,484,540 shares of the Companys Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock, with no gain or loss recognized upon conversion.
2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes
In October 2021, the Company executed a note issuance agreement and a note purchase agreement with a related party for the issuance of an aggregate principal amount of up to $50 million of convertible senior secured notes (the 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes). The Company drew $20 million at execution and the remaining $30 million in April 2022. The 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes are collateralized by the Companys property, equipment and other assets, excluding the financed property, equipment and other assets collateralized by the delayed draw term loans and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) financing arrangements discussed below.
The 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes bear a stated annual interest rate of 10.00% for the first three years, payable semiannually on April 30 and October 30. Interest may be paid in cash or paid-in-kind (PIK), in which case additional 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes will be issued with a principal amount equal to the accrued interest, and otherwise which carry the same terms of the original notes (the PIK Notes). In April and October of 2023, an aggregate of $5 million principal amount of PIK Notes were issued in lieu of cash settlement of accrued interest.
If a qualified public company event (QPCE), defined as an IPO, direct listing, or special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) transaction, is not consummated on or prior to the date that is three (3) years from the issuance date, the interest rate shall automatically increase to 16.00% per year, prospectively, payable in cash. The 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes have a contractual maturity date of October 18, 2025. In the event the 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes are not otherwise converted or redeemed prior to the maturity date, and in the event that there is no QPCE, the investors will be entitled to redeem the 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes for cash in the amount equal to the principal, accrued and unpaid interest, plus a premium amount to ensure the holders realize an aggregate internal rate of return (IRR) of 16.00%. Prior to the maturity date, the 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes may be redeemed or converted as follows:
| RedemptionFrom the third anniversary until a QPCE, the Company has the right, at its option, to redeem up to a principal amount of $15 million at a redemption price equal to principal amount plus accrued and unpaid interest plus a premium amount such that the holders of such principal amount of debt realize an IRR of 20.00% with respect to such redeemed amounts. |
| ConversionHolders of the 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes have the right, at their option, to convert all or any portion of their notes into a number of shares of common stock at any time based on the outstanding principal and accrued interest divided by the conversion price in effect. The conversion price in effect shall be calculated as follows: |
| Initially, the conversion price is equal to $675 million (the Maximum Conversion Valuation) divided by the fully diluted shares of common stock outstanding, which was $2.20 per share. |
| If a qualified financing occurs prior to a QPCE, the Maximum Conversion Valuation will be reduced, but not increased, to the enterprise value derived from the qualified financing on a fully diluted basis. |
F-36
| Upon the occurrence of a QPCE, the conversion price will be reduced, but not increased, to 75% of either the price per share offered to the public in an IPO, 75% of the stock price after the closing of a direct listing, or 75% of the stock valuation derived from a SPAC transaction. |
The Company determined that the conversion features, the accelerated redemption features, the variability in interest payments, and the Companys redemption option are required to be bifurcated and accounted for as an embedded derivative. Accordingly, upon issuances in October 2021 and April 2022, the Company recognized embedded derivative liabilities of $0 million and $2 million, respectively. The Company used Level 3 inputs to determine the fair value of the embedded derivatives. Significant management assumptions and estimates were involved in this determination. As of December 31, 2023, the estimated fair value of 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes was $451 million. This amount includes the $55 million face value of the notes, $6 million in accreted redemption premiums, $2 million in unamortized debt discounts and issuance costs, which is a reduction to the net carrying value, and a $386 million embedded derivative requiring bifurcation. The embedded derivative is separated and included within derivative and warrant liabilities on the consolidated balance sheets.
For the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, the Company recorded losses related to the fair value adjustment of these derivative liabilities of $3 million, $361 million, and $627 million, respectively. During the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, total interest costs were $7 million, $31 million, and $8 million, respectively. These amounts are comprised of coupon interest of $4 million, $5 million, and $4 million, respectively; PIK interest cost was $0 million, $22 million, and $0 million, respectively; and amortization of debt discounts and issuance costs of $3 million, $4 million, and $4 million, respectively.
The debt host liability was initially recognized based on the proceeds received from issuance, net of issuance costs and net of the initial fair value of the bifurcated derivative. The debt host was subsequently accounted for using the effective interest method to amortize the discount and issuance costs and accrue for the premiums due at maturity in the event the debt was not early converted or redeemed earlier and no QPCE occurred.
The investors elected to convert all of the outstanding 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes on September 17, 2024, pursuant to the original terms of the conversion feature, resulting in the issuance of 24,543,980 shares of common stock and a cash payment of $2 million for accrued interest and cash in lieu of fractional shares. The conversion was accounted for as an extinguishment. Equity increased by the settlement-date fair value of the common shares issued of $1.1 billion. Additionally, a $6 million extinguishment loss is included in other income, net, which represents the difference between the fair value of the shares and the combined carrying amounts of the debt host and the bifurcated embedded derivative liability.
2022 Senior Secured Notes
In October 2022, the Company executed a note issuance agreement and a note purchase agreement (the 2022 Senior Secured Notes) with a related party for an aggregate principal amount of up to $125 million. The Company drew down $30 million upon execution (the First Closing), an additional $30 million in November 2022 (the Second Closing), an additional $40 million in January 2023 (the Third Closing), and the remaining $25 million in April 2023 (the Fourth Closing). The 2022 Senior Secured Notes are collateralized by the Companys property, equipment and other assets, excluding the financed property, equipment and other assets collateralized by the delayed draw term loans and OEM financing arrangements discussed below.
The first three tranches of 2022 Senior Secured Notes bear 0.0% interest from the issuance date through April 16, 2024, and 12.00% interest per annum from and after April 17, 2024. Interest payments are due, in cash, semiannually on April 14 and October 14 of each year, beginning on April 14, 2024. All principal and accrued and unpaid interest are due on October 17, 2025.
The fourth tranche of 2022 Senior Secured Notes bear 0.0% interest from the issuance date through October 19, 2024, and 12.00% interest per annum from and after October 20, 2024. Interest payments are due, in
F-37
cash, semiannually on April 14 and October 14 of each year, beginning on October 14, 2024. All principal and accrued and unpaid interest are due on April 20, 2026.
The Company may redeem the debt at any time, or the debt may be required to be redeemed early upon the occurrence of customary events of default or change of control. In the event the debt is redeemed prior to the maturity date, the redemption price is equal to the principal amount plus accrued and unpaid interest, plus a potential early redemption premium based on the following schedule:
| No premium if redeemed prior to April 17, 2024, or on or after October 2, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) or prior to October 20, 2024, or on or after April 7, 2026 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
| 10.00% premium if redeemed on or after April 17, 2024, but before July 17, 2024 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) or on or after October 20, 2024, but before January 20, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
| 8.50% premium if redeemed on or after July 17, 2024, but before October 17, 2024 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) on or after January 20, 2025, but before April 20, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
| 7.00% premium if redeemed on or after October 17, 2024, but before January 17, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) or on or after April 20, 2025, but before July 20, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
| 5.50% premium if redeemed on or after January 17, 2025, but before April 17, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) or on or after July 20, 2025, but before October 20, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
| 4.00% premium if redeemed on or after April 17, 2025, but before July 17, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) or on or after October 20, 2025, but before January 20, 2026 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
| 2.50% premium if redeemed on or after April 17, 2025, but before October 2, 2025 (with respect to the notes issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing) on or after to January 20, 2026, but before April 7, 2026 (with respect to the notes issued in the Fourth Closing). |
In conjunction with the borrowing under the 2022 Senior Secured Notes, the Company granted the 2022 Senior Secured Note holders fully vested penny warrants and regular warrants to purchase shares of the Companys common stock upon each closing:
| First Closing: Penny warrants for 1,873,735 shares and regular warrants for 1,040,956 shares. |
| Second Closing: Penny warrants for 1,873,735 shares and regular warrants for 1,040,956 shares. |
| Third Closing: Penny warrants for 2,498,356 shares and regular warrants for 1,388,000 shares. |
| Fourth Closing: Penny warrants for 1,561,456 shares and regular warrants for 867,474 shares. |
All warrants issued in the First Closing, Second Closing and Third Closing expire on October 17, 2029 and all warrants issued in the Fourth Closing expire on April 20, 2030. The penny warrants have an exercise price of $0.0005 per share. The regular warrants are exercisable at a price per share equal to the lower of (subject to adjustment as provided in the 2022 Senior Secured Notes):
a) | if, prior to an IPO or SPAC Transaction, the Company completes a qualified equity financing, the purchase price or deemed purchase price per share of common stock in the qualified equity financing; or |
F-38
b) | the purchase price determined based on a valuation of the Company of: |
(i) | $1,500,000,000, if the principal amount of the 2022 Senior Secured Notes is repaid in full within one hundred twenty (120) days after the original issue date; |
(ii) | $1,300,000,000, if the principal amount of the 2022 Senior Secured Notes is repaid in full within one hundred twenty-one (121) to two hundred forty (240) days after the original issue date; |
(iii) | $1,100,000,000, if the principal amount of the 2022 Senior Secured Notes is repaid in full within two hundred forty-one (241) to three hundred sixty (360) days after the original issue date; or |
(iv) | $1,000,000,000, if the principal amount of the 2022 Senior Secured Notes is repaid in full three hundred sixty-one (361) or more days after the original issue date. |
The penny warrants are classified within stockholders deficit on the consolidated balance sheets, as their settlement is indexed to the Companys own stock in accordance with ASC 815, Derivatives and Hedging.
The regular warrants are classified as derivative liabilities as their settlement amounts are not solely indexed to the Companys own stock and settled in equity.
The Company recorded a loss related to the fair value adjustment of these warrant liabilities of $0 million, $67 million, and $129 million within loss on fair value adjustments in the consolidated statements of operations during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.
The fair values of the regular warrants were remeasured to $71 million and $200 million as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively. These amounts are included within derivative and warrant liabilities on the consolidated balance sheets.
The Second Closing and the Third Closing were loan commitments that were required to be issued and funded. The fees associated with the loan commitment were initially capitalized and accounted for as deferred financing costs. As these closings were completed, the associated portions of the deferred financing costs were reclassified as the debt discount for the portion of the drawn loans and amortized to interest expense. As of December 31, 2023, the carrying value of the notes was $124 million, which approximates fair value. The penny warrants and regular warrants issued in connection with the first three closings were recorded as part of the deferred financing costs equal to their issuance date fair values of $6 million and $3 million, respectively.
The Fourth Closing provided the lenders the option, but not the obligation to purchase up to $25 million principal amount of notes and the associated portion of penny warrants and regular warrants. The option was accounted for as a derivative liability issued on the initial closing date, representing part of the deferred financing costs of $1 million for the loan commitments. The written option was remeasured to fair value through the settlement date completed in April 2023, and the Company recognized a loss for the change in fair value of $2 million during the year ended December 31, 2023. The notes, penny warrants, and regular warrants issued upon settlement of the Fourth Closing were initially recorded at their respective fair values of $22 million, $4 million, and $2 million, respectively.
In June 2024, the Company issued notice to the lenders to exercise its option to redeem the 2022 Senior Secured Notes. In July 2024, the Company settled the entire principal amount of the notes for a redemption price of $137 million, inclusive of prepayment premium and accrued and unpaid interest, resulting in an extinguishment loss of $6 million, which is included in other income, net.
Delayed Draw Term Loans
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 1.0
In July 2023, one of the Companys subsidiaries, CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. II, LLC (CCAC II), entered into a delayed draw term loan with various lenders and U.S. Bank, N.A., as the administrative and collateral agent. The agreement provides for a delayed draw term loan facility of up to $2.3 billion (as amended,
F-39
the DDTL 1.0 Facility). Borrowings under the DDTL 1.0 Facility were used to finance a portion of the purchase consideration, fees, and expenses relating to the acquisition of computing equipment.
The DDTL 1.0 Facility contains covenants that restrict the ability of the Company and/or CCAC II to incur or guarantee additional indebtedness; pay dividends and make other distributions or repurchase stock; make certain investments; create or incur liens; sell assets; enter into certain transactions with affiliates; and merge, consolidate or transfer or sell all or substantially all of its assets.
All obligations under the DDTL 1.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by the Company. Obligations outstanding under the DDTL 1.0 Facility are secured by perfected first priority pledges of and security interests in (i) the equity interests of CCAC II held by its direct parent and (ii) substantially all of the assets of CCAC II.
Interest on outstanding borrowings on the DDTL 1.0 Facility accrues at a rate per annum equal to either, at the Companys election, Term SOFR plus 8.75% or the alternative base rate plus 7.75%. On May 15, 2024, the interest rate was modified to Term SOFR plus 9.62% or the alternative base rate plus 8.62%. As of December 31, 2023, and 2024, the actual average interest rate being charged on the amounts borrowed against the DDTL 1.0 Facility was 14.12% and 14.11%, respectively.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, the Company borrowed against the $2.3 billion facility commitment. The principal amount of the loans is required to be repaid in quarterly installments, with the final balloon payment due on March 28, 2028. The loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at the Companys option, and are required to be prepaid upon the occurrence of an event of default or change of control of the Company, or with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions or incurrence of indebtedness. If the loans are prepaid prior to the fourth anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, in addition to principal and accrued interest, the Company is required to pay an applicable premium equal to (a) with respect to prepayments made prior to the third anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, the present value of future interest payments that would have accrued on the principal amount of the loans being prepaid through the third anniversary of the loan commitment termination date based on the interest rate in effect plus 1.00% of the principal amount of the loans being prepaid or (b) with respect to prepayments made between the third and fourth anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, an amount equal to 1.00% of the principal amount of the loans being prepaid.
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the amounts outstanding were $1.4 billion and $2.0 billion, respectively, under the DDTL 1.0 Facility. The Company incurred deferred financing costs of $12 million and recorded debt discounts of $24 million and $22 million for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively. These costs are capitalized as a reduction to the outstanding debt balance on the consolidated balance sheets and are being amortized to interest expense over the term of the DDTL 1.0 Facility. Amortization of debt issuance costs and debt discounts was $2 million and $20 million for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively.
The Company was required to maintain restricted cash equal to 16.00% of the drawn balance, totaling $220 million as of December 31, 2023. In May 2024, in conjunction with the amendment to the interest rate, the restricted cash requirement was reduced to 4.00% of the drawn balance, but in no event can the liquidity requirement be greater than $56 million. As of December 31, 2024, $56 million was restricted cash in relation to this agreement.
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facility 2.0
In May 2024, one of the Companys subsidiaries, CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. IV, LLC (CCAC IV) entered into a second agreement with various lenders and U.S. Bank, N.A., as the administrative and collateral agent. The agreement provides for another delayed draw term loan facility of up to $7.6 billion (as amended, the DDTL 2.0 Facility). Borrowings under this agreement were established to primarily finance capital expenditures necessary to fulfill customer contracts, including the acquisition of GPU servers and related infrastructure.
F-40
Under the DDTL 2.0 Facility, additional loans may be drawn until June 2025, with an option to extend the commitment period by three months subject to lender consent. The total loans available are constrained by the purchase price of assets for which the loans are being used to finance with such percentage based upon the depreciable cost of GPU servers.
All obligations under the DDTL 2.0 Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by the Company. Obligations outstanding under the DDTL 2.0 Facility are secured by perfected first priority pledges of and security interests in (i) the equity interests of CCAC IV held by its direct parent and (ii) substantially all of the assets of CCAC IV.
The DDTL 2.0 Facility contains covenants that restrict the ability of the Company and/or CCAC IV to incur or guarantee additional indebtedness; pay dividends and make other distributions or repurchase stock; make certain investments; create or incur liens; sell assets; enter into certain transactions with affiliates; and merge, consolidate or transfer or sell all or substantially all of its assets.
Interest on outstanding borrowings on the DDTL 2.0 Facility accrues at a rate per annum equal to either, at the Companys election, Term SOFR or the alternative base rate plus a spread based on the credit quality of the associated customer contracts. For specified investment-grade customers, the spread is equal to 6.00% for Term SOFR denominated loans and 5.00% for base rate denominated loans. For investment-grade customers, the spread is equal to 6.50% for Term SOFR loans and 5.50% for base rate loans. For non-investment-grade customer contracts, the spread is equal to 13.00% for Term SOFR loans and 12.00% for base rate loans.
The principal amount of the loans is required to be repaid in quarterly installments, beginning in October 2025, with the final balloon payment due on five years after the applicable loan was funded. The loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at the Companys option and are required to be prepaid upon the occurrence of an event of default or change of control of the Company, or incurrence of certain indebtedness. If the loans are prepaid prior to the 30-month anniversary of the loan commitment termination date, in addition to principal and accrued interest, the Company is required to pay an applicable premium equal to the present value of future interest payments that would have accrued through the 30-month anniversary of the loan commitment termination date based on the interest rate in effect.
As of December 31, 2024, the actual average interest rate being charged on the amounts borrowed against the DDTL 2.0 Facility was 10.53% and the total amount borrowed was $3.8 billion. The Company incurred deferred financing costs of $3 million and recorded debt discounts of $58 million related to the issuance of the DDTL 2.0 Facility. These costs are capitalized as a reduction to the outstanding debt balance on the consolidated balance sheets and are being amortized to interest expense over the term of the DDTL 2.0 Facility. Amortization of debt issuance costs and debt discounts was $5 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. The Company is required to maintain restricted cash equal to 2.00% of the drawn balance, totaling $77 million as of December 31, 2024. Additionally, the Company incurred undrawn fees totaling $4 million for the year ended December 31, 2024, which is recognized in interest expense, net in the consolidated statements of operations.
Revolving Credit Facility
On June 21, 2024, the Company entered into a credit agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as administrative agent and collateral agent. The credit agreement matures on June 21, 2027. The credit agreement originally provided for a $100 million senior revolving credit facility. On October 7, 2024, the credit agreement was amended to have a capacity of $650 million consisting of (i) a $500 million secured facility and (ii) a $150 million unsecured facility to support the expansion of the Companys data center infrastructure and AI-driven cloud computing operations. On December 2, 2024, the credit agreement was further amended to provide for the $650 million senior revolving credit facility to be fully secured (the Revolving Credit Facility). The Revolving Credit Facility includes a $175 million letter of credit sub-facility. As of December 31, 2024, the Company had not drawn on the Revolving Credit Facility.
F-41
Amounts borrowed under the Companys Revolving Credit Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at the Companys option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 0.75% plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate, (ii) the greater of (a) the federal funds effective rate and (b) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin of 1.75% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three or six month interest period. Additionally, the Company is required to pay a fee of 0.25% per annum on the average undrawn commitment. The Company may voluntarily prepay outstanding loans under its Revolving Credit Facility at any time without premium or penalty.
2024 Term Loan Facility
In December 2024, the Company entered into a credit agreement providing for a $1.0 billion term loan facility (the 2024 Term Loan Facility) consisting of (i) a $229 million secured facility and (ii) a $771 million unsecured facility. On December 16, 2024, the Company borrowed the full $1.0 billion of loans available under the agreement. The proceeds from the term loan facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and investments).
The Company incurred deferred financing costs related to the issuance of the 2024 Term Loan Facility of $16 million. These costs are capitalized as a reduction to the outstanding debt balance within Debt, current on the consolidated balance sheets and are being amortized to interest expense over the term of the 2024 Term Loan Facility. As of December 31, 2024, the unamortized deferred financing costs were $15 million.
The 2024 Term Loan Facility matures December 16, 2025. The Company may prepay at any time, from time to time, at its option, upon the occurrence of an event of default, or with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions, incurrences of indebtedness or equity issuances, including a requirement to be prepaid with some or all of the proceeds of an initial public offering. Amounts borrowed under the term loan facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at the Companys option, either (a) Term SOFR plus 5.25% for the first 180 days, 5.75% for the next 90 days, and 6.25% for the remainder of the term of the 2024 Term Loan Facility or (b) the alternative base rate (as described previously) plus 4.25% for the first 180 days, 4.75% for the next 90 days, and 5.25% for the remainder of the term of the 2024 Term Loan Facility. As of December 31, 2024, the actual interest rate being charged on the amounts borrowed against the 2024 Term Loan Facility was 9.65%. The 2024 Term Loan Facility contains customary affirmative and negative covenants.
OEM Financing Arrangements
The Company entered into various agreements with an OEM between February and December 2024 whereby the Company obtained financing for certain equipment with an aggregate notional balance of $1.3 billion as of December 31, 2024. Related to the financing agreements, the Company granted a security interest for the financed equipment. The agreements are accounted for as financing arrangements, with terms between two to three years. The financing arrangements have a stated repayment schedule over the term with effective interest rates between 9% to 11%. The Company did not incur any debt issuance costs associated with the financing arrangements. Interest expense for the year ended December 31, 2024 was $60 million.
DCSP Financing Arrangements
In June 2023, the Company entered into a service agreement with a data center service provider (the DCSP) (the DCSP Service Agreement). Under the DCSP Service Agreement, the DCSP will design, purchase, build, and manage a data center providing access to up to 78 MW of electrical power to be delivered in phases. Separately, during the year ended December 31, 2024, the Company purchased $116 million of critical infrastructure assets to support the data center site (the Existing Critical Infrastructure Assets).
F-42
In October 2024, the Company, as a lender, entered into a Senior Secured Delayed Draw Term Loan Credit Agreement (the Note Receivable, and collectively, with the DCSP Service Agreement, the DCSP Financing Arrangements) with the DCSP to facilitate the purchase of critical infrastructure assets. The Note Receivable agreement provides for a total commitment of up to $305 million in delayed draw term loan funding for a term of seven years with a stated interest rate of 13.00% per annum. The Company incurred an immaterial amount of fees in conjunction with the issuance of the Note Receivable.
The Note Receivable is secured by the new and existing critical infrastructure assets that support current and future phases of the build out at the data center and is prepayable at any time by the DCSP with no penalty.
During the year ended December 31, 2024, the DCSP borrowed under the Note Receivable to settle amounts previously advanced to the DCSP by the Company, finance purchases of additional critical infrastructure assets, and purchase the Existing Critical Infrastructure Assets. Under the terms of the DCSP Service Agreement, the Company continues to control the Existing Critical Infrastructure Assets and the Company recorded a financing obligation related to the consideration received for the Existing Critical Infrastructure Assets. The financing obligation is payable over a term of 14 years and has an imputed interest rate of 15%. The Existing Critical Infrastructure Assets are included in property and equipment, net, on the consolidated balance sheets and are depreciated over their estimated useful life.
As of December 31, 2024, the future contractual principal payments under the financing obligation due to the DCSP were as follows (in thousands):
Years Ending December 31, |
Contractual Principal Payments |
|||
2025 |
$ | 19,672 | ||
2026 |
19,658 | |||
2027 |
19,645 | |||
2028 |
19,630 | |||
2029 |
19,616 | |||
Thereafter |
175,800 | |||
|
|
|||
Total future payments |
274,021 | |||
Less: amount representing interest |
(158,081 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Total financing obligation |
$ | 115,940 | ||
Less: current portion |
(2,087 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Long-term portion |
$ | 113,853 | ||
|
|
The DCSP Financing Arrangements allow for the net settlement of amounts due between the parties and meet the criteria for right of setoff in accordance with ASC 210, Balance Sheet. As of December 31, 2024, the gross amount of the Note Receivable is $224 million, which is presented net of the financing obligation of $116 million. The accrued interest on the Note Receivable is forgiven if the DCSP achieves certain construction milestones in the first quarter of 2025. For the year ended December 31, 2024, the Company did not recognize any interest income as the Company does not expect to be entitled to the accrued interest. The total interest expense related to the financing obligation for the year ended December 31, 2024 was $3 million.
F-43
11. Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock and Stockholders Deficit
Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company had four and five classes of redeemable convertible preferred stock, respectively. As of December 31, 2023, redeemable convertible preferred stock consisted of the following (in thousands, except per share amounts):
Shares Authorized |
Shares Issued and Outstanding |
Issuance Price Per Share |
Carrying Value |
Aggregate Liquidation Preference |
||||||||||||||||
Series Seed |
60,000 | 48,896 | $ | 0.05 | $ | 2,205 | $ | 2,205 | ||||||||||||
Series A |
24,182 | 19,879 | 0.12 | 2,316 | 2,316 | |||||||||||||||
Series B |
79,979 | 75,496 | 5.58 | 455,996 | 421,001 | |||||||||||||||
Series B-1 |
12,485 | 10,407 | 0.40 | 4,173 | 4,173 | |||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total |
176,646 | 154,678 | $ | 464,690 | $ | 429,695 | ||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As of December 31, 2024, redeemable convertible preferred stock consisted of the following (in thousands, except per share amounts):
Shares Authorized |
Shares Issued and Outstanding |
Issuance Price Per Share |
Carrying Value |
Aggregate Liquidation Preference |
||||||||||||||||
Series Seed |
60,000 | 45,567 | $ | 0.05 | $ | 2,039 | $ | 2,039 | ||||||||||||
Series A |
24,182 | 19,361 | 0.12 | 2,256 | 2,256 | |||||||||||||||
Series B |
79,979 | 79,979 | 5.58 | 550,595 | 446,002 | |||||||||||||||
Series B-1 |
12,484 | 10,205 | 0.40 | 4,091 | 4,091 | |||||||||||||||
Series C |
29,523 | 29,523 | 38.95 | 1,163,130 | 1,163,671 | |||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Total |
206,169 | 184,635 | $ | 1,722,111 | $ | 1,618,059 | ||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In April 2023, the Company authorized a total of 79,978,760 shares of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock, with a par value of $0.000005 per share and an original issue price of $5.58 per share, pursuant to an amendment of the certificate of incorporation. Additionally, the Company issued a total of 12,484,540 shares of Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock, with a par value of $0.000005 per share to settle the outstanding principal and interest balance of the 2021 Unsecured Senior Subordinated Convertible Promissory Notes based on a conversion price, equal to the original issue price of $0.40 per share. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information.
During the year ended December 31, 2023, the Company issued 75,495,640 shares of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock for total gross proceeds of $421 million. At the time of the initial issuance, the Company granted an option to the lead investor, a related party, to purchase up to 40,348,040 shares of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock over a period of up to nine months, at the original issuance price of $5.58 per share. The Series B tranche liability was required to be recognized as a liability as it represented a contract to purchase redeemable equity. A portion of the proceeds of the original issuance was allocated to the initial recognition of the liability. The liability was subsequently remeasured to fair value with changes in fair value recognized in earnings through the settlement date. In May 2023, 35,864,920 shares of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock were issued upon exercise of the portion of the Series B tranche liability. In January 2024, 4,483,120 shares of Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock were issued upon exercise of the remaining portion of the Series B tranche liability. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company recognized a fair value adjustment loss of $105 million and no material gain or loss, respectively, on the remeasurement of the Series B tranche liability.
F-44
In May 2024, the Company issued 29,523,120 shares of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock with a par value of $0.000005 per share and an original issue price of $38.95 per share for total gross proceeds of $1.1 billion and incurred related issuance costs of $3 million.
The holders of the redeemable convertible preferred stock have the following rights, preferences, and privileges:
Voting
Except as provided by law or by the Companys certificate of incorporation, the holders of redeemable convertible preferred stock have full voting rights, equivalent to the voting rights of holders of common stock, as if converted. The preferred stockholders vote together as a single class, except as provided by law or by the Companys certificate of incorporation.
Dividends
Holders of the redeemable convertible preferred stock are entitled to participate in any dividends distributed to holders of common stock, as if converted.
Holders of the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock are entitled to a cumulative dividend that accrues from day-to-day at a rate of 10% per annum of the accumulated stated value, which is initially equal to $38.95 per share. Cumulative dividends are payable quarterly and can be paid in cash, or paid in kind by being added to the accumulated stated value preference. The holders of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock are entitled to receive the cumulative dividends prior and in preference to the payment of any other dividend. For the year ending December 31, 2024, the Company paid a total cash dividend of $59 million and a total PIK dividend, recognized at fair value, of $16 million. The PIK dividend payment increased the accumulated stated value of the Series C Redeemable Preferred Stock by $14 million, which is equivalent to the amount that would have been paid in cash. This increased value will be used to calculate future quarterly dividends payable.
Conversion
Each share of redeemable convertible preferred stock is convertible at any time at the election of the holder into Class A common stock. The conversion rate is determined by dividing the original issue price, or in the case of the Series C, the accumulated stated value plus accrued and unpaid dividends (without double counting), by the conversion price at the time of conversion, with the conversion price initially equal to the original issue price, subject to customary anti-dilutive adjustments for stock splits, dividends, and other applicable corporate events. As of December 31, 2023, each share of redeemable convertible preferred stock was convertible into one share of Class A common stock. As of December 31, 2024, each share of Series Seed, Series A, Series B and Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock was convertible into one share of Class A common stock and each share of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock was convertible into 1.0119 shares of Class A common stock.
Conversion is mandatory upon the occurrence of either: (i) an IPO at a price per share of at least $6.97 resulting in at least $125 million in proceeds to the Company, net of underwriting discount and commissions, or (ii) the election by the holders of a majority of the redeemable convertible preferred stock, voting together as a single class, provided that the consent of holders of at least 20% of the then-outstanding Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock is required with respect to the Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock, and the consent of holders of at least 90% of the then-outstanding Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock is required with respect to the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock if in connection with a Deemed Liquidation Event (as defined in the Companys certificate of incorporation) in which the holders of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock will receive consideration per share that is less than the accumulated stated value.
F-45
Liquidation Preference
In the event of any voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution, or winding up of the Company, or any Deemed Liquidation Event (including mergers or consolidations), (i) first, holders of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock are entitled to be paid out of any funds available for distribution, (ii) then, holders of Combined Series B Preferred Stock (Series B, Series B-1) are entitled to be paid out of any funds available for distribution, (iii) then, holders of Junior Preferred Stock (Series Seed, Series A) are entitled to be paid out of any funds available for distribution, and the holders of redeemable convertible preferred stock may elect to redeem their shares in the event the shares are not redeemed by the Company within 90 days of the consummation of such transactions, before any payments are made to holders of Junior Preferred Stock or common stock. Holders are entitled to the greater of: (x) the original issue price of such shares and in the case of the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock, the accumulated stated value plus accrued and unpaid dividends, or (y) the amount per share that would have been payable had all redeemable convertible preferred stock been converted immediately prior to the liquidation.
Optional Redemption
The holders have the option, but not the obligation, to force the Company to redeem their shares for a redemption price equal to the accumulated stated value per share plus accrued and unpaid dividends, with such option being accelerated upon the occurrence of a change of control. In the event the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock is converted upon an IPO, the holders will be entitled to redeem the common stock issued upon conversion of the Series C for $38.95 cash per share at the second anniversary of the first trading day after the IPO. The Company concluded that the redemption features were embedded within the respective shares of stock and were not required to be bifurcated because the redemption features would not meet the definition of a derivative if they were freestanding.
Protective Provisions
In addition to the rights and privileges listed for all redeemable convertible preferred stock, the Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock includes certain special rights, such as the ability to elect one member of the Companys Board of Directors (Board), and protective rights, such as the ability to veto an increase in the authorized number of shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock (Series B, Series B-1). Series C convertible preferred stock also includes protective rights, such as the ability to veto an increase in the authorized number of shares of Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock.
Classification of Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock
Although the Companys redeemable convertible preferred stock is not mandatorily redeemable, it is classified outside of stockholders deficit because it is contingently redeemable upon certain Deemed Liquidation Events outside the Companys control. Accordingly, redeemable convertible preferred stock is presented outside of permanent equity in the mezzanine section of the consolidated balance sheets. With the exception of the Series C, the redeemable convertible common stock is not being remeasured to redemption value because the redemption rights are contingently exercisable upon the occurrence of events that are not within the control of the holders, the contingent events were not deemed probable of occurring at any time during the periods presented, and therefore, the instruments were not deemed probable of becoming redeemable.
The holders of the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock are entitled to redeem their shares for cash on the date the put option becomes exercisable, without contingency. As a result, the carrying value of the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock is being accreted to its redemption value over the period from issuance to when the redemption option first becomes exercisable. The cumulative dividends on the Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock are accrued as dividend liabilities in the event the Company elects to settle in cash, or included in the calculation of the accretion to redemption value in the event the Company elects to settle the cumulative dividend in kind.
F-46
Common Stock
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company was authorized to issue 469,030,700 and 690,680,000 shares of common stock, respectively, with a par value of $0.000005 per share. As of December 31, 2023, the Company had one class of common stock. During the year ended December 31, 2024, the Companys certificate of incorporation was amended such that the Companys common stock consists of Class A common stock and Class B common stock. Common stockholders are entitled to receive any dividends if and when declared by the Board, and upon liquidation or dissolution, are also entitled to receive all assets legally available for distribution to stockholders, ratably in proportion to the number of shares held, subject to the rights of preferred stockholders. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, no dividends on the Companys common stock had been declared by the Board.
Voting
Holders of Class A common stock are entitled to one vote per share. Holders of Class B common stock are entitled to one vote per share prior to the completion of the Companys IPO. Upon the completion of the IPO, each share of Class B common stock will entitle the holder to ten votes per share. Holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock vote together as a single class, except where otherwise required by law.
Conversion
Shares of Class B common stock are convertible at any time at the option of the holder into shares of Class A common stock on a one-to-one basis. In addition, each share of Class B common stock will automatically convert into a share of Class A common stock, as a result of certain events, including upon a non-permitted sale or transfer. Further, upon certain events specified in the certificate of incorporation, all outstanding shares of Class B common stock will convert automatically into shares of Class A common stock. Class A common stock is not convertible into any other class of shares.
Dividend and Liquidation Rights
Both Class A common stock and Class B common stock participate equally in any dividends declared by the Company, subject to the rights of preferred stockholders. In the event of liquidation, dissolution, or winding up of the Company, holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock are entitled to share in any distribution of assets remaining after payment of liabilities, subject to the rights of preferred stockholders.
Treasury Stock
In October 2023, the Company agreed to repurchase 4,483,100 shares of callable Class A common stock at $7.15 per share in connection with shares issued pursuant to a stock purchase agreement with a customer. The aggregate purchase price of $32 million represented the approximate fair value of the shares, net of the fair value of the embedded call option, which was recorded as treasury stock on the consolidated balance sheets.
In May 2024, the Company repurchased 2,104,900 shares of callable Class A common stock that were legally issued to Conductor. This action settled the Companys liability to issue shares in connection with the business combination. Refer to Note 4Business Combination for additional information.
Stock Option Plan
In July 2019, the Company adopted a stock option plan (the 2019 Stock Option Plan or the Plan). The purpose of the Plan is to provide incentives to attract, retain, and motivate eligible persons whose potential contributions are important to the success of the Company by offering those eligible persons an opportunity to participate in the Companys future performance through the grant of awards of common stock. The total number
F-47
of shares authorized by the Board to be issued under the Plan are 66,637,600 and 73,637,600 shares as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively. In the event that shares previously issued under the Plan are reacquired by the Company pursuant to a forfeiture provision, right of first refusal, or repurchase by the Company, such shares shall be added back to the number of shares then available for issuance under the Plan. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, 11,061,240 and 3,750,480 shares, respectively, were available for issuance under the Plan.
The Company may grant stock options to employees, contractors, or other entities in order to incentivize them to increase their efforts on behalf of the Company and to promote the success of the Companys business. Stock options may be treated as incentive stock options or nonqualified stock options depending on the specific circumstances of an optionees relationship with the Company and the number of stock options vesting or exercised in a calendar year. Stock options granted under the Plan generally vest either over a three-year or four-year period. The Company may award stock options that are immediately exercisable, subject to a repurchase right. The Company may also grant stock options that allow for acceleration of vesting. The stock options granted under the Plan will expire after ten years from the time of their grant. The Company issues common stock upon the exercise of stock options.
The following table summarizes stock option activity under the Plan (share data and aggregate intrinsic value in thousands):
Stock Options Outstanding |
Weighted-Average Exercise Price |
Weighted-Average Remaining Contractual Term (Years) |
Aggregate Intrinsic Value |
|||||||||||||
Balance at January 1, 2023 |
32,655 | $ | 0.33 | 8 | $ | 20,770 | ||||||||||
Granted |
23,300 | 3.48 | ||||||||||||||
Exercised |
(4,337 | ) | 0.38 | |||||||||||||
Forfeited, expired, or canceled |
(379 | ) | 1.70 | |||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Outstanding at December 31, 2023 |
51,239 | $ | 1.75 | 8 | $ | 795,013 | ||||||||||
Granted |
| | ||||||||||||||
Exercised |
(2,872 | ) | 1.01 | |||||||||||||
Forfeited, expired, or canceled |
(1,148 | ) | 4.05 | |||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Outstanding at December 31, 2024 |
47,219 | $ | 1.74 | 7 | $ | 2,163,455 | ||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Vested and expected to vest at December 31, 2023 |
51,239 | $ | 1.75 | 8 | $ | 795,013 | ||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Vested and expected to vest at December 31, 2024 |
47,219 | $ | 1.74 | 7 | $ | 2,163,455 | ||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Exercisable at December 31, 2023 |
24,356 | $ | 0.37 | 6 | $ | 411,567 | ||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Exercisable at December 31, 2024 |
31,019 | $ | 0.98 | 6 | $ | 1,444,794 | ||||||||||
|
|
The Company did not grant any stock options during the year ended December 31, 2024.
The weighted-average grant date fair value of stock options granted during the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023 were $0.47 and $6.50 per share, respectively.
The aggregate grant date fair value of stock options vested during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024 were $2 million, $10 million, and $45 million, respectively.
F-48
The aggregate intrinsic value of stock options exercised during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024, was $0 million, $38 million, and $117 million, respectively. The intrinsic value for options exercised is the difference between the estimated fair value of the stock and the exercise price of the stock option at the date of exercise.
The Black-Scholes option-pricing model assumptions used to value the employee stock options at the grant dates were as follows, presented on a weighted-average basis except for the fair value of common stock which is presented on a range basis:
Year Ended December 31, 2022 |
Year Ended December 31, 2023 |
|||||||
Fair value of common stock |
$ | 0.55 - 0.99 | $ | 1.86 - 17.27 | ||||
Expected volatility |
97 | % | 58 | % | ||||
Expected term (in years) |
6 | 6 | ||||||
Risk-free interest rate |
4 | % | 4 | % | ||||
Expected dividend yield |
0 | % | 0 | % |
These assumptions and estimates were determined as follows:
Expected VolatilityAs there is no public market for the Companys common stock, the expected volatility was determined using the historical volatilities of publicly listed peer companies over a period equivalent to the expected term of the awards.
Expected TermThe expected term represents the period that the stock-based awards are expected to be outstanding. For option grants that are considered to be plain vanilla, the Company determines the expected term using the simplified method. The simplified method deems the term to be the average of the time-to-vesting and the contractual life of the stock options.
Risk-Free Interest RateThe risk-free interest rate is based on the implied yield available on U.S. Treasury zero-coupon issues with an equivalent expected term of the stock options at the time of grant.
Expected Dividend YieldThe expected dividend is assumed to be zero, as the Company has never paid dividends on its common stock and has no current plans to do so.
Fair Value Per Share of the Companys Common StockBecause the Companys common stock is not yet publicly traded, the Company must estimate the fair value of its common stock. The Board considers numerous objective and subjective factors to determine the fair value of the Companys common stock at each meeting in which awards are approved. The factors considered include, but are not limited to: (i) the results of contemporaneous independent third-party valuations of the Companys common stock, (ii) the prices, rights, preferences, and privileges of the Companys redeemable convertible preferred stock relative to those of its common stock, (iii) the lack of marketability of the Companys common stock, (iv) the Companys actual operating and financial performance and estimated trends and prospects for its future performance current business conditions and financial projections, (v) the likelihood of achieving a liquidity event, such as an IPO, direct listing, or sale of the Company, given prevailing market conditions; and (vi) precedent transactions involving the Companys shares.
F-49
Restricted Stock Units
RSUs granted typically vest over four years. The following table summarizes restricted stock unit activity under the Plan for the year ended December 31, 2024 (share data in thousands):
Shares | Weighted- Average Fair Value Per Share |
|||||||
Balance at January 1, 2024 |
| $ | | |||||
Granted |
15,733 | 38.56 | ||||||
Vested |
| | ||||||
Forfeited, expired, or canceled |
(278 | ) | 25.18 | |||||
|
|
|||||||
Unvested balance at December 31, 2024 |
15,455 | $ | 38.80 | |||||
|
|
Secondary Transactions
In December 2023, certain employee and non-employee stockholders of the Company (the 2023 Selling Stockholders) offered 41,476,000 shares of common stock (the 2023 Secondary Offering). The Company did not offer any shares of common stock in the 2023 Secondary Offering and did not receive any proceeds from the sale of the shares of common stock by the 2023 Selling Stockholders. The 2023 Secondary Offering was conducted and led by a new investor and was determined to be an arms-length transaction at fair value. Accordingly, the Company did not record any compensation cost associated with the 2023 Secondary Offering. The Company incurred no costs in relation to the 2023 Secondary Offering for the year ended December 31, 2023. The Company received less than $1 million in cash (excluding withholding taxes) in connection with the exercise of 1,125,500 options by certain stockholders participating in the 2023 Secondary Offering. In conjunction with the 2023 Secondary Offering, 11,103,380 shares of Series Seed redeemable convertible preferred stock, 3,896,180 shares of Series A redeemable convertible preferred stock, and 2,077,980 shares of Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock were converted to the equivalent number of shares of common stock to be included in the offering.
In October 2024, certain employees and non-employee stockholders of the Company (the 2024 Selling Stockholders) offered 13,851,240 shares of Class A common stock to new and existing investors at a purchase price of $46.99 per share, equal to the estimated fair value of the stock at the time of the transaction (the 2024 Secondary Offering). The Company did not offer any shares of common stock in the 2024 Secondary Offering and did not receive any proceeds from the sale of the shares of common stock by the 2024 Selling Stockholders. The 2024 Secondary Offering was determined to be an arms-length transaction at fair value. Accordingly, the Company did not record any compensation cost associated with the 2024 Secondary Offering. The Company incurred no costs in relation to the 2024 Secondary Offering for the year ended December 31, 2024. The Company received $1 million in cash (excluding withholding taxes) in connection with the exercise of 1,368,680 options by certain stockholders participating in the 2024 Secondary Offering. In conjunction with the 2024 Secondary Offering, 3,329,540 shares of Series Seed redeemable convertible preferred stock, 518,060 shares of Series A redeemable convertible preferred stock, 201,420 shares of Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock, and 1,067,020 shares of Class B common stock were converted to the equivalent number of shares of Class A common stock to be included in the offering.
Stock-Based Compensation Expense
As of December 31, 2024, unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to unvested stock options was $91 million, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of three years.
As of December 31, 2024, unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to unvested RSUs was $600 million, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of two years.
F-50
The Company will record cumulative stock-based compensation expense related to the RSUs with performance-based vesting conditions in the period when its liquidity event is completed for the portion of the awards for which the relevant service condition has been satisfied with the remaining expense recognized over the remaining service period. If the effectiveness of a registration statement had occurred on December 31, 2024, the Company would have recorded $78 million of stock-based compensation expense related to these RSUs.
Total stock-based compensation expense recognized in the Companys consolidated statements of operations was as follows (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 133 | $ | 694 | $ | 1,307 | ||||||
Technology and infrastructure |
624 | 7,100 | 10,137 | |||||||||
Sales and marketing |
74 | 1,740 | 3,408 | |||||||||
General and administrative |
659 | 5,620 | 16,635 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total stock-based compensation expense |
$ | 1,490 | $ | 15,154 | $ | 31,487 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
12. Income Taxes
The components of the net loss before the provision for (benefit from) income taxes were as follows (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Domestic |
$ | (35,016 | ) | $ | (558,047 | ) | $ | (743,667 | ) | |||
Foreign |
| | (534 | ) | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss before the provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
$ | (35,016 | ) | $ | (558,047 | ) | $ | (744,201 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The provision (benefit) for income taxes consists of the following (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Current: |
||||||||||||
Federal |
$ | (1,664 | ) | $ | | $ | | |||||
State |
(226 | ) | | 6,306 | ||||||||
Foreign |
| | 155 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total current income tax expense (benefit) |
(1,890 | ) | | 6,461 | ||||||||
Deferred: |
||||||||||||
Federal |
(1,697 | ) | 35,765 | 109,010 | ||||||||
State |
(563 | ) | (64 | ) | 3,196 | |||||||
Foreign |
| | 580 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total deferred income tax expense (benefit) |
(2,260 | ) | 35,701 | 112,786 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total provision for (benefit from) income taxes |
$ | (4,150 | ) | $ | 35,701 | $ | 119,247 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
F-51
The following table presents the reconciliation of the statutory federal income tax rate to the Companys effective tax rate:
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
U.S. federal tax benefit at statutory rate |
21.0 | % | 21.0 | % | 21.0 | % | ||||||
State income taxes, net of federal benefit |
4.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | |||||||||
Stock-based compensation |
(0.4 | ) | 0.5 | 1.9 | ||||||||
Foreign tax rate differential |
| | (0.1 | ) | ||||||||
Convertible interest |
(0.7 | ) | (0.2 | ) | (0.2 | ) | ||||||
Change in valuation allowance, net |
(9.5 | ) | (7.7 | ) | (17.5 | ) | ||||||
Derivative liabilities |
(3.0 | ) | (20.2 | ) | (21.4 | ) | ||||||
General business credit - federal |
0.1 | 0.2 | 0.3 | |||||||||
Other |
0.3 | (0.1 | ) | (0.2 | ) | |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Effective tax rate |
11.9 | % | (6.4 | )% | (16.1 | )% | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Deferred income taxes reflect the net tax effects of temporary differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities for financial reporting purposes and the amounts used for income tax purposes. The Companys deferred tax assets and liabilities as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, were as follows (in thousands):
December 31, 2023 |
December 31, 2024 |
|||||||
Deferred tax assets: |
||||||||
Net operating losses |
$ | 200,057 | $ | 766,434 | ||||
Lease liabilities |
112,634 | 540,405 | ||||||
Capitalized research and development expenditures |
13,637 | 24,498 | ||||||
Deferred revenue |
1,054 | 309,264 | ||||||
Accrued liabilities and reserves |
| 2,811 | ||||||
Interest expense carryforward |
| 61,443 | ||||||
Research and development credits, net of reserve |
1,252 | 3,244 | ||||||
Stock-based compensation |
2,135 | 7,593 | ||||||
Other |
650 | 2,907 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total deferred tax assets |
331,419 | 1,718,599 | ||||||
Valuation allowance |
(47,717 | ) | (180,529 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Deferred tax assets, net of valuation allowance |
283,702 | 1,538,070 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Deferred tax liabilities: |
||||||||
Property and equipment |
(207,054 | ) | (1,147,258 | ) | ||||
Intangible assets |
(1,446 | ) | (969 | ) | ||||
Operating and financing ROU assets |
(111,649 | ) | (539,075 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total deferred tax liabilities |
(320,149 | ) | (1,687,302 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Net deferred tax liabilities, net of valuation allowance |
$ | (36,447 | ) | $ | (149,232 | ) | ||
|
|
|
|
ASC 740, Income Taxes requires that the tax benefit of net operating losses (NOL), temporary differences, and credit carryforwards be recorded as an asset to the extent that management assesses that realization is more likely than not. Realization of the future tax benefits is dependent on the Companys ability to generate sufficient taxable income within the carryforward period. Because of the Companys recent history of operating losses, management believes that recognition of the deferred tax assets arising from the above-mentioned future tax benefits is currently not likely to be realized and, accordingly, a valuation allowance has been provided by the Company against federal and state deferred tax assets.
F-52
The valuation allowance increased year over year by $44 million and $133 million during the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively.
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company had $933 million and $3.6 billion, respectively, in federal NOL carryforwards to offset future taxable income, almost all of which can be carried forward indefinitely. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company had state NOL carryforwards of $57 million and $61 million, respectively, of which $19 million and $30 million, respectively, can be carried forward indefinitely. If the NOL carryforwards are not utilized, $38 million and $31 million, respectively, will expire in varying amounts between the years 2032 and 2044. As of December 31, 2024, the Company had foreign NOL carryforwards to offset future taxable income of $5 million that can be carried forward indefinitely.
As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, the Company had insignificant amounts of federal and state tax credit carryforwards available to offset future taxable income.
A limitation may apply to the use of the net operating loss and credit carryforwards, under provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, and similar state tax provisions that are applicable if the Company experiences an ownership change under Section 382. For example, an ownership change may occur as a result of the issuance of new equity or certain shareholder transactions. Should these limitations apply, the carryforwards would be subject to an annual limitation, resulting in a potential reduction in the gross deferred tax assets before considering the valuation allowance.
The Company experienced a Section 382 ownership change during the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, and determined that these changes did not materially impact the availability of its NOL carryforwards for use in the future.
The Company is subject to income taxes in the United States, California, and other various domestic and international jurisdictions. The U.S., state, and foreign jurisdictions have statutes of limitations that generally range from three to five years. Fiscal years outside of the normal statute of limitation remain open to audit by tax authorities due to tax attributes generated in those early years, which have been carried forward and may be audited in subsequent years when utilized. We are not aware of any ongoing examinations.
Due to differing interpretations of tax laws and regulations, tax authorities may dispute the Companys tax filing positions. The Company periodically evaluates the exposures associated with tax filing positions and will reserve amounts, if needed, for adjustments that may result from tax examinations.
The Companys total amount of unrecognized tax benefits is insignificant, and did not change materially during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Recognition of the unrecognized tax benefits would not have an impact on the effective tax as they are recorded as deferred tax assets which are subject to a full valuation allowance. The Company does not anticipate any significant change in its uncertain tax positions within the next 12 months.
F-53
13. Net Loss Per Share Attributable to Common Stockholders
The following table sets forth the computation of basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders for the periods presented (in thousands, except per share data):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Numerator: |
||||||||||||
Net loss from continuing operations |
$ | (30,866 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (863,448 | ) | |||
Net loss from discontinued operations |
(189 | ) | | | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss |
(31,055 | ) | (593,748 | ) | (863,448 | ) | ||||||
Dividends and accretion on Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock |
| | (74,317 | ) | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (31,055 | ) | $ | (593,748 | ) | $ | (937,765 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Denominator: |
||||||||||||
Weighted-average shares used in computing net loss attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
180,632 | 192,164 | 217,854 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss from continuing operations per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (0.17 | ) | $ | (3.09 | ) | $ | (4.30 | ) | |||
Net loss from discontinued operations per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
0.00 | | | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (0.17 | ) | $ | (3.09 | ) | $ | (4.30 | ) | |||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The number of securities that were excluded from the calculation of diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders for the periods presented because including them would have been anti-dilutive are as follows (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, |
||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock |
83,775 | 154,678 | 184,986 | |||||||||
Outstanding convertible notes |
22,773 | 24,544 | | |||||||||
Outstanding stock options |
32,655 | 51,239 | 47,219 | |||||||||
Outstanding warrants to purchase common stock |
2,082 | 4,337 | 4,337 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total |
141,285 | 234,798 | 236,542 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
The table above does not include 15,454,720 RSUs outstanding as of December 31, 2024 as these awards are subject to a performance condition that was not considered probable as of that date. There were no RSUs outstanding as of December 31, 2022 or 2023. The table also does not include 2,104,900 and 0 contingently issuable shares related to the Conductor acquisition as of December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively, as the contingency had not been met as of those dates.
14. Related-Party Transactions
The Company has entered into a series of related party arrangements as described below.
The Company has entered into certain transactions, as further described below, with Magnetar Financial LLC (Magnetar) and certain funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, and such funds or accounts collectively held a significant equity interest in the Company.
F-54
Senior Secured Notes
In October 2021, the Company issued $20 million of 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes to funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, with a maturity date in 2025. The principal amount increased to $50 million in April 2022. In September 2024, these notes were converted into shares of the Companys Class A common stock. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information. In connection with the issuance of the 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes, the Company granted Magnetar an option to purchase up to $15 million in the Companys Class A common stock, at a price equal to the price per share in the Companys IPO, which is exercisable until the one-year anniversary of such offering of the Companys Class A common stock. In September 2024, the investors elected to convert all 2021 Convertible Senior Secured Notes, resulting in the issuance of 24,543,980 shares of Class A common stock.
Between October 2022 and April 2023, the Company issued $125 million of 2022 Senior Secured Notes with maturity dates between October 2025 and April 2026 to funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar, along with warrants to purchase 12,144,668 shares of the Companys Class A common stock. In July 2024, the Company redeemed these notes in full, paying $137 million. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information. In connection with the issuance of the 2022 Senior Secured Notes, the Company granted Magnetar the right to purchase up to 5% of the Companys Class A common stock issued at a price equal to the price per share in the Companys IPO.
Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock Financing
Between April 2023 and May 2024, the Company issued a number of shares of different classes of redeemable convertible preferred stock, some of which were acquired by certain of the Companys directors, holders of more than 5% of the Companys outstanding capital stock, and their affiliates or funds or accounts managed thereby. Refer to Note 11Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock and Stockholders Deficit for additional information.
Tender Offer
In December 2023, employees and certain stockholders of the Company offered 41,476,000 shares of common stock, which were purchased by certain existing stockholders and new stockholders. Entities managed or advised by a single stockholder participated in the tender offer as purchasers. Upon completion of the tender offer, these entities were deemed to beneficially own more than 5% of the Companys outstanding shares of capital stock, on an aggregated basis.
In October 2024, employees and certain stockholders of the Company offered 13,851,240 shares of Class A common stock, which were purchased by certain existing stockholders and new stockholders. Entities managed or advised by a single stockholder participated in the tender offer as purchasers. Upon completion of the tender offer, these entities were deemed to beneficially own more than 5% of the Companys outstanding shares of capital stock, on an aggregated basis.
Delayed Draw Term Loan Facilities
In July 2023, a subsidiary of the Company entered into the DDTL 1.0 Facility of $2.3 billion, including $520 million from funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar. As of December 31, 2023 and 2024, $311 million and $438 million in aggregate principal amount, respectively, of the DDTL 1.0 Facility was outstanding and held by funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar. The Company has paid to funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar $0 million and $63 million in principal and incurred $6 million and $66 million in interest expense for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information.
F-55
In May 2024, a different subsidiary of the Company entered into the DDTL 2.0 Facility of up to $7.6 billion, including $210 million from funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar. As of December 31, 2024, $106 million of the DDTL 2.0 Facility was outstanding and held by funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar. The Company paid to funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar $0 million in principal and incurred $3 million in interest expense for the year ended December 31, 2024. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information.
Strategic Investment Related to a Purchase of Series D Preferred Stock
In June 2024, the Company contributed $50 million to a fund managed by Magnetar in connection with the funds purchase of a third-partys preferred stock. The Company has the right to request a distribution in kind of up to 99% of its interest in the fund, which will be satisfied by distributing shares of the third-party companys preferred stock. The fund did not meet the definition of a VIE, and under the VOE model, the Company has a majority equity interest and has control over significant operating, financial, and investing decisions of the fund. The Company consolidated the fund and accounted for the purchased preferred stock as privately held equity securities that do not have a readily determinable fair value measured at cost, with subsequent adjustments for observable price changes or impairments.
To the extent there is an in-kind distribution of the third-partys preferred stock to the Company and following such distribution the Company sells any shares of such preferred stock (or any securities into which such stock is converted or exchanged), the Company will allocate the net proceeds from such sale as follows: (i) 100% of the net proceeds to the Company until it receives an amount equal to its aggregate capital contribution and (ii) thereafter, 75% of the net proceeds to the Company and 25% to an affiliate of Magnetar.
Other Transactions
In August 2024, the Company entered into an AI Computing Service Reserved Capacity and Prepayment Agreement with MagAI Ventures (the MagAI Capacity Agreement). Under this agreement, the Company will provide portfolio companies of MagAI Ventures with a pre-determined amount of cloud computing services at a pre-negotiated hourly rate. The specific amount of cloud computing services, inclusive of the capacity and term, to be used by each portfolio company, if any, will be negotiated individually with each portfolio company, and will be subject to final approval by MagAI Ventures. The Company received a refundable deposit of $230 million in connection with the MagAI Capacity Agreement. Any consumption of cloud services by MagAI Ventures, including by their portfolio companies, under this arrangement is deducted from this deposit amount, with the unused portion refunded back to MagAI Ventures at the end of the term of the arrangement. Throughout the term of the arrangement, if MagAI Ventures portfolio companies do not contract for the full amount of the pre-determined cloud computing services, the Company may agree with MagAI Ventures to instead use this available capacity for other customers, and share profits with MagAI Ventures for any revenues realized above the revenues that would have been generated by charging these customers the MagAI Ventures pre-negotiated rate.
Additionally, the MagAI Capacity Agreement provides for certain termination options for MagAI Ventures, including if a specified amount of capacity is not available by a target commencement date. The MagAI Capacity Agreement runs for an initial period of four years, with an option for MagAI Ventures to extend for two additional years. As of December 31, 2024, the refundable deposit is included within other current liabilities on the consolidated balance sheet, as no services had yet been provided under this arrangement. In February 2025, the MagAI Capacity Agreement was amended to provide certain termination for convenience rights to MagAI Ventures. Upon such termination, the unused portion of deposit will be refunded with a specified multiplier.
In September 2024, the Company entered into an equity exchange right agreement with each of its co-founders. This agreement grants each co-founder the right, but not the obligation, to exchange shares of Class A common stock received upon the exercise or settlement of equity awards for shares of Class B common
F-56
stock. This right applies to equity awards previously granted to the Companys co-founders and to equity awards that may be granted to the Companys co-founders in the future.
15. Geographic Information
Revenue by geography is based on the address of the customer as specified in the Companys customer contracts. The following table sets forth revenue by geographic area (in thousands):
Year ended December 31, | ||||||||||||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 | ||||||||||
United States |
$ | 10,367 | $ | 200,469 | $ | 1,797,268 | ||||||
All other countries* |
5,463 | 28,474 | 118,158 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Total revenue |
$ | 15,830 | $ | 228,943 | $ | 1,915,426 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
* | The United Kingdom accounted for 18% of total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2022 and less than 10% of revenue for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024. |
The Companys long-lived assets are attributed to a country based on the physical location of the assets. It defines long-lived assets as property and equipment and operating lease right-of-use assets because many of these assets cannot be readily moved and are relatively illiquid, subjecting them to geographic risk.
As of December 31, 2023 substantially all of the Companys long-lived assets were located in the United States. As of December 31, 2024, 90% of the Companys long-lived assets were located in the United States and no other single country accounted for more than 10% of these assets.
16. Discontinued Operations
Blockchain Mining and Management Services
On September 30, 2022, the Company ceased its Blockchain Mining and Management Services due to changes in Ethereums reward policy, which materially impacted potential future mining revenues, and concentrated its focus to its cloud computing business. This strategic shift resulted in the classification of the Blockchain Mining and Management business as discontinued operations in the Companys financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2022.
Blockchain mining utilized the Companys computing capacity to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily Ethereum, under arrangements where rewards were received as digital assets and immediately converted to U.S. dollars. All digital assets mined were liquidated in 2022, and the Company held no digital assets as of December 31, 2022. Management Services involved hosting and operational support for customers engaged in blockchain mining, with revenues derived through reimbursement agreements and revenue sharing. These activities are not present in subsequent periods, and there are no discontinued operations for any subsequent periods.
F-57
The following table summarizes the net loss from discontinued operations (in thousands):
Year ended December 31, 2022 |
||||
Blockchain and management services revenue |
$ | 9,692 | ||
Operating expenses |
||||
Cost of revenue |
3,138 | |||
Equipment disposal gain |
(99 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Operating income |
6,653 | |||
Fair value adjustments of trading securities |
(2,088 | ) | ||
Assets impairment loss |
(4,510 | ) | ||
Other (income) expense, net |
(300 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Loss from discontinued operations before income tax |
(245 | ) | ||
Income tax benefit |
(56 | ) | ||
|
|
|||
Net loss from discontinued operations, net of tax |
$ | (189 | ) |
The following table summarizes the statements of cash flows of the discontinued operations (in thousands):
Year ended December 31, 2022 |
||||
Operating activities |
||||
Net loss |
$ | (189 | ) | |
Adjustments to reconcile net (loss) income to net cash from operating activities |
||||
Depreciation |
1,428 | |||
Noncash lease expense |
6 | |||
Assets impairment |
4,510 | |||
Equipment disposal gain |
(99 | ) | ||
Fair value adjustments of trading securities |
2,088 | |||
Realized loss on trading securities |
300 | |||
Increase in digital currency from mining and management services |
(9,692 | ) | ||
Changes in operating assets and liabilities: |
||||
Prepaid and other current assets |
115 | |||
Proceeds from sale of digital currency |
9,692 | |||
|
|
|||
Net cash provided by discontinued operating activities |
$ | 8,159 | ||
|
|
|||
Investing activities |
||||
Proceeds from sales of trading securities |
866 | |||
Proceeds from sale of property and equipment |
207 | |||
|
|
|||
Cash flows provided by investing activities of discontinued operations |
$ | 1,073 | ||
|
|
17. Subsequent Events
The Company has evaluated subsequent events through March 3, 2025, the date the consolidated financial statements were issued, and with respect to the stock split, described in Note 1, through March 19, 2025.
In January 2025, the Company drew $50 million on the Revolving Credit Facility.
In January 2025, the Company entered into various additional financing agreements with an OEM. The financing agreements have an aggregate notional balance of $160 million. Related to the financing agreements, the Company granted a security interest for the financed equipment. The financing arrangements have a term of two years.
F-58
In February 2025, the Company borrowed an additional $473 million under the DDTL 2.0 Facility, bringing the total borrowings on the DDTL 2.0 Facility to $4.3 billion. Refer to Note 10Debt for additional information.
In February and March 2025, the Company entered into new agreements to lease additional space. The Company expects to make approximately $3.4 billion of additional rent payments over the next 15 years related to the leases.
In February 2025, the Company modified multiple lease agreements with a single landlord. The modifications changed the contracted power capacity, term, and contractual payments, and terminated the related escrow agreements. As a result of the modification, the Company will receive an additional 70 MW of contracted power capacity. The Company received a refund of $304 million of unused escrow funds previously included within other non-current assets, and expects to make approximately $1.7 billion of additional rent payments over the 13 year term of these leases.
In February 2025, the Company entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weights and Biases, Inc., an AI developer platform. The purchase price is anticipated to be payable primarily in approximately 20,400,000 shares of the Companys Class A common stock. Given the timing of the acquisition, it is not practicable to disclose information regarding the final purchase price, purchase price allocation, or other related disclosure at this time.
Note 18. Subsequent Events (Unaudited)
The Company has evaluated subsequent events from the date the consolidated financial statements were originally issued on March 3, 2025 through March 19, 2025, the date the consolidated financial statements were reissued.
In March 2025, the Company entered into a Master Services Agreement (the OpenAI Master Services Agreement) with OpenAI, pursuant to which the Company provides OpenAI access to cloud computing capacity through fulfillment of reserved capacity orders submitted to the Company by OpenAI. As of March 11, 2025, subject to the satisfaction of delivery and availability of service requirements, OpenAI has committed to pay the Company up to approximately $11.9 billion through October 2030. Under the outstanding order under the OpenAI Master Services Agreement, the Company has established a special purpose vehicle that will hold the infrastructure, and the Company intends for the special purpose vehicle to incur indebtedness to finance its obligations under the OpenAI Master Services Agreement. Additionally, the Company has agreed to issue to OpenAI, in accordance with the terms of the OpenAI Master Services Agreement and pursuant to a stock issuance agreement (the OpenAI Stock Issuance Agreement) with OpenAI, a number of shares of the Companys Class A common stock equal to $350.0 million valued at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price. The issuance of the shares in a private placement is contingent upon the completion of this offering. Any revenue recognized under the OpenAI Master Service Agreement will be offset by the value of the shares issued under the OpenAI Stock Issuance Agreement.
In March 2025, the Company entered into a credit agreement (the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement) with Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as administrative agent, the guarantors party thereto, and the lenders party thereto, providing for a $300 million unsecured term loan facility (the 2025 Term Loan Facility). The obligations under the 2025 Term Loan Facility are unconditionally guaranteed by the subsidiary guarantors as described in the 2025 Term Loan Credit Agreement. Amounts borrowed under the 2025 Term Loan Facility may only be borrowed in a single funding. There have been no borrowings under the 2025 Term Loan Facility as of March 19, 2025. The proceeds of the 2025 Term Loan Facility may be used for working capital and general corporate purposes (including the financing of acquisitions and other investments). The 2025 Term Loan Facility will mature on December 16, 2025. Amounts borrowed under the 2025 Term Loan Facility are subject to an interest rate per annum equal to, at the Companys option, either (a) for base rate loans, an applicable margin of 0.75% plus a base rate (subject to a 1.00% floor) determined by reference to the highest of (i) the prime rate,
F-59
(ii) the greater of (A) the federal funds effective rate and (B) the overnight bank funding rate, in each case, plus 0.50%, and (iii) the one month term SOFR plus 1.00% or (b) for term benchmark loans, an applicable margin of 1.75% plus the term SOFR (subject to a 0.00% floor) for a one, three, or six month interest period plus, in the case of either of clauses (a) or (b), a fee of 2.25% payable to the lenders thereof. Once drawn, the loans are prepayable at any time, from time to time, at the Companys option, and are required to be prepaid with the proceeds of certain asset dispositions, incurrences of indebtedness or equity issuances, including a requirement to be prepaid with some or all of the proceeds of this offering. All unfunded commitments of the lenders under the 2025 Term Loan Facility shall terminate upon the earlier to occur of (i) April 7, 2025 and (ii) the closing of this offering.
In March 2025, the Company entered into agreements to lease additional space. The Company expects to make approximately $497 million of additional rent payments over the next 12 years related to the leases.
In March 2025, the Company entered into a lease agreement for various buildings located at a single site intended to be used as data centers. The agreement provides access to 133 MW of electrical power, which is expected to be delivered in phases in 2026. The Company will make contractual rent payments based on construction costs incurred by the lessor. The total contractual rent payments range from $3.8 billion to $4.8 billion over the next 15 years term related to this lease.
In March 2025, the Company entered into various additional financing agreements with an OEM. The financing agreements have an aggregate notional balance of $41 million. The financing arrangements have a term of 2 years. The Company granted a security interest for the financed equipment.
In March 2025, the Companys Board of Directors approved the 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the 2025 Plan), which will become effective in connection with the IPO. A total of 50,000,000 shares of the Companys Class A common stock has been reserved for issuance in connection with the 2025 Plan.
In March 2025, the Companys Board of Directors approved the 2025 Employee Stock Purchased Plan (the 2025 ESPP), which will both become effective in connection with the IPO. A total of 10,000,000 shares of the Companys Class A common stock has been reserved for issuance in connection with the 2025 ESPP.
Subsequent to December 31, 2024, the Companys board of directors approved grants of 8,753,320 RSUs. Based on the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, the Company currently estimates that the unrecognized stock-based compensation expense related to these RSUs will be approximately $450 million. This estimate is preliminary, subject to change, and may differ materially from the final amount recognized depending on factors such as the actual offering price and other valuation inputs.
F-60
49,000,000 Shares
CoreWeave, Inc.
Class A Common Stock
MORGAN STANLEY | J.P. MORGAN | GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. LLC | ||
BARCLAYS | CITIGROUP | MUFG |
DEUTSCHE BANK SECURITIES | JEFFERIES | MIZUHO | WELLS FARGO SECURITIES | BOFA SECURITIES |
GUGGENHEIM SECURITIES | M. KLEIN & COMPANY | MACQUARIE CAPITAL | ||||
NEEDHAM & COMPANY | SANTANDER | STIFEL | GALAXY DIGITAL |
PART II
INFORMATION NOT REQUIRED IN PROSPECTUS
Item 13. Other Expenses of Issuance and Distribution.
The following table sets forth all costs and expenses to be paid by the Registrant, other than underwriting discounts and commissions, in connection with the sale of Class A common stock being registered hereby. All amounts shown are estimates except for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration fee, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) filing fee and the listing fee:
Amount Paid or to be Paid |
||||
SEC registration fee |
$ | 474,496 | ||
FINRA filing fee |
225,500 | |||
Nasdaq listing fee |
295,000 | |||
Printing and engraving expenses |
840,000 | |||
Legal fees and expenses |
7,500,000 | |||
Accounting fees and expenses |
18,000,000 | |||
Transfer agent and registrar fees and expenses |
3,500 | |||
Miscellaneous expenses |
261,505 | |||
|
|
|||
Total |
$ | 27,600,000 | ||
|
|
Item 14. Indemnification of Directors and Officers.
Section 145 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the DGCL) authorizes a court to award, or a corporations board of directors to grant, indemnity to directors and officers under certain circumstances and subject to certain limitations. The terms of Section 145 of the DGCL are sufficiently broad to permit indemnification under certain circumstances for liabilities, including reimbursement of expenses incurred, arising under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act).
As permitted by the DGCL, the Registrants amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering contains provisions that eliminate the personal liability of its directors and officers for monetary damages for any breach of fiduciary duties as a director or officer, except liability for the following:
| any breach of the directors or officers duty of loyalty to the Registrant or its stockholders; |
| acts or omissions not in good faith or that involve intentional misconduct or a knowing violation of law; |
| under Section 174 of the DGCL (regarding unlawful dividends and stock purchases); |
| any transaction from which the director or officer derived an improper personal benefit; and |
| with respect to officers, any action by or in the right of the corporation. |
As permitted by the DGCL, the Registrants amended and restated bylaws to be effective upon the completion of this offering, provide that:
| the Registrant is required to indemnify its directors and executive officers to the fullest extent permitted by the DGCL, subject to very limited exceptions; |
| the Registrant may indemnify its other employees and agents as set forth in the DGCL; |
II-1
| the Registrant is required to advance expenses, as incurred, to its directors and executive officers in connection with a legal proceeding to the fullest extent permitted by the DGCL, subject to very limited exceptions; and |
| the rights conferred in the amended and restated bylaws are not exclusive. |
Prior to completion of this offering, the Registrant intends to enter into indemnification agreements with each of its then-current directors and executive officers to provide these directors and executive officers additional contractual assurances regarding the scope of the indemnification set forth in its amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws and to provide additional procedural protections. There is no pending litigation or proceeding involving a director or executive officer of the Registrant for which indemnification is sought. The indemnification provisions in its amended and restated certificate of incorporation, amended and restated bylaws, and the indemnification agreements entered into or to be entered into between the Registrant and each of its directors and executive officers may be sufficiently broad to permit indemnification of the directors and executive officers for liabilities arising under the Securities Act.
The Registrant currently carries liability insurance for its directors and officers.
Certain of the Registrants directors are also indemnified by their employers with regard to service on the Registrants board of directors.
In addition, the underwriting agreement filed as Exhibit 1.1 to this registration statement provides for indemnification by the underwriters of the Registrant and its officers and directors for certain liabilities arising under the Securities Act, or otherwise.
Item 15. Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities.
Since March 15, 2022, the Registrant has issued and sold the following securities:
| In May 2024, the Registrant sold an aggregate 29,523,120 shares of its Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock to 46 accredited investors at a purchase price of $38.96 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.15 billion. |
| In April 2023, the Registrant sold an aggregate of 10,406,560 shares of its Series B-1 redeemable convertible preferred stock to 19 accredited investors at a purchase price of $0.41 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $4 million. |
| Between April 2023 and January 2024, the Registrant sold an aggregate of 79,978,760 shares of its Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock to 25 accredited investors at a purchase price of $5.58 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $446 million. |
| In October 2022, the Registrant issued warrants to purchase up to 4,337,386 shares of its Class A common stock to nine accredited investors at an exercise price of $4.33 per share and warrants to purchase up to 7,807,282 shares of its Class A common stock to 9 accredited investors at an exercise price of $0.0005 per share. |
| The Registrant granted stock options to its directors, officers, employees, consultants, and other service providers to purchase an aggregate of 32,387,120 shares of its Class A common stock under the 2019 Plan with per share exercise prices ranging from $0.55 to $15.50, and the Registrant issued 8,254,640 shares of its Class A common stock upon exercise of stock options under its 2019 Plan. |
| The Registrant granted to its directors, officers, employees, consultants, and other service providers an aggregate of 24,486,280 RSUs to be settled in shares of its Class A common stock under the 2019 Plan. |
Unless otherwise stated, the sales of the above securities were deemed to be exempt from registration under the Securities Act in reliance upon Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act (or Regulation D or Regulation S promulgated thereunder), or Rule 701 promulgated under Section 3(b) of the Securities Act as transactions by an
II-2
issuer not involving any public offering or pursuant to benefit plans and contracts relating to compensation as provided under Rule 701. The recipients of the securities in each of these transactions represented their intentions to acquire the securities for investment only and not with a view to or for sale in connection with any distribution thereof, and appropriate legends were placed upon the stock certificates issued in these transactions.
Item 16. Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules.
(a) | Exhibits. |
Exhibit Number |
Description of Document | |
1.1 | ||
3.1 | ||
3.2 | ||
3.3+ | Second Amended and Restated Bylaws of CoreWeave, Inc., as currently in effect. | |
3.4 | ||
4.1 | ||
4.2+ | ||
4.3+ | ||
4.4+ | Form of Penny Warrant between CoreWeave, Inc. and funds or accounts managed or advised by Magnetar. | |
4.5^+ | ||
4.6 | ||
5.1 | ||
10.1#+ | ||
10.2# | CoreWeave, Inc. 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended, and related form agreements. | |
10.3# | CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan and related form agreements. | |
10.4# | CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Employee Stock Purchase Plan and related form agreements. | |
10.5#+ | ||
10.6# | ||
10.7^+ | Office Lease, between CoreWeave, Inc. and Livingston Circle Associates, dated March 29, 2024. | |
10.8^+ |
II-3
Exhibit Number |
Description of Document | |
10.9+ | ||
10.10^+ | ||
10.11+ | ||
10.12+ | ||
10.13^+ | ||
10.14+ | ||
10.15+ | ||
10.16^+ | ||
10.17^+ | ||
10.18^+ | ||
10.19^+ | ||
10.20^+ | ||
10.21+ | ||
10.22+ | ||
10.23^+ | ||
10.24^+ | Master Services Agreement between CoreWeave, Inc. and OpenAI OpCo, LLC, dated March 7, 2025. | |
10.25+ | Stock Issuance Agreement between CoreWeave, Inc. and OpenAI OpCo, LLC, dated March 7, 2025. | |
10.26^+ | ||
16.1+ | ||
21.1+ | ||
23.1 | Consent of Deloitte & Touche LLP, independent registered public accounting firm. |
II-4
Exhibit Number |
Description of Document | |
23.2 | Consent of RSM US LLP, independent registered public accounting firm. | |
23.3 | ||
24.1+ | ||
107 |
+ | Previously filed. |
# | Indicates management contract or compensatory plan. |
| The Registrant has omitted portions of the exhibit (indicated by [*]) as permitted under Item 601(b)(10) of Regulation S-K. |
^ | The Registrant has omitted schedules and exhibits pursuant to Item 601(a)(5) of Regulation S-K. The Registrant agrees to furnish supplementally a copy of the omitted schedules and exhibits to the SEC upon request. |
(b) | Financial Statement Schedules. |
All financial statement schedules are omitted because the information required to be set forth therein is not applicable or is shown in the consolidated financial statements or the notes thereto.
Item 17. Undertakings.
The undersigned Registrant hereby undertakes to provide to the underwriters at the closing specified in the underwriting agreement certificates in such denominations and registered in such names as required by the underwriters to permit prompt delivery to each purchaser.
Insofar as indemnification for liabilities arising under the Securities Act may be permitted to directors, officers, and controlling persons of the Registrant pursuant to the foregoing provisions, or otherwise, the Registrant has been advised that in the opinion of the SEC such indemnification is against public policy as expressed in the Securities Act and is, therefore, unenforceable. In the event that a claim for indemnification against such liabilities (other than the payment by the Registrant of expenses incurred or paid by a director, officer, or controlling person of the Registrant in the successful defense of any action, suit, or proceeding) is asserted by such director, officer, or controlling person in connection with the securities being registered, the Registrant will, unless in the opinion of its counsel the matter has been settled by controlling precedent, submit to a court of appropriate jurisdiction the question whether such indemnification by it is against public policy as expressed in the Securities Act and will be governed by the final adjudication of such issue.
The undersigned Registrant hereby undertakes that:
(a) | For purposes of determining any liability under the Securities Act, the information omitted from the form of prospectus filed as part of this registration statement in reliance upon Rule 430A and contained in a form of prospectus filed by the Registrant pursuant to Rule 424(b)(1) or (4) or 497(h) under the Securities Act shall be deemed to be part of this registration statement as of the time it was declared effective. |
(b) | For the purpose of determining any liability under the Securities Act, each post-effective amendment that contains a form of prospectus shall be deemed to be a new registration statement relating to the securities offered therein, and the offering of such securities at that time shall be deemed to be the initial bona fide offering thereof. |
II-5
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, the registrant has duly caused this registration statement on Form S-1 to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized, in Livingston, New Jersey, on the 20th day of March, 2025.
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: |
/s/ Michael Intrator | |
Michael Intrator | ||
Chief Executive Officer and President |
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, this registration statement on Form S-1 has been signed by the following persons in the capacities and on the dates indicated.
* By: |
/s/ Michael Intrator | |
Michael Intrator | ||
Attorney-in-Fact |
II-6
POWER OF ATTORNEY
KNOW ALL PERSONS BY THESE PRESENTS, that each person whose signature appears below hereby constitutes and appoints Michael Intrator and Nitin Agrawal, and each of them, as his or her true and lawful attorneys-in-fact, proxies, and agents, each with full power of substitution, for him or her in any and all capacities, to sign any and all amendments to this registration statement (including post-effective amendments or any abbreviated registration statement and any amendments thereto filed pursuant to Rule 462(b) increasing the number of securities for which registration is sought), and to file the same, with all exhibits thereto and other documents in connection therewith, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, granting unto said attorneys-in-fact, proxies, and agents full power and authority to do and perform each and every act and thing requisite and necessary to be done in connection therewith, as fully for all intents and purposes as he or she might or could do in person, hereby ratifying and confirming all that said attorneys-in-fact, proxies, and agents, or their or his or her substitute or substitutes, may lawfully do or cause to be done by virtue hereof.
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, this registration statement on Form S-1 has been signed by the following persons in the capacities and on the dates indicated.
Signature |
Title |
Date | ||
/s/ Margaret C. Whitman |
Director | March 20, 2025 | ||
Margaret C. Whitman |
II-7
Exhibit 1.1
[ ] Shares
COREWEAVE, INC.
CLASS A COMMON STOCK, PAR VALUE $0.000005 PER SHARE
UNDERWRITING AGREEMENT
[ ], 2025
[ ], 2025
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC
As Representatives of the several
Underwriters named in Schedule II hereto
c/o Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
1585 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
c/o J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
383 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10179
c/o Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC
200 West Street
New York, New York 10282
Ladies and Gentlemen:
CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), proposes to issue and sell to the several Underwriters named in Schedule II hereto (the Underwriters)and certain stockholders of the Company (the Selling Stockholders) named in Schedule I hereto severally propose to sell to the several Underwriters, an aggregate of [ ] shares (the Firm Shares) of the Companys Class A Common Stock, par value $0.000005 per share (the Class A Common Stock) of which [ ] shares are to be issued and sold by the Company and [ ] shares are to be sold by the Selling Stockholders, each Selling Stockholder selling the amount set forth opposite such Selling Stockholders name in Schedule I hereto.
The Company also proposes to issue and sell to the several Underwriters not more than an additional [ ] shares of its Class A Common Stock (the Additional Shares), if and to the extent that Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC (Morgan Stanley), J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (J.P. Morgan) and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC (Goldman Sachs), as representatives of the Underwriters (the Representatives), shall have determined to exercise, on behalf of the Underwriters, the right to purchase such Additional Shares granted to the Underwriters in Section 3 hereof. The Firm Shares and the Additional Shares are hereinafter collectively referred to as the Shares. The shares of Class B common stock, par value $0.000005 per share, of the Company are hereinafter referred to as the Class B Common Stock. The shares of Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock, collectively, of the Company to be outstanding after giving effect to the sales contemplated hereby are hereinafter referred to as the Common Stock. The Company and the Selling Stockholders are hereinafter sometimes collectively referred to as the Sellers.
1
The Company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the Commission) a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-285512), including a preliminary prospectus, relating to the Shares. The registration statement as amended at the time it becomes effective, including the information (if any) deemed to be part of the registration statement at the time of effectiveness pursuant to Rule 430A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), is hereinafter referred to as the Registration Statement; the prospectus in the form first used to confirm sales of the Shares (or in the form first made available to the Underwriters by the Company to meet requests of purchasers pursuant to Rule 173 under the Securities Act) is hereinafter referred to as the Prospectus. If the Company has filed an abbreviated registration statement to register additional shares of Class A Common Stock pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act (a Rule 462 Registration Statement), then any reference herein to the term Registration Statement shall be deemed to include such Rule 462 Registration Statement.
For purposes of this Underwriting Agreement (this Agreement), free writing prospectus has the meaning set forth in Rule 405 under the Securities Act, preliminary prospectus shall mean each prospectus used prior to the effectiveness of the Registration Statement, and each prospectus that omitted information pursuant to Rule 430A under the Securities Act that was used after such effectiveness and prior to the execution and delivery of this Agreement, Time of Sale Prospectus means the preliminary prospectus contained in the Registration Statement at the time of its effectiveness together with the documents, pricing information and free writing prospectuses, if any, set forth in Schedule III hereto, and broadly available road show means a bona fide electronic road show as defined in Rule 433(h)(5) under the Securities Act that has been made available without restriction to any person. As used herein, the terms Registration Statement, preliminary prospectus, Time of Sale Prospectus and Prospectus shall include the documents, if any, incorporated by reference therein as of the date hereof.
Morgan Stanley has agreed to reserve a portion of the Shares to be purchased by it under this Agreement for sale to the Companys directors, officers, employees and business associates and other parties related to the Company (collectively, Participants), as set forth in each of the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus under the heading Underwriters (the Directed Share Program). The Shares to be sold by Morgan Stanley and its affiliates pursuant to the Directed Share Program, at the direction of the Company, are referred to hereinafter as the Directed Shares. Any Directed Shares not orally confirmed for purchase by any Participant by the end of the business day on which this Agreement is executed will be offered to the public by the Underwriters as set forth in the Prospectus.
2
1. Representations and Warranties of the Company. The Company represents and warrants to and agrees with each of the Underwriters that:
(a) The Registration Statement has become effective; no stop order suspending the effectiveness of the Registration Statement is in effect, and no proceedings for such purpose or pursuant to Section 8A under the Securities Act are pending before or, to the Companys knowledge, threatened by the Commission.
(b) (i) The Registration Statement, when it became effective, did not contain and, as amended or supplemented, if applicable, will as of the date of such amendment or supplement, not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading, (ii) the Registration Statement and the Prospectus comply and, as amended or supplemented, if applicable, will as of the date of such amendment or supplement, comply in all material respects with the Securities Act and the applicable rules and regulations of the Commission thereunder, (iii) the Time of Sale Prospectus does not, and at the time of each sale of the Shares in connection with the offering when the Prospectus is not yet available to prospective purchasers and at the Closing Date (as defined in Section 5 herein), the Time of Sale Prospectus, as then amended or supplemented by the Company, if applicable, will not, contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, (iv) each broadly available road show, if any, when considered together with the Time of Sale Prospectus, does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading and (v) the Prospectus, as of its date, does not contain and, as amended or supplemented, if applicable, as of the date of such amendment or supplement, will not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, except that the representations and warranties set forth in this paragraph do not apply to statements or omissions in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus or the Prospectus based upon Underwriter Information (as defined in Section 10(c) herein).
(c) The Company is not an ineligible issuer in connection with the offering pursuant to Rules 164, 405 and 433 under the Securities Act. Any free writing prospectus that the Company is required to file pursuant to Rule 433(d) under the Securities Act has been, or will be, filed with the Commission in accordance with the requirements of the Securities Act and the applicable rules and regulations of the Commission thereunder. Each free writing prospectus that the Company has filed, or is required to file, pursuant to Rule 433(d) under the Securities Act or that was prepared by or on behalf of or used or referred to by the Company complies, or, if used after the effective date of this Agreement, will comply when used, in all material respects with the requirements of the Securities Act and the applicable rules and regulations of the Commission thereunder. Except for the free writing prospectuses, if any, identified in Schedule III hereto, and electronic road shows, if any, each furnished to the Representatives before first use, the Company has not prepared, used or referred to, and will not, without the Representatives prior consent, prepare, use or refer to, any free writing prospectus.
3
(d) The Company has been duly incorporated, is validly existing as a corporation in good standing under the laws of the State of Delaware, has the corporate power and authority to own or lease its property and to conduct its business as described in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus and is duly qualified to transact business and is in good standing in each jurisdiction (to the extent the concept of good standing or the equivalent concept is applicable in such jurisdiction) in which the conduct of its business or its ownership or leasing of property requires such qualification, except to the extent that the failure to be so qualified or be in good standing would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
(e) Each significant subsidiary (as such term is defined in Rule 1-02 of Regulation S-X under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act)) of the Company has been duly incorporated, organized or formed, is validly existing as a corporation or other business entity in good standing under the laws of the jurisdiction of its incorporation, organization or formation (to the extent the concept of good standing or the equivalent concept is applicable in such jurisdiction), has the corporate or other business entity power and authority to own or lease its property and to conduct its business as described in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus and is duly qualified to transact business and is in good standing in each jurisdiction (to the extent the concept of good standing or the equivalent concept is applicable in such jurisdiction) in which the conduct of its business or its ownership or leasing of property requires such qualification, except to the extent that the failure to be so qualified or be in good standing would not reasonably be expected to, singly or in the aggregate, have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole. All of the issued shares of capital stock or other equity interests of each significant subsidiary have been duly and validly authorized and issued, are fully paid and non-assessable and are owned directly or indirectly by the Company or a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company, are free and clear of all liens, encumbrances, equities or claims, except for any such liens or encumbrances arising pursuant to indebtedness or financing arrangements described in the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus and such other liens, encumbrances, equities or claims as would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
(f) This Agreement has been duly authorized, executed and delivered by the Company.
(g) As of the Closing Date, the authorized capital stock of the Company will conform as to legal matters in all material respects to the description thereof contained in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus.
4
(h) The shares of Common Stock (including the Shares to be sold by the Selling Stockholders) outstanding prior to the issuance of the Shares have been duly authorized and are validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable.
(i) The Shares have been duly authorized and, when issued, delivered and paid for in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, will be validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable, and the issuance of the Shares will not be subject to any preemptive or similar rights that have not been validly waived or satisfied.
(j) The unissued Shares issuable upon the exercise of options (the Options) to be exercised by certain of the Selling Stockholders (the Optionholders) have been duly authorized by the Company and validly and reserved for issuance, and at the time of delivery to the Underwriters with respect to such Shares, such Shares will be issued and delivered in accordance with the provisions of the Stock Option Agreements between the Company and such Selling Stockholders pursuant to which such Options were granted (the Option Agreements) and will be validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable and will conform to the description thereof in the Registration Statement, Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus.
(k) The Options were duly authorized and issued pursuant to the Option Agreements and constitute valid and binding obligations of the Company and the Optionholders are entitled to the benefits provided by the Option Agreements; the Option Agreements were duly authorized, executed and delivered and constitute valid and legally binding agreements enforceable against the Company in accordance with their terms; and the Options and the Option Agreements conform to the descriptions thereof in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus.
(l) The execution and delivery by the Company of, and the performance by the Company of its obligations under, this Agreement will not contravene any provision of (i) applicable law, (ii) the certificate of incorporation or bylaws of the Company, (iii) any agreement or other instrument binding upon the Company or any of its subsidiaries, or (iv) any judgment, order or decree of any governmental body, agency or court having jurisdiction over the Company or any subsidiary, except that in the case of clauses (i), (iii) and (iv) above, where such contravention would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, or the power or ability of the Company to perform its obligations under this Agreement; and no consent, approval, authorization or order of, or qualification with, any governmental body, agency or court is required for the performance by the Company of its obligations under this Agreement, except such as has previously been obtained and such as may be required by the securities or Blue Sky laws of the various states or foreign jurisdictions or the rules and regulations of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) in connection with the offer and sale of the Shares.
5
(m) There has not occurred any material adverse change, or any development involving a prospective material adverse change, in the condition, financial or otherwise, or in the earnings, business or operations of the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, from that set forth in the Time of Sale Prospectus.
(n) There are no legal or governmental proceedings pending or, to the Companys knowledge, threatened to which the Company or any of its subsidiaries is a party or to which any of the properties of the Company or any of its subsidiaries is subject (i) other than proceedings accurately described in all material respects in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus and proceedings that would not reasonably be expected to, singly or in the aggregate, have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, or on the power or ability of the Company to perform its obligations under this Agreement or to consummate the transactions contemplated by each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus or (ii) that are required to be described in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus or the Prospectus and are not so described in all material respects; and there are no statutes, regulations, contracts or other documents to which the Company or any of its subsidiaries is subject or by which the Company or any of its subsidiaries is bound that are required to be described in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus or the Prospectus or to be filed as exhibits to the Registration Statement that are not described in all material respects or filed as required.
(o) Each preliminary prospectus filed as part of the Registration Statement as originally filed or as part of any amendment thereto, or filed pursuant to Rule 424 under the Securities Act, complied when so filed in all material respects with the Securities Act and the applicable rules and regulations of the Commission thereunder.
(p) The Company is not, and after giving effect to the offering and sale of the Shares and the application of the proceeds thereof as described in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus will not be, required to register as an investment company as such term is defined in the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended.
(q) The Company and each of its subsidiaries (i) are in compliance with any and all applicable foreign, federal, state and local laws and regulations relating to the protection of human health and safety, the environment or hazardous or toxic substances or wastes, pollutants or contaminants (collectively, Environmental Laws), (ii) have received all permits, licenses or other approvals required of them under applicable Environmental Laws to conduct their respective businesses as presently conducted and (iii) are in compliance with all terms and conditions of any such permit, license or approval, except where such noncompliance with Environmental Laws, failure to receive required permits, licenses or other approvals or failure to comply with the terms and conditions of such permits, licenses or approvals would not reasonably be expected to, singly or in the aggregate, have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
6
(r) There are no costs or liabilities associated with Environmental Laws (including, without limitation, any capital or operating expenditures required for clean-up, closure of properties or compliance with Environmental Laws or any permit, license or approval, any related constraints on operating activities and any potential liabilities to third parties) which would, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
(s) There are no contracts, agreements or understandings between the Company and any person granting such person the right to require the Company to file a registration statement under the Securities Act with respect to any securities of the Company or to require the Company to include such securities with the Shares registered pursuant to the Registration Statement, except as have been validly waived or complied with in connection with the issuance and sale of the Shares contemplated hereby, or the issuance by the Company of the Shares to be issued upon the exercise of the Options.
(t) None of the Company or any of its subsidiaries or controlled affiliates, or any director or officer thereof, or, to the Companys knowledge, any employee, agent or representative of the Company or of any of its subsidiaries or controlled affiliates, has taken or will take any action in furtherance of an offer, payment, promise to pay, or authorization or approval of the payment, giving or receipt of money, property, gifts or anything else of value, directly or indirectly, to any person to improperly influence official action by that person for the benefit of the Company or its subsidiaries or controlled affiliates, or to otherwise secure any improper advantage, or to any person in violation of (a) the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, (b) the UK Bribery Act 2010, or (c) any other applicable law, regulation, order, decree or directive having the force of law and relating to bribery or corruption (collectively, the Anti-Corruption Laws).
(u) The operations of the Company and each of its subsidiaries are and have been conducted at all times in material compliance with all applicable anti-money laundering laws, rules, and regulations, including the financial recordkeeping and reporting requirements contained therein, and including the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, applicable provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, and the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, (collectively, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws).
7
(v) (i) None of the Company, any of its subsidiaries, or any director or officer thereof, or, to the Companys knowledge, any employee, agent, affiliate, or representative of the Company or any of its subsidiaries, is an individual or entity (Person) that is, or is owned or controlled by one or more Persons that are:
(A) the subject of any sanctions administered or enforced by the United States Government (including the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.S. Department of State), the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, the United Kingdom, or any other relevant sanctions authority (collectively, Sanctions), or
(B) located, organized or resident in a country or territory that is the subject of comprehensive territorial Sanctions (including, without limitation, the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic, the so-called Luhansk Peoples Republic, or any other Covered Region of Ukraine identified pursuant to Executive Order 14065, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria).
(ii) The Company and each of its subsidiaries, (a) have not, since the more recent of April 24, 2019 or 10 years prior to the date of the Agreement, directly or knowingly indirectly engaged in, (b) are not now directly or knowingly indirectly engaged in, and (c) will not directly or knowingly indirectly engage in, any dealings or transactions with any Person, or in any country or territory, that at the time of the dealing or transaction is or was the subject of Sanctions.
(iii) The Company will not, directly or knowingly indirectly, use the proceeds of the offering, or lend, contribute or otherwise make available such proceeds to any subsidiary, joint venture partner or other Person:
(A) to fund or facilitate any activities or business of or with any Person or in any country or territory that, at the time of such funding or facilitation, is the subject of Sanctions;
(B) to fund or facilitate any money laundering or terrorist financing activities; or
(C) in any other manner that would cause or result in a violation of any Anti-Corruption Laws, Anti-Money Laundering Laws, or Sanctions by any Person (including any Person participating in the offering, whether as underwriter, advisor, investor or otherwise).
(w) The Company and its subsidiaries have conducted their businesses in material compliance with the Anti-Corruption Laws, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws, and Sanctions, and no investigation, inquiry, action, suit or proceeding by or before any court or governmental agency, authority or body or any arbitrator involving the Company or any of its subsidiaries with respect to the Anti-Corruption Laws, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws or Sanctions is pending or, to the knowledge of the Company, threatened. The Company and its subsidiaries and controlled affiliates have instituted and maintained and will continue to maintain policies and procedures reasonably designed to promote and achieve compliance with the Anti-Corruption Laws, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws, Sanctions, and with the representations and warranties contained herein.
8
(x) Subsequent to the respective dates as of which information is given in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus, except in each case as described in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus, (i) the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, have not incurred any material liability or obligation, direct or contingent, nor entered into any material transaction; (ii) the Company has not purchased any of its outstanding capital stock (other than from employees or other service providers in connection with purchase rights under the equity compensation plans or other agreements described in each of the Registration Statement, the Prospectus and the Time of Sale Prospectus or in exercise of the Companys right of first refusal upon a proposed transfer), nor declared, paid or otherwise made any dividend or distribution of any kind on its capital stock other than ordinary and customary dividends; and (iii) there has not been any material change in the capital stock (other than the exercise or settlement (including any net or cashless exercises or settlements) or grants of equity awards or forfeiture of equity awards outstanding under the Companys equity incentive plans as described in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus), short-term debt or long-term debt of the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, except in the case of short-term and long-term debt, pursuant to such agreements as described in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus, respectively.
(y) The Company and each of its subsidiaries have good and marketable title in fee simple to all real property and good and marketable title to all personal property owned by them (other than with respect to intellectual property, which is addressed exclusively in Section 1(z)) which is material to the business of the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, in each case free and clear of all liens, encumbrances and defects except such as do not materially affect the value of such property and do not materially interfere with the use made and proposed to be made of such property by the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole; and any real property and buildings held under lease by the Company and its subsidiaries are held by them under valid, subsisting and, to the Companys knowledge, enforceable leases with such exceptions as are not material and do not materially interfere with the use made and proposed to be made of such property and buildings by the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole (subject to the effects of (i) bankruptcy, insolvency, fraudulent conveyance, fraudulent transfer, reorganization, moratorium or other similar laws relating to or affecting the rights or remedies of creditors generally, (ii) the application of general principals of equity (including, without limitation concepts of materiality, reasonableness, good faith and fair dealing, regardless of whether enforcement is considered in proceedings at law or in equity) and (iii) applicable law and public policy with respect to rights to indemnity and contribution).
9
(z) Except as would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, (i) the Company and its subsidiaries each own or license or otherwise have a valid right to use all patents, inventions, copyrights, know how (including trade secrets and other unpatented and/or unpatentable proprietary or confidential information, systems or procedures), trademarks, service marks and trade names, and registered domain names (collectively, Intellectual Property Rights) used in or reasonably necessary to the conduct of their respective businesses as currently conducted provided that this subclause (i) shall not be deemed a representation or warranty of non-infringement, which is covered solely by subclause (v) below; (ii) the Intellectual Property Rights owned by the Company and its subsidiaries and, to the Companys knowledge, the Intellectual Property Rights licensed to the Company and its subsidiaries, are valid, subsisting and, to the knowledge of the Company, enforceable, and there is no pending or, to the Companys knowledge, threatened action, suit, proceeding or claim by others against the Company or any of its subsidiaries challenging the validity, scope or enforceability of any such Intellectual Property Rights; (iii) neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries has received any written notice alleging any infringement, misappropriation or other violation of any third-party Intellectual Property Rights; (iv) to the Companys knowledge, no third party is infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating, or has infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated, any Intellectual Property Rights owned by the Company or its subsidiaries; (v) to the Companys knowledge, neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries infringes, misappropriates or otherwise violates, or has infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated, any third party Intellectual Property Rights in any material respect; (vi) all employees or contractors engaged in the development of Intellectual Property Rights on behalf of the Company or any subsidiary of the Company have executed an invention assignment agreement whereby such employees or contractors presently assign all of their right, title and interest in and to such Intellectual Property Rights to the Company or the applicable subsidiary, and to the Companys knowledge no such agreement has been breached or violated; and (vii) the Company and its subsidiaries use, and have used, commercially reasonable efforts to appropriately maintain and protect all information intended to be maintained as a trade secret.
(aa) Except as would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, (i) the Company and its subsidiaries use and have used any and all software and other materials distributed under a free, open source, or similar licensing model (including but not limited to the MIT License, Apache License, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License and GNU Affero General Public License) (Open Source Software) in compliance with all license terms applicable to such Open Source Software; and (ii) neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries uses or distributes or has used or distributed any Open Source Software in any manner that requires or has required (A) the Company or any of its subsidiaries to permit reverse engineering of any software code or other technology owned by the Company or any of its subsidiaries or (B) any software code or other technology owned by the Company or any of its subsidiaries to be (1) disclosed or distributed in source code form to any third party, (2) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works or (3) redistributed at no charge.
10
(bb) Except as would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, (i) the Company and each of its subsidiaries have complied and are presently in compliance with all internal and external privacy policies, contractual obligations, industry standards, guidelines, applicable laws, statutes, judgments, orders, rules and regulations of any court or arbitrator or other governmental or regulatory authority and any other legal obligations, in each case, where binding upon the Company or any of its subsidiaries, relating to the privacy, security, collection, use, transfer, import, export, storage, protection, disposal, disclosure, or other processing by the Company or any of its subsidiaries of personal, personally identifiable, household, sensitive, confidential or regulated data (Data Security Obligations, and such data, Data); (ii) neither the Company nor its subsidiaries have received any notification, inquiry, claim or complaint regarding, and is unaware of any other facts that, individually or in the aggregate, would reasonably indicate, non-compliance with any Data Security Obligation or a Breach (as defined below); and (iii) to the Companys knowledge, there is no audit, investigation, action, suit or proceeding against the Company or its subsidiaries by or before any court or governmental agency, authority or body pending or, to the Companys knowledge threatened relating to any Breach or alleging non-compliance with any Data Security Obligation.
(cc) Except as would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, (i) the Company and each of its subsidiaries have taken, all commercially reasonable technical and organizational steps designed to protect the information technology systems and Data in the possession or otherwise in the control of the Company and its subsidiaries and used in connection with the operation of the Companys and its subsidiaries businesses; (ii) and without limiting the foregoing, the Company and its subsidiaries have used commercially reasonable efforts to establish and maintain, and have established, maintained, implemented and complied with, commercially reasonable information technology, information security, cyber security and data protection controls, policies and procedures, including oversight, access controls, encryption, technological and physical safeguards and business continuity/disaster recovery and security plans designed to protect against and prevent a breach, or unauthorized, unlawful, or accidental destruction, distribution, use, access, disablement, modification of, or any loss, misappropriation, compromise or misuse of or relating to any information technology system or Data used in connection with the operation of the Companys and its subsidiaries businesses (Breach). There has been no Breach, and the Company and its subsidiaries have not been notified of and have no knowledge of any event or condition that would reasonably be expected to result in, any such Breach, in each case that would reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
11
(dd) No material labor dispute with the employees of the Company or any of its subsidiaries exists, or, to the knowledge of the Company, is imminent; and the Company is not aware of any existing, threatened or imminent labor disturbance by the employees of any of its principal suppliers, manufacturers or contractors that could, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
(ee) The Company and each of its subsidiaries are insured by insurers of recognized financial responsibility against such losses and risks and in such amounts as the Company reasonably believes are prudent and customary in the businesses in which they are engaged, taken as a whole; neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries has been refused any insurance coverage sought or applied for; and neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries has any reason to believe that it will not be able to renew its existing insurance coverage as and when such coverage expires or to obtain similar coverage from similar insurers as may be necessary to continue its business at a cost that would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
(ff) The Company and each of its subsidiaries possess all certificates, authorizations and permits issued by the appropriate federal, state or foreign regulatory authorities necessary to conduct their respective businesses, except where the failure to obtain such certificates, authorizations or permits would not reasonably be expected to, singly or in the aggregate, have a material adverse effect on the Company or its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, and neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries has received any notice of proceedings relating to the revocation or modification of any such certificate, authorization or permit which, singly or in the aggregate, if the subject of an unfavorable decision, ruling or finding, would reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
(gg) The financial statements included in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus, together with the related schedules and notes thereto, comply as to form in all material respects with the applicable accounting requirements of the Securities Act and present fairly in all material respects the consolidated financial position of the Company and its subsidiaries as of the dates shown and its results of operations and cash flows for the periods shown, and such financial statements have been prepared in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (U.S. GAAP) applied on a consistent basis throughout the periods covered thereby except for any normal year-end adjustments in the Companys quarterly financial statements. The other financial information included in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus has been derived from the accounting records of the Company and its consolidated subsidiaries and presents fairly in all material
12
respects the information shown thereby. The statistical, industry-related and market-related data included in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus are based on or derived from sources which the Company reasonably and in good faith believes are reliable and accurate and such data is consistent with the sources from which they are derived, in each case in all material respects.
(hh) Deloitte & Touche LLP, who have certified certain financial statements of the Company and its subsidiaries and delivered its report with respect to the audited consolidated financial statements and schedules filed with the Commission as part of the Registration Statement and included in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus, is an independent registered public accounting firm with respect to the Company within the meaning of the Securities Act and the applicable rules and regulations thereunder adopted by the Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States).
(ii) RSM US LLP, who have certified certain financial statements of the Company and its subsidiaries and delivered its report with respect to the audited consolidated financial statements and schedules filed with the Commission as part of the Registration Statement and included in each of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus, is an independent registered public accounting firm with respect to the Company within the meaning of the Securities Act and the applicable rules and regulations thereunder adopted by the Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States).
(jj) The Company and each of its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, maintain a system of internal accounting controls designed to provide reasonable assurance that (i) transactions are executed in accordance with managements general or specific authorizations; (ii) transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP and to maintain asset accountability; (iii) access to assets is permitted only in accordance with managements general or specific authorization; and (iv) the recorded accountability for assets is compared with the existing assets at reasonable intervals and appropriate action is taken with respect to any differences. Except as described in the Registration Statement, the Prospectus and the Time of Sale Prospectus, since the end of the Companys most recent audited fiscal year, there has been (i) no material weakness in the Companys internal control over financial reporting (whether or not remediated) as defined in Rule 13(a)-15(f) under the Exchange Act and (ii) no change in the Companys internal control over financial reporting that has materially and adversely affected, or is reasonably likely to materially and adversely affect, the Companys internal control over financial reporting (it being understood that these clauses (i) and (ii) shall not require the Company to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as amended, and the rules and regulations promulgated in connection therewith as of an earlier date than it would otherwise be required to do so under applicable law).
13
(kk) Except as described in the Registration Statement, the Prospectus and the Time of Sale Prospectus, the Company has not sold, issued or distributed any shares of Common Stock during the six-month period preceding the date hereof, including any sales pursuant to Rule 144A under, or Regulation D or S of, the Securities Act, other than shares issued pursuant to employee benefit plans, qualified equity incentive plans or other employee compensation plans or pursuant to outstanding options, rights or warrants.
(ll) The Registration Statement, the Prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus and any preliminary prospectus comply, and any amendments or supplements thereto will comply, with any applicable laws or regulations of foreign jurisdictions in which the Prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus or any preliminary prospectus, as amended or supplemented, if applicable, are distributed in connection with the Directed Share Program.
(mm) No consent, approval, authorization or order of, or qualification with, any governmental body or agency, other than those obtained, is required in connection with the offering of the Directed Shares in any jurisdiction where the Directed Shares are being offered.
(nn) The Company has not offered, or caused Morgan Stanley or any Morgan Stanley Entity as defined in Section 11 to offer, Shares to any person pursuant to the Directed Share Program with the specific intent to unlawfully influence (i) a customer or supplier of the Company to alter the customers or suppliers level or type of business with the Company, or (ii) a trade journalist or publication to write or publish favorable information about the Company or its products.
(oo) The Company and each of its subsidiaries have filed all U.S. federal, state, local and foreign tax returns required by law to be filed through the date of this Agreement or have requested extensions thereof (except where the failure to file would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole) and have paid all taxes required to be paid (except for cases in which the failure to pay would not, singly or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, or, except as currently being contested in good faith by appropriate proceedings and for which adequate reserves required by U.S. GAAP have been created in the financial statements of the Company and its subsidiaries), and no unpaid tax deficiency has been determined adversely to the Company or any of its subsidiaries which, singly or in the aggregate, has had (nor does the Company nor any of its subsidiaries have any written notice or knowledge of any tax deficiency which could reasonably be expected to be determined adversely to the Company or its subsidiaries and which could reasonably be expected to have) a material adverse effect on the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole.
14
(pp) At the time of initial confidential submission of the Registration Statement to the Commission, the Company was an emerging growth company, as defined in Section 2(a) of the Securities Act (an Emerging Growth Company), and the Company notified the Representatives that it will continue to be treated as an Emerging Growth Company through the Closing Date.
(qq) The Company (i) has not alone engaged in any Testing-the-Waters Communication with any person other than Testing-the-Waters Communications with the consent of the Representatives with entities that are reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers within the meaning of Rule 144A under the Securities Act or institutions that are reasonably believed to be accredited investors within the meaning of Rule 501 under the Securities Act and (ii) has not authorized anyone other than the Representatives to engage in Testing-the-Waters Communications. The Company reconfirms that the Representatives have been authorized to act on its behalf in undertaking Testing-the-Waters Communications. The Company has not distributed any Testing-the-Waters Communication that is a written communication within the meaning of Rule 405 under the Securities Act other than those listed on Schedule VI hereto. Testing-the-Waters Communication means any communication with potential investors undertaken in reliance on Rule 163B of the Securities Act.
(rr) As of the time of each sale of the Shares in connection with the offering when the Prospectus is not yet available to prospective purchasers, none of (A) the Time of Sale Prospectus, (B) any free writing prospectus, when considered together with the Time of Sale Prospectus, and (C) any individual Testing-the-Waters Communication, when considered together with the Time of Sale Prospectus, included, includes or will include an untrue statement of a material fact or omitted, omits or will omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading; provided, however, that this representation and warranty shall not apply to any statements or omissions made in reliance upon and in conformity with the Underwriter Information.
(ss) Neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries is a covered foreign person, as that term is defined in 31 C.F.R. § 850.209. Neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries currently engage, or have plans to engage, directly or indirectly, in a covered activity, as that term is defined in 31 C.F.R. § 850.208 (Covered Activity). The Company does not have any joint venture that engages in or plans to engage in any Covered Activity. The Company also does not, directly or indirectly, hold a board seat on, have a voting or equity interest in, or have any contractual power to direct or cause the direction of the management or policies of any person or persons that engages or plans to engage in any Covered Activity.
(tt) The Company does not have any securities rated by any nationally recognized statistical rating organization, as such term is defined in Section 3(a)(62) of the Exchange Act.
15
(uu) The holders of shares of Common Stock or securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock (such shares of Common Stock or other such securities collectively, the Securities) representing substantially all of the Securities that have not delivered executed lock-up agreements (as described in Section 6(j)) to the Representatives as of the date hereof and any Securities that are issuable pursuant to an award granted prior to the date of the effectiveness of the Registration Statement and issued pursuant to any employee benefit plan in effect on the date hereof and described in the Time of Sale Prospectus are, in each case, bound by market standoff provisions with the Company that impose restrictions on transfer (subject to certain exceptions set forth in such provisions) with respect to such holders securities during the Restricted Period without the consent of the Company (Market Standoff Provisions) that are enforceable by the Company. Each such Market Standoff Provision is in full force and effect as of the date hereof and shall remain in full force and effect during the Restricted Period, except that this provision shall not prevent the Company from effecting a waiver or amendment to permit a transfer of securities which, if such securities were subject to the terms of the lock-up agreement in the form attached as Exhibit A hereto, would be permissible under such lock-up agreement without any consent, waiver or amendment.
2. Representations and Warranties of the Selling Stockholders. Each Selling Stockholder, severally and not jointly, represents and warrants to and agrees with each of the Underwriters that:
(a) This Agreement has been duly authorized, executed and delivered by or on behalf of such Selling Stockholder.
(b) The execution and delivery by or on behalf of such Selling Stockholder of, and the performance by such Selling Stockholder of its obligations under, this Agreement, the Custody Agreement signed by or on behalf of such Selling Stockholder and Computershare, Inc., as Custodian, relating to the deposit of the Shares to be sold by such Selling Stockholder (the Custody Agreement) and the Power of Attorney appointing certain individuals as such Selling Stockholders attorneys-in-fact to the extent set forth therein, relating to the transactions contemplated hereby and by the Registration Statement (the Power of Attorney) will not contravene (i) any provision of applicable law, or (ii) the certificate of incorporation or by-laws of such Selling Stockholder (if such Selling Stockholder is a corporation), or (iii) any agreement or other instrument binding upon such Selling Stockholder or (iv) any judgment, order or decree of any governmental body, agency or court having jurisdiction over such Selling Stockholder except in the case of clauses (i), (iii) or (iv) as would not, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the ability of the Selling Stockholder to perform its obligations under this Agreement, the Custody Agreement and the Power of Attorney, and no consent, approval, authorization or order of, or qualification with, any governmental body, agency or court is required for the performance by such Selling Stockholder of its obligations under this Agreement or the Custody Agreement or Power of Attorney of such Selling Stockholder, except such as have already been obtained or as may be required under the Securities Act, the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder, or by the securities or Blue Sky laws of the various states or non-U.S. jurisdictions or the rules and regulations of the FINRA in connection with the offer and sale of the Shares.
16
(c) On the Closing Date, such Selling Stockholder will have (i) valid title to the Shares (other than the Shares, if any, to be issued upon exercise of the Options) to be sold by such Selling Stockholder, (ii) valid title to the Options, if any, to be exercised in respect of the Shares to be sold by such Selling Stockholder, and (iii) assuming due issuance by the Company of any Shares to be issued upon the exercise of Options to be sold by such Selling Stockholder, valid title to the Shares issued upon the exercise of Options to be sold by such Selling Stockholder. On the date hereof, such Selling Stockholder has, and on the Closing Date, such Selling Stockholder will have all authorization and approval required by law, to enter into this Agreement, the Custody Agreement, and the Power of Attorney and to sell, transfer and deliver the Shares to be sold by such Selling Stockholder, except (x) such as shall have been obtained or waived, and (y) such as may be required by the securities or Blue Sky laws of the various states or foreign jurisdictions or the rules and regulations of FINRA in connection with the offer and sale of the Shares.
(d) Immediately prior to the Closing, such Selling Stockholder will have, valid title to, or a valid security entitlement within the meaning of Section 8-501 of the New York Uniform Commercial Code in respect of, the Shares to be sold by such Selling Stockholder free and clear of all security interests, claims, liens, equities or other encumbrances.
(e) The Custody Agreement and the Power of Attorney have been duly authorized, executed and delivered by or on behalf of such Selling Stockholder and are valid and binding agreements of such Selling Stockholder, subject to the effects of bankruptcy, insolvency, fraudulent transfer, reorganization, moratorium and similar laws of general applicability relating to or affecting creditors rights and to general equity principles.
(f) Upon payment for the Shares to be sold by such Selling Stockholder pursuant to this Agreement, delivery of such Shares, as directed by the Underwriters, to Cede & Co. (Cede) or such other nominee as may be designated by the Depository Trust Company (DTC), registration of such Shares in the name of Cede or such other nominee and the crediting of such Shares on the books of DTC to securities accounts of the Underwriters (assuming that neither DTC nor any such Underwriter has notice of any adverse claim (within the meaning of Section 8-105 of the New York Uniform Commercial Code (the UCC)) to such Shares), (i) DTC shall be a protected purchaser of such Shares within the meaning of Section 8-303 of the UCC, (ii) under Section 8-501 of the UCC, the Underwriters will acquire a valid security entitlement in respect of such Shares and (iii) no action based on any adverse claim, within the meaning of Section 8-102 of the UCC, to such Shares may be successfully asserted against the Underwriters with respect to
17
such security entitlement; for purposes of this representation, such Selling Stockholder may assume that when such payment, delivery and crediting occur, (x) such Shares will have been registered in the name of Cede or another nominee designated by DTC, in each case on the Companys share registry in accordance with its certificate of incorporation, bylaws and applicable law, (y) DTC will be registered as a clearing corporation within the meaning of Section 8-102 of the UCC and (z) appropriate entries to the accounts of the several Underwriters on the records of DTC will have been made pursuant to the UCC.
(g) Such Selling Stockholder has delivered to the Representatives an executed Lock-up Agreement in substantially the form attached hereto as Exhibit A.
(h) Such Selling Stockholder is not prompted by any material information concerning the Company or its subsidiaries which is not set forth in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus or the Prospectus to sell its Shares pursuant to this Agreement.
(i) (i) The Registration Statement, when it became effective, did not contain and, as amended or supplemented, if applicable, as of the date of such amendment or supplement, will not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading, (ii) the Time of Sale Prospectus does not, and at the time of each sale of the Shares in connection with the offering when the Prospectus is not yet available to prospective purchasers and at the Closing Date (as defined in Section 5), the Time of Sale Prospectus, as then amended or supplemented by the Company, if applicable, as of the date of such amendment or supplement, will not, contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, (iii) each broadly available road show, if any, when considered together with the Time of Sale Prospectus, does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading and (iv) the Prospectus does not contain and, as amended or supplemented, if applicable, as of the date of such amendment or supplement, will not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, provided, that, in the case of each Selling Stockholder, the representations and warranties set forth in this paragraph are limited solely to statements or omissions made in reliance upon information relating to such Selling Stockholder furnished in writing to the Company or the Representatives by or on behalf of such Selling Stockholder expressly for use in the Registration Statement, any preliminary prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus, any issuer free writing prospectus, road show or the Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto, it being understood and agreed that the only information furnished in writing by such Selling Stockholder consists of the name of such Selling Stockholder, the number of offered shares and
18
the address and other information with respect to such Selling Stockholder (excluding percentages), which appear in the Registration Statement or any Prospectus in the table (and corresponding footnotes) under the caption Principal Stockholders and, if such Selling Stockholder is an executive officer or director of the Company (including any person who is named in the Registration Statement or any Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto as a person who is to become a director of the Company at a future date), the biographical information of such Selling Stockholder as set forth under the caption Management in the Registration Statement or any Prospectus (with respect to each such Selling Stockholder, the Selling Stockholder Information).
(j) (i) None of such Selling Stockholder or, if such Selling Stockholder is an entity, any of its subsidiaries, or any director, officer, or, to such Selling Stockholders knowledge, any employee, agent, affiliate, or representative of such Selling Stockholder or any of its subsidiaries, is a Person that is, or is owned or controlled by one or more Persons that are:
(A) the subject of any Sanctions, or
(B) located, organized or resident in a country or territory that is the subject of comprehensive territorial Sanctions (including, without limitation, the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic, the so-called Luhansk Peoples Republic, or any other Covered Region of Ukraine identified pursuant to Executive Order 14065, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria).
(ii) Such Selling Stockholder and, if such Selling Stockholder is an entity, each of its subsidiaries have not since the more recent of April 24, 2019 or 10 years prior to the date of this Agreement, directly or knowingly indirectly engaged in, are not now directly or knowingly indirectly engaged in, and will not directly or knowingly indirectly engage in, any dealings or transactions with any Person, or in any country or territory, that at the time of the dealing or transaction is or was the subject of Sanctions.
(k) Such Selling Stockholder will not, directly or knowingly indirectly, use the proceeds of the offering, or lend, contribute or otherwise make available such proceeds to any subsidiary, joint venture partner or other Person:
(i) to fund or facilitate any activities or business of or with any Person or in any country or territory that, at the time of such funding or facilitation, is the subject of Sanctions;
(ii) to fund or facilitate any money laundering or terrorist financing activities; or
(iii) in any other manner that would cause or result in a violation of any Anti-Corruption Laws, Anti-Money Laundering Laws, or Sanctions by any Person (including any Person participating in the offering, whether as underwriter, advisor, investor or otherwise).
19
(l) None of such Selling Stockholder or, if such Selling Stockholder is an entity, any of its subsidiaries or controlled affiliates, or any director or officer, thereof, or to the knowledge of such Selling Stockholder, any employee, agent or representative of such Selling Stockholder or of any of its subsidiaries or controlled affiliates, has taken or will take any action in furtherance of an offer, payment, promise to pay, or authorization or approval of the payment, giving or receipt of money, property, gifts or anything else of value, directly or indirectly, to any person to improperly influence official action by that person for the benefit of such Selling Stockholder or, if such Selling Stockholder is an entity, for the benefit of any of its subsidiaries or controlled affiliates, or to otherwise secure any improper advantage, or to any person in violation of Anti-Corruption Laws.
(m) If such Selling Stockholder is an entity, the operations of such Selling Stockholder and each of its subsidiaries are, have been conducted at all times in material compliance with all applicable Anti-Money Laundering Laws.
(n) If such Selling Stockholder is an entity, such Selling Stockholder and each of its subsidiaries have conducted their businesses in material compliance with the Anti-Corruption Laws, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws, and Sanctions, and no investigation, inquiry, action, suit or proceeding by or before any court or governmental agency, authority or body or any arbitrator involving such Selling Stockholder or any of its subsidiaries with respect to the Anti-Corruption Laws, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws or Sanctions is pending or, to the knowledge of the Selling Stockholder, threatened. If such Selling Stockholder is an entity, such Selling Stockholder and its subsidiaries and controlled affiliates have instituted and maintained and will continue to maintain policies and procedures reasonably designed to promote and achieve compliance with the Anti-Corruption Laws, the Anti-Money Laundering Laws, Sanctions, and with the representations and warranties contained herein.
(o) Such Selling Stockholder represents and warrants that it is not (i) an employee benefit plan subject to Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA), (ii) a plan or account subject to Section 4975 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code) or (iii) an entity deemed to hold plan assets of any such plan or account under Section 3(42) of ERISA, 29 C.F.R. 2510.3-101, or otherwise.
(p) Each Selling Stockholder listed on Schedule I hereto and organized or domiciled in a jurisdiction outside of the United States (each, a Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder) specifically agrees that no stamp, documentary, issuance, registration, transfer, withholding, capital gains, income or other taxes or duties are payable by or on behalf of the Underwriters, the Company or any of its subsidiaries in such Non-U.S. Selling Stockholders jurisdiction of organization or to any taxing authority thereof or therein in connection with (i) the execution, delivery or consummation of this Agreement, or (ii) the sale and delivery of the Shares to the Underwriters or purchasers procured by the Underwriters.
20
(q) Each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder has the power to submit, and pursuant to Section 16 has, to the extent permitted by law, legally, validly, effectively and irrevocably submitted, to the jurisdiction of the Specified Courts (as defined in Section 16).
3. Agreements to Sell and Purchase. Each Seller, severally and not jointly, hereby agrees to sell to the several Underwriters, and each Underwriter, upon the basis of the representations and warranties herein contained, but subject to the terms and conditions hereinafter stated, agrees, severally and not jointly, to purchase from such Seller at $[ ] a share (the Purchase Price) the number of Firm Shares (subject to such adjustments to eliminate fractional shares as the Representatives may determine) that bears the same proportion to the number of Firm Shares to be sold by such Seller as the number of Firm Shares set forth in Schedule II hereto opposite the name of such Underwriter bears to the total number of Firm Shares.
On the basis of the representations and warranties contained in this Agreement, and subject to its terms and conditions, the Company agrees to sell to the Underwriters the Additional Shares, and the Underwriters shall have the right to purchase, severally and not jointly, up to [ ] Additional Shares at the Purchase Price, provided, however, that the amount paid by the Underwriters for any Additional Shares shall be reduced by an amount per share equal to any dividends declared by the Company and payable on the Firm Shares but not payable on such Additional Shares. The Representatives may exercise this right on behalf of the Underwriters in whole or from time to time in part by giving written notice to the Company not later than 30 days after the date of this Agreement. Any exercise notice shall specify the number of Additional Shares to be purchased by the Underwriters and the date on which such Additional Shares are to be purchased. Each purchase date must be at least one business day after the written notice is given and may not be earlier than the closing date for the Firm Shares or later than ten business days after the date of such notice. Additional Shares may be purchased as provided in Section 5 hereof solely for the purpose of covering over-allotments made in connection with the offering of the Firm Shares. On each day, if any, that Additional Shares are to be purchased (an Option Closing Date), each Underwriter agrees, severally and not jointly, to purchase the number of Additional Shares (subject to such adjustments to eliminate fractional shares as the Representatives may determine) that bears the same proportion to the total number of Additional Shares to be purchased on such Option Closing Date as the number of Firm Shares set forth in Schedule II hereto opposite the name of such Underwriter bears to the total number of Firm Shares.
4. Terms of Public Offering. The Sellers are advised by the Representatives that the Underwriters propose to make a public offering of their respective portions of the Shares as soon after the Registration Statement and this Agreement have become effective as in the Representatives judgment is advisable. The Sellers are further advised by the Representatives that the Shares are to be offered to the public initially at $[ ] a share (the Public Offering Price) and to certain dealers selected by the Representatives at a price that represents a concession not in excess of $[ ] a share under the Public Offering Price, and that any Underwriter may allow, and such dealers may reallow, a concession, not in excess of $[ ] a share, to any Underwriter or to certain other dealers.
21
5. Payment and Delivery. Payment for the Firm Shares to be sold by each Seller shall be made to such Seller in Federal or other funds immediately available in New York City against delivery of such Firm Shares for the respective accounts of the several Underwriters at 10:00 a.m., New York City time, on [ ], 2025, or at such other time on the same or such other date, not later than [ ], 2025, as shall be designated in writing by the Representatives. The time and date of such payment are hereinafter referred to as the Closing Date.
Payment for any Additional Shares shall be made to the Company in Federal or other funds immediately available in New York City against delivery of such Additional Shares for the respective accounts of the several Underwriters at 10:00 a.m., New York City time, on the date specified in the corresponding notice described in Section 3 or at such other time on the same or on such other date, in any event not later than [ ], 2025, as shall be designated in writing by the Representatives.
The Firm Shares and Additional Shares shall be registered in such names and in such denominations as the Representatives shall request not later than one full business day prior to the Closing Date or the applicable Option Closing Date, as the case may be. The Firm Shares and Additional Shares shall be delivered to the Representatives on the Closing Date or an Option Closing Date, as the case may be, for the respective accounts of the several Underwriters, with any transfer taxes payable in connection with the transfer of the Shares to the Underwriters duly paid, against payment of the Purchase Price therefor.
6. Conditions to the Underwriters Obligations. The obligations of the Sellers to sell the Shares to the Underwriters and the several obligations of the Underwriters to purchase and pay for the Shares on the Closing Date are subject to the condition that the Registration Statement shall have become effective not later than [ ] p.m. (New York City time) on the date hereof.
The several obligations of the Underwriters are subject to the following further conditions:
(a) Subsequent to the execution and delivery of this Agreement and prior to the Closing Date:
(i) no order suspending the effectiveness of the Registration Statement shall be in effect, and no proceeding for such purpose or pursuant to Section 8A under the Securities Act shall be pending before or, to the Companys knowledge, threatened by the Commission; and
(ii) there shall not have occurred any change, or any development involving a prospective change, in the condition, financial or otherwise, or in the earnings, business or operations of the Company and its subsidiaries, taken as a whole, from that set forth in the Time of Sale Prospectus that, in the Representatives judgment, is material and adverse and that makes it, in the Representatives judgment, impracticable to market the Shares on the terms and in the manner contemplated in the Time of Sale Prospectus.
22
(b) The Underwriters shall have received on the Closing Date a certificate, dated the Closing Date and signed on behalf of the Company by an executive officer of the Company, to the effect set forth in Sections 6(a)(i) and 6(a)(ii) above and to the effect that the representations and warranties of the Company contained in this Agreement are true and correct as of the Closing Date and that the Company has complied with all of the agreements and satisfied all of the conditions on its part to be performed or satisfied hereunder on or before the Closing Date.
The officer signing and delivering such certificate may rely upon the best of his or her knowledge as to proceedings threatened.
(c) The Underwriters shall have received on the Closing Date an opinion and a negative assurance letter of Fenwick & West LLP, outside counsel for the Company, dated the Closing Date, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Representatives.
(d) The Underwriters shall have received on the Closing Date an opinion of McGrath North Mullin & Kratz, PC LLO, counsel for the Company, dated the Closing Date, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Representatives.
(e) The Underwriters shall have received on the Closing Date an opinion of Whalen LLP, counsel for the Selling Stockholders, dated the Closing Date, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Representatives.
(f) The Underwriters shall have received on the Closing Date an opinion and a negative assurance letter of Latham & Watkins LLP, counsel for the Underwriters, dated the Closing Date, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Underwriters.
With respect to the negative assurance letters to be delivered pursuant to Sections 6(c) and 6(f) above, Fenwick & West LLP and Latham & Watkins LLP, may state that their opinions and beliefs are based upon their participation in the preparation of the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus and any amendments or supplements thereto and review and discussion of the contents thereof, but are without independent check or verification, except as specified. With respect to Section 6(e) above, Whalen LLP may rely upon an opinion or opinions of counsel for any Selling Stockholders and, with respect to factual matters and to the extent such counsel deems appropriate, upon the representations of each Selling Stockholder contained herein and in the Custody Agreement and Power of Attorney of such Selling Stockholder and in other documents and instruments; provided that (A) each such counsel for the Selling
23
Stockholders is satisfactory to the Representatives, (B) a copy of each opinion so relied upon is delivered to the Representatives and is in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Underwriters, (C) copies of such Custody Agreements and Powers of Attorney and of any such other documents and instruments shall be delivered to the Representatives and shall be in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Underwriters and (D) Whalen LLP shall state in their opinion that they are justified in relying on each such other opinion.
The opinion and negative assurance letter of Fenwick & West LLP, the opinion of McGrath North Mullin & Kratz, PC LLO and the opinion of Whalen LLP described in Section 6(c), 6(d) and 6(e) above (and any opinions of counsel for any Selling Stockholder referred to in the immediately preceding paragraph) shall be rendered to the Underwriters at the request of the Company or one or more of the Selling Stockholders, as the case may be, and shall so state therein.
(g) The Underwriters shall have received, on each of the date hereof and the Closing Date, a letter dated the date hereof or the Closing Date, as the case may be, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Representatives, from Deloitte & Touche LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, containing statements and information of the type ordinarily included in accountants comfort letters to underwriters with respect to the financial statements and certain financial information contained in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus; provided that the letter delivered on the Closing Date shall use a cut-off date not earlier than the date hereof.
(h) The Underwriters shall have received, on each of the date hereof and the Closing Date, a letter dated the date hereof or the Closing Date, as the case may be, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Representatives, from RSM US LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, containing statements and information of the type ordinarily included in accountants comfort letters to underwriters with respect to the financial statements and certain financial information contained in the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus and the Prospectus; provided that the letter delivered on the Closing Date shall use a cut-off date not earlier than the date hereof.
(i) The Underwriters shall have received, on each of the date hereof and the Closing Date, a Chief Financial Officers certificate, dated the Closing Date and signed on behalf of the Company by the Chief Financial Officer of the Company, in form and substance reasonably satisfactory to the Representatives.
(j) The lock-up agreements, each substantially in the form of Exhibit A hereto, between the Representatives and certain stockholders, officers and directors of the Company relating to restrictions on sales and certain other dispositions of shares of Common Stock or certain other securities, delivered to the Representatives on or before the date hereof (the Lock-up Agreements), shall be in full force and effect on the Closing Date.
24
(k) The Firm Shares and Additional Shares, if any, shall have been approved for listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, subject to official notice of issuance.
(l) The several obligations of the Underwriters to purchase Additional Shares hereunder are subject to the delivery to the Representatives on the applicable Option Closing Date of the following:
(i) a certificate, dated the Option Closing Date and signed on behalf of the Company by an executive officer of the Company, confirming that the certificate delivered on the Closing Date pursuant to Section 6(b) hereof remains true and correct as of such Option Closing Date;
(ii) an opinion and a negative assurance letter of Fenwick & West LLP, outside counsel for the Company, dated the Option Closing Date, relating to the Additional Shares to be purchased on such Option Closing Date and otherwise to the same effect as the opinion required by Section 6(c) hereof;
(iii) an opinion of McGrath North Mullin & Kratz, PC LLO, counsel for the Company, dated the Option Closing Date, relating to the Additional Shares to be purchased on such Option Closing Date and otherwise to the same effect as the opinion required by Section 6(d) hereof;
(iv) an opinion and a negative assurance letter of Latham & Watkins LLP, counsel for the Underwriters, dated the Option Closing Date, relating to the Additional Shares to be purchased on such Option Closing Date and otherwise to the same effect as the opinion required by Section 6(f) hereof;
(v) a letter dated the Option Closing Date, in form and substance satisfactory to the Representatives, from Deloitte & Touche LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, substantially in the same form and substance as the letter furnished to the Underwriters pursuant to Section 6(g) hereof; provided that the letter delivered on the Option Closing Date shall use a cut-off date not earlier than two business days prior to such Option Closing Date;
(vi) a letter dated the Option Closing Date, in form and substance satisfactory to the Representatives, from RSM US LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, substantially in the same form and substance as the letter furnished to the Underwriters pursuant to Section 6(h) hereof; provided that the letter delivered on the Option Closing Date shall use a cut-off date not earlier than two business days prior to such Option Closing Date;
25
(vii) a Chief Financial Officers certificate, dated the Option Closing Date and signed on behalf of the Company by the Chief Financial Officer of the Company, in substantially the same form and substance as the certificate required by Section 6(i) hereof; and
(viii) such other documents as the Representatives may reasonably request with respect to the good standing of the Company, the due authorization and issuance of the Additional Shares to be sold on such Option Closing Date and other matters related to the issuance of such Additional Shares.
7. Covenants of the Company. The Company covenants with each Underwriter as follows:
(a) To furnish to the Representatives upon written request, without charge, [ ] signed copies of the Registration Statement (including exhibits thereto) (which may be an electronic facsimile) and for delivery to each other Underwriter a conformed copy of the Registration Statement (without exhibits thereto) and to furnish to the Representatives in New York City, without charge, prior to 10:00 a.m. New York City time on the business day next succeeding the date of this Agreement and during the period mentioned in Section 7(e) or 7(f) below, as many copies of the Time of Sale Prospectus, the Prospectus and any supplements and amendments thereto or to the Registration Statement as the Representatives may reasonably request.
(b) Before amending or supplementing the Registration Statement, the Time of Sale Prospectus or the Prospectus, to furnish to the Representatives a copy of each such proposed amendment or supplement and not to file any such proposed amendment or supplement to which the Representatives reasonably object, and to file with the Commission within the applicable period specified in Rule 424(b) under the Securities Act any prospectus required to be filed pursuant to such Rule.
(c) To furnish to the Representatives a copy of each proposed free writing prospectus to be prepared by or on behalf of, used by, or referred to by the Company and not to use or refer to any proposed free writing prospectus to which the Representatives reasonably object.
(d) Not to take any action that would result in an Underwriter or the Company being required to file with the Commission pursuant to Rule 433(d) under the Securities Act a free writing prospectus prepared by or on behalf of the Underwriter that the Underwriter otherwise would not have been required to file thereunder.
(e) If the Time of Sale Prospectus is being used to solicit offers to buy the Shares at a time when the Prospectus is not yet available to prospective purchasers and any event shall occur or condition exist as a result of which it is necessary to amend or supplement the Time of Sale Prospectus in order to make
26
the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, or if any event shall occur or condition exist as a result of which the Time of Sale Prospectus conflicts with the information contained in the Registration Statement then on file, or if, in the reasonable opinion of counsel for the Underwriters, it is necessary to amend or supplement the Time of Sale Prospectus to comply with applicable law, forthwith to prepare, file with the Commission and furnish, at its own expense, to the Underwriters and to any dealer upon request, either amendments or supplements to the Time of Sale Prospectus so that the statements in the Time of Sale Prospectus as so amended or supplemented will not, in the light of the circumstances when the Time of Sale Prospectus is delivered to a prospective purchaser, be misleading or so that the Time of Sale Prospectus, as amended or supplemented, will no longer conflict with the Registration Statement, or so that the Time of Sale Prospectus, as amended or supplemented, will comply with applicable law.
(f) If, during such period after the first date of the public offering of the Shares as in the reasonable opinion of counsel for the Underwriters the Prospectus (or in lieu thereof the notice referred to in Rule 173(a) of the Securities Act) is required by law to be delivered in connection with sales by an Underwriter or dealer, any event shall occur or condition exist as a result of which it is necessary to amend or supplement the Prospectus in order to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances when the Prospectus (or in lieu thereof the notice referred to in Rule 173(a) of the Securities Act) is delivered to a purchaser, not misleading, or if, in the reasonable opinion of counsel for the Underwriters, it is necessary to amend or supplement the Prospectus to comply with applicable law, forthwith to prepare, file with the Commission and furnish, at its own expense, to the Underwriters and to the dealers (whose names and addresses the Representatives will furnish to the Company) to which Shares may have been sold by the Representatives on behalf of the Underwriters and to any other dealers upon request, either amendments or supplements to the Prospectus so that the statements in the Prospectus as so amended or supplemented will not, in the light of the circumstances when the Prospectus (or in lieu thereof the notice referred to in Rule 173(a) of the Securities Act) is delivered to a purchaser, be misleading or so that the Prospectus, as amended or supplemented, will comply with applicable law.
(g) To endeavor to qualify the Shares for offer and sale under the securities or Blue Sky laws of such jurisdictions as the Representatives shall reasonably request; provided that in no event shall the Company be obligated to qualify to do business in any jurisdiction where it is not now so qualified or to take any action that would subject it to service of process in suits or taxation in any jurisdiction where it is not now so subject.
(h) To make generally available (which may be satisfied by filing with the Commission on its Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval System) to the Companys security holders and to the Representatives as soon as practicable an earnings statement covering a period of at least twelve months beginning with the first fiscal quarter of the Company occurring after the date of this Agreement which shall satisfy the provisions of Section 11(a) of the Securities Act and the rules and regulations of the Commission thereunder.
27
(i) To comply with all applicable securities and other laws, rules and regulations in each jurisdiction in which the Directed Shares are offered in connection with the Directed Share Program.
(j) Whether or not the transactions contemplated in this Agreement are consummated or this Agreement is terminated, the Company agrees to pay or cause to be paid all expenses incident to the performance of its obligations under this Agreement, including: (i) the fees, disbursements and expenses of the Companys counsel, the Companys accountants and Whalen LLP, counsel for the Selling Stockholders, in connection with the registration and delivery of the Shares under the Securities Act and all other fees or expenses in connection with the preparation and filing of the Registration Statement, any preliminary prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus, the Prospectus, any free writing prospectus prepared by or on behalf of, used by, or referred to by the Company and amendments and supplements to any of the foregoing, including all printing costs associated therewith, and the mailing and delivering of copies thereof to the Underwriters and dealers, in the quantities hereinabove specified, (ii) all costs and expenses related to the transfer and delivery of the Shares to the Underwriters, including any transfer or other taxes payable thereon, (iii) the cost of printing or producing any Blue Sky or Legal Investment memorandum in connection with the offer and sale of the Shares under state securities laws and all expenses in connection with the qualification of the Shares for offer and sale under state securities laws as provided in Section 7(g) hereof, including filing fees and the reasonable fees and disbursements of counsel for the Underwriters in connection with such qualification and in connection with the Blue Sky or Legal Investment memorandum, (iv) all filing fees and the reasonable fees and disbursements of counsel to the Underwriters incurred in connection with the review and qualification of the offering of the Shares by FINRA; provided that the amount payable by the Company with respect to the fees and disbursements of counsel for the Underwriters incurred pursuant to subsection (iii) and (iv) of this Section 7(j) shall not exceed $60,000 in the aggregate, (v) all fees and expenses in connection with the preparation and filing of the registration statement on Form 8-A relating to the Common Stock and all costs and expenses incident to listing the Shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, (vi) the cost of printing certificates representing the Shares, (vii) the costs and charges of any transfer agent, registrar or depositary, (viii) the costs and expenses of the Company relating to investor presentations on any road show undertaken in connection with the marketing of the offering of the Shares, including, without limitation, expenses associated with the preparation or dissemination of any electronic road show, expenses associated with the production of road show slides and graphics, fees and expenses of any consultants engaged in connection with the road show presentations with the prior approval of the Company, travel and lodging expenses of the officers of the Company and any such consultants, and fifty percent (50%) of the cost of any chartered aircraft or other means of transportation chartered in connection with the road show (the remaining fifty percent (50%) of the cost of
28
such aircraft or other transportation to be paid by the Underwriters), (ix) the document production charges and expenses associated with printing this Agreement, (x) all fees and disbursements of counsel incurred by the Underwriters in connection with the Directed Share Program and stamp duties, similar taxes or duties or other taxes, if any, incurred by the Underwriters in connection with the Directed Share Program and (xi) all other costs and expenses incident to the performance of the obligations of the Company hereunder for which provision is not otherwise made in this Section. It is understood, however, that except as provided in this Section, Section 10 entitled Indemnity and Contribution, Section 11 entitled Directed Share Program Indemnification and the last paragraph of Section 13 below, the Underwriters will pay all of their costs and expenses, including fees and disbursements of their counsel, stock transfer taxes payable on resale of any of the Shares by them and any advertising expenses connected with any offers they may make. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Underwriters and the Company will each be responsible for any costs and expenses that the parties may agree to in writing. The provisions of this Section 7(j) shall not supersede or otherwise affect any agreement that the Selling Stockholders may otherwise have for the allocation of related expenses among themselves.
(k) If at any time following the distribution of any Testing-the-Waters Communication that is a written communication within the meaning of Rule 405 under the Securities Act there occurred or occurs an event or development as a result of which such Testing-the-Waters Communication included or would include an untrue statement of a material fact or omitted or would omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements therein, in the light of the circumstances existing at that subsequent time, not misleading, the Company will promptly notify the Representatives and will promptly amend or supplement, at its own expense, such Testing-the-Waters Communication to eliminate or correct such untrue statement or omission.
(l) The Company will deliver to each Underwriter (or its agent), on the date of execution of this Agreement, a properly completed and executed Certification Regarding Beneficial Owners of Legal Entity Customers, together with copies of identifying documentation, and the Company undertakes to provide such additional supporting documentation as each Underwriter may reasonably request in connection with the verification of the foregoing Certification.
(m) If any Selling Stockholder is not a U.S. person for U.S. federal income tax purposes, to deliver to each Underwriter (or its agent), (i) on or before the Closing Date, a properly completed and duly executed certificate that the Company is not, and has not been at any time during the five-year period ending on the date of such certificate, a United States real property holding corporation within the meaning of Section 897(c)(2) of the Code, dated not more than thirty (30) days prior to the Closing Date, in form and substance as required by U.S. Treasury Regulations Sections 1.1445-2(c), and (ii) within thirty (30) days following the Closing Date, proof of delivery to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the required notice, as described in U.S. Treasury Regulations Section 1.897-2(h)(2), in each case, in form and substance reasonably acceptable to such Underwriter.
29
The Company also covenants with each Underwriter that, without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley on behalf of the Underwriters, it will not, and will not publicly disclose an intention to, during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the closing of trading on the second Trading Day immediately following the Companys release of earnings (which for this purpose shall not include flash numbers or preliminary, partial earnings) for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in the Prospectus and (ii) 180 days after the date of the Prospectus (the Restricted Period), (1) offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right or warrant to purchase, lend, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock or (2) enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of the Common Stock, whether any such transaction described in clause (1) or (2) above is to be settled by delivery of Common Stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise or (3) file any registration statement with the Commission relating to the offering of any shares of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock. For purposes of section a Trading Day is a day on which the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market are open for the buying and selling of securities.
The restrictions contained in the preceding paragraph shall not apply to (A) the Shares to be sold hereunder, (B) the issuance by the Company of shares of Common Stock upon the exercise of an option or warrant or the conversion of a security outstanding on the date hereof or the settlement of restricted stock units (including net settlement) as described in each of the Time of Sale Prospectus and Prospectus, (C) grants of stock options, stock awards, restricted stock, restricted stock units or other equity awards and the issuance of Common Stock or securities convertible into or exercisable for Common Stock (whether upon the exercise of stock options or otherwise) to employees, officers, directors, advisors, or consultants of the Company pursuant to the terms of a plan in effect on the date hereof and described in the Time of Sale Prospectus, (D) the filing by the Company of a registration statement on Form S-8 relating to the issuance, vesting, exercise, settlement, or resale of, equity awards granted or to be granted pursuant to any employee benefit plan in effect on the date hereof and described in the Time of Sale Prospectus, (E) the issuance by the Company of shares of Common Stock as payment of accrued dividends in connection with the conversion of the Companys shares of preferred stock in the offering, (F) the sale or issuance of or entry into an agreement to sell or issue Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock in connection with one or more mergers; acquisitions of securities, businesses, property or other assets, products or technologies; joint ventures; commercial relationships or other strategic corporate transactions or alliances; provided that the aggregate amounts of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock (on an as-converted, as-exercised or as-exchanged basis) that the Company may sell or issue or agree to sell or
30
issue pursuant to this clause (F) shall not exceed 10% of the total number of shares of Common Stock of the Company issued and outstanding immediately following the completion of the transactions contemplated by this Agreement determined on a fully-diluted basis (the M&A Cap); provided, however, that those shares of Common Stock that may be issued in connection with the Companys acquisition of Weights and Biases, Inc., as described in each of the Time of Sale Prospectus and Prospectus, shall not be subject to the M&A Cap, (G) the sale and issuance by the Company of shares of Common Stock in a private placement to affiliates of Magnetar Financial LLC upon exercise of Magnetar Financial LLCs option to purchase $15.0 million of Common Stock as described in each of the Time of Sale Prospectus and Prospectus, (H) the issuance by the Company of shares of Common Stock in a private placement to OpenAI, Inc., as described in each of the Time of Sale Prospectus and Prospectus, (I) facilitating the establishment of a trading plan on behalf of a stockholder, officer or director of the Company pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act for the transfer of shares of Common Stock, provided that (i) such plan does not provide for the transfer of Common Stock during the Restricted Period (except as otherwise permitted under the form of lock-up agreement) and (ii) to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by the Company regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect that no transfer of Common Stock may be made under such plan during the Restricted Period; provided that, with respect to clauses (B) and (F) above, the recipients thereof provide to the Representatives a signed lock-up agreement substantially in the form of the lock-up agreement described in Section 6(j) hereof.
If Morgan Stanley, in its sole discretion, agrees to release or waive the restrictions on the transfer of Shares set forth in a Lock-up Agreement (a form of such Waiver of Lock-Up is set forth in substantially the form attached as Exhibit B hereto) for an officer or director of the Company and provides the Company with notice of the impending release or waiver at least three business days before the effective date of the release or waiver, the Company agrees to announce the impending release or waiver by a press release substantially in the form of Exhibit C hereto through a major news service at least two business days before the effective date of the release or waiver.
In addition, during the Restricted Period, the Company agrees to (a) enforce the Market Standoff Provisions and any similar transfer restrictions contained in any agreement between the Company and any of its securityholders, including, without limitation, through the issuance of stop transfer instructions to the Companys transfer agent and registrar with respect to any transaction that would constitute a breach of, or default under, the transfer restrictions, except that this provision shall not prevent the Company from effecting such a waiver or amendment to permit a transfer of securities that would be permissible under the terms of a lock-up agreement described in Section 6(j) hereof, and (b) not amend or waive any such transfer restrictions with respect to any such holder without the prior written consent of the Representatives.
31
8. Covenants of the Selling Stockholder. Each Selling Stockholder, severally and not jointly, covenants with each Underwriter as follows:
(a) Each Selling Stockholder will deliver to each Underwriter (or its agent), prior to or at the Closing Date, a properly completed and executed IRS Form W-9 or an appropriate IRS Form W-8, as applicable, together with all required attachments to such form, establishing a complete exemption from U.S. backup withholding tax and any withholding imposed under Chapter 3 or Chapter 4 of the Code.
(b) Each Selling Stockholder will deliver to each Underwriter (or its agent), on the date of execution of this Agreement, a properly completed and executed Certification Regarding Beneficial Owners of Legal Entity Customers, together with copies of identifying documentation, and each Selling Stockholder undertakes to provide such additional supporting documentation as each Underwriter may reasonably request in connection with the verification of the foregoing Certification.
(c) All sums payable by each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder under this Agreement shall be paid free and clear of and without deductions or withholdings of any present or future taxes or duties, unless the deduction or withholding is required by law, in which case each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder shall pay such additional amount as will result in the receipt by each Underwriter of the full amount that would have been received had no deduction or withholding been made.
(d) All sums payable to an Underwriter shall be considered exclusive of any value added or similar taxes. Where a Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder is obliged to pay value added or similar tax on any amount payable hereunder to an Underwriter, each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder, shall in addition to the sum payable hereunder pay an amount equal to any applicable value added or similar tax.
9. Covenants of the Underwriters. Each Underwriter, severally and not jointly, covenants with the Company not to take any action that would result in the Company being required to file with the Commission under Rule 433(d) a free writing prospectus prepared by or on behalf of such Underwriter that otherwise would not be required to be filed by the Company thereunder, but for the action of the Underwriter.
10. Indemnity and Contribution. (a) The Company agrees to indemnify and hold harmless each Underwriter, each person, if any, who controls any Underwriter within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act and each affiliate of any Underwriter within the meaning of Rule 405 under the Securities Act from and against any and all losses, claims, damages and liabilities (including, without limitation, any legal or other expenses reasonably incurred in connection with defending or investigating any such action or claim) that arise out of, or are based upon, any untrue statement or alleged untrue statement of a material fact contained in the Registration Statement or any amendment thereof, any preliminary prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto, any issuer free writing prospectus as defined in Rule 433(h) under the Securities Act, any Company information that the Company has filed, or is required to file, pursuant to Rule 433(d) under the Securities Act,
32
any road show as defined in Rule 433(h) under the Securities Act (a road show), the Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto, or any Testing-the-Waters Communication, or arise out of, or are based upon, any omission or alleged omission to state therein a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading, except insofar as such losses, claims, damages or liabilities arise out of, or are based upon, any such untrue statement or omission or alleged untrue statement or omission made in reliance upon and in conformity with any information relating to any Underwriter furnished to the Company in writing by such Underwriter through the Representatives expressly for use therein, it being understood and agreed that the only such information furnished by the Underwriters through the Representatives consists of the Underwriter Information as defined in paragraph (c) below. The Company also agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Goldman Sachs and each person, if any, who controls Goldman Sachs within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act from and against any and all losses, claims, damages, liabilities and judgments incurred as a result of Goldman Sachs participation as a qualified independent underwriter within the meaning of FINRA Rule 5121 in connection with the offering of the Shares, except for any losses, claims, damages, liabilities, and judgments resulting from Goldman Sachs, or such controlling persons, willful misconduct, and agrees to reimburse Goldman Sachs for any legal or other expenses reasonably incurred by Goldman Sachs in connection with investigating or defending any such loss, claim, damage, liability or action as such expenses are incurred.
(b) Each Selling Stockholder agrees, severally and not jointly, to indemnify and hold harmless each Underwriter, each person, if any, who controls any Underwriter within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act and each affiliate of any Underwriter within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act, within the meaning of Rule 405 under the Securities Act from and against any and all losses, claims, damages and liabilities (including, without limitation, any legal or other expenses reasonably incurred in connection with defending or investigating any such action or claim) that arise out of, or are based upon, any untrue statement or alleged untrue statement of a material fact contained in the Registration Statement or any amendment thereof, any preliminary prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto, any issuer free writing prospectus as defined in Rule 433(h) under the Securities Act, any Company information that the Company has filed, or is required to file, pursuant to Rule 433(d) under the Securities Act, any road show, the Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto, or any Testing-the-Waters Communication or arise out of, or are based upon, any omission or alleged omission to state therein a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading, but only with reference to the Selling Stockholder Information relating to such Selling Stockholder. The liability of each Selling Stockholder under the indemnity agreement contained in this paragraph shall be limited to an amount equal to the aggregate net proceeds (after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions but before deducting expenses) of the Shares sold by such Selling Stockholder under this Agreement (with respect to each Selling Stockholder, the Selling Stockholder Proceeds) less any amounts such Selling Stockholder actually pays pursuant to the contribution provisions of this Section 10(e) below.
33
(c) Each Underwriter agrees, severally and not jointly, to indemnify and hold harmless the Company, the Selling Stockholders, the directors of the Company, the officers of the Company who sign the Registration Statement and each person, if any, who controls the Company or any Selling Stockholder within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act to the same extent as the foregoing indemnity from the Company to such Underwriter, but only with reference to information relating to such Underwriter furnished to the Company in writing by such Underwriter through or on behalf of the Representatives expressly for use in the Registration Statement, any preliminary prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus, any issuer free writing prospectus, road show or the Prospectus or any amendment or supplement thereto (Underwriter Information); it being understood and agreed that the only such information furnished by any Underwriter consists of the following information in the Prospectus furnished on behalf of each Underwriter: the first sentence of the third paragraph under the caption Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest) in the Prospectus concerning the terms of the offering by the Underwriters, the seventh paragraph under the caption Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest) in the Prospectus concerning sales to discretionary accounts and the first sentence of the fifteenth paragraph under the caption Underwriting (Conflicts of Interest) in the Prospectus concerning stabilization by the Underwriters.
(d) In case any proceeding (including any governmental investigation) shall be instituted involving any person in respect of which indemnity may be sought pursuant to Section 10(a), 10(b), or 10(c) such person (the indemnified party) shall promptly notify the person against whom such indemnity may be sought (the indemnifying party) in writing and the indemnifying party, upon request of the indemnified party, shall retain counsel reasonably satisfactory to the indemnified party to represent the indemnified party and any others the indemnifying party may designate in such proceeding and shall pay the reasonably incurred fees and disbursements of such counsel related to such proceeding. In any such proceeding, any indemnified party shall have the right to retain its own counsel, but the fees and expenses of such counsel shall be at the expense of such indemnified party unless (i) the indemnifying party and the indemnified party shall have mutually agreed in writing to the retention of such counsel or (ii) the named parties to any such proceeding (including any impleaded parties) include both the indemnifying party and the indemnified party and representation of both parties by the same counsel would be inappropriate due to actual or potential differing interests between them. It is understood that the indemnifying party shall not, in respect of the legal expenses of any indemnified party in connection with any proceeding or related proceedings in the same jurisdiction, be liable for the fees and expenses of more than one separate firm (in addition to any local counsel) for all Underwriters and all persons, if any, who control any Underwriter within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act or who are affiliates of any Underwriter within the meaning of Rule 405 under
34
the Securities Act, (iii) the fees and expenses of more than one separate firm (in addition to any local counsel) for the Company, its directors, its officers who sign the Registration Statement and each person, if any, who controls the Company within the meaning of either such Section and (iv) the fees and expenses of more than one separate firm (in addition to any local counsel) for all Selling Stockholders and all persons, if any, who control any Selling Stockholder within the meaning of either such Section, and that all such fees and expenses shall be reimbursed as they are incurred. In the case of any such separate firm for the Underwriters and such control persons and affiliates of any Underwriters, such firm shall be designated in writing by the Representatives. In the case of any such separate firm for the Company, and such directors, officers and control persons of the Company, such firm shall be designated in writing by the Company. In the case of any such separate firm for the Selling Stockholders and such control persons of any Selling Stockholders, such firm shall be designated in writing by the persons named as attorneys-in-fact for the Selling Stockholders under the Powers of Attorney. The indemnifying party shall not be liable for any settlement of any proceeding effected without its written consent, but if settled with such consent or if there be a final judgment for the plaintiff, the indemnifying party agrees to indemnify the indemnified party from and against any loss or liability by reason of such settlement or judgment. Notwithstanding the foregoing sentence, if at any time an indemnified party shall have requested an indemnifying party to reimburse the indemnified party for fees and expenses of counsel as contemplated by the second and third sentences of this paragraph, the indemnifying party agrees that it shall be liable for any settlement of any proceeding effected without its written consent if (i) such settlement is entered into more than 60 days after receipt by such indemnifying party of the aforesaid request and (ii) such indemnifying party shall not have reimbursed the indemnified party in accordance with such request prior to the date of such settlement. No indemnifying party shall, without the prior written consent of the indemnified party, effect any settlement of any pending or threatened proceeding in respect of which any indemnified party is or could have been a party and indemnity could have been sought hereunder by such indemnified party, unless such settlement (x) includes an unconditional release of such indemnified party from all liability on claims that are the subject matter of such proceeding and (y) does not include any statement as to or any admission of fault, culpability or a failure to act by or on behalf of any indemnified party. Notwithstanding anything contained herein to the contrary, if indemnity may be sought pursuant to Section 10(a) hereof in respect of such action or proceeding, then in addition to such separate firm for the indemnified parties, the indemnifying party shall be liable for the reasonable fees and expenses of not more than one separate firm (in addition to any local counsel) for Goldman Sachs in its capacity as a qualified independent underwriter and all persons, if any, who control Goldman Sachs within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act.
35
(e) To the extent the indemnification provided for in Sections 10(a), 10(b), or 10(c) is unavailable to an indemnified party or insufficient in respect of any losses, claims, damages or liabilities referred to therein, then each indemnifying party under such paragraph, in lieu of indemnifying such indemnified party thereunder, shall contribute to the amount paid or payable by such indemnified party as a result of such losses, claims, damages or liabilities (i) in such proportion as is appropriate to reflect the relative benefits received by the indemnifying party or parties on the one hand and the indemnified party or parties on the other hand from the offering of the Shares or (ii) if the allocation provided by clause 11(e)(i) above is not permitted by applicable law, in such proportion as is appropriate to reflect not only the relative benefits referred to in clause 11(e)(i) above but also the relative fault of the indemnifying party or parties on the one hand and of the indemnified party or parties on the other hand in connection with the statements or omissions that resulted in such losses, claims, damages or liabilities, as well as any other relevant equitable considerations. The relative benefits received by the Sellers on the one hand and the Underwriters on the other hand in connection with the offering of the Shares shall be deemed to be in the same respective proportions as the net proceeds from the offering of the Shares (after deducting underwriting commissions and discounts but before deducting expenses) received by each Seller and the total underwriting discounts and commissions received by the Underwriters, in each case as set forth in the table on the cover of the Prospectus, bear to the aggregate Public Offering Price of the Shares. The relative fault of the Sellers on the one hand and the Underwriters on the other hand shall be determined by reference to, among other things, whether the untrue or alleged untrue statement of a material fact or the omission or alleged omission to state a material fact relates to information supplied by the Sellers or by the Underwriters and the parties relative intent, knowledge, access to information and opportunity to correct or prevent such statement or omission. The Underwriters respective obligations to contribute pursuant to this Section 10 are several in proportion to the respective number of Shares they have purchased hereunder, and not joint. The Selling Stockholders obligations to contribute pursuant to this Section 10 are several, and not joint. The liability of each Selling Stockholder under the contribution agreement contained in this paragraph shall be limited to an amount equal to the Selling Stockholder Proceeds of such Selling Stockholder less any amounts that such Selling Stockholder actually pays pursuant to Section 10(b) above.
(f) The Sellers and the Underwriters agree that it would not be just or equitable if contribution pursuant to this Section 10 were determined by pro rata allocation (even if the Underwriters were treated as one entity for such purpose) or by any other method of allocation that does not take account of the equitable considerations referred to in Section 10(e). The amount paid or payable by an indemnified party as a result of the losses, claims, damages and liabilities referred to in Section 10(e) shall be deemed to include, subject to the limitations set forth above, any legal or other expenses reasonably incurred by such indemnified party in connection with investigating or defending any such action or claim. Notwithstanding the provisions of this Section 10, no Underwriter shall be required to contribute any amount in excess of the amount by which the total price at which the Shares underwritten by it and distributed to the public were offered to the public exceeds the amount of any damages that such Underwriter has otherwise been required to pay by reason of such untrue or alleged untrue statement or omission or
36
alleged omission. No person guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation (within the meaning of Section 11(f) of the Securities Act) shall be entitled to contribution from any person who was not guilty of such fraudulent misrepresentation. The remedies provided for in this Section 10 are not exclusive and shall not limit any rights or remedies which may otherwise be available to any indemnified party at law or in equity.
(g) The indemnity and contribution provisions contained in this Section 10 and the representations, warranties and other statements of the Company and the Selling Stockholders contained in this Agreement shall remain operative and in full force and effect regardless of (i) any termination of this Agreement, (ii) any investigation made by or on behalf of any Underwriter, any person controlling any Underwriter or any affiliate of any Underwriter, by or on behalf of any Selling Stockholder or any person controlling any Selling Stockholder, or by or on behalf of the Company, its officers or directors or any person controlling the Company and (iii) acceptance of and payment for any of the Shares.
11. Directed Share Program Indemnification. (a) The Company agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Morgan Stanley, each person, if any, who controls Morgan Stanley within the meaning of either Section 15 of the Securities Act or Section 20 of the Exchange Act and each affiliate of Morgan Stanley within the meaning of Rule 405 of the Securities Act (Morgan Stanley Entities) from and against any and all losses, claims, damages and liabilities (including, without limitation, any legal or other expenses reasonably incurred in connection with defending or investigating any such action or claim) (i) that arise out of, or are based upon, any untrue statement or alleged untrue statement of a material fact contained in any material prepared by or with the consent of the Company for distribution to Participants in connection with the Directed Share Program or arise out of, or are based upon, any omission or alleged omission to state therein a material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading; (ii) that arise out of, or are based upon, the failure of any Participant to pay for and accept delivery of Directed Shares that the Participant agreed to purchase; or (iii) related to, arising out of, or in connection with the Directed Share Program, other than losses, claims, damages or liabilities (or expenses relating thereto) that are finally judicially determined to have resulted from the bad faith or gross negligence of Morgan Stanley Entities.
(b) In case any proceeding (including any governmental investigation) shall be instituted involving any Morgan Stanley Entity in respect of which indemnity may be sought pursuant to Section 11(a), the Morgan Stanley Entity seeking indemnity, shall promptly notify the Company in writing and the Company, upon request of the Morgan Stanley Entity, shall retain counsel reasonably satisfactory to the Morgan Stanley Entity to represent the Morgan Stanley Entity and any others the Company may designate in such proceeding and shall pay the reasonably incurred fees and disbursements of such counsel related to such proceeding. In any such proceeding, any Morgan Stanley Entity shall have the right to retain its own counsel, but the fees and expenses of such counsel shall be at the expense of such Morgan Stanley Entity unless (i) the Company shall have agreed in writing to the retention of such counsel or (ii) the named parties to any such
37
proceeding (including any impleaded parties) include both the Company and the Morgan Stanley Entity and representation of both parties by the same counsel would be inappropriate due to actual or potential differing interests between them. The Company shall not, in respect of the legal expenses of the Morgan Stanley Entities in connection with any proceeding or related proceedings in the same jurisdiction, be liable for the fees and expenses of more than one separate firm (in addition to one local counsel in each relevant jurisdiction) for all Morgan Stanley Entities. Any such separate firm for the Morgan Stanley Entities shall be designated in writing by Morgan Stanley. The Company shall not be liable for any settlement of any proceeding effected without its written consent, but if settled with such consent or if there be a final judgment for the plaintiff, the Company agrees to indemnify the Morgan Stanley Entities from and against any loss or liability by reason of such settlement or judgment. Notwithstanding the foregoing sentence, if at any time a Morgan Stanley Entity shall have requested the Company to reimburse it for fees and expenses of counsel as contemplated by the second and third sentences of this paragraph, the Company agrees that it shall be liable for any settlement of any proceeding effected without its written consent if (i) such settlement is entered into more than 60 days after receipt by the Company of the aforesaid request and (ii) the Company shall not have reimbursed the Morgan Stanley Entity in accordance with such request prior to the date of such settlement. The Company shall not, without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley, effect any settlement of any pending or threatened proceeding in respect of which any Morgan Stanley Entity is or could have been a party and indemnity could have been sought hereunder by such Morgan Stanley Entity, unless such settlement includes an unconditional release of the Morgan Stanley Entities from all liability on claims that are the subject matter of such proceeding.
(c) To the extent the indemnification provided for in Section 11(a) is unavailable to a Morgan Stanley Entity or insufficient in respect of any losses, claims, damages or liabilities referred to therein, then the Company in lieu of indemnifying the Morgan Stanley Entity thereunder, shall contribute to the amount paid or payable by the Morgan Stanley Entity as a result of such losses, claims, damages or liabilities (i) in such proportion as is appropriate to reflect the relative benefits received by the Company on the one hand and the Morgan Stanley Entities on the other hand from the offering of the Directed Shares or (ii) if the allocation provided by clause 12(c)(i) above is not permitted by applicable law, in such proportion as is appropriate to reflect not only the relative benefits referred to in clause 12(c)(i) above but also the relative fault of the Company on the one hand and of the Morgan Stanley Entities on the other hand in connection with any statements or omissions that resulted in such losses, claims, damages or liabilities, as well as any other relevant equitable considerations. The relative benefits received by the Company on the one hand and the Morgan Stanley Entities on the other hand in connection with the offering of the Directed Shares shall be deemed to be in the same respective proportions as the net proceeds from the offering of the Directed Shares (before deducting expenses) and the total underwriting discounts and commissions received by the Morgan Stanley Entities for the Directed Shares, bear to the aggregate Public Offering Price of the Directed Shares. If the loss,
38
claim, damage or liability is caused by an untrue or alleged untrue statement of a material fact or the omission or alleged omission to state a material fact, the relative fault of the Company on the one hand and the Morgan Stanley Entities on the other hand shall be determined by reference to, among other things, whether the untrue or alleged untrue statement or the omission or alleged omission relates to information supplied by the Company or by the Morgan Stanley Entities and the parties relative intent, knowledge, access to information and opportunity to correct or prevent such statement or omission.
(d) The Company and the Morgan Stanley Entities agree that it would not be just or equitable if contribution pursuant to this Section 11 were determined by pro rata allocation (even if the Morgan Stanley Entities were treated as one entity for such purpose) or by any other method of allocation that does not take account of the equitable considerations referred to in Section 11(c). The amount paid or payable by the Morgan Stanley Entities as a result of the losses, claims, damages and liabilities referred to in the immediately preceding paragraph shall be deemed to include, subject to the limitations set forth above, any legal or other expenses reasonably incurred by the Morgan Stanley Entities in connection with investigating or defending any such action or claim. Notwithstanding the provisions of this Section 11, no Morgan Stanley Entity shall be required to contribute any amount in excess of the amount by which the total price at which the Directed Shares distributed to the public were offered to the public exceeds the amount of any damages that such Morgan Stanley Entity has otherwise been required to pay. The remedies provided for in this Section 11 are not exclusive and shall not limit any rights or remedies which may otherwise be available to any indemnified party at law or in equity.
(e) The indemnity and contribution provisions contained in this Section 11 shall remain operative and in full force and effect regardless of (i) any termination of this Agreement, (ii) any investigation made by or on behalf of any Morgan Stanley Entity or the Company, its officers or directors or any person controlling the Company and (iii) acceptance of and payment for any of the Directed Shares.
12. Termination. The Underwriters may terminate this Agreement by notice given by the Representatives to the Company, if after the execution and delivery of this Agreement and prior to or on the Closing Date or any Option Closing Date, as the case may be, (i) trading generally shall have been suspended or materially limited on, or by, as the case may be, any of the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE American or the Nasdaq Global Market, (ii) trading of any securities of the Company shall have been suspended on any exchange or in any over-the-counter market, (iii) a material disruption in securities settlement, payment or clearance services in the United States shall have occurred, (iv) any moratorium on commercial banking activities shall have been declared by Federal or New York State authorities or (v) there shall have occurred any outbreak or escalation of hostilities, or any change in financial markets or any calamity or crisis that, in the Representatives judgment, is material and adverse and which, singly or together with any other event specified in this clause (v), makes it, in the Representatives judgment, impracticable or inadvisable to proceed with the offer, sale or delivery of the Shares on the terms and in the manner contemplated in the Time of Sale Prospectus or the Prospectus.
39
13. Effectiveness; Defaulting Underwriters. This Agreement shall become effective upon the execution and delivery hereof by the parties hereto.
If, on the Closing Date or an Option Closing Date, as the case may be, any one or more of the Underwriters shall fail or refuse to purchase Shares that it has or they have agreed to purchase hereunder on such date, and the aggregate number of Shares which such defaulting Underwriter or Underwriters agreed but failed or refused to purchase is not more than one-tenth of the aggregate number of the Shares to be purchased on such date, the other Underwriters shall be obligated severally in the proportions that the number of Firm Shares set forth opposite their respective names in Schedule II bears to the aggregate number of Firm Shares set forth opposite the names of all such non-defaulting Underwriters, or in such other proportions as the Representatives may specify, to purchase the Shares which such defaulting Underwriter or Underwriters agreed but failed or refused to purchase on such date; provided that in no event shall the number of Shares that any Underwriter has agreed to purchase pursuant to this Agreement be increased pursuant to this Section 13 by an amount in excess of one-ninth of such number of Shares without the written consent of such Underwriter. If, on the Closing Date, any Underwriter or Underwriters shall fail or refuse to purchase Firm Shares and the aggregate number of Firm Shares with respect to which such default occurs is more than one-tenth of the aggregate number of Firm Shares to be purchased on such date, and arrangements satisfactory to the Representatives. the Company, and the Selling Stockholders for the purchase of such Firm Shares are not made within 36 hours after such default, this Agreement shall terminate without liability on the part of any non-defaulting Underwriter, the Company, or the Selling Stockholders. In any such case either the Representatives or the relevant Sellers shall have the right to postpone the Closing Date, but in no event for longer than seven days, in order that the required changes, if any, in the Registration Statement, in the Time of Sale Prospectus, in the Prospectus or in any other documents or arrangements may be effected. If, on an Option Closing Date, any Underwriter or Underwriters shall fail or refuse to purchase Additional Shares and the aggregate number of Additional Shares with respect to which such default occurs is more than one-tenth of the aggregate number of Additional Shares to be purchased on such Option Closing Date, the non-defaulting Underwriters shall have the option to (i) terminate their obligation hereunder to purchase the Additional Shares to be sold on such Option Closing Date or (ii) purchase not less than the number of Additional Shares that such non-defaulting Underwriters would have been obligated to purchase in the absence of such default. Any action taken under this paragraph shall not relieve any defaulting Underwriter from liability in respect of any default of such Underwriter under this Agreement.
If this Agreement shall be terminated by the Underwriters, or any of them, because of any failure or refusal on the part of any Seller to comply with the terms or to fulfill any of the conditions of this Agreement, or if for any reason any Seller shall be unable to perform its obligations under this Agreement (other than by reason of default by the Underwriters or the occurrence of any of the events described in clauses (i), (iii), (iv) or (v) of Section 12 hereof), the Company will reimburse the Underwriters or such Underwriters
40
as have so terminated this Agreement with respect to themselves, severally, for all accountable and documented out-of-pocket expenses (including the fees and disbursements of their counsel) reasonably incurred by such Underwriters in connection with this Agreement or the offering contemplated hereunder.
14. Entire Agreement. (a) This Agreement, together with any contemporaneous written agreements and any prior written agreements (to the extent not superseded by this Agreement) that relate to the offering of the Shares, represents the entire agreement between the Company and the Selling Stockholders, on the one hand, and the Underwriters, on the other, with respect to the preparation of any preliminary prospectus, the Time of Sale Prospectus, the Prospectus, the conduct of the offering, and the purchase and sale of the Shares.
(b) The Company and each Selling Stockholder acknowledges that in connection with the offering of the Shares: (i) the Underwriters have acted at arms length, are not agents of, and owe no fiduciary duties to, the Company, any of the Selling Stockholders or any other person, (ii) the Underwriters owe the Company and each Selling Stockholder only those duties and obligations set forth in this Agreement, any contemporaneous written agreements and prior written agreements (to the extent not superseded by this Agreement), if any, (iii) the Underwriters may have interests that differ from those of the Company and each Selling Stockholder, and (iv) none of the activities of the Underwriters in connection with the transactions contemplated herein constitutes a recommendation, investment advice, or solicitation of any action by the Underwriters with respect to any entity or natural person. The Company and each Selling Stockholder waive to the full extent permitted by applicable law any claims it may have against the Underwriters arising from an alleged breach of fiduciary duty in connection with the offering of the Shares.
(c) Each Selling Stockholder further acknowledges and agrees that, although the Underwriters may provide certain Selling Stockholders with certain Regulation Best Interest and Form CRS disclosures or other related documentation in connection with the offering, the Underwriters are not making a recommendation to any Selling Stockholder to participate in the offering or sell any Shares at the Purchase Price, and nothing set forth in such disclosures or documentation is intended to suggest that any Underwriter is making such a recommendation.
15. Recognition of the U.S. Special Resolution Regimes. (a) In the event that any Underwriter that is a Covered Entity becomes subject to a proceeding under a U.S. Special Resolution Regime, the transfer from such Underwriter of this Agreement, and any interest and obligation in or under this Agreement, will be effective to the same extent as the transfer would be effective under the U.S. Special Resolution Regime if this Agreement, and any such interest and obligation, were governed by the laws of the United States or a state of the United States.
41
(b) In the event that any Underwriter that is a Covered Entity or a BHC Act Affiliate of such Underwriter becomes subject to a proceeding under a U.S. Special Resolution Regime, Default Rights under this Agreement that may be exercised against such Underwriter are permitted to be exercised to no greater extent than such Default Rights could be exercised under the U.S. Special Resolution Regime if this Agreement were governed by the laws of the United States or a state of the United States.
For purposes of this Section a BHC Act Affiliate has the meaning assigned to the term affiliate in, and shall be interpreted in accordance with, 12 U.S.C. § 1841(k). Covered Entity means any of the following: (i) a covered entity as that term is defined in, and interpreted in accordance with, 12 C.F.R. § 252.82(b); (ii) a covered bank as that term is defined in, and interpreted in accordance with, 12 C.F.R. § 47.3(b); or (iii) a covered FSI as that term is defined in, and interpreted in accordance with, 12 C.F.R. § 382.2(b). Default Right has the meaning assigned to that term in, and shall be interpreted in accordance with, 12 C.F.R. §§ 252.81, 47.2 or 382.1, as applicable. U.S. Special Resolution Regime means each of (i) the Federal Deposit Insurance Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder and (ii) Title II of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
16. Submission to Jurisdiction. Each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder irrevocably submits to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of any New York State or United States Federal court sitting in The City of New York (the Specified Courts) over any suit, action or proceeding arising out of or relating to this Agreement, the Time of Sale Prospectus, the Prospectus, the Registration Statement or the offering of the Shares (each, a Related Proceeding). Each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder irrevocably waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any objection which it may now or hereafter have to the laying of venue of any Related Proceeding brought in such a court and any claim that any such Related Proceeding brought in such a court has been brought in an inconvenient forum. To the extent that any Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder has or hereafter may acquire any immunity (on the grounds of sovereignty or otherwise) from the jurisdiction of any court or from any legal process with respect to itself or its property, such Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder irrevocably waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, such immunity in respect of any such suit, action or proceeding.
17. Judgment Currency. If for the purposes of obtaining judgment in any court it is necessary to convert a sum due hereunder into any currency other than United States dollars, the parties hereto agree, to the fullest extent permitted by law, that the rate of exchange used shall be the rate at which in accordance with normal banking procedures the Underwriters could purchase United States dollars with such other currency in The City of New York on the business day preceding that on which final judgment is given. The obligation of each Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder with respect to any sum due from it to any Underwriter or any person controlling any Underwriter shall, notwithstanding any judgment in a currency other than United States dollars, not be discharged until the first business day following receipt by such Underwriter or controlling person of any sum in such other currency, and only to the extent that such Underwriter or controlling person may in accordance with normal banking procedures purchase United States dollars with such other currency. If the United States dollars so purchased are less than the sum originally due to such Underwriter or controlling person hereunder, each Non-U.S. Selling
42
Stockholder agrees as a separate obligation and notwithstanding any such judgment, to indemnify such Underwriter or controlling person against such loss. If the United States dollars so purchased are greater than the sum originally due to such Underwriter or controlling person hereunder, such Underwriter or controlling person agrees to pay the relevant Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder(s), as applicable, an amount equal to the excess of the dollars so purchased over the sum originally due to such Underwriter or controlling person hereunder.
18. Taxes. If any sum payable by a Non-U.S. Selling Stockholder under this Agreement is subject to tax in the hands of an Underwriter or taken into account as a receipt in computing the taxable income of that Underwriter (excluding net income taxes on underwriting commissions payable hereunder), the sum payable to the Underwriter under this Agreement shall be increased to such sum as will ensure that the Underwriter shall be left with the sum it would have had in the absence of such tax.
19. Counterparts. This Agreement may be signed in two or more counterparts, each of which shall be an original, with the same effect as if the signatures thereto and hereto were upon the same instrument. Counterparts may be delivered via facsimile, electronic mail (including any electronic signature complying with the U.S. federal ESIGN Act of 2000, Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, the Electronic Signatures and Records Act or other applicable law, e.g., www.docusign.com) or other transmission method and any counterpart so delivered shall be deemed to have been duly and validly delivered and be valid and effective for all purposes.
20. Applicable Law. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of New York.
21. Headings. The headings of the sections of this Agreement have been inserted for convenience of reference only and shall not be deemed a part of this Agreement.
22. Notices. All communications hereunder shall be in writing and effective only upon receipt and if to the Underwriters shall be delivered, mailed or sent to the Representatives in care of Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, 1585 Broadway, New York, New York 10036, Attention: Equity Syndicate Desk, with a copy to the Legal Department, in care of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10179 (fax: (212) 622-8358), Attention: Equity Syndicate Desk, with a copy to the Legal Department, and in care of Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282-2198, Attention: Registration Department; if to the Company shall be delivered, mailed or sent to 290 W Mt. Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100, Livingston, New Jersey 07039, Attention: General Counsel, and if to the Selling Stockholders shall be delivered, mailed or sent to each of the Attorneys-in-Fact named in the Power of Attorney, c/o the Company at the address set forth on the cover of the Registration Statement, Attention General Counsel, with a copy, which shall not constitute notice, to Whalen LLP, 4701 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 325, Newport Beach, California 92660.
[Remainder of page intentionally left blank]
43
Very truly yours,
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: |
| |
Name: | ||
Title: |
The Selling Stockholders named in Schedule I hereto, acting severally | ||
By: |
| |
Name: | ||
Title: Attorney-in-Fact: |
SCHEDULE I
Selling Stockholder |
Number of Firm Shares To |
I-1
SCHEDULE II
II-1
SCHEDULE III
Time of Sale Prospectus
1. | Preliminary Prospectus issued [ ], 2025 |
2. | [identify all free writing prospectuses filed by the Company under Rule 433(d) of the Securities Act] |
3. | [free writing prospectus containing a description of terms that does not reflect final terms, if the Time of Sale Prospectus does not include a final term sheet] |
4. | [orally communicated pricing information such as price per share and size of offering if a Rule 134 pricing term sheet is used at the time of sale instead of a pricing term sheet filed by the Company under Rule 433(d) as a free writing prospectus] |
III-1
SCHEDULE IV
Testing-the-Waters Communications
1. [ ]
IV-1
EXHIBIT A
FORM OF LOCK-UP AGREEMENT
_____________, 2025
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC
As Representatives of the several
Underwriters named in Schedule I to the Underwriting
Agreement referred to below
c/o Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
1585 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
c/o J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
383 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10179
c/o Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC
200 West Street
New York, New York 10282
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The undersigned understands that Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC (Morgan Stanley), J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC (together, the Representatives) propose to enter into an Underwriting Agreement (the Underwriting Agreement) with CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), and the selling stockholders listed on Schedule I of the Underwriting Agreement, providing for the public offering (the Public Offering) by the several Underwriters, including the Representatives (the Underwriters), of shares (the Shares) of the Class A Common Stock, par value $0.000005 per share of the Company (the Class A Common Stock and, together with the Class B Common Stock, par value $0.000005 per share and Class C Common Stock, par value $0.000005 per share, of the Company, the Common Stock).
To induce the Underwriters that may participate in the Public Offering to continue their efforts in connection with the Public Offering, the undersigned hereby agrees that, without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley on behalf of the Underwriters, it will not, and will not publicly disclose an intention to, during the period commencing on the date of this letter agreement (this Letter Agreement) and ending 180 days after the date of the final prospectus or such other earlier date as provided herein (the Restricted Period) relating to the Public Offering (the Prospectus), (1) offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right or warrant to purchase,
A-1
lend, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of Common Stock beneficially owned (as such term is used in Rule 13d-3 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act)), by the undersigned or any other securities so owned, convertible into, or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock or (2) enter into any swap or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of the Common Stock, whether any such transaction described in clause (1) or (2) above is to be settled by delivery of Common Stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise. The undersigned acknowledges and agrees that the foregoing precludes the undersigned from engaging in any hedging or other transaction designed or intended, or which could reasonably be expected to lead to or result in, a sale or disposition of any shares of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock, even if any such sale or disposition transaction or transactions would be made or executed by or on behalf of someone other than the undersigned. The restrictions in this paragraph shall not apply to:
(a) | transactions relating to shares of Common Stock or other securities acquired in the Public Offering or in open market transactions after the completion of the Public Offering, provided that no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of Common Stock, shall be required or shall be voluntarily made during the Restricted Period [other than any Schedule 13G, 13D or Form 13F (or any amendments to such schedules or forms)] in connection with subsequent sales of Common Stock or other securities acquired either in the Public Offering or in such open market or other transactions after the completion of the Public Offering; |
(b) | transfers of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock (i) as a bona fide gift or to a charitable organization or educational institution or (ii) for bona fide estate planning purposes, in each case, in a transfer not involving a disposition for value; |
(c) | transfers or dispositions of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock to any member of the immediate family of the undersigned or any trust for the direct or indirect benefit of the undersigned or the immediate family of the undersigned, or if the undersigned is a trust, to a trustor, trustee or any beneficiary (including such trustor, trustee or beneficiarys estate) in a transaction not involving a disposition for value; |
(d) | distributions, transfers or dispositions of shares of Common Stock or other securities to any corporation, partnership, limited liability company, other entity that is an affiliate of the undersigned (as defined below), investment fund sponsored, managed, advised or sub-advised by the investment manager, advisor or sub-advisor of the undersigned or of which all of the beneficial ownership interests of which are held by the undersigned or the immediate family of the undersigned in a transaction not involving a disposition for value; |
(e) | transfers or dispositions of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock (i) by will, other testamentary document or intestate succession and (ii) by operation of law including, without limitation, pursuant to orders of a court or regulatory agency, in connection with a negotiated divorce settlement, pursuant to a qualified domestic relations order or by other court order; |
A-2
(f) | to a nominee or custodian of a person or entity to whom a disposition or transfer would be permissible under clauses (b) through (e) above; |
(g) | if the undersigned is a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, trust or other entity, (x) transfers or dispositions of shares of Common Stock or other securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock to another corporation, member, managers, partnership, limited liability company, trust or other entity (or in each case its nominee or custodian) that is a direct or indirect affiliate (as defined under Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act) of the undersigned, or to an investment fund or other entity that controls or is controlled by, manages or is managed by, advises or is advised by, or sub-advises or is sub-advised by, or is under common control or common investment management with, the undersigned or affiliates of the undersigned, or (y) distributions of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock to current or former partners (general or limited), members, managers, stockholders, beneficiaries or other equity holders of the undersigned (or in each case its nominee or custodian) or to the estate of any such partners, members, managers, stockholders, beneficiaries or other equity holders; |
(h) | (i) the receipt by the undersigned from the Company of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock upon the exercise of options, settlement of restricted stock units or other equity awards or the exercise of warrants which are outstanding as of the date of the Prospectus and are disclosed in the Prospectus, or (ii) transfers or dispositions to the Company in connection with the vesting, settlement or exercise of restricted stock units, options, warrants or other rights to purchase shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock (including, in each case, by way of net or cashless exercise), including any transfer to the Company for the payment of tax withholdings or remittance payments due as a result of the vesting, settlement or exercise of such restricted stock units, options, warrants or other rights, or in connection with the conversion of convertible securities, in all such cases pursuant to equity awards granted under a stock incentive plan or other equity award plan, or pursuant to the terms of convertible securities, each as described in the Registration Statement, the preliminary prospectus relating to the Shares included in the Registration Statement immediately prior to the time the Underwriting Agreement is executed and the Prospectus; provided that (1) any such shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock received by the undersigned shall be subject to the terms of this Letter Agreement, (2) except as set forth in (3), no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of Common Stock, shall be voluntarily made during the Restricted Period and (3) to the extent a filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act is required during the Restricted Period as a result of such transfers or dispositions pursuant to clause (h)(ii), it shall clearly indicate that the filing relates to the circumstances described in this clause (h)(ii); |
A-3
(i) | sales in open market transactions during the Restricted Period to generate such amount of net proceeds to the undersigned from such sales (after deducting commissions) in an aggregate amount up to the total amount of taxes or estimated taxes (as applicable) that become due as a result of the vesting and/or settlement of Company equity awards held by the undersigned and issued pursuant to a plan or arrangement described in the Prospectus that vest and/or settle during the Restricted Period, provided that, for the avoidance of doubt, any shares of Common Stock or Other Securities retained by the undersigned after giving effect to this provision shall be subject to the terms of this Letter Agreement; provided that in the case of any sale pursuant to this clause (i), filings under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act shall only be permissible during the Restricted Period if such filing shall clearly indicates in the footnotes thereto that the filing relates to securities being sold to generate net proceeds solely to cover taxes or estimated taxes (as applicable) that became due as a result of the vesting and/or settlement of Company equity award; |
(j) | the establishment of a trading plan on behalf of a stockholder, officer or director of the Company pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act for the transfer of shares of Common Stock, provided that (i) such plan does not provide for the transfer of Common Stock during the Restricted Period (except as otherwise allowed pursuant to clause (i) above) and (ii) to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by or on behalf of the undersigned or the Company regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect that no transfer of Common Stock may be made under such plan during the Restricted Period (except as otherwise allowed pursuant to clause (i) above); |
(k) | transfers of shares of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock to the Company pursuant to arrangements under which the Company has the option to repurchase such shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock or a right of first refusal with respect to such securities; provided to the extent a public announcement or filing under the Exchange Act, if any, is required of or voluntarily made by or on behalf of the undersigned or the Company regarding the establishment of such plan, such announcement or filing shall include a statement to the effect such transfer was to the Company in connection with the repurchase of shares of Common Stock; |
(l) | the conversion of the outstanding preferred stock or warrants to acquire preferred stock of the Company into shares of Common Stock or the exercise of warrants to acquire shares of Common Stock prior to or in connection with the consummation of the Public Offering, or the conversion exchange, retirement or reclassification of the outstanding shares of preferred stock or other classes of capital stock of the Company into shares of Common Stock, provided that any such shares of Common Stock received upon such conversion, exchange, retirement or reclassification shall be subject to the terms of this Letter Agreement; |
A-4
(m) | (i) transfers of shares of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock pursuant to a bona fide third-party tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction, that is approved by the Board of Directors of the Company, made to all holders of the Companys capital stock involving a Change of Control (as defined below) and (ii) entry into any lock-up, voting or similar agreement pursuant to which the undersigned may agree to transfer, sell, tender or otherwise dispose of shares of Common Stock or such other securities in connection with a transaction described in (i) above; provided, that, in the event that such tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction is not completed, the shares of Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock beneficially owned by the undersigned shall remain subject to the restrictions contained in this Letter Agreement. For purposes of this clause (k), Change of Control shall mean the transfer (whether by tender offer, merger, consolidation or other similar transaction), in one transaction or a series of related transactions, the result of which is that any person (as defined in Section 13(d)(3) of the Exchange Act), or group of persons, other than the Company or an Underwriter pursuant to the Public Offering, becomes the beneficial owner (as defined in Rules 13d-3 and 13d-5 of the Exchange Act) of more than 50% of the total voting power of the voting stock of the Company (or the surviving entity); |
(n) | with the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley on behalf of the Underwriters (subject to compliance with the Consent Paragraph (as defined below)); |
(o) | to the Underwriters pursuant to the Underwriting Agreement; |
(p) | any transfer of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock pledged in a bona fide transaction to third parties as collateral to secure obligations pursuant to lending or other arrangements in effect as of the date hereof between such third parties (or their affiliates or designees) and the undersigned and/or its affiliates or any existing or future similar arrangement relating to a financing arrangement for the benefit of the undersigned and/or its affiliates, provided that in the case of pledges or similar arrangements under this clause (p), any such pledgee or other party shall, upon foreclosure on the pledged securities, sign and deliver a lock-up agreement substantially in the form of this Letter Agreement, and provided further that no filing under the Exchange Act, or any other public filing or disclosure, of such transfer by or on behalf of the undersigned, shall be voluntarily made during the Restricted Period and to the extent a filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act is required during the Restricted Period as a result of such transfers or dispositions pursuant to clause (p), it shall clearly indicate that the filing relates to the circumstances described in this clause (p); or |
(q) | to any underwriters pursuant to any underwriting agreement entered into in connection with any offering of shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock undertaken by the Company with the prior written consent delivered by Morgan Stanley to the Company in accordance with the Underwriting Agreement and for which the undersigned has exercised its registration rights; |
provided, in the case of any transfer, disposition or distribution pursuant to clauses (b) through (g) [or (n)], that (i) each transferee, donee or distributee shall sign and deliver a lock-up agreement substantially in the form of this Letter Agreement and (ii) no public announcement or filing under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act or any other public filing or disclosure reporting a reduction in beneficial ownership of shares of Common Stock, shall be required or shall be
A-5
voluntarily made during the Restricted Period [other than any Schedule 13G, 13D or Form 13F (or any amendments to such schedules or forms)] with respect to such transfer, disposition or distribution (other than, in the case of a transfer or other disposition pursuant to clause (b), (e), (f), to the extent such transfer or other disposition is to a nominee or custodian of a person or entity to whom a disposition or transfer would be permissible under clause (b) or (e), and (g), above, if the undersigned is subject to Section 16 reporting with respect to the Company under the Exchange Act and any Form 4 or Form 5 is required to be filed under the Exchange Act, any such filing will indicate by footnote disclosure or otherwise the nature of the transfer or disposition).
For purposes of this Letter Agreement, (i) immediate family shall mean any relationship by blood, current or former marriage or domestic partnership, or adoption, not more remote than first cousin; and (ii) affiliate shall have the meaning set forth in Rule 405 promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
Notwithstanding the foregoing,
(1) if (a) the undersigned is an employee or other service provider of the Company (but excluding in all cases any director or Founder of the Company) (an Employee) as of the date of the Companys initial public filing of the registration statement on Form S-1 relating to the Public Offering (the Public Filing Date) who continues to provide service to the Company through the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date and (b) the closing price per share of the Common Stock, on the exchange on which the Class A Common Stock is listed, is at least 25% greater than the initial public offering price per share of Class A Common Stock set forth on the cover page of the Prospectus for at least five Trading Days (as defined below) in any 10-day consecutive Trading Day period, including at least one day occurring after the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date (as defined below), then 5% of the aggregate number of vested shares of Common Stock and other securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock owned by the undersigned Employee as of the Public Filing Date and vested through the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date (Measurement Date), including (A) (i) restricted stock units that have satisfied the time and service vesting condition as of the Measurement Date but for which the satisfaction of the liquidity event condition is delayed until the effectiveness of the Registration Statement and (ii) vested and exercisable stock options as of the Measurement Date, but excluding any unvested warrants, restricted stock, convertible securities, stock options, restricted stock units or other equity awards issued by the Company as of the Measurement Date, and (B) such shares and other securities that are held by any trust for the direct or indirect benefit of the holder or of an immediate family member of the holder, will be automatically released from the restrictions contained in this Letter Agreement and may be sold in the public market, subject to compliance with applicable securities laws including, without limitation, Rule 144 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and compliance with the Companys insider trading policy, beginning at the close of the second Trading Day after the date that the Company publicly announces its earnings for the first completed quarterly period (which, for this purpose, shall not include flash numbers or preliminary, partial earnings) (the Initial Post-Offering Earnings Release Date) following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in the Prospectus; and
A-6
(2) in addition, and notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the Restricted Period shall terminate for the remainder of the undersigneds Shares subject to the restrictions hereunder, on the earlier of (i) the closing of trading on the second Trading Day immediately following the Companys release of earnings (the Second Post-Offering Earnings Release Date) (which for this purpose shall not include flash numbers or preliminary, partial earnings) for the second quarter following the most recent period for which financial statements are included in the Prospectus and (ii) 180 days after the date of the Prospectus.
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, if the undersigned is an employee, officer or a director of the Company or is otherwise subject to the Companys insider trading policy, the undersigned hereby acknowledges that the undersigned shall remain subject to the Companys insider trading policy, including the Companys regular quarterly black-out periods thereunder, it being understood that the insider trading policy shall be deemed to not apply to the Magnetar Entities.
Any release from the restrictions contained in this Letter Agreement pursuant to paragraph (1) above shall be referred to as the Employee Release and any release from the restrictions contained in this Letter Agreement pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2) above shall be referred to as an Earnings-Related Lockup Release. The Company shall announce the date of the anticipated date of such Earnings-Related Lockup Release through a major news service, or on a Form 8-K, at least two Trading Days in advance of the Earnings-Related Lockup Release.
For purposes of this Letter Agreement a Trading Day is a day on which the Nasdaq Stock Market is open for the buying and selling of securities.
For purposes of this Letter Agreement Founder includes each of Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, Brannin McBee and Peter Salanki.
In addition, the undersigned agrees that, without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley on behalf of the Underwriters, it will not, during the earlier of (i) the end of the Restricted Period and (ii) the Second Post-Offering Earnings Release Date, other than in connection with a registration initiated by the Company, make any demand for the registration of any shares of Common Stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock. The undersigned also agrees and consents to the entry of stop transfer instructions with the Companys transfer agent and registrar against the transfer of the undersigneds shares of Common Stock except in compliance with the foregoing restrictions.
If the undersigned is an officer or director of the Company, the undersigned further agrees that the foregoing restrictions shall be equally applicable to any issuer-directed Shares the undersigned may purchase in the offering.
If the undersigned is an officer or director of the Company, (i) Morgan Stanley agrees that, at least three business days before the effective date of any release or waiver of the foregoing restrictions in connection with a transfer of shares of Common Stock, Morgan Stanley will notify the Company of the impending release or waiver, and (ii) the Company will agree in
A-7
the Underwriting Agreement to announce the impending release or waiver by press release through a major news service at least two business days before the effective date of the release or waiver. Any release or waiver granted by Morgan Stanley hereunder to any such officer or director shall only be effective two business days after the publication date of such press release. The provisions of this paragraph will not apply if (a) the release or waiver is effected solely to permit a transfer not for consideration or to an immediate family member as defined in FINRA Rule 5130(i)(5) and (b) the transferee has agreed in writing to be bound by the same terms described in this Letter Agreement to the extent and for the duration that such terms remain in effect at the time of the transfer.
The undersigned shall not be granted or provided by Morgan Stanley, on behalf of the Underwriters, in any manner (i) any amendment or waiver with respect to, (ii) any early release, other than the Earnings-Related Lockup Release, in respect of or (iii) any other modification of its obligations under this Letter Agreement, in any respect, without the prior written consent of Magnetar Financial LLC (Magnetar); provided that the foregoing prohibition will not apply in the event of (i) a release solely to permit a transfer not for consideration and in respect of which the transferee has agreed in writing to be bound by the same terms described in this Letter Agreement to the extent and for the duration that such terms remain in effect at the time of the transfer and (ii) an early release of any officer, director or other individual from the restrictions described herein due to circumstances of an emergency or hardship, as determined by Morgan Stanley in its sole judgment, with respect to Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock valued at $500,000 or less per individual and $10,000,000 in the aggregate (based on the closing or last reported sale price of the Common Stock on the date such release becomes effective) ((i) and (ii) of this proviso, the Consent Paragraph Exceptions) (the Consent Paragraph). This Consent Paragraph is being provided in connection with Magnetars existing rights as of the date hereof under its agreements with the Company. For the avoidance of doubt, this provision shall not apply to obligations of the Company under the Underwriting Agreement. If any record or beneficial owner of any securities of the Company (each, a Triggering Shareholder) is granted (i) any amendment or waiver with respect to, (ii) any modification of or (iii) an any other early release or waiver from the restrictions described herein or in any similar lock-up agreement during the Restricted Period (each, a Triggering Release), then each of the undersigned shall also be granted such amendment or waiver, modification of or early release or waiver, as applicable, from its obligations hereunder with respect to the same percentage of the undersigneds shares of Common Stock or other securities subject to this Letter Agreement (the Restricted Securities) as the percentage that the securities being released or waived in the Triggering Release represent with respect to the Restricted Securities held by the Triggering Shareholder at the time of the Triggering Release (the Pro Rata Release). Notwithstanding the foregoing, the pro rata release or waiver described in this paragraph will not apply: (a) to the Employee Release or (b) an early release of any officer, director or other individual from the restrictions described herein due to circumstances of an emergency or hardship, as determined by Morgan Stanley in its sole judgment with respect to Common Stock or any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for Common Stock valued at $500,000 or less per individual and $10,000,000 in the aggregate (based on the closing or last reported sale price of the Common Stock on the date such release becomes effective).
The undersigned understands that the Company and the Underwriters are relying upon this Letter Agreement in proceeding toward consummation of the Public Offering. The undersigned further understands that this Letter Agreement is irrevocable and shall be binding upon the undersigneds heirs, legal representatives, successors and assigns.
A-8
The undersigned acknowledges and agrees that the Underwriters have not provided any recommendation or investment advice nor have the Underwriters solicited any action from the undersigned with respect to the Public Offering of the Shares and the undersigned has consulted their own legal, accounting, financial, regulatory and tax advisors to the extent deemed appropriate. The undersigned further acknowledges and agrees that, although the Underwriters may provide certain Regulation Best Interest and Form CRS disclosures or other related documentation to you in connection with the Public Offering, the Underwriters are not making a recommendation to you to participate in the Public Offering or sell any Shares at the price determined in the Public Offering, and nothing set forth in such disclosures or documentation is intended to suggest that any Underwriter is making such a recommendation.
In the event that any of the Representatives withdraws from or declines to participate in the Public Offering, all references to the Representatives contained in this Letter Agreement shall be deemed to refer to the Representatives that continues to participate in the Public Offering.
Whether or not the Public Offering actually occurs depends on a number of factors, including market conditions. Any Public Offering will only be made pursuant to an Underwriting Agreement, the terms of which are subject to negotiation between the Company and the Underwriters.
The undersigned understands that, if (i) either the Representatives, on the one hand, or the Company, on the other hand, informs the other in writing, prior to the execution of the Underwriting Agreement, that they have determined not to proceed with the Public Offering, (ii) the Underwriting Agreement (other than the provisions thereof which survive termination) shall terminate or be terminated prior to payment for and delivery of the Common Stock to be sold thereunder (iii) the registration statement furnished to or filed with the Commission with respect to the Public Offering is withdrawn prior to the execution of the Underwriting Agreement or (iv) the Underwriting Agreement is not duly executed by April 30, 2025, then this Letter Agreement shall be of no further force and effect, and the undersigned shall be automatically released from all obligations under this Letter Agreement.
This Letter Agreement may be delivered via facsimile, electronic mail (including pdf or any electronic signature complying with the U.S. federal ESIGN Act of 2000, e.g., www.docusign.com or www.echosign.com) or other transmission method and any counterpart so delivered shall be deemed to have been duly and validly delivered and be valid and effective for all purposes.
This Letter Agreement and any claim, controversy or dispute arising under or related to this Letter Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, without regard to the conflict of laws principles thereof. The Company shall be a third party beneficiary of this Letter Agreement.
[Signature Page Follows]
A-9
Very truly yours, |
||||||||
IF AN INDIVIDUAL: | IF AN ENTITY: | |||||||
(duly authorized signature) |
(please print complete name of entity) | |||||||
Name: | By: |
|||||||
(please print full name) | (duly authorized signature) | |||||||
Name: |
||||||||
(please print full name) | ||||||||
Title: |
||||||||
(please print full title) | ||||||||
Address: | Address: |
|||||||
E-mail: | E-mail: |
[Signature Page to Lock Up Agreement]
EXHIBIT B
FORM OF WAIVER OF LOCK-UP
_____________, 20__
[Name and Address of
Officer or Director
Requesting Waiver]
Dear Mr./Ms. [Name]:
This letter is being delivered to you in connection with the offering by CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) of _____ shares of Class A common stock, $0.000005 par value per share (the Common Stock), of the Company and the lock-up agreement dated ____, 2025 (the Lock-up Agreement), executed by you in connection with such offering, and your request for a [waiver] [release] dated ____, 2025, with respect to ____ shares of Common Stock (the Shares).
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC hereby agrees to [waive] [release] the transfer restrictions set forth in the Lock-up Agreement, but only with respect to the Shares, effective _____, 20__; provided, however, that such [waiver] [release] is conditioned on the Company announcing the impending [waiver] [release] by press release through a major news service at least two business days before effectiveness of such [waiver] [release]. This letter will serve as notice to the Company of the impending [waiver] [release].
Except as expressly [waived] [released] hereby, the Lock-up Agreement shall remain in full force and effect.
Very truly yours,
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC | ||
Acting severally on behalf of themselves and the several Underwriters named in Schedule II hereto | ||
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC | ||
By: |
| |
Name: | ||
Title: |
cc: Company
B-1
EXHIBIT C
FORM OF PRESS RELEASE
CoreWeave, Inc.
[Date]
CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) announced today that Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, the [__] in the Companys recent public sale of _____ shares of its Class A common stock, are [waiving][releasing] a lock-up restriction with respect to ____ shares of the Companys common stock held by [certain officers or directors] [an officer or director] of the Company. The [waiver][release] will take effect on ____, 20__ , and the shares may be sold on or after such date.
This press release is not an offer for sale of the securities in the United States or in any other jurisdiction where such offer is prohibited, and such securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
C-1
Exhibit 3.1
FIFTH AMENDED AND RESTATED
CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION
OF
COREWEAVE, INC.
(Pursuant to Sections 242 and 245 of the
General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware)
CoreWeave, Inc., a corporation organized and existing under and by virtue of the provisions of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (the General Corporation Law),
DOES HEREBY CERTIFY:
1. That the name of the corporation is CoreWeave, Inc. (the Corporation), and the Corporation was originally incorporated pursuant to the General Corporation Law on September 6, 2018 under the name, Atlantic Crypto Corporation.
2. That the Board of Directors of the Corporation duly adopted resolutions proposing to amend and restate the Corporations Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation, as currently amended (the Existing Certificate), declaring said amendment and restatement to be advisable and in the best interests of the Corporation and its stockholders, and authorizing the appropriate officers of this Corporation to solicit the consent of the stockholders therefor, which resolutions set forth the proposed Fifth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation attached hereto as Exhibit A (the Restated Certificate).
3. That the Restated Certificate was approved by the holders of the requisite number of shares of capital stock of the Corporation in accordance with Section 228 of the General Corporation Law.
4. The Restated Certificate, which restates and integrates and further amends the provisions of the Corporations current Certificate of Incorporation, has been duly adopted in accordance with Sections 242 and 245 of the General Corporation Law.
5. The Existing Certificate is hereby amended and restated in its entirety to read as set forth in the Restated Certificate.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, this Fifth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation has been executed by the undersigned duly authorized officer of the Corporation on this 13th day of March, 2025.
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Michael Intrator, Chief Executive Officer |
EXHIBIT A
FIFTH AMENDED AND RESTATED CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION
OF
COREWEAVE, INC.
FIRST: The name of this corporation is CoreWeave, Inc. (the Corporation).
SECOND: The address of the registered office of the Corporation in the State of Delaware is 16192 Coastal Highway, in the City of Lewes, County of Sussex 19958. The name of its registered agent at such address is Harvard Business Services, Inc.
THIRD: The nature of the business or purposes to be conducted or promoted is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized under the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (the General Corporation Law).
FOURTH: The total number of shares of all classes of capital stock which the Corporation shall have authority to issue is (i) 690,680,000 shares of Common Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Common Stock), of which there shall be two series of such class of Common Stock, 540,680,000 shares of which are hereby designated Class A Common Stock, and 150,000,000 shares of which are hereby designated Class B Common Stock, and (ii) 206,169,100 shares of Preferred Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Preferred Stock). The Preferred Stock may be issued from time to time in one or more series, each of such series to consist of such number of shares and to have such terms, rights, powers and preferences, and the qualifications and limitations with respect thereto, as stated or expressed herein. Pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law, 60,000,000 of the shares of the Preferred Stock of the Corporation are hereby designated Series Seed Preferred Stock; 24,182,680 of the shares of the Preferred Stock of the Corporation are hereby designated Series A Preferred Stock; 79,978,760 of the shares of Preferred Stock of the Corporation are hereby designated Series B Preferred Stock; 12,484,540 of the shares of Preferred Stock of the Corporation are hereby designated Series B-l Preferred Stock; and 29,523,120 of the shares of Preferred Stock of the Corporation are hereby designated Series C Preferred Stock. The Series B Preferred Stock and the Series B-1 Preferred Stock are referred to together as the Combined Series B Preferred Stock and the Series Seed Preferred Stock and Series A Preferred Stock are referred to together as the Junior Preferred Stock.
Contingent and effective immediately upon the filing of this Fifth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation (the Restated Certificate) with the Secretary of State of the State of Delaware (the time of such filing, the Effective Time), without further action on the part of the Corporation or its stockholders: (a) each one (1) share of Class A Common Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Class A Common Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Class A Common Stock; (b) each one (1) share of Class B Common Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Class B Common Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Class B Common Stock; (c) each one (1) share of Series Seed Preferred Stock issued
-1-
and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Series Seed Preferred Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Series Seed Preferred Stock, (d) each one (1) share of Series A Preferred Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Series A Preferred Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Series A Preferred Stock, (e) each one (1) share of Series B Preferred Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Series B Preferred Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Series B Preferred Stock, (f) each one (1) share of Series B-1 Preferred Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Series B-1 Preferred Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Series B-1 Preferred Stock and (g) each one (1) share of Series C Preferred Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time (the Prior Series C Preferred Stock, and collectively with the Prior Class A Common Stock, the Prior Class B Common Stock, the Prior Series Seed Preferred Stock, the Prior Series A Preferred Stock, the Prior Series B Preferred Stock and the Prior Series B-1 Preferred Stock, the Prior Capital Stock) shall be reconstituted and reclassified as twenty (20) shares of Series C Preferred Stock, automatically and without any further action on the part of the Corporation or the holder of any such shares of capital stock (the foregoing, the Forward Stock Split). Any stock certificate that, immediately prior to the Effective Time, represented shares of Prior Capital Stock, shall, from and after the Effective Time, automatically and without the necessity of presenting the same for exchange, represent that number of shares of Common Stock or Preferred Stock into which such shares of Prior Capital Stock, as applicable, shall have been reconstituted and reclassified pursuant to the Forward Stock Split. The statement of the rights, powers, preferences and privileges (and the qualifications, limitations and restrictions thereof) of the Common Stock and Preferred Stock contained in this Restated Certificate reflect the Forward Stock Split (that is, all numeric references and other provisions in this Restated Certificate have already given effect to, and no further adjustment shall be made on account of, the Forward Stock Split).
The following is a statement of the designations and the powers, privileges and rights, and the qualifications, limitations or restrictions thereof in respect of each class of capital stock of the Corporation.
A. Common Stock.
Unless otherwise indicated, references to Sections in this Part A of this Article Fourth refer to sections of this Part A.
1. General. The voting, dividend and liquidation rights of the holders of the Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock are subject to and qualified by the rights, powers and preferences of the holders of the Preferred Stock set forth herein. Except as otherwise provided in this Restated Certificate or required by applicable law, shares of Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock shall have the same rights and powers, rank equally (including as to dividends and distributions, and upon any liquidation, bankruptcy, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation), share ratably and be identical in all respects as to all matters.
-2-
2. Voting. Except as otherwise provided in this Restated Certificate or required by law, each holder of shares of Class B Common Stock shall (a) initially be entitled to one (1) vote for each share of Class B Common Stock and (b) automatically, upon the Public Offering Date (as defined below), be entitled to ten (10) votes for each share of Class B Common Stock, in each case, held at all meetings of stockholders (and all written actions in lieu of meetings) and each holder of Class A Common Stock shall be entitled to one (1) vote for each share of Class A Common Stock held at all meetings of stockholders (and all written actions in lieu of meetings); provided, however, that, except as otherwise required by law, holders of Common Stock, as such, shall not be entitled to vote on any amendment to this Restated Certificate that relates solely to the terms of one (1) or more outstanding series of Preferred Stock if the holders of such affected series are entitled, either separately or together with the holders of one (1) or more other such series, to vote thereon pursuant to this Restated Certificate or pursuant to the General Corporation Law. Unless required by law, there shall be no cumulative voting. Except as otherwise provided in this Restated Certificate or required by law, holders of Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock shall vote together as a single class. The number of authorized shares of Common Stock, or a class or series of Common Stock, may be increased or decreased (but not below the number of shares thereof then outstanding) by (in addition to any vote of the holders of one (1) or more series of Preferred Stock that may be required by the terms of this Restated Certificate) the affirmative vote of the holders of shares of capital stock of the Corporation representing a majority of the votes represented by all outstanding shares of capital stock of the Corporation entitled to vote, irrespective of the provisions of Section 242(b)(2) of the General Corporation Law. For the avoidance of doubt, any stockholder of the Corporation shall be permitted to vote the shares of capital stock of the Corporation held by such stockholder differently as among such shares, whether or not such shares are of a given class or series of capital stock of the Corporation.
3. Conversion of Class B Common Stock.
3.1 Optional Conversion. Each share of Class B Common Stock shall be convertible, at the option of the holder thereof, at any time, and without the payment of additional consideration by the holder thereof, into one fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock. In order for a holder of Class B Common Stock to voluntarily convert shares of Class B Common Stock into shares of Class A Common Stock, such holder shall surrender the certificate or certificates for such shares of Class B Common Stock (or, if such registered holder alleges that any such certificate has been lost, stolen or destroyed, a lost certificate affidavit and agreement reasonably acceptable to the Corporation to indemnify the Corporation against any claim that may be made against the Corporation on account of the alleged loss, theft or destruction of such certificate), at the office of the transfer agent for the Class B Common Stock (or at the principal office of the Corporation if the Corporation serves as its own transfer agent), together with written notice that such holder elects to convert all or any number of the shares of the Class B Common Stock represented by such certificate or certificates and, if applicable, any event on which such conversion is contingent (a Class B Contingency Event). Such notice shall state such holders name or the names of the nominees in which such holder wishes the certificate or certificates for shares of Class A Common Stock to be issued. If required by the Corporation, certificates surrendered for conversion shall be endorsed or accompanied by a written instrument or instruments of transfer, in form reasonably satisfactory to the Corporation, duly executed by the registered holder or such holders attorney duly authorized in writing. The close of business on the date of receipt by the transfer agent (or by the Corporation if the Corporation serves as its own transfer agent) of such certificates (or lost
-3-
certificate affidavit and agreement) and notice (or, if later, the date on which all Class B Contingency Events have occurred) shall be the time of conversion (the Class B Conversion Time), and the shares of Class A Common Stock issuable upon conversion of the shares represented by such certificate shall be deemed to be outstanding of record as of such time. If the conversion is in connection with an underwritten offering of securities registered pursuant to the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), the conversion may, at the option of any holder tendering Class B Common Stock for conversion, be conditioned upon the closing with the underwriters of the sale of securities pursuant to such offering, in which event the persons entitled to receive the Class A Common Stock upon conversion of the Class B Common Stock shall not be deemed to have converted such Class B Common Stock until immediately prior to the closing of such sale of securities. The Corporation shall, as soon as practicable after the applicable Class B Conversion Time, issue and deliver to such holder of Class B Common Stock, or to such holders nominee(s), a certificate or certificates for the number of full shares of Class A Common Stock issuable upon such conversion in accordance with the provisions hereof and a certificate for the number (if any) of the shares of Class B Common Stock represented by the surrendered certificate that were not converted into Class A Common Stock. All shares of Class B Common Stock that shall have been surrendered for conversion as herein provided shall no longer be deemed to be outstanding and all rights with respect to such shares shall immediately cease and terminate at the applicable Class B Conversion Time, except only the right of the holders thereof to receive shares of Class A Common Stock in exchange therefor.
3.2 Automatic Conversion.
3.2.1 Each share of Class B Common Stock held by an Applicable Holder and all Permitted Affiliates of such Applicable Holder shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock immediately prior to the close of business on the earliest to occur of the following with respect to such Applicable Holder (the earliest to occur of the events referred to in the following clauses (a)-(d), the Specific Applicable Holder Conversion):
(a) the date fixed by the Board of Directors of the Corporation (the Board of Directors), which date may be no more than sixty-one (61) days following the first day after 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the Public Offering Date that the number of Threshold Shares (as defined below) held by such Applicable Holder and his Permitted Affiliates is less than fifty percent (50%) of the number of Threshold Shares at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the Public Offering Date; provided, that, following a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement with respect to a spouse of an Applicable Holder, the Threshold Shares shall be deemed to include Threshold Shares transferred prior to such proceeding, order or legal requirement to such spouse or a Permitted Trust of which such spouse was a trustee;
(b) the date fixed by the Board of Directors following the first time that such Applicable Holder is no longer providing services that occupy substantially all such Applicable Holders working time and business efforts to the Corporation as an officer, employee or consultant, as determined by the Board of Directors in its sole discretion (other than as a result of such Applicable Holders employment with the Corporation being terminated without Cause) (Service Termination), which date may be no more than sixty-one (61) days following such Service Termination;
-4-
(c) the date that such Applicable Holders employment with the Corporation is terminated for Cause (as defined below); and
(d) the date fixed by the Board of Directors after the date of the death or Disability (as defined below) of such Applicable Holder, which date may be no more than sixty-one (61) days following such Service Termination.
3.2.2 All shares of Class B Common Stock then outstanding shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock immediately prior to the close of business on the earliest to occur of the following (the earliest to occur of the events referred to in the following clauses (a)-(c), together with the Specific Applicable Holder Conversion, the Class B Automatic Conversion):
(a) the date fixed by the Board of Directors that is no more than sixty-one (61) days following the seventh (7th) anniversary of the Public Offering Date;
(b) the date specified by the affirmative vote of the holders of Class B Common Stock representing not less than two-thirds (2/3) of the voting power of the outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock, voting separately as a single class; and
(c) the date fixed by the Board of Directors that is no more than sixty-one (61) days following the first time that there is a Service Termination with respect to Michael Intrator.
The Corporation shall provide notice of a Class B Automatic Conversion to record holders of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock subject to such Class B Automatic Conversion, as applicable, as soon as practicable following such Class B Automatic Conversion. Such notice shall be provided by any means then permitted by the General Corporation Law; provided, however, that no failure to give such notice nor any defect therein shall affect the validity of a Class B Automatic Conversion. Upon and after a Class B Automatic Conversion, each record holder of then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock subject to such Class B Automatic Conversion, as applicable, immediately prior to such Class B Automatic Conversion, as applicable, shall be registered on the Corporations books as the record holder of the shares of Class A Common Stock issued upon such Class B Automatic Conversion without further action on the part of such record holder. Immediately upon the effectiveness of a Class B Automatic Conversion, as applicable, the rights of the holders of the shares of Class B Common Stock converted pursuant to such Class B Automatic Conversion, as applicable, shall cease, and the holders shall be treated for all purposes as having become the record holder or holders of such shares of Class A Common Stock into which such shares of Class B Common Stock were converted.
-5-
3.3 Conversion on Transfer. Each share of Class B Common Stock shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock upon the occurrence of a Class B Transfer (as defined below), other than a Permitted Transfer (as defined below), of such share of Class B Common Stock. The person(s) entitled to shares of Class A Common Stock upon a Class B Transfer shall be treated for all purposes as the record holders of such shares of Class A Common Stock as of the date of such Class B Transfer.
3.4 Policies and Procedures. The Corporation may, from time to time, establish such policies and procedures, not in violation of applicable law, this Restated Certificate or the Bylaws of the Corporation (as may be amended, modified or restated, the Bylaws), relating to the conversion of shares of Class B Common Stock into shares of Class A Common Stock as it may deem necessary or advisable. If the Corporation has reason to believe that a Class B Transfer that is not a Permitted Transfer has occurred, the Corporation may request that the purported transferor furnish affidavits or other evidence to the Corporation as it reasonably deems necessary to determine whether a Class B Transfer that is not a Permitted Transfer has occurred, and if such transferor does not, within ten days after the date of such request, furnish sufficient (as reasonably determined by the Board of Directors (but not a committee thereof)) evidence to the Corporation (in the manner provided in the request) to enable the Corporation to determine that such Class B Transfer was a Permitted Transfer, any such shares of Class B Common Stock included in such Class B Transfer, to the extent not previously converted, shall be automatically converted into shares of Class A Common Stock on a one-to-one basis, and such conversion shall thereupon be registered on the books and records of the Corporation. In connection with any action of stockholders taken at a meeting, the stock ledger of the Corporation shall be presumptive evidence as to who are the stockholders entitled to vote in person or by proxy at any meeting of stockholders and the classes of shares held by each such stockholder and the number of shares of each class held by such stockholder.
3.5 Definitions. As used in this Restated Certificate, the following terms shall have the meanings set forth below:
3.5.1 Applicable Holders shall mean each of Michael Intrator, Brannin McBee and Brian Venturo.
3.5.2 Cause shall mean: (a) such Applicable Holder willfully engages in conduct that is in bad faith and materially injurious to the Corporation, including but not limited to, misappropriation of trade secrets, fraud or embezzlement; (b) such Applicable Holder commits a material breach of any written agreement between such Applicable Holder and the Corporation that causes harm to the Corporation, which breach is not cured within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice describing in detail such breach to such Applicable Holder from the Board of Directors; (c) such Applicable Holder willfully refuses to implement or follow a directive by the Board of Directors, directly related to a breach of such Applicable Holders duties, which breach is not cured within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice describing in detail such breach to such Applicable Holder from the Board of Directors; (d) such Applicable Holder engages in material misfeasance or malfeasance demonstrated by a continued pattern of material failure to perform the essential job duties associated with such Applicable Holders position, which breach is not cured within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice describing in detail such breach to such Applicable Holder from the Board of Directors; (e) such Applicable Holders conviction of, or plea of guilty or no contest to, a felony that results in, or would reasonably be expected to result in, a material loss, material reputational damage or other material harm to the Corporation, as determined in good faith by the Board of Directors (including a majority of the disinterested members of the Board of Directors).
-6-
3.5.3 Class B Transfer shall mean any direct or indirect sale, assignment, transfer, conveyance, pledge, mortgage, hypothecation, encumbrance or other transfer, disposition or encumbering of a share of Class B Common Stock, or any legal or beneficial interest in such share, whether or not for value and whether voluntary or involuntary or by operation of law, including, without limitation, a transfer of a share of Class B Common Stock to a broker or other nominee (regardless of whether there is a corresponding change in beneficial ownership), or the transfer of, or entering into a binding agreement with respect to, Voting Control over such share by proxy or otherwise; provided, however, that the following shall not be considered a Class B Transfer:
(a) the granting of a proxy to one or more officers or directors of the Corporation at the request of the Board of Directors in connection with actions to be taken at an annual or special meeting of stockholders;
(b) entering into a voting trust, agreement or arrangement (with or without granting a proxy) solely with stockholders who are holders of Class B Common Stock that (i) is disclosed either in a Schedule 13D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission or in writing to the Secretary of the Corporation, (ii) either has a term not exceeding one year or is terminable by the holder of the shares subject thereto at any time and (iii) does not involve any payment of cash, securities, property or other consideration to the holder of the shares subject thereto other than the mutual promise to vote shares in a designated manner;
(c) entering into a voting trust, agreement or arrangement (with or without granting a proxy) pursuant to a written agreement to which the Corporation is a party;
(d) the pledge of shares of Class B Common Stock by a stockholder that creates a mere security interest in such shares pursuant to a bona fide loan or indebtedness transaction for so long as such stockholder continues to exercise Voting Control (as defined below) over such pledged shares; provided, however, that a foreclosure on such shares or other similar action by the pledgee (including the exercise of any proxy authority granted to such pledgee pursuant to such pledge) shall constitute a Class B Transfer unless such foreclosure or similar action qualifies as a Permitted Transfer;
(e) the fact that the spouse of any holder of Class B Common Stock possesses or obtains an interest in such holders shares of Class B Common Stock arising solely by reason of the application of the community property laws of any jurisdiction, so long as no other event or circumstance shall exist or have occurred that constitutes a Class B Transfer of such shares of Class B Common Stock; provided, that any transfer of shares by any holder of shares of Class B Common Stock to such holders spouse, including a transfer in connection with a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement, shall constitute a Class B Transfer of such shares of Class B Common Stock unless otherwise exempt from the definition of Class B Transfer;
-7-
(f) entering into a trading plan pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), with a broker or other nominee; provided, however, that a sale of such shares of Class B Common Stock pursuant to such plan shall constitute a Class B Transfer at the time of such sale; or
(g) entering into a support, voting, tender or similar agreement or arrangement (in each case, with or without the grant of a proxy) in connection with a voluntary or involuntary liquidation, bankruptcy, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or any Deemed Liquidation Event (as defined below) (including, without limitation, tendering or voting shares of Class B Common Stock in connection with such a transaction, the consummation of such a transaction or the sale, assignment, transfer, conveyance, hypothecation or other transfer or disposition of shares of Class B Common Stock or any legal or beneficial interest in shares of Class B Common Stock in connection with such a transaction); provided, that any sale, tender, assignment, transfer, conveyance, hypothecation or other transfer or disposition of Class B Common Stock or any legal or economic interest therein pursuant to such a transaction, or any grant of a proxy over Class B Common Stock with respect to such a transaction without specific instructions as to how to vote such Class B Common Stock, in each case, will constitute a Class B Transfer of such Class B Common Stock unless such transaction was approved by the Board of Directors prior to the taking of such action.
A Class B Transfer shall also be deemed to have occurred with respect to a share of Class B Common Stock beneficially held by an entity that is a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA, if there occurs any act or circumstance that causes such entity to no longer be a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA.
3.5.1 Disability or Disabled shall mean, with respect to an Applicable Holder, the permanent and total disability of such Applicable Holder such that such Applicable Holder is unable to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death within 12 months or which has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months as determined by a licensed medical practitioner jointly selected by any one of the Independent Directors and such Applicable Holder. If such Applicable Holder is incapable of selecting a licensed physician, then such Applicable Holders spouse shall make the selection on behalf of such Applicable Holder, or in the absence or incapacity of such Applicable Holders spouse, such Applicable Holders adult children by majority vote shall make the selection on behalf of such Applicable Holder, or in the absence of adult children of such Applicable Holder or their inability to act by majority vote, a natural person then acting as the successor trustee of a revocable living trust which was created by such Applicable Holder and which holds more shares of all classes of capital stock of the Corporation than any other revocable living trust created by such Applicable Holder shall make the selection on behalf of such Applicable Holder, or in absence of any such successor trustee, the legal guardian or conservator of the estate of such Applicable Holder shall make the selection on behalf of the Applicable Holder.
3.5.2 Family Member shall mean with respect to an Applicable Holder, the spouse, domestic partner, parents, grandparents, lineal descendants, siblings and lineal descendants of siblings of such Applicable Holder. Lineal descendants shall include adopted persons, but only so long as they are adopted while a minor.
-8-
3.5.3 Independent Directors shall mean the members of the Board of Directors designated as independent directors in accordance with (a) the requirements of any national stock exchange under which the Corporations equity securities are listed for trading that are generally applicable to companies with common equity securities listed thereon or (b) if the Corporations equity securities are not listed for trading on a national stock exchange, the requirements of the Nasdaq Stock Market generally applicable to companies with equity securities listed thereon.
3.5.4 IPO shall mean the Corporations first marketed underwritten public offering of Class A Common Stock under the Securities Act.
3.5.5 Permitted Affiliate shall mean a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation, Permitted IRA or Permitted Transferee.
3.5.6 Permitted Entity shall mean with respect to an Applicable Holder: (a) a Permitted Trust; or (b) any general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability company, corporation or other entity (i) directly or indirectly owned by or managed by such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder and/or a Permitted Trust and (ii) for which such Applicable Holder, spouse of such Applicable Holder and/or Permitted Trust has Voting Control.
3.5.7 Permitted Foundation shall mean with respect to an Applicable Holder, a trust or private non-operating foundation that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), so long as (a) such Applicable Holder has dispositive power and Voting Control with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held by such trust or organization and (b) the Class B Transfer to such trust does not involve any payment of cash, securities, property or other consideration (other than an interest in such trust or organization) to such Applicable Holder.
3.5.8 Permitted IRA shall mean an Individual Retirement Account, as defined in Section 408(a) of the Code, or a pension, profit sharing, stock bonus or other type of plan or trust of which an Applicable Holder is a participant or beneficiary and which satisfies the requirements for qualification under Section 401 of the Code; provided, that in each case such Applicable Holder has sole dispositive power and exclusive Voting Control with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held in such account, plan or trust.
3.5.9 Permitted Transfer shall mean, and be restricted to, any Class B Transfer of a share of Class B Common Stock:
(a) by an Applicable Holder to (i) the spouse of such Applicable Holder; provided, that such Transfer shall cease to be, and shall not be deemed to be, a Permitted Transfer following a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement with respect to such spouse, (ii) any Permitted Entity of such Applicable Holder, (iii) any Permitted Foundation of such Applicable Holder or (iv) any Permitted IRA of such Applicable Holder; or
-9-
(b) by a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA of an Applicable Holder to (i) such Applicable Holder or (ii) any other Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA of such Applicable Holder.
3.5.10 Permitted Transferee shall mean a transferee of shares of Class B Common Stock received in a Permitted Transfer.
3.5.11 Permitted Trust shall mean a bona fide trust where (a) an Applicable Holder or the spouse of such Applicable Holder is a trustee; or (b) the trustee is a professional in the business of providing trustee services, including private professional fiduciaries, trust companies and bank trust departments (each, a Third Party Trustee), and (i) such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such applicable Holder or a Permitted Entity either is, or has the right to appoint, direct or replace, the investment advisor or special investment advisor to such trust, (ii) such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder or a Permitted Entity has the right to substitute the shares of Class B Common Stock held by such trust with other assets, or (iii) such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder or a Permitted Entity has Voting Control with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held in such Permitted Trust; provided, that a Permitted Trust whose trustee is the spouse of an Applicable Holder shall cease to be, and shall not be deemed to be, a Permitted Trust following a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement with respect to such spouse; provided, further, that, in the event that the shares of Class B Common Stock then held by a Permitted Trust are affirmatively voted (but excluding abstentions and broker non-votes of such shares then held by such Permitted Trust) at any meeting of the stockholders of the Corporation differently than the affirmative vote of the shares of the Applicable Holder affiliated with such Permitted Trust (but excluding abstentions and broker non-votes of such shares by such Applicable Holder), a Class B Transfer shall be deemed to have occurred with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held by such Permitted Trust immediately following such vote.
3.5.12 Public Offering Date shall mean the date on which a registration statement filed under the Securities Act for the IPO (including a Qualified IPO) of Class A Common Stock is declared effective.
3.5.13 Qualified IPO has the meaning assigned to it in Subsection 5.1.1.
3.5.14 Threshold Shares shall mean, with respect to an Applicable Holder as of a particular time, the sum of (without duplication): (a) any shares of capital stock of the Corporation, including Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock, held by such Applicable Holder or his Permitted Affiliates as of such time; and (b) any shares of capital stock of the Corporation, including Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock, underlying any Options or Convertible Securities held by such Applicable Holder or his Permitted Affiliates as of such time, whether such securities are vested or unvested, earned or unearned, convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable as of such time or in the future.
3.5.15 Trading Day means any day on which (a) trading in the Common Stock generally occurs on the principal U.S. national or regional securities exchange on which the Common Stock is then listed or, if the Common Stock is not then listed on a U.S. national or regional securities exchange, on the principal other market on which the Common Stock is then traded; and (b) there is no Market Disruption Event. If the Common Stock is not so listed or traded, then Trading Day means a Business Day.
-10-
3.5.16 Voting Control shall mean, with respect to a share of Class B Common Stock, the power (whether exclusive or shared) to vote or direct the voting of such share by proxy, voting agreement or otherwise.
3.6 Status of Converted Stock. In the event any shares of Class B Common Stock are converted into shares of Class A Common Stock pursuant to this Section 3, the shares of Class B Common Stock so converted shall be retired and cancelled and may not be reissued.
3.7 Effect of Conversion on Payment of Dividends. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in Sections 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3, if the date on which any share of Class B Common Stock is converted into Class A Common Stock pursuant to the provisions of Subsection 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3 occurs after the record date for the determination of the holders of Class B Common Stock entitled to receive any dividend or distribution to be paid on the shares of Class B Common Stock, the holder of such shares of Class B Common Stock as of such record date will be entitled to receive such dividend or distribution on such payment date; provided, that, notwithstanding any other provision of this Restated Certificate, to the extent that any such dividend or distribution is payable in shares of Class B Common Stock, such shares of Class B Common Stock shall automatically be converted to Class A Common Stock, on a one-to-one basis.
3.8 Reservation. The Corporation shall at all times reserve and keep available, out of its authorized and unissued shares of Class A Common Stock, solely for the purpose of effecting conversions of shares of Class B Common Stock into Class A Common Stock, such number of duly authorized shares of Class A Common Stock as shall from time to time be sufficient to effect the conversion of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock. If at any time the number of authorized and unissued shares of Class A Common Stock shall not be sufficient to effect the conversion of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock, the Corporation shall promptly take such corporate action as may be necessary to increase its authorized but unissued shares of Class A Common Stock to such number of shares as shall be sufficient for such purpose, including, without limitation, obtaining the requisite stockholder approval of any necessary amendment to this Restated Certificate. All shares of Class A Common Stock which are so issuable shall, when issued, be duly and validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable shares. The Corporation shall take all such action as may be necessary to ensure that all such shares of Class A Common Stock may be so issued without violation of any applicable law or regulation.
3.9 Determinations by the Board. In case of an ambiguity in the application of any provision set forth in this Section 3 or in the meaning of any term or definition set forth in this Section 3, the Board of Directors (but not a committee thereof), shall have the power to determine, in its sole discretion, the application of any such provision or any such term or definition with respect to any situation based on the facts believed in good faith by it. A
-11-
determination of the Board of Directors in accordance with the preceding sentence shall be conclusive and binding on the stockholders of the Corporation. Such determination shall be evidenced in a writing adopted by the Board of Directors, and such writing shall be made available for inspection by any holder of capital stock of the Corporation at the principal executive offices of the Corporation.
4. Amendments and Changes. In addition to any vote required by applicable law or the other provisions of this Restated Certificate, the Corporation shall not, either directly or indirectly by amendment, merger, consolidation or otherwise, without first obtaining the affirmative vote or written consent of the holders representing a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock (voting separately as a single class), amend, alter, repeal or waive Article Fourth, Part A of this Restated Certificate.
B. Preferred Stock.
Unless otherwise indicated, references to Sections or Subsections in this Part B of this Article Fourth refer to sections and subsections of Part B of this Article Fourth.
1. Dividends.
1.1 Series C Preferred Stock Dividends. From the date of the issuance of the applicable shares of Series C Preferred Stock until the consummation of an IPO in which the shares of Series C Preferred Stock convert into Class A Common Stock or the earlier of a Deemed Liquidation Event (as defined below), the consummation of the repurchase of the applicable shares of Series C Preferred Stock pursuant to the Series C Rights (as defined below) or the conversion of the applicable shares of Series C Preferred Stock into shares of Class A Common Stock at the option of the holder thereof in accordance with Subsection 4.1.1, dividends at the rate of 10% per annum (the Dividend Rate) shall accrue daily on the Accumulated Stated Value of the Series C Preferred Stock (the Accrued Dividends). Accrued Dividends shall be payable quarterly and, at the sole discretion of the Corporation, shall be declared and paid in cash in full for each such quarterly dividend period (the Cash Dividend Payment). If the Accrued Dividends shall not be declared and paid in cash for any quarterly dividend period, Accrued Dividends shall automatically accrete to the then Accumulated Stated Value of the Series C Preferred Stock on a compounding basis and be added to the then Accumulated Stated Value of the Series C Preferred Stock in an amount equal to the Accrued Dividends for such quarterly period (such Accrued Dividends, the Compounded Dividends). At least fifteen days prior to the end of each fiscal quarter, the Company shall notify each holder of Series C Preferred Stock in writing of its election to pay the Accrued Dividends for the following fiscal quarter as the Cash Dividend Payment or for such Accrued Dividends to accrete to the Accumulated Stated Value of the Series C Preferred Stock as Compounded Dividends, and the Corporation shall pay such Accrued Dividend for such fiscal quarter in accordance with such election, which such election shall be the same for all outstanding shares of Series C Preferred Stock. Dividends shall accrue on the Accumulated Stated Value of the Series C Preferred Stock from day to day, whether or not declared, and shall be cumulative. The holders of Series C Preferred Stock shall be entitled to receive Accrued Dividends prior and in preference to any declaration or payment of any other dividend. The Corporation shall not declare, pay or set aside any dividends on shares of any other class or series of capital stock of the Corporation (other
-12-
than dividends on shares of Common Stock payable in shares of Common Stock) unless (in addition to the obtaining of any consents required elsewhere in this Restated Certificate) the holders of Series C Preferred Stock then outstanding shall first receive, or simultaneously receive, a dividend on each outstanding share of Series C Preferred Stock in an amount at least equal to (A) in the case of a dividend on Common Stock or any class or series that is convertible into Common Stock, that dividend per share of the Series C Preferred Stock as would equal the product of (1) the dividend payable on each share of such class or series determined, if applicable, as if all shares of such class or series had been converted into Common Stock and (2) the number of shares of Common Stock issuable upon conversion of a share of such Series C Preferred Stock, in each case calculated on the record date for determination of holders entitled to receive such dividend or (B) in the case of a dividend on any class or series that is not convertible into Common Stock, at a rate per share of Series C Preferred Stock determined by (1) dividing the amount of the dividend payable on each share of such class or series of capital stock by the original issuance price of such class or series of capital stock (subject to appropriate adjustment in the event of any stock dividend, stock split, combination or other similar recapitalization with respect to such class or series) and (2) multiplying such fraction by an amount equal to the applicable Accumulated Stated Value (as defined below); provided that, if the Corporation declares, pays or sets aside, on the same date, a dividend on shares of more than one (1) class or series of capital stock of the Corporation, the dividend payable to the holders of such Preferred Stock pursuant to this Section 1 shall be calculated based upon the dividend on the class or series of capital stock that would result in the highest Preferred Stock dividend. For purposes hereof, Accumulated Stated Value shall mean the Original Issue Price of the Series C Preferred Stock as increased by the Compounded Dividends pursuant to this Subsection 1.1 (but excluding, for the avoidance of doubt, any and all Cash Dividend Payments).
1.2 Series B Preferred Stock and Junior Preferred Stock Dividends. The Corporation shall not declare, pay or set aside any dividends on shares of any other class or series of capital stock of the Corporation (other than dividends on shares of Common Stock payable in shares of Common Stock or Series C Preferred Stock as set forth Subsection 1.1) unless (in addition to the obtaining of any consents required elsewhere in this Restated Certificate) (a) the holders of Series C Preferred Stock have received the amounts set forth in Subsection 1.1 and (b) the holders of Series B Preferred Stock and each series of Junior Preferred Stock (as defined below) then outstanding receive, or simultaneously receive, on a pari passu basis, a dividend on each such outstanding share of such Preferred Stock in an amount at least equal to (i) in the case of a dividend on Common Stock or any class or series that is convertible into Common Stock, that dividend per share of Preferred Stock as would equal the product of (A) dividend payable on each share of such class or series determined, if applicable, as if all shares of such class or series had been converted into Common Stock and (B) the number of shares of Common Stock issuable upon conversion of a share of such Preferred Stock, in each case calculated on the record date for determination of holders entitled to receive such dividend or (ii) in the case of a dividend on any class or series that is not convertible into Common Stock, at a rate per share of such Preferred Stock determined by (A) dividing the amount of the dividend payable on each share of such class or series of capital stock by the original issuance price of such class or series of capital stock (subject to appropriate adjustment in the event of any stock dividend, stock split, combination or other similar recapitalization with respect to such class or series) and (B) multiplying such fraction by an amount equal to the applicable Original Issue Price (as defined below); provided that, if the Corporation declares,
-13-
pays or sets aside, on the same date, a dividend on shares of more than one (1) class or series of capital stock of the Corporation, the dividend payable to the holders of Preferred Stock pursuant to this Section 1 shall be calculated based upon the dividend on the class or series of capital stock that would result in the highest Preferred Stock dividend. The Original Issue Price shall mean, for the Series Seed Preferred Stock, $0.0500000 per share; for the Series A Preferred Stock, $0.1166650 per share; for the Series B Preferred Stock, $5.5764805 per share; for the Series B-1 Preferred Stock, $0.4010095 per share; and for the Series C Preferred Stock, $38.9525000 per share, in each case subject to appropriate adjustment in the event of any stock dividend, stock split, combination or other similar recapitalization with respect to the Preferred Stock.
2. Liquidation, Dissolution or Winding Up; Certain Mergers, Consolidations and Asset Sales.
2.1 Payments to Holders of Preferred Stock.
2.1.1 Preferential Payments to Holders of Series C Preferred Stock. In the event of any voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, the holders of shares of Series C Preferred Stock then outstanding shall be entitled to be paid out of the assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders, and in the event of a Deemed Liquidation Event (as defined below), the holders of shares of Series C Preferred Stock then outstanding shall be entitled to be paid out of the consideration payable to stockholders in such Deemed Liquidation Event or out of the Available Proceeds (as defined below), as applicable, before any payment shall be made to the holders of Combined Series B Preferred Stock, Junior Preferred Stock or Common Stock by reason of their ownership thereof, on a pari passu basis, an amount per share equal to the greater of (a) one (1) times the Accumulated Stated Value plus any Accrued Dividends that the Corporation has designated as Compounded Dividends, or the Corporation has not yet designated as Compounded Dividends or Cash Dividends, for such fiscal quarter but that have not yet been paid or added to the Accumulated Stated Value as Compounded Dividends (and excluding any and all Cash Dividend Payments), or (b) such amount per share as would have been payable had all shares of Series C Preferred Stock been converted into Common Stock pursuant to Section 4 immediately prior to such liquidation, dissolution, winding up or Deemed Liquidation Event (the amount payable pursuant to this sentence is hereinafter referred to as the Series C Liquidation Amount). If upon any such liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or Deemed Liquidation Event, the assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders shall be insufficient to pay the holders of shares of Series C Preferred Stock the full amount to which they shall be entitled under this Subsection 2.1.1, the holders of shares of Series C Preferred Stock shall share ratably in any distribution of the assets available for distribution in proportion to the respective amounts which would otherwise be payable in respect of the shares held by them upon such distribution if all amounts payable on or with respect to such shares were paid in full.
-14-
2.1.2 Preferential Payments to Holders of Combined Series B Preferred Stock. After the payment in full of all Series C Liquidation Amount required to be paid to the holders of shares of Series C Preferred Stock as provided in Subsection 2.1.1, in the event of any voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, the holders of shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock then outstanding shall be entitled to be paid out of the assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders, and in the event of a Deemed Liquidation Event (as defined below), the holders of shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock then outstanding shall be entitled to be paid out of the consideration payable to stockholders in such Deemed Liquidation Event or out of the Available Proceeds (as defined below), as applicable, before any payment shall be made to the holders of Junior Preferred Stock or Common Stock by reason of their ownership thereof, on a pari passu basis, an amount per share equal to the greater of (a) one (1) times the applicable Original Issue Price, plus any dividends declared but unpaid thereon, or (b) such amount per share as would have been payable had all shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock been converted into Common Stock pursuant to Section 4 immediately prior to such liquidation, dissolution, winding up or Deemed Liquidation Event (the amount payable pursuant to this sentence is hereinafter referred to as the Series B Liquidation Amount). If upon any such liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or Deemed Liquidation Event, the assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders shall be insufficient to pay the holders of shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock the full amount to which they shall be entitled under this Subsection 2.1.2, the holders of shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock shall share ratably in any distribution of the assets available for distribution in proportion to the respective amounts which would otherwise be payable in respect of the shares held by them upon such distribution if all amounts payable on or with respect to such shares were paid in full.
2.1.3 Payments to Holders of Junior Preferred Stock. After payment in full of the Series C Liquidation Amount as provided in Subsection 2.1.1 and the Series B Liquidation Amount as provided in Subsection 2.1.2, in the event of any voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, the holders of shares of Junior Preferred Stock then outstanding shall be entitled to be paid out of the assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders, and in the event of a Deemed Liquidation Event (as defined below), the holders of shares of Junior Preferred Stock then outstanding shall be entitled to be paid out of the consideration payable to stockholders in such Deemed Liquidation Event or out of the Available Proceeds (as defined below), as applicable, before any payment shall be made to the holders of Common Stock by reason of their ownership thereof, on a pari passu basis, an amount per share equal to the greater of (a) one (1) times the applicable Original Issue Price, plus any dividends declared but unpaid thereon, or (b) such amount per share as would have been payable had all shares of Junior Preferred Stock been converted into Common Stock pursuant to Section 4 immediately prior to such liquidation, dissolution, winding up or Deemed Liquidation Event (the amount payable pursuant to this sentence is hereinafter referred to as the Junior Preferred Liquidation Amount, and together with the Series C Liquidation Amount and the Series B Liquidation Amount, the Liquidation Amounts). If upon any such liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or Deemed Liquidation Event, the assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders shall be insufficient to pay the holders of shares of Junior Preferred Stock the full amount to which they shall be entitled under this Subsection 2.1.3, the holders of shares of Junior Preferred Stock shall share ratably in any distribution of the assets available for distribution in proportion to the respective amounts which would otherwise be payable in respect of the shares held by them upon such distribution if all amounts payable on or with respect to such shares were paid in full.
-15-
2.2 Payments to Holders of Common Stock. In the event of any voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, after the payment in full of all Liquidation Amounts required to be paid to the holders of shares of Preferred Stock, the remaining assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders or, in the case of a Deemed Liquidation Event, the consideration not payable to the holders of shares of Preferred Stock pursuant to Subsection 2.1, or the remaining Available Proceeds (as defined below), as the case may be, shall be distributed among the holders of shares of Common Stock, pro rata based on the number of shares held by each such holder.
2.3 Deemed Liquidation Events.
2.3.1 Definition. As used in this Restated Certificate, (i) Requisite Holders shall mean (x) the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of Preferred Stock, voting together as a single class on an as-converted basis, and (y) the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of Series Seed Preferred Stock, Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock and Series B-1 Preferred Stock, voting together as a single class on an as-converted basis, which must include the holders of at least twenty percent (20%) of the then-outstanding shares of Series B Preferred Stock, voting as a separate class, (ii) Series B Majority shall mean the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Series B Preferred Stock, voting as a separate class, and (iii) Series C Majority shall mean holders of at least ninety percent (90%) of the then-outstanding shares of Series C Preferred Stock, voting as a separate class. Each of the following events shall be considered a Deemed Liquidation Event unless the Requisite Holders, the Series B Majority and Series C Majority elect otherwise by written notice sent to the Corporation at least ten (10) days prior to the effective date of any such event:
(a) a merger or consolidation in which
(i) | the Corporation is a constituent party or |
(ii) | a subsidiary of the Corporation is a constituent party and the Corporation issues shares of its capital stock pursuant to such merger or consolidation, |
except any such merger or consolidation involving the Corporation or a subsidiary in which the shares of capital stock of the Corporation outstanding immediately prior to such merger or consolidation continue to represent, or are converted into or exchanged for shares of capital stock that represent, immediately following such merger or consolidation, a majority, by voting power, of the capital stock of (A) the surviving or resulting entity; or (B) if the surviving or resulting entity is a wholly owned subsidiary of another entity immediately following such merger or consolidation, the parent entity of such surviving or resulting entity; provided, however, that, for the purpose of this Subsection 2.3.1, all shares of Common Stock that are issuable upon conversion or exercise of Options that are outstanding as of immediately prior to such merger or consolidation, or upon conversion or exercise of Convertible Securities that are outstanding as of immediately prior to such merger or consolidation, shall be deemed to be outstanding as of immediately prior to such merger or consolidation and, if applicable, deemed to be converted or
-16-
exchanged in such merger or consolidation on the same terms as the actual outstanding shares of Common Stock are converted or exchanged, in each case solely if and to the extent that such Options or Convertible Securities are not cancelled in such merger or consolidation without the right to receive consideration in connection therewith as if such Options or Convertible Securities were exercised or converted for such shares of Common Stock;
(b) (i) the sale, lease, transfer, exclusive license or other disposition, in a single transaction or series of related transactions, by the Corporation or any subsidiary of the Corporation of all or substantially all the assets, business, technology or intellectual property of the Corporation and its subsidiaries taken as a whole, or (ii) the sale or disposition (whether by merger, consolidation or otherwise, and whether in a single transaction or a series of related transactions) of one or more subsidiaries of the Corporation if substantially all of the assets of the Corporation and its subsidiaries taken as a whole are held by such subsidiary or subsidiaries, except where such sale, lease, transfer, exclusive license or other disposition is to a wholly owned subsidiary of the Corporation;
(c) (i) the stockholders of the Corporation approve any plan or proposal for the liquidation or dissolution of the Corporation, or (ii) the commencement of any proceeding relating to the liquidation, bankruptcy, or dissolution of the Corporation.
2.3.2 Effecting a Deemed Liquidation Event.
(a) The Corporation shall not have the power to effect a Deemed Liquidation Event referred to in Subsection 2.3.1(a)(i) unless the agreement or plan of merger or consolidation for such transaction (the Merger Agreement) provides that the consideration payable to the stockholders of the Corporation in such Deemed Liquidation Event shall be paid to the holders of capital stock of the Corporation in accordance with Subsections 2.1 and 2.2.
(b) In the event of a Deemed Liquidation Event referred to in Subsection 2.3.1(a)(ii) or 2.3.1(b), if the Corporation does not effect a dissolution of the Corporation under the General Corporation Law within ninety (90) days after such Deemed Liquidation Event, then (i) the Corporation shall send a written notice to each holder of Preferred Stock no later than the ninetieth (90th) day after the Deemed Liquidation Event advising such holders of their right (and the requirements to be met to secure such right) pursuant to the terms of the following clause; (ii) the holders of shares of Preferred Stock shall have the right to require the redemption of such shares of Preferred Stock, and (iii) if the holders of a majority of the then outstanding shares of Preferred Stock so request in a written instrument delivered to the Corporation not later than one hundred twenty (120) days after such Deemed Liquidation Event, the Corporation shall use the consideration received by the Corporation for such Deemed Liquidation Event (net of any retained liabilities associated with the assets sold or technology licensed, as determined in good faith by the Board of Directors), together with any other assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders, all to the extent permitted by Delaware law governing distributions to stockholders (the Available Proceeds), on the one hundred fiftieth (150th) day after such Deemed Liquidation Event, to redeem all outstanding shares of Preferred Stock at a price per share equal to the applicable Liquidation Amount. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in the event of a redemption pursuant to the preceding sentence,
-17-
if the Available Proceeds are not sufficient to redeem all outstanding shares of Preferred Stock, the Corporation shall redeem a pro rata portion of each holders shares of Preferred Stock to the fullest extent of such Available Proceeds, based on the respective amounts which would otherwise be payable in respect of the shares to be redeemed if the Available Proceeds were sufficient to redeem all such shares, and shall redeem the remaining shares as soon as it may lawfully do so under Delaware law governing distributions to stockholders. Prior to the distribution or redemption provided for in this Subsection 2.3.2(b), the Corporation shall not expend or dissipate the consideration received for such Deemed Liquidation Event, except to discharge expenses incurred in connection with such Deemed Liquidation Event or in the ordinary course of business.
2.3.3 Amount Deemed Paid or Distributed. The amount deemed paid or distributed to the holders of capital stock of the Corporation upon any such merger, consolidation, sale, transfer, exclusive license, other disposition or redemption shall be the cash or the value of the property, rights or securities to be paid or distributed to such holders pursuant to such Deemed Liquidation Event. The value of such property, rights or securities shall be determined in good faith by the Board of Directors, including the approval of the Series B Director (if then in office).
2.3.4 Allocation of Escrow and Contingent Consideration. In the event of a Deemed Liquidation Event pursuant to Subsection 2.3.1(a)(i), if any portion of the consideration payable to the stockholders of the Corporation is payable only upon satisfaction of contingencies (the Additional Consideration), the Merger Agreement shall provide that (a) the portion of such consideration that is not Additional Consideration (such portion, the Initial Consideration) shall be allocated among the holders of capital stock of the Corporation in accordance with Subsections 2.1 and 2.2 as if the Initial Consideration were the only consideration payable in connection with such Deemed Liquidation Event; and (b) any Additional Consideration which becomes payable to the stockholders of the Corporation upon satisfaction of such contingencies shall be allocated among the holders of capital stock of the Corporation in accordance with Subsections 2.1 and 2.2 after taking into account the previous payment of the Initial Consideration as part of the same transaction. For the purposes of this Subsection 2.3.4, consideration placed into escrow or retained as a holdback to be available for satisfaction of indemnification or similar obligations in connection with such Deemed Liquidation Event shall be deemed to be Additional Consideration.
3. Voting.
3.1 General. On any matter presented to the stockholders of the Corporation for their action or consideration at any meeting of stockholders of the Corporation (or by written consent of stockholders in lieu of meeting), each holder of outstanding shares of Preferred Stock shall be entitled to cast the number of votes equal to the number of whole shares of Class A Common Stock into which the shares of Preferred Stock held by such holder are convertible as of the record date for determining stockholders entitled to vote on such matter. Fractional votes shall not be permitted and any fractional voting rights available on an as-converted basis (after aggregating all shares into which shares of Preferred stock held by each holder could be converted) will be rounded to the nearest whole number (with one-half being rounded upward). Except as provided by law or by the other provisions of this Restated
-18-
Certificate, holders of Preferred Stock shall vote together with the holders of Common Stock as a single class and on an as-converted to Class A Common Stock basis, and shall be entitled, notwithstanding any provision of this Restated Certificate, to notice of any stockholder meeting in accordance with the Bylaws of the Corporation. The Junior Preferred Stock shall vote together as a single class on an as-converted basis. For the avoidance of doubt, any stockholder of the Corporation shall be permitted to vote the shares of capital stock of the Corporation held by such stockholder differently as among such shares, whether or not such shares are of a given class or series of capital stock of the Corporation.
3.2 Election of Directors. The holders of record of the shares of Series B Preferred Stock, exclusively and as a separate class, shall be entitled to elect one (1) director of the Corporation (the Series B Director), and the holders of record of the shares of Common Stock, exclusively and with the Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock voting together as a separate class based upon the voting power of the respective class of Common Stock, shall be entitled to elect four (4) directors of the Corporation. Any director elected as provided in the preceding sentence may be removed without cause by, and only by, the affirmative vote of the holders of the shares of the class or series of capital stock entitled to elect such director or directors, given either at a special meeting of such stockholders duly called for that purpose or pursuant to a written consent of stockholders. If the holders of shares of Series B Preferred Stock or Common Stock, as the case may be, fail to elect a sufficient number of directors to fill all directorships for which they are entitled to elect directors, voting exclusively and as a separate class, pursuant to the first sentence of this Subsection 3.2, then any directorship not so filled shall remain vacant until such time as the holders of the Series B Preferred Stock or Common Stock, as the case may be, elect a person to fill such directorship by vote or written consent in lieu of a meeting; and no such directorship may be filled by stockholders of the Corporation other than by the stockholders of the Corporation that are entitled to elect a person to fill such directorship, voting exclusively and as a separate class. The holders of record of the shares of Common Stock and of any other class or series of voting stock (including the Preferred Stock, but excluding the Series C Preferred Stock), exclusively and voting together as a single class on an as-converted to Class A Common Stock basis, shall be entitled to elect the balance of the total number of directors of the Corporation (the Remaining Directors) based upon the voting power of the respective class of Common Stock as of the applicable measurement time; provided, however, for administrative convenience, any Remaining Director may also be appointed by the Board of Directors in connection with the approval of the initial issuance of Series C Preferred Stock without a separate action by the holders of voting stock of the Corporation. At any meeting held for the purpose of electing a director, the presence in person or by proxy of the holders of a majority of the voting power of the outstanding shares of the class or series entitled to elect such director shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of electing such director. Except as otherwise provided in this Subsection 3.2, a vacancy in any directorship filled by the holders of any class or series shall be filled only by vote or written consent in lieu of a meeting of the holders of such class or series or by any remaining director or directors elected by the holders of such class or series pursuant to this Subsection 3.2. The rights of the holders of the Series B Preferred Stock under the first sentence of this Subsection 3.2 shall terminate on the first date following the Original Issue Date (as defined below) on which there are issued and outstanding fewer than 4,976,240 shares of Series B Preferred Stock (subject to appropriate adjustment in the event of any stock dividend, stock split, combination, or other similar recapitalization with respect to the Series B Preferred Stock).
-19-
3.3 Protective Provisions.
3.3.1 Preferred Stock Protective Provisions. So long as at least 37,531,400 shares of Preferred Stock are outstanding, the Corporation shall not, either directly or indirectly by amendment, merger, consolidation, recapitalization, reclassification, or otherwise, do any of the following without (in addition to any other vote required by law or this Restated Certificate) the written consent or affirmative vote of the Requisite Holders given in writing or by vote at a meeting, consenting or voting (as the case may be) separately as a class, and any such act or transaction entered into without such consent or vote shall be ultra vires, null and void ab initio, and of no force or effect.
(a) liquidate, dissolve or wind-up the business and affairs of the Corporation or effect any Deemed Liquidation Event;
(b) increase the authorized number of shares of any series of Preferred Stock or of Common Stock, or create a new class or series of capital stock or other equity securities of the Corporation;
(c) create, or authorize the creation of, or issue, or authorize the issuance of any debt security or create any lien or security interest (except for purchase money liens, statutory liens of landlords, mechanics, materialmen, workmen, warehousemen and other similar liens arising or incurred in the ordinary course of business) or incur other indebtedness for borrowed money, or permit any subsidiary to take any such action with respect to any debt security lien, security interest or other indebtedness for borrowed money, including without limitations obligations and contingent obligations under guarantees of indebtedness for borrowed money (collectively, Indebtedness), in each case where the amount involved is in excess of $100,000,000, other than purchase money indebtedness, equipment leases and trade payables incurred in the ordinary course, unless such Indebtedness has received the prior approval of the Board of Directors;
(d) create, or hold capital stock in, any direct or indirect subsidiary that is not wholly owned (either directly or through one or more other subsidiaries) by the Corporation, or permit any direct or indirect subsidiary to create, or authorize the creation of, or issue or obligate itself to issue, any shares of any class or series of capital stock which results in such subsidiary not being wholly owned (either directory or through one or more other subsidiaries), or sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of any capital stock of any direct or indirect subsidiary of the Corporation, or permit any direct or indirect subsidiary to sell, lease, transfer, exclusively license or otherwise dispose (whether in a single transaction, a series of related transactions or otherwise) of all or substantially all of the assets of such subsidiary, unless (i) the corporate documentation and agreements between the Corporation and any such entity provide that any proceeds or consideration received or held by such entity (and any assets that may be distributed by such entity to its equity holders) shall be distributed to the Corporation in connection with any liquidation, dissolution or winding-up of the affairs of such entity or any transaction involving such entity of the nature described as a Deemed Liquidation Event (pro rata with any other equity holders), and (ii) there are no other stockholders, members or equity holders (or affiliates thereof) in such entity that are stockholders, members or equity holders of the Corporation (or affiliates of any of the foregoing);
-20-
(e) adopt, amend, terminate or repeal any equity (or equity-linked) compensation plan; or
(f) increase or decrease the authorized number of directors constituting the Board of Directors or change the number of votes entitled to be cast by any director or directors on any matter.
3.3.2 Series B Preferred Stock Protective Provisions. So long as at least 4,976,240 shares of Series B Preferred Stock are outstanding, the Corporation shall not, either directly or indirectly by amendment, merger, consolidation, recapitalization, reclassification, or otherwise, do any of the following without (in addition to any other vote required by law or this Restated Certificate) the written consent or affirmative vote of the Series B Majority given in writing or by vote at a meeting, consenting or voting (as the case may be) separately as a class, and any such act or transaction entered into without such consent or vote shall be null and void ab initio, and of no force or effect.
(a) liquidate, dissolve or wind-up the business and affairs of the Corporation or effect any Deemed Liquidation Event, provided that the consent or affirmative vote of the Series B Majority shall not be required pursuant to this clause for any such event where the proceeds per share actually paid to the holders of Series B Preferred Stock on account of such Series B Preferred Stock at the closing of such event is composed solely of cash and/or freely tradeable securities having a fair market value per share of at least 1.25 times the Original Issue Price of the Series B Preferred Stock;
(b) amend, alter or repeal any provision of this Restated Certificate or Bylaws of the Corporation in a manner that adversely affects the powers, preferences or rights of the Series B Preferred Stock which, for the avoidance of doubt, shall include and be deemed to include any amendment, alteration or repeal of any provision that would alter any rights of the Class B Common Stock set forth in this Restated Certificate;
(c) create, or authorize the creation of, or issue or obligate itself to issue shares of, any capital stock, including for the avoidance of doubt any shares of Series B Preferred Stock or any security or other instrument that is directly or indirectly convertible into, or exchangeable for, Series B Preferred Stock (collectively, a Series B Instrument), or any security that is convertible into or exercisable for capital stock, unless (A) such capital stock ranks junior to the Combined Series B Preferred Stock with respect to its rights, preferences and privileges, or (B) other than with respect to shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock or any Series B Instrument such action is approved in writing by at least five of the seven members of the Board of Directors (the Supermajority Board);
(d) purchase or redeem (or permit any subsidiary to purchase or redeem) any shares of capital stock of the Corporation prior to the Series B Preferred Stock other than (i) redemptions of Preferred Stock as expressly authorized herein, (ii) repurchases of stock from current or former employees, officers, directors, consultants or other persons who perform or performed services for the Corporation or any subsidiary, in each case in connection with (A) the cessation of such employment or service at a price that is (x) no greater than the lower of the original purchase price or the then-current fair market value thereof or (y)
-21-
up to the then-current fair market value thereof, if approved by the Board of Directors, including the approval of the Series B Director, or (B) the Companys exercise of a right of first refusal, if approved by the Board of Directors, including the approval of the Series B Director, (iii) redemptions of the promissory notes held by Lead Investor or its affiliates on the date of filing of this Restated Certificate and issued pursuant to those certain Note Issuance Agreements dated as of October 19, 2021 and October 17, 2022 among the Corporation, the Lead Investor and U.S. Bank Trust Company, National Association, pursuant to the terms thereof, (iv) the redemption of up to 5,000,000 shares of Series Seed Preferred Stock; provided, that such redemption is approved by the Supermajority Board, (v) the redemption of up to 6,524,120 shares of Common Stock; provided, that such redemption is approved by the Supermajority Board and (vi) the Series C Rights (as defined in that Put Option Agreement, dated on or about the Original Issue Date, by and among the Corporation and the holders of Series C Preferred Stock party thereto) (the Put Option Agreement);
(e) pay or declare any dividend or make any distribution on, any shares of capital stock of the Corporation prior to the Series B Preferred Stock other than (i) dividends or distributions on Preferred Stock as expressly authorized herein, including the Accrued Dividends, and (ii) dividends or other distributions payable on the Common Stock solely in the form of additional shares of Common Stock;
(f) increase the authorized number of shares of Combined Series B Preferred Stock;
(g) amend or waive any of the terms of Subsection 4, as they relate to the Combined Series B Preferred Stock or that would result in no adjustment being made to the Conversion Price applicable to the Series B Preferred Stock in connection with an event or series of events if such event or series of events would result in an adjustment to the Conversion Price applicable to the Series B Preferred Stock absent such amendment or waiver;
(h) convert the Series B Preferred Stock into Common Stock other than pursuant to a Qualified IPO (as defined below);
(i) amend or waive the application of Subsection 2.1.2 in the event of a voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or Deemed Liquidation Event, or otherwise waive, amend, impair or eliminate the liquidation preference of the Series B Preferred Stock; or
(j) amend or waive observance of any provision of this Subsection 3.3.2.
3.3.3 Series C Preferred Stock Protective Provisions. So long as at least 20% shares of Series C Preferred Stock are outstanding, the Corporation shall not, either directly or indirectly by amendment, merger, consolidation, recapitalization, reclassification, or otherwise, do any of the following without (in addition to any other vote required by law or this Restated Certificate) the written consent or affirmative vote of the Series C Majority, given in writing or by vote at a meeting, consenting or voting (as the case may be) separately as a class, and any such act or transaction entered into without such consent or vote shall be ultra vires, null and void ab initio, and of no force or effect:
(a) increase the authorized number of shares of Series C Preferred Stock;
-22-
(b) amend, alter or repeal any provision of this Restated Certificate or Bylaws of the Corporation in a manner that adversely affects the powers, preferences or rights of the Series C Preferred Stock differently from all other series of Preferred Stock, which, for the avoidance of doubt, shall include and be deemed to include any amendment, alteration or repeal of any provision that would alter any rights of the Class B Common Stock set forth in this Restated Certificate;
(c) create, issue or reclassify shares of any capital stock, unless (i) such capital stock ranks junior or pari passu to the Series C Preferred Stock with respect to its rights, preferences and privileges with respect to the distribution of assets on the liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, the payment of dividends and rights of redemption, or (ii) such shares of capital stock are so created, issued or reclassified at a fully diluted pre-money valuation of at least $22,500,000,000;
(d) enter into (or permit any subsidiary to enter into) any debt facility or similar agreements (whether existing on the Original Issue Date or entered into subsequent to the Original Issue Date, and in each case including any refinancings thereof, but excepting (1) that certain Credit Agreement as of July 30, 2023 among CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co II, LLC, as borrower, the lenders party thereto from time to time and U.S. Bank National Association, as depository bank and U.S. Bank Trust Company, National Association as administrative agent and collateral agent and that certain Credit Agreement as of May 2024 among CoreWeave Compute Acquisition Co. IV, LLC, as borrower, the lenders party thereto and a depository bank and an administrative agent and collateral agent (together, the Specified Debt Facilities) prior to the earlier of (i) with respect to the amounts owed to the Coatue Investors (as defined in the Investor Rights Agreement (as defined below)) under the Put Option Agreement, the maturity date of the Specified Debt Facilities as of the Original Issue Date and (ii) the repayment in full of such Specified Debt Facilities and (2) any such facility or agreement consisting of indebtedness incurred in the ordinary course of business with respect to (A) capital lease programs and equipment and vendor financing arrangements, (B) seller financing consisting of indebtedness incurred in connection with acquisitions in favor of the sellers of such assets; provided, that the principal amount of such seller financing is not greater than the purchase price of such assets acquired, (C) cash management or treasury arrangements, (D) interest rate hedging or swap arrangements and (E) bilateral letter of credit arrangements), unless an express exception to any covenant contained therein which governs restricted payments that may be made from time to time by the Corporation or any of its subsidiaries, which exception expressly permits the Corporation and its subsidiaries to make or pay a dividend to satisfy the Series C Rights in accordance with the Put Option Agreement (the RP Exception); provided, that such RP Exception shall not require such payment or dividend (a) in the event that (i) a default then-exists or (ii) would result from the making of any such dividend or restricted payment under any such debt facilities or agreements or (b) except with respect to the Specified Debt Facilities, to the extent the aggregate amount of such dividends or restricted payments exceed an amount equal to the gross proceeds received by the Corporation from any equity offerings from and after the IPO, if any, plus the amount of the Corporations retained earnings; and
-23-
(e) amend or waive the observance of any provision of this Subsection 3.3.3.
4. Optional Conversion.
The holders of the Preferred Stock shall have conversion rights as follows (the Conversion Rights):
4.1 Right to Convert.
4.1.1 Conversion Ratio. Each share of Preferred Stock shall be convertible, at the option of the holder thereof, at any time and from time to time, and without the payment of additional consideration by the holder thereof, into such number of fully paid and non-assessable shares of Class A Common Stock as is determined by dividing: (a) in the case of the Preferred Stock (other than Series C Preferred Stock) the applicable Original Issue Price and (b) in the case of Series C Preferred Stock, the Accumulated Stated Value plus any Accrued Dividends that the Corporation has designated as Compounded Dividends, or the Corporation has not yet designated as Compounded Dividends or Cash Dividends, for such fiscal quarter but that have not yet been paid or added to the Accumulated Stated Value as Compounded Dividends (and excluding any and all Cash Dividend Payments that have previously been made), in each case, by the applicable Conversion Price (as defined below) in effect at the time of conversion. The Conversion Price shall initially be equal to the applicable Original Issue Price. Such initial Conversion Price, and the rate at which shares of Preferred Stock may be converted into shares of Class A Common Stock, shall be subject to adjustment as provided below.
4.1.2 Termination of Conversion Rights. In the event of a liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or a Deemed Liquidation Event, the Conversion Rights shall terminate at the close of business on the last full day preceding the date fixed for the payment of any such amounts distributable on such event to the holders of Preferred Stock; provided that the foregoing termination of Conversion Rights shall not affect the amount(s) otherwise paid or payable in accordance with Subsection 2.1 to holders of Preferred Stock pursuant to such liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation or a Deemed Liquidation Event.
4.2 Fractional Shares. No fractional shares of Class A Common Stock shall be issued upon conversion of the Preferred Stock. In lieu of any fractional shares to which the holder would otherwise be entitled, the number of shares of Class A Common Stock to be issued upon conversion of the Preferred Stock shall be rounded to the nearest whole share.
-24-
4.3 Mechanics of Conversion.
4.3.1 Notice of Conversion. In order for a holder of Preferred Stock to voluntarily convert shares of Preferred Stock into shares of Class A Common Stock, such holder shall (a) provide written notice to the Corporations transfer agent at the office of the transfer agent for the Preferred Stock (or at the principal office of the Corporation if the Corporation serves as its own transfer agent) that such holder elects to convert all or any number of such holders shares of Preferred Stock and, if applicable, any event on which such conversion is contingent and (b), if such holders shares are certificated, surrender the certificate or certificates for such shares of Preferred Stock (or, if such registered holder alleges that such certificate has been lost, stolen or destroyed, a lost certificate affidavit and agreement reasonably acceptable to the Corporation to indemnify the Corporation against any claim that may be made against the Corporation on account of the alleged loss, theft or destruction of such certificate), at the office of the transfer agent for the Preferred Stock (or at the principal office of the Corporation if the Corporation serves as its own transfer agent). Such notice shall state such holders name or the names of the nominees in which such holder wishes the shares of Class A Common Stock to be issued. If required by the Corporation, any certificates surrendered for conversion shall be endorsed or accompanied by a written instrument or instruments of transfer, in form satisfactory to the Corporation, duly executed by the registered holder or his, her or its attorney duly authorized in writing. The close of business on the date of receipt by the transfer agent (or by the Corporation if the Corporation serves as its own transfer agent) of such notice and, if applicable, certificates (or lost certificate affidavit and agreement) shall be the time of conversion (the Conversion Time), and the shares of Class A Common Stock issuable upon conversion of the specified shares shall be deemed to be outstanding of record as of such date. The Corporation shall, as soon as practicable after the Conversion Time (i) issue and deliver to such holder of Preferred Stock, or to his, her or its nominees, a notice of issuance of uncertificated shares and may, upon written request, issue and deliver a certificate or certificates for the number of full shares of Class A Common Stock issuable upon such conversion in accordance with the provisions hereof and may, if applicable and upon written request, issue and deliver a certificate for the number (if any) of the shares of Preferred Stock represented by the surrendered certificate that were not converted into Class A Common Stock and (ii) pay all declared but unpaid dividends on the shares of Preferred Stock converted.
4.3.2 Reservation of Shares. The Corporation shall at all times when the Preferred Stock shall be outstanding, reserve and keep available out of its authorized but unissued capital stock, for the purpose of effecting the conversion of the Preferred Stock, such number of its duly authorized shares of Class A Common Stock as shall from time to time be sufficient to effect the conversion of all outstanding Preferred Stock; and if at any time the number of authorized but unissued shares of Class A Common Stock shall not be sufficient to effect the conversion of all then outstanding shares of the Preferred Stock, the Corporation shall take such corporate action as may be necessary to increase its authorized but unissued shares of Class A Common Stock to such number of shares as shall be sufficient for such purposes, including, without limitation, engaging in best efforts to obtain the requisite stockholder approval of any necessary amendment to this Restated Certificate. Before taking any action which would cause an adjustment reducing the Conversion Price below the then par value of the shares of Class A Common Stock issuable upon conversion of the Preferred Stock, the Corporation will take any corporate action which may, in the opinion of its counsel, be necessary in order that the Corporation may validly and legally issue fully paid and non-assessable shares of Class A Common Stock at such adjusted Conversion Price.
-25-
4.3.3 Effect of Conversion. All shares of Preferred Stock that have been surrendered for conversion as herein provided shall no longer be deemed to be outstanding and all rights with respect to such shares shall immediately cease and terminate at the Conversion Time, except only the right of the holders thereof to receive shares of Class A Common Stock in exchange therefor and to receive payment of any dividends declared but unpaid thereon. Any shares of Preferred Stock so converted shall be retired and cancelled and may not be reissued as shares of such series, and the Corporation may thereafter take such appropriate action (without the need for stockholder action) as may be necessary to reduce the authorized number of shares of Preferred Stock accordingly.
4.3.4 No Further Adjustment. Upon any such conversion, no adjustment to the Conversion Price shall be made for any declared but unpaid dividends on the Preferred Stock surrendered for conversion or on the Class A Common Stock delivered upon conversion.
4.3.5 Taxes. The Corporation shall pay any and all issue and other similar taxes that may be payable in respect of any issuance or delivery of shares of Class A Common Stock upon conversion of shares of Preferred Stock pursuant to this Section 4. The Corporation shall not, however, be required to pay any tax which may be payable in respect of any transfer involved in the issuance and delivery of shares of Class A Common Stock in a name other than that in which the shares of Preferred Stock so converted were registered, and no such issuance or delivery shall be made unless and until the person or entity requesting such issuance has paid to the Corporation the amount of any such tax or has established, to the satisfaction of the Corporation, that such tax has been paid.
4.4 Adjustments to Conversion Price for Diluting Issues.
4.4.1 Special Definitions. For purposes of this Article Fourth, the following definitions shall apply:
(a) Additional Shares of Common Stock shall mean all shares of Common Stock issued (or, pursuant to Subsection 4.4.3 below, deemed to be issued) by the Corporation after the date the first share of Series C Preferred Stock was issued by the Corporation (the Original Issue Date), other than (1) the following shares of Common Stock and (2) shares of Common Stock deemed issued pursuant to the following Options and Convertible Securities (clauses (1) and (2), collectively, Exempted Securities):
(i) | as to any series of Preferred Stock, shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued as a dividend or distribution on such series of Preferred Stock; |
(ii) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued by reason of a dividend, stock split, split-up or other distribution on shares of Common Stock that is covered by Subsection 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 or 4.8; |
-26-
(iii) | shares of Common Stock or Options issued to employees or directors of, or consultants or advisors to, the Corporation or any of its subsidiaries pursuant to a plan, agreement or arrangement approved by the Supermajority Board; |
(iv) | shares of Common Stock or Convertible Securities actually issued upon the exercise of Options or shares of Common Stock actually issued upon the conversion or exchange of Convertible Securities or Class B Common Stock, in each case provided such issuance is pursuant to the terms of such Option or Convertible Security; |
(v) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued to banks, equipment lessors or other financial institutions, or to real property lessors, pursuant to a debt financing, equipment leasing or real property leasing transaction approved by the Supermajority Board; |
(vi) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued to suppliers or third party service providers in connection with the provision of goods or services pursuant to transactions approved by the Supermajority Board; |
(vii) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued pursuant to that certain Note Purchase Agreement made as of October 17, 2022 by and among the Corporation and the lenders named on the Schedule of Lenders attached thereto, in each of the foregoing cases as amended from time to time; |
-27-
(viii) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued pursuant to that certain Series C Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement dated on or about the Original Issue Date by and among the Corporation and the investors listed on Exhibit A attached thereto (excluding, for the avoidance of doubt, any additional shares authorized to be issued pursuant to amendments to such agreement following the Original Issue Date); |
(ix) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued as acquisition consideration pursuant to the acquisition of another corporation by the Corporation by merger, purchase of substantially all of the assets or other reorganization or to a joint venture agreement, provided that such issuances are approved by the Supermajority Board; |
(x) | shares of Common Stock, Options or Convertible Securities issued in connection with sponsored research, collaboration, technology license, development, OEM, marketing or other similar agreements or strategic partnerships approved by the Supermajority Board; |
(xi) | shares of Class A Common Stock issued in an IPO; or |
(xii) | shares of Class B Common Stock issued to the Applicable Holders or Permitted Affiliates of Applicable Holders in exchange for shares of Class A Common Stock or shares of Class B Common Stock issued to an Applicable Holder or Permitted Affiliates of Applicable Holders in exchange of Options or Convertible Securities exercisable or convertible into shares of Class A Common Stock, in each case, pursuant to any agreement or other arrangement approved by the Board of Directors. |
(b) Convertible Securities shall mean any evidences of indebtedness, shares or other securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable for Common Stock, but excluding Options.
-28-
(c) Option shall mean rights, options or warrants to subscribe for, purchase or otherwise acquire Common Stock or Convertible Securities.
4.4.2 No Adjustment of Conversion Price. No adjustment in the Conversion Price applicable to a series of Preferred Stock shall be made as the result of the issuance or deemed issuance of Additional Shares of Common Stock if the Corporation receives written notice from the majority of such series of Preferred Stock agreeing that no such adjustment shall be made as the result of the issuance or deemed issuance of such Additional Shares of Common Stock; provided, however, that any amendment or waiver of an adjustment to the Conversion Price to the Series B Preferred Stock shall require the consent of the Series B Majority, and any amendment or waiver of an adjustment to the Conversion Price to the Series C Preferred Stock shall require the consent of the Series C Majority.
4.4.3 Deemed Issue of Additional Shares of Common Stock.
(a) If the Corporation at any time or from time to time after the Original Issue Date shall issue any Options or Convertible Securities (excluding Options or Convertible Securities which are themselves Exempted Securities) or shall fix a record date for the determination of holders of any class of securities entitled to receive any such Options or Convertible Securities, then the maximum number of shares of Common Stock (as set forth in the instrument relating thereto, assuming the satisfaction of any conditions to exercisability, convertibility or exchangeability but without regard to any provision contained therein for a subsequent adjustment of such number) issuable upon the exercise of such Options or, in the case of Convertible Securities and Options therefor, the conversion or exchange of such Convertible Securities, shall be deemed to be Additional Shares of Common Stock issued as of the time of such issue or, in case such a record date shall have been fixed, as of the close of business on such record date.
(b) If the terms of any Option or Convertible Security, the issuance of which resulted in an adjustment to the Conversion Price pursuant to the terms of Subsection 4.4.4, are revised as a result of an amendment to such terms or any other adjustment pursuant to the provisions of such Option or Convertible Security (but excluding automatic adjustments to such terms pursuant to anti-dilution or similar provisions of such Option or Convertible Security) to provide for either (i) any increase or decrease in the number of shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise, conversion and/or exchange of any such Option or Convertible Security or (ii) any increase or decrease in the consideration payable to the Corporation upon such exercise, conversion and/or exchange, then, effective upon such increase or decrease becoming effective, the Conversion Price computed upon the original issue of such Option or Convertible Security (or upon the occurrence of a record date with respect thereto) shall be readjusted to such Conversion Price as would have obtained had such revised terms been in effect upon the original date of issuance of such Option or Convertible Security. Notwithstanding the foregoing, no readjustment pursuant to this clause (b) shall have the effect of increasing the Conversion Price to an amount which exceeds the lower of (A) the Conversion Price in effect immediately prior to the original adjustment made as a result of the issuance of such Option or Convertible Security, or (B) the Conversion Price that would have resulted from any issuances of Additional Shares of Common Stock (other than deemed issuances of Additional Shares of Common Stock as a result of the issuance of such Option or Convertible Security) between the original adjustment date and such readjustment date.
-29-
(c) If the terms of any Option or Convertible Security (excluding Options or Convertible Securities which are themselves Exempted Securities), the issuance of which did not result in an adjustment to the Conversion Price pursuant to the terms of Subsection 4.4.4 (either because the consideration per share (determined pursuant to Subsection 4.4.5) of the Additional Shares of Common Stock subject thereto was equal to or greater than the Conversion Price then in effect, or because such Option or Convertible Security was issued before the Original Issue Date), are revised after the Original Issue Date as a result of an amendment to such terms or any other adjustment pursuant to the provisions of such Option or Convertible Security (but excluding automatic adjustments to such terms pursuant to anti-dilution or similar provisions of such Option or Convertible Security) to provide for either (i) any increase in the number of shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise, conversion or exchange of any such Option or Convertible Security or (ii) any decrease in the consideration payable to the Corporation upon such exercise, conversion or exchange, then such Option or Convertible Security, as so amended or adjusted, and the Additional Shares of Common Stock subject thereto (determined in the manner provided in Subsection 4.4.3(a) shall be deemed to have been issued effective upon such increase or decrease becoming effective.
(d) Upon the expiration or termination of any unexercised Option or unconverted or unexchanged Convertible Security (or portion thereof) which resulted (either upon its original issuance or upon a revision of its terms) in an adjustment to the Conversion Price pursuant to the terms of Subsection 4.4.4, the Conversion Price shall be readjusted to such Conversion Price as would have been obtained had such Option or Convertible Security (or portion thereof) never been issued.
(e) If the number of shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise, conversion and/or exchange of any Option or Convertible Security, or the consideration payable to the Corporation upon such exercise, conversion and/or exchange, is calculable at the time such Option or Convertible Security is issued or amended but is subject to adjustment based upon subsequent events, any adjustment to the Conversion Price provided for in this Subsection 4.4.3 shall be effected at the time of such issuance or amendment based on such number of shares or amount of consideration without regard to any provisions for subsequent adjustments (and any subsequent adjustments shall be treated as provided in clauses (b) and (c) of this Subsection 4.4.3). If the number of shares of Common Stock issuable upon the exercise, conversion and/or exchange of any Option or Convertible Security, or the consideration payable to the Corporation upon such exercise, conversion and/or exchange, cannot be calculated at all at the time such Option or Convertible Security is issued or amended, any adjustment to the Conversion Price that would result under the terms of this Subsection 4.4.3 at the time of such issuance or amendment shall instead be effected at the time such number of shares and/or amount of consideration is first calculable (even if subject to subsequent adjustments), assuming for purposes of calculating such adjustment to the Conversion Price that such issuance or amendment took place at the time such calculation can first be made.
-30-
4.4.4 Adjustment of Conversion Price Upon Issuance of Additional Shares of Common Stock. In the event the Corporation shall at any time after the Original Issue Date issue Additional Shares of Common Stock (including Additional Shares of Common Stock deemed to be issued pursuant to Subsection 4.4.3), without consideration or for a consideration per share less than the Conversion Price in effect immediately prior to such issuance or deemed issuance for a series of Preferred Stock, then the Conversion Price applicable to such series of Preferred Stock shall be reduced, concurrently with such issue, to a price (calculated to the nearest one-hundredth of a cent) determined in accordance with the formula set forth below:
CP2 = CP1* (A + B) ÷ (A + C).
For purposes of the foregoing formula, the following definitions shall apply:
(a) CP2 shall mean the Conversion Price in effect immediately after such issuance or deemed issuance of Additional Shares of Common Stock
(b) CP1 shall mean the Conversion Price in effect immediately prior to such issuance or deemed issuance of Additional Shares of Common Stock;
(c) A shall mean the number of shares of Common Stock outstanding immediately prior to such issuance or deemed issuance of Additional Shares of Common Stock (treating for this purpose as outstanding all shares of Common Stock issuable upon exercise of Options outstanding immediately prior to such issuance or deemed issuance or upon conversion or exchange of Convertible Securities (including the Preferred Stock) outstanding (assuming exercise of any outstanding Options therefor) immediately prior to such issue);
(d) B shall mean the number of shares of Common Stock that would have been issued if such Additional Shares of Common Stock had been issued or deemed issued at a price per share equal to CP1 (determined by dividing the aggregate consideration received by the Corporation in respect of such issue by CP1); and
(e) C shall mean the number of such Additional Shares of Common Stock issued in such transaction.
4.4.5 Determination of Consideration. For purposes of this Subsection 4.4, the consideration received by the Corporation for the issuance or deemed issuance of any Additional Shares of Common Stock shall be computed as follows:
(a) Cash and Property: Such consideration shall:
(i) | insofar as it consists of cash, be computed at the aggregate amount of cash received by the Corporation, excluding amounts paid or payable for accrued interest; |
(ii) | insofar as it consists of property other than cash, be computed at the fair market value thereof at the time of such issue, as determined in good faith by the Board of Directors, including the approval of the Series B Director (if then in office); and |
-31-
(iii) | in the event Additional Shares of Common Stock are issued together with other shares or securities or other assets of the Corporation for consideration which covers both, be the proportion of such consideration so received, computed as provided in clauses (i) and (ii) above, as determined in good faith by the Board of Directors, including the approval of the Series B Director (if then in office). |
(b) Options and Convertible Securities. The consideration per share received by the Corporation for Additional Shares of Common Stock deemed to have been issued pursuant to Subsection 4.4.3, relating to Options and Convertible Securities, shall be determined by dividing:
(i) | The total amount, if any, received or receivable by the Corporation as consideration for the issue of such Options or Convertible Securities, plus the minimum aggregate amount of additional consideration (as set forth in the instruments relating thereto, without regard to any provision contained therein for a subsequent adjustment of such consideration) payable to the Corporation upon the exercise of such Options or the conversion or exchange of such Convertible Securities, or in the case of Options for Convertible Securities, the exercise of such Options for Convertible Securities and the conversion or exchange of such Convertible Securities, by |
(ii) | the maximum number of shares of Common Stock (as set forth in the instruments relating thereto, without regard to any provision contained therein for a subsequent adjustment of such number) issuable upon the exercise of such Options or the conversion or exchange of such Convertible Securities, or in the case of Options for Convertible Securities, the exercise of such Options for Convertible Securities and the conversion or exchange of such Convertible Securities. |
-32-
4.4.6 Multiple Closing Dates. In the event the Corporation shall issue on more than one date Additional Shares of Common Stock that are a part of one transaction or a series of related transactions and that would result in an adjustment to the Conversion Price pursuant to the terms of Subsection 4.4.4, and such issuance dates occur within a period of no more than ninety (90) days from the first such issuance to the final such issuance, then, upon the final such issuance, the Conversion Price shall be readjusted to give effect to all such issuances as if they occurred on the date of the first such issuance (and without giving effect to any additional adjustments as a result of any such subsequent issuances within such period).
4.5 Adjustment for Stock Splits and Combinations. If the Corporation shall at any time or from time to time after the Original Issue Date effect a subdivision of the outstanding Class A Common Stock, the Conversion Price in effect immediately before that subdivision shall be proportionately decreased so that the number of shares of Class A Common Stock issuable on conversion of each share of such series shall be increased in proportion to such increase in the aggregate number of shares of Class A Common Stock outstanding. If the Corporation shall at any time or from time to time after the Original Issue Date combine the outstanding shares of Class A Common Stock, the Conversion Price in effect immediately before the combination shall be proportionately increased so that the number of shares of Class A Common Stock issuable on conversion of each share of such series shall be decreased in proportion to such decrease in the aggregate number of shares of Class A Common Stock outstanding. Any adjustment under this subsection shall become effective at the close of business on the date the subdivision or combination becomes effective.
4.6 Adjustment for Certain Dividends and Distributions. In the event the Corporation at any time or from time to time after the Original Issue Date shall make or issue, or fix a record date for the determination of holders of Common Stock entitled to receive, a dividend or other distribution payable on the Common Stock in additional shares of Common Stock, then and in each such event the Conversion Price in effect immediately before such event shall be decreased as of the time of such issuance or, in the event such a record date shall have been fixed, as of the close of business on such record date, by multiplying the Conversion Price then in effect by a fraction:
(1) the numerator of which shall be the total number of shares of Common Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the time of such issuance or the close of business on such record date, and
(2) the denominator of which shall be the total number of shares of Common Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the time of such issuance or the close of business on such record date plus the number of shares of Common Stock issuable in payment of such dividend or distribution.
-33-
Notwithstanding the foregoing (a) if such record date shall have been fixed and such dividend is not fully paid or if such distribution is not fully made on the date fixed therefor, the Conversion Price shall be recomputed accordingly as of the close of business on such record date and thereafter the Conversion Price shall be adjusted pursuant to this subsection as of the time of actual payment of such dividends or distributions; and (b) that no such adjustment shall be made if the holders of Preferred Stock simultaneously receive a dividend or other distribution of shares of Common Stock in a number equal to the number of shares of Common Stock as they would have received if all outstanding shares of Preferred Stock had been converted into Class A Common Stock on the date of such event.
4.7 Adjustments for Other Dividends and Distributions. In the event the Corporation at any time or from time to time after the Original Issue Date shall make or issue, or fix a record date for the determination of holders of Common Stock entitled to receive, a dividend or other distribution payable in securities of the Corporation (other than a distribution of shares of Common Stock in respect of outstanding shares of Common Stock) or in other property, then and in each such event the holders of Preferred Stock shall receive, simultaneously with the distribution to the holders of Common Stock, a dividend or other distribution of such securities or other property in an amount equal to the amount of such securities or other property as they would have received if all outstanding Preferred Stock had been converted into Class A Common Stock on the date of such event.
4.8 Adjustment for Merger or Reorganization, etc. Subject to the provisions of this Restated Certificate, including Subsection 2.3, if there shall occur any reorganization, recapitalization, reclassification, consolidation or merger (but excluding any Deemed Liquidation Event) involving the Corporation in which the Common Stock (but not the Preferred Stock) is converted into or exchanged for securities, cash or other property (other than a transaction covered by Subsections 4.4, 4.6, or 4.7), then, following any such reorganization, recapitalization, reclassification, consolidation or merger, each share of Preferred Stock shall thereafter be convertible in lieu of the Class A Common Stock into which it was convertible prior to such event into the kind and amount of securities, cash or other property which a holder of the number of shares of Class A Common Stock of the Corporation issuable upon conversion of one share of Preferred Stock immediately prior to such reorganization, recapitalization, reclassification, consolidation or merger would have been entitled to receive pursuant to such transaction; and, in such case, appropriate adjustment (as determined in good faith by the Board of Directors, including the approval of the Series B Director (if then in office)) shall be made in the application of the provisions in this Section 4 with respect to the rights and interests thereafter of the holders of the Preferred Stock, to the end that the provisions set forth in this Section 4 (including provisions with respect to changes in and other adjustments of the Conversion Price) shall thereafter be applicable, as nearly as reasonably may be, in relation to any securities or other property thereafter deliverable upon the conversion of the Preferred Stock.
4.9 Certificate as to Adjustments. Upon the occurrence of each adjustment or readjustment of the Conversion Price pursuant to this Section 4, the Corporation at its expense shall, as promptly as reasonably practicable but in any event not later than ten (10) days thereafter, compute such adjustment or readjustment in accordance with the terms hereof and furnish to each holder of the effected series of Preferred Stock a certificate setting forth such adjustment or readjustment (including the kind and amount of securities, cash or other property into which the Preferred Stock is convertible) and showing in detail the facts upon which such
-34-
adjustment or readjustment is based. The Corporation shall, as promptly as reasonably practicable after the written request at any time of any holder of Preferred Stock (but in any event not later than ten (10) days thereafter), furnish or cause to be furnished to such holder a certificate setting forth (a) the Conversion Price then in effect, and (b) the number of shares of Class A Common Stock and the amount, if any, of other securities, cash or property which then would be received upon the conversion of Preferred Stock.
4.10 Notice of Record Date. In the event:
(a) the Corporation shall take a record of the holders of its Common Stock (or other capital stock or securities at the time issuable upon conversion of the Preferred Stock) for the purpose of entitling or enabling them to receive any dividend or other distribution, or to receive any right to subscribe for or purchase any shares of capital stock of any class or any other securities, or to receive any other security; or
(b) of any capital reorganization of the Corporation, any reclassification of the Common Stock of the Corporation, or any Deemed Liquidation Event; or
(c) of the voluntary or involuntary dissolution, liquidation or winding-up of the Corporation,
then, and in each such case, the Corporation will send or cause to be sent to the holders of the Preferred Stock a notice specifying, as the case may be, (i) the record date for such dividend, distribution or right, and the amount and character of such dividend, distribution or right, or (ii) the effective date on which such reorganization, reclassification, consolidation, merger, transfer, dissolution, liquidation or winding-up is proposed to take place, and the time, if any is to be fixed, as of which the holders of record of Common Stock (or such other capital stock or securities at the time issuable upon the conversion of the Preferred Stock) shall be entitled to exchange their shares of Common Stock (or such other capital stock or securities) for securities or other property deliverable upon such reorganization, reclassification, consolidation, merger, transfer, dissolution, liquidation or winding-up, and the amount per share and character of such exchange applicable to the Preferred Stock and the Common Stock. Such notice shall be sent at least ten (10) days prior to the record date or effective date for the event specified in such notice.
5. Mandatory Conversion.
5.1 Trigger Events. Upon either (a) the closing of the sale of shares of Common Stock to the public at a price of at least $6.9706005 per share (subject to appropriate adjustment in the event of any stock dividend, stock split, combination or other similar recapitalization with respect to the Common Stock), in a firm-commitment underwritten public offering pursuant to an effective registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, resulting in at least $125,000,000 of proceeds, net of the underwriting discount and commissions, to the Corporation and in connection with such offering the Common Stock is listed for trading on the Nasdaq Stock Markets National Market, the New York Stock Exchange or another exchange or marketplace approved by the Board of Directors (a Qualified IPO) or (b) the date and time, or the occurrence of an event, specified by vote or written consent of the
-35-
Requisite Holders (the time of such closing or the date and time specified or the time of the event specified in such vote or written consent is referred to herein as the Mandatory Conversion Time), then (i) all outstanding shares of Preferred Stock shall automatically be converted into shares of Common Stock, at the then effective conversion rate as calculated pursuant to Subsection 4.1.1. and (ii) such shares may not be reissued by the Corporation; provided, however, that in no event shall the Series B Preferred Stock be converted pursuant to clause (b) of this Subsection 5.1 without the prior written consent of the Series B Majority; provided, further, that in no event shall the Series C Preferred Stock be converted pursuant to clause (b) of this Subsection 5.1 in connection with a Deemed Liquidation Event in which the holders of Series C Preferred Stock receive an amount per share less than the Accumulated Stated Value (subject to appropriate adjustment in the event of any stock dividend, stock split, combination or other similar recapitalization with respect to the Common Stock), without the prior written consent of the Series C Majority.
5.2 Procedural Requirements. All holders of record of shares of Preferred Stock shall be sent written notice of the Mandatory Conversion Time and the place designated for mandatory conversion of all such shares of Preferred Stock pursuant to this Section 5. Such notice need not be sent in advance of the occurrence of the Mandatory Conversion Time. Upon receipt of such notice, each holder of shares of Preferred Stock in certificated form shall surrender his, her or its certificate or certificates for all such shares (or, if such holder alleges that such certificate has been lost, stolen or destroyed, a lost certificate affidavit and agreement reasonably acceptable to the Corporation to indemnify the Corporation against any claim that may be made against the Corporation on account of the alleged loss, theft or destruction of such certificate) to the Corporation at the place designated in such notice. If so required by the Corporation, any certificates surrendered for conversion shall be endorsed or accompanied by written instrument or instruments of transfer, in form satisfactory to the Corporation, duly executed by the registered holder or by his, her or its attorney duly authorized in writing. All rights with respect to the Preferred Stock converted pursuant to Subsection 5.1, including the rights, if any, to receive notices and vote (other than as a holder of Class A Common Stock), will terminate at the Mandatory Conversion Time (notwithstanding the failure of the holder or holders thereof to surrender any certificates at or prior to such time), except only the rights of the holders thereof, upon surrender of any certificate or certificates of such holders (or lost certificate affidavit and agreement) therefor, to receive the items provided for in the next sentence of this Subsection 5.2. As soon as practicable after the Mandatory Conversion Time and, if applicable, the surrender of any certificate or certificates (or lost certificate affidavit and agreement) for Preferred Stock, the Corporation shall (a) issue and deliver to such holder, or to his, her or its nominees, a notice of issuance of uncertificated shares and may, upon written request, issue and deliver a certificate or certificates for the number of full shares of Class A Common Stock issuable on such conversion in accordance with the provisions hereof and (b) pay any declared but unpaid dividends on the shares of Preferred Stock converted. Such converted Preferred Stock shall be retired and cancelled and may not be reissued as shares of such series, and the Corporation may thereafter take such appropriate action (without the need for stockholder action) as may be necessary to reduce the authorized number of shares of Preferred Stock accordingly.
-36-
6. Redemption. The Preferred Stock is not redeemable at the sole discretion of the holders thereof, the Requisite Holders, or otherwise, except as provided in Subsection 2.3.2(b) of Article Fourth hereof.
7. Redeemed or Otherwise Acquired Shares. Any shares of Preferred Stock that are redeemed, converted or otherwise acquired by the Corporation or any of its subsidiaries shall be automatically and immediately cancelled and retired and shall not be reissued, sold or transferred. Neither the Corporation nor any of its subsidiaries may exercise any voting or other rights granted to the holders of Preferred Stock following redemption, conversion or acquisition.
8. Waiver. Except as otherwise set forth herein, (a) any of the rights, powers, preferences and other terms of the Preferred Stock set forth herein may be waived only by the affirmative written consent or vote of the Requisite Holders, and any such waiver shall apply to each holder of Preferred Stock with respect to all shares of Preferred Stock held thereby, and (b) at any time more than one (1) series of Preferred Stock is issued and outstanding, any of the rights, powers, preferences and other terms of any series of Preferred Stock set forth herein may be waived only by the affirmative written consent or vote of the holders of a majority of the shares of such series of Preferred Stock then outstanding, and any such waiver shall apply to each holder of such series of Preferred Stock with respect to all shares of such series of Preferred Stock held thereby; provided, however, that (i) any of the rights, powers, preferences and other terms of the Series B Preferred Stock set forth herein may be waived only by the affirmative written consent or vote of the Series B Majority, and any such waiver shall apply to each holder of Series B Preferred Stock with respect to all shares of Series B Preferred Stock held thereby, and (ii) any of the rights, powers, preferences and other terms of the Series C Preferred Stock set forth herein may be waived only by the affirmative written consent or vote of the Series C Majority, and any such waiver shall apply to each holder of Series C Preferred Stock with respect to all shares of Series C Preferred Stock held thereby.
9. Notices. Any notice required or permitted by the provisions of this Article Fourth to be given to a holder of shares of Preferred Stock shall be mailed, postage prepaid, to the post office address last shown on the records of the Corporation, or given by electronic communication in compliance with the provisions of the General Corporation Law, and shall be deemed sent upon such mailing or electronic transmission.
10. Preemptive Rights. No stockholder of the Corporation has a right to purchase shares of capital stock of the Corporation sold or issued by the Corporation except to the extent that such a right may from time to time be set forth in a written agreement between the Corporation and the stockholder.
11. Intended Tax Treatment. It is intended for U.S. federal and applicable state and local income tax purposes that: (i) accrued dividends on the Series C Preferred Stock shall not be treated as distributions for purposes of Section 301 of the Code, unless and until the applicable dividends are declared by the Board of Directors and paid in accordance with the terms of the Restated Certificate or as required as a result of any disproportionate distribution within the meaning of Section 305(b)(2) of the Code and Treasury Regulations Section 1.305-3 resulting from securities issued after the Original Issue Date, (ii) the Series C Preferred Stock
-37-
shall be treated as stock that is not preferred stock within the meaning of Section 305 of the Code and Treasury Regulations Section 1.305-5, and (iii) the conversion of the Series C Preferred Stock to Common Stock in accordance with the terms of the Restated Certificate shall be treated as a tax-deferred recapitalization under Section 368(a)(1)(E) of the Code and such conversion shall not result in a constructive distribution on account of accrued dividends under Treasury Regulations Section 1.305-7(c) (clauses (i) through (iii), the Intended Tax Treatment). The Corporation will, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to cause any paying agent or other agent of the Corporation to, report consistently with, and take no reporting positions or actions inconsistent with (including on any IRS Form 1099 or any other information return) the Intended Tax Treatment (including by way of withholding) unless otherwise required by a change in applicable law.
12. Incorporation by Reference. With respect to the shares of Preferred Stock held by the holders thereof, the Corporation incorporates by reference Sections 5.1 and 5.9 of that certain Third Amended and Restated Investors Rights Agreement (the Investors Rights Agreement), dated on or around the Original Issue Date (the Incorporated Sections). Such incorporation by reference shall apply for so long as the applicable Incorporated Sections are in effect or until such time as it is no longer required under the General Corporation Law. For the avoidance of doubt, for purposes of the Incorporated Sections, references therein to director shall also be deemed to refer to such other person or persons, if any, who, pursuant to a provision of this Restated Certificate, in accordance with § 141(a) of the General Corporation Law, exercise or perform any of the powers or duties otherwise conferred or imposed upon the board of directors by the General Corporation Law.
FIFTH: Subject to any additional vote required by this Restated Certificate or Bylaws of the Corporation, in furtherance and not in limitation of the powers conferred by statute, the Board of Directors is expressly authorized to make, repeal, alter, amend and rescind any or all of the Bylaws of the Corporation.
SIXTH: Subject to any additional vote required by this Restated Certificate, the number of directors of the Corporation shall be determined in the manner set forth in the Bylaws of the Corporation. Each director shall be entitled to one vote on each matter presented to the Board of Directors.
SEVENTH: Elections of directors need not be by written ballot unless the Bylaws of the Corporation shall so provide.
EIGHTH: Meetings of stockholders may be held within or without the State of Delaware, as the Bylaws of the Corporation may provide. The books of the Corporation may be kept outside the State of Delaware at such place or places as may be designated from time to time by the Board of Directors or in the Bylaws of the Corporation.
NINTH: To the fullest extent permitted by law, a director of the Corporation shall not be personally liable to the Corporation or its stockholders for monetary damages for breach of fiduciary duty as a director. If the General Corporation Law or any other law of the State of Delaware is amended after approval by the stockholders of this Article Ninth to authorize corporate action further eliminating or limiting the personal liability of directors, then the liability of a director of the Corporation shall be eliminated or limited to the fullest extent permitted by the General Corporation Law as so amended.
-38-
Any repeal or modification of the foregoing provisions of this Article Ninth by the stockholders of the Corporation shall not adversely affect any right or protection of a director of the Corporation existing at the time of, or increase the liability of any director of the Corporation with respect to any acts or omissions of such director occurring prior to, such repeal or modification.
TENTH: To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Corporation is authorized to provide indemnification of (and advancement of expenses to) directors, officers and agents of the Corporation (and any other persons to which General Corporation Law permits the Corporation to provide indemnification) through Bylaw provisions, agreements with such agents or other persons, vote of stockholders or disinterested directors or otherwise, in excess of the indemnification and advancement otherwise permitted by Section 145 of the General Corporation Law.
Any amendment, repeal or modification of the foregoing provisions of this Article Tenth shall not (a) adversely affect any right or protection of any director, officer or other agent of the Corporation existing at the time of such amendment, repeal or modification or (b) increase the liability of any director of the Corporation with respect to any acts or omissions of such director, officer or agent occurring prior to, such amendment, repeal or modification.
ELEVENTH: The Corporation renounces, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any interest or expectancy of the Corporation in, or in being offered an opportunity to participate in, any Excluded Opportunity. An Excluded Opportunity is any matter, transaction or interest that is presented to, or acquired, created or developed by, or which otherwise comes into the possession of (i) any director of the Corporation who is not an employee of the Corporation or any of its subsidiaries, or (ii) any holder of Preferred Stock or any partner, member, director, stockholder, employee, affiliate or agent of any such holder, other than someone who is an employee of the Corporation or any of its subsidiaries (collectively, the persons referred to in clauses (i) and (ii) are Covered Persons), unless such matter, transaction or interest is presented to, or acquired, created or developed by, or otherwise comes into the possession of, a Covered Person expressly and solely in such Covered Persons capacity as a director of the Corporation while such Covered Person is performing services in such capacity. Any repeal or modification of this Article Eleventh will only be prospective and will not affect the rights under this Article Eleventh in effect at the time of the occurrence of any actions or omissions to act giving rise to liability. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained elsewhere in this Restated Certificate, the affirmative vote of the Requisite Holders will be required to amend or repeal, or to adopt any provisions inconsistent with this Article Eleventh.
TWELFTH: Unless the Corporation consents in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery in the State of Delaware shall be the sole and exclusive forum for any stockholder (including a beneficial owner) to bring (i) any derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of the Corporation, (ii) any action asserting a claim of breach of fiduciary duty owed by any director, officer or other employee of the Corporation to the Corporation or the Corporations stockholders, (iii) any action asserting a claim against the
-39-
Corporation, its directors, officers or employees arising pursuant to any provision of the General Corporation Law, this Restated Certificate or the Bylaws of the Corporation or (iv) any action asserting a claim against the Corporation, its directors, officers or employees governed by the internal affairs doctrine, except for, as to each of (i) through (iv) above, any claim as to which the Court of Chancery determines that there is an indispensable party not subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery (and the indispensable party does not consent to the personal jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery within ten days following such determination), which is vested in the exclusive jurisdiction of a court or forum other than the Court of Chancery, or for which the Court of Chancery does not have subject matter jurisdiction. If any provision or provisions of this Article Twelfth shall be held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable as applied to any person or entity or circumstance for any reason whatsoever, then, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the validity, legality and enforceability of such provisions in any other circumstance and of the remaining provisions of this Article Twelfth (including, without limitation, each portion of any sentence of this Article Twelfth containing any such provision held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable that is not itself held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable) and the application of such provision to other persons or entities and circumstances shall not in any way be affected or impaired thereby.
THIRTEENTH: For purposes of Section 500 of the California Corporations Code (to the extent applicable), in connection with any repurchase of shares of Common Stock permitted under this Restated Certificate from employees, officers, directors or consultants of the Corporation in connection with a termination of employment or services pursuant to agreements or arrangements approved by the Board of Directors (in addition to any other consent required under this Restated Certificate), such repurchase may be made without regard to any preferential dividends arrears amount or preferential rights amount (as those terms are defined in Section 500 of the California Corporations Code). Accordingly, for purposes of making any calculation under California Corporations Code Section 500 in connection with such repurchase, the amount of any preferential dividends arrears amount or preferential rights amount (as those terms are defined therein) shall be deemed to be zero (0).
* * *
-40-
Exhibit 3.2
COREWEAVE, INC.
AMENDED AND RESTATED CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION
CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation, hereby certifies as follows:
1. The name of this corporation is CoreWeave, Inc. The date of the filing of its original Certificate of Incorporation with the Secretary of State of the State of Delaware was September 6, 2018. This corporation was originally incorporated under the name of Atlantic Crypto Corporation.
2. The Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of this corporation attached hereto as Exhibit A, which is incorporated herein by this reference, and which restates, integrates and further amends the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation of this corporation, as previously amended and/or supplemented, has been duly adopted by this corporations Board of Directors and by the stockholders in accordance with Sections 242 and 245 of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, with the approval of this corporations stockholders having been given by written consent without a meeting in accordance with Section 228 of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, this corporation has caused this Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to be signed by its duly authorized officer and the foregoing facts stated herein are true and correct.
Dated: , 2025 | COREWEAVE, INC. | |||
By: |
| |||
|
Michael Intrator | |||
|
President and Chief Executive Officer |
EXHIBIT A
COREWEAVE, INC.
AMENDED AND RESTATED CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION
ARTICLE I: NAME
The name of the corporation is CoreWeave, Inc. (the Corporation).
ARTICLE II: AGENT FOR SERVICE OF PROCESS
The address of the Corporations registered office in the State of Delaware is 1209 Orange Street, City of Wilmington, County of New Castle, Delaware 19801, and the name of the Corporations registered agent in the State of Delaware at such address is National Registered Agents, Inc.
ARTICLE III: PURPOSE
The purpose of the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized under the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (as amended from time to time, the General Corporation Law).
ARTICLE IV: AUTHORIZED STOCK
1. Authorized Shares.
1.1. The total number of shares of all classes of capital stock that the Corporation has authority to issue is 3,500,000,000 shares comprised of: (i) 3,400,000,000 shares of Common Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Common Stock), of which (a) 3,000,000,000 shares shall be a series designated as Class A Common Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Class A Common Stock), (b) 200,000,000 shares shall be a series designated as Class B Common Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Class B Common Stock), and (c) 200,000,000 shares shall be a series designated as Class C Common Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Class C Common Stock), and (ii) 100,000,000 shares of Preferred Stock, $0.000005 par value per share (Preferred Stock).
1.2. Irrespective of the provisions of Section 242(b)(2) of the General Corporation Law, but subject to the rights of the holders of any series of Preferred Stock then outstanding, the number of authorized shares of any class or classes of stock may be increased or decreased (but not below the number of shares thereof then outstanding) by a vote of the holders of the stock of the Corporation entitled to vote thereon, voting as a single class.
1.3. For the avoidance of doubt, the Corporation expressly elects to be governed by Section 242(d) of the General Corporation Law.
2. Preferred Stock.
2.1. The Corporations Board of Directors (the Board of Directors) is authorized, subject to any limitations prescribed by the law of the State of Delaware, by resolution or resolutions adopted from time to time, to provide for the issuance of shares of Preferred Stock in one or more series, and, by filing a certificate of designation pursuant to the applicable law of the State of Delaware (Certificate of Designation), to establish from time to time the number of shares to be included in each
such series, to fix the designation, powers (including voting powers), preferences and relative, participating, optional or other special rights (and the qualifications, limitations or restrictions thereof) of the shares of each such series and, except where otherwise provided in the applicable Certificate of Designation, to increase (but not above the total number of authorized shares of the Preferred Stock) or decrease (but not below the number of shares of such series then outstanding) the number of shares of any such series.
2.2 Except as otherwise expressly provided in this Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation (as the same may be amended and/or restated from time to time, including any Certificate of Designation designating a series of Preferred Stock, this Certificate of Incorporation), (i) any new series of Preferred Stock may be designated, fixed and determined as provided herein by the Board of Directors without approval of the holders of Common Stock or the holders of the Preferred Stock, or any series thereof, and (ii) any such new series may have powers, preferences and rights, including, without limitation, voting powers, dividend rights, liquidation rights, redemption rights and conversion rights, senior to, junior to or pari passu with the rights of the Common Stock, any series of the Preferred Stock or any future class or series of the Corporations capital stock.
3. Common Stock.
3.1 Equal Status. Except as otherwise provided in this Certificate of Incorporation or required by applicable law, the holders of each series of Common Stock shall have the same rights and powers, rank equally (including as to dividends and distributions, and upon any liquidation, bankruptcy, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, but excluding voting and other matters as described in Section 3.2 of this Article IV), share ratably and be identical in all respects and as to all matters.
3.2 Voting Rights. Except as otherwise expressly provided by this Certificate of Incorporation or as required by law, the holders of shares of Common Stock shall (a) at all times vote together as a single class and not as separate series or classes on all matters (including the election of directors) submitted to a vote of the stockholders of the Corporation, (b) be entitled to notice of any stockholders meeting in accordance with the Corporations Bylaws (as the same may be amended and/or restated from time to time, the Bylaws) and (c) be entitled to vote upon such matters and in such manner as may be provided by applicable law; provided, however, that, except as otherwise required by law or this Certificate of Incorporation, holders of shares of Common Stock shall not be entitled to vote on any amendment to this Certificate of Incorporation (including any Certificate of Designation relating to any series of Preferred Stock) that relates solely to the terms of one (1) or more outstanding class or series of Preferred Stock if the holders of such affected class or series are entitled, either separately or together as a class with the holders of one (1) or more other such class or series, to vote thereon pursuant to this Certificate of Incorporation (including any Certificate of Designation relating to any series of Preferred Stock). Except as otherwise expressly provided herein or required by applicable law, (x) each holder of Class A Common Stock shall have the right to one (1) vote per share of Class A Common Stock held of record by such holder, (y) each holder of Class B Common Stock shall have the right to ten (10) votes per share of Class B Common Stock held of record by such holder and (z) shares of Class C Common Stock shall have no voting rights, except as otherwise required by law. Unless required by law, there shall be no cumulative voting.
3.3 Dividends. Subject to the preferential or other rights of any holders of Preferred Stock then outstanding, the holders of all series of Common Stock shall be treated equally, identically and ratably, on a per share basis, with respect to any dividends or distributions (other than authorized repurchases of outstanding Common Stock) as may be declared and paid from time to time by the Board of Directors out of any assets of the Corporation legally available therefor, unless a disparate dividend is approved in advance by the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of each series of Common Stock, voting as separate series; provided, however, that, notwithstanding the foregoing, in the event a dividend or distribution (other than authorized repurchases of outstanding Common Stock) is paid in the form of shares of a series of Common Stock (or securities convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for (rights to acquire) such shares), the holders of a series of Common Stock, as such, shall receive shares of such series of Common Stock (or rights to acquire such shares).
1
3.4 Subdivisions or Combinations. Without the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of each series of Common Stock, voting as separate series, the Corporation may not subdivide or combine the issued shares of any series of Common Stock unless the issued shares of each other such series shall, concurrently therewith, be subdivided or combined in a manner that maintains the same proportionate equity ownership between the holders of the outstanding series of Common Stock on the record date of such subdivision or combination.
3.5 Reclassifications. Without the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of each series of Common Stock, voting as separate series, the Corporation may not reclassify or otherwise change (other than a subdivision or combination pursuant to which Section 3.4 of this Article IV shall be applicable) (such reclassification or other change, Reclassify) the shares of any series of Common Stock unless the shares of each other series of Common Stock are concurrently Reclassified (i) in a manner that maintains the same proportionate equity ownership between the holders of the outstanding series of Common Stock on the record date of such Reclassification and (ii) into the same kind and amount of stock or securities; provided, that, the stock or securities into which each share of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock is Reclassified shall be deemed the same kind and amount into which each share of Class A Common Stock is Reclassified so long as any differences in the kind and amount of stock or securities are intended solely (as determined by the Board of Directors in good faith) to maintain the relative voting power of each share of Class B Common Stock relative to each share of any other series of Common Stock outstanding prior to the Reclassification.
3.6 Liquidation, Dissolution or Winding Up. Subject to the preferential or other rights of any holders of Preferred Stock then outstanding, upon the liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation, whether voluntary or involuntary, the holders of each series of Common Stock will be entitled to receive ratably, on a per share basis, all assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders unless disparate or different treatment of the shares of each such series with respect to distributions upon any such liquidation, dissolution or winding up is approved in advance by the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of each series of Common Stock, voting as separate series. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and for the avoidance of doubt, consideration to be paid or received by a holder of Common Stock pursuant to any employment, consulting, severance or similar services arrangement shall not be deemed to be assets of the Corporation available for distribution to its stockholders for the purpose of this Section 3.6.
3.7 Fundamental Change. In addition to any vote required pursuant to applicable law or this Certificate of Incorporation, the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of each series of Common Stock, voting as separate series, shall be required to approve any merger, consolidation, conversion, transfer, domestication or continuance (whether or not the Corporation is the surviving entity, a Fundamental Change) unless the holders of each series of Common Stock, as such, will be entitled to receive equal, identical and ratable per share distributions or payments, if any, in connection with such Fundamental Change; provided, however, that, notwithstanding the foregoing, in the case of a distribution or payment in the form of securities in connection with a Fundamental Change, any or all such series of Common Stock may (but shall not be required to) receive different or disproportionate distributions or payments in the form of securities of the Corporation or another entity if the only difference among the securities distributed or paid to each series of Common Stock shall be the voting rights thereof, which shall be substantially similar to the voting rights of the series of Common Stock in respect of which such securities are distributed or paid; and provided, further, that in the event that the holders of a series of Common Stock are granted rights to elect to receive one of two or more alternative forms of consideration,
2
the holders of each series of Common Stock shall be deemed to have received equal, identical and ratable per share distributions or payments in connection with such Fundamental Change if holders of each series of Common Stock are granted substantially similar election rights. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and for the avoidance of doubt, (x) consideration to be distributed or paid to a holder of Common Stock in connection with any such Fundamental Change pursuant to any employment, consulting, severance or similar services arrangement or (y) a negotiated agreement between a holder of Common Stock and any counterparty (or an affiliate thereof (used herein as defined pursuant to Rule 405 promulgated under the Securities Act (as defined below), as amended)) to a Fundamental Change wherein such holder is contributing, selling, transferring or otherwise disposing of shares of the Corporations capital stock to such counterparty (or an affiliate thereof) as part of a rollover or similar transaction that is in connection with such Fundamental Change, in each case, shall not be deemed to be consideration distributed or paid to the holder of shares of Common Stock for the purpose of this Section 3.7.
4. Conversion.
4.1 Optional Conversion. Each share of Class B Common Stock shall be convertible into one (1) fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock at the option of the holder thereof at any time upon written notice to the Corporation. Before any holder of Class B Common Stock shall be entitled to convert any of such holders shares of such Class B Common Stock into shares of Class A Common Stock, such holder shall deliver an instruction, duly signed and authenticated in accordance with any procedures set forth in the Bylaws or any policies of the Corporation then in effect (which will be available upon request therefor made to the Secretary), at the principal corporate office of the Corporation or of any transfer agent for the Class B Common Stock, and shall give written notice to the Corporation at its principal corporate office of such holders election to convert the same and shall state therein the name or names in which the shares of Class A Common Stock issuable on conversion thereof are to be registered on the books and records of the Corporation and, if applicable, any event on which such conversion is contingent (a Class B Contingency Event). The Corporation shall, as soon as practicable thereafter, register on the Corporations books ownership of the number of shares of Class A Common Stock to which such record holder of Class B Common Stock, or to which the nominee or nominees of such record holder, shall be entitled as aforesaid. Such conversion shall be deemed to have occurred immediately prior to the close of business on the date such notice of the election to convert is received by the Corporation (or, if later, the date on which all Class B Contingency Events have occurred) (the Class B Conversion Time), and the person or persons entitled to receive the shares of Class A Common Stock issuable upon such conversion shall be treated for all purposes as the record holder or holders of such shares of Class A Common Stock as of the Class B Conversion Time. The Corporation shall not be required to register a conversion of a share of Class B Common Stock pursuant to this Section 4.1 unless it is permitted to do so by law. All shares of Class B Common Stock that shall have been surrendered for conversion as herein provided shall no longer be deemed to be outstanding and all rights with respect to such shares shall immediately cease and terminate at the applicable Class B Conversion Time, except only the right of the holders thereof to receive shares of Class A Common Stock in exchange therefor. Each share of Class C Common Stock shall be convertible into one (1) fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock but only upon the written consent of the Corporation and subject to the terms specified by the Corporation in any such written consent.
4.2 Automatic Conversion.
4.2.1 Specific Applicable Holder Class B Automatic Conversion. Each share of Class B Common Stock held by an Applicable Holder and all Permitted Affiliates (as each such term is defined below) of such Applicable Holder shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one (1) fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock immediately prior to the close of business on the earliest to occur of the following with respect to such Applicable Holder (the earliest to occur of the events referred to in the following clauses (a)-(d), the Specific Applicable Holder Conversion):
3
(a) the date fixed by the Board of Directors, which date may be no more than sixty-one (61) days following the first day after 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the Public Offering Date (as defined below) that the number of Threshold Shares (as defined below) held by such Applicable Holder and his Permitted Affiliates is less than fifty percent (50%) of the number of Threshold Shares at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the Public Offering Date; provided, that, following a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement with respect to a spouse of an Applicable Holder, the Threshold Shares shall be deemed to include Threshold Shares transferred prior to such proceeding, order or legal requirement to such spouse or a Permitted Trust of which such spouse was a trustee;
(b) the date fixed by the Board of Directors following the first time that such Applicable Holder is no longer providing services that occupy substantially all such Applicable Holders working time and business efforts to the Corporation as an officer, employee or consultant, as determined by the Board of Directors in its sole discretion (other than as a result of such Applicable Holders employment with the Corporation being terminated without Cause) (a Service Termination), which date may be no more than sixty-one (61) days following such Service Termination;
(c) the date that such Applicable Holders employment with the Corporation is terminated for Cause (as defined below); and
(d) the date fixed by the Board of Directors after the date of the death or Disability (as defined below) of such Applicable Holder, which date may be no more than sixty-one (61) days following such Service Termination.
4.2.2 Class B Automatic Conversion. All shares of Class B Common Stock then outstanding shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one (1) fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock immediately prior to the close of business on the earliest to occur of the following (the earliest to occur of the events referred to in the following clauses (a)-(c), together with the Specific Applicable Holder Conversion, the Class B Automatic Conversion):
(a) the date fixed by the Board of Directors that is no more than sixty-one (61) days following the seventh (7th) anniversary of the Public Offering Date;
(b) the date specified by the affirmative vote of the holders of Class B Common Stock representing not less than two-thirds (2/3) of the voting power of the outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock, voting separately as a single class; and
(c) the date fixed by the Board of Directors that is no more than sixty-one (61) days following the first time that there is a Service Termination with respect to Michael Intrator.
4.2.3 Class C Automatic Conversion. All shares of Class C Common Stock then outstanding shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one (1) fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock following both (a) the earliest to occur of (i) the conversion or other exchange of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock into, or for shares of, Class A Common Stock, (ii) the Class B Automatic Conversion (other than a Specific Applicable Holder Conversion) and (iii) the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock, voting separately as a single class and (b) upon the date and time, or occurrence of an event, specified by the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the then-outstanding shares of Class A Common Stock, voting separately as a single class (the Class C Automatic Conversion, and, together with the Class B Automatic Conversion, each an Automatic Conversion).
4
The Corporation shall provide notice of an Automatic Conversion to record holders of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock subject to such Class B Automatic Conversion and of Class C Common Stock subject to such Class C Automatic Conversion, as applicable, as soon as practicable following such Automatic Conversion. Such notice shall be provided by any means then permitted by the General Corporation Law; provided, however, that no failure to give such notice nor any defect therein shall affect the validity of an Automatic Conversion. Upon and after an Automatic Conversion, each record holder of then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock subject to such Class B Automatic Conversion and of Class C Common Stock subject to such Class C Automatic Conversion, as applicable, immediately prior to such Class B Automatic Conversion and Class C Automatic Conversion, as applicable, shall be registered on the Corporations books as the record holder of the shares of Class A Common Stock issued upon such Automatic Conversion without further action on the part of such record holder. Immediately upon the effectiveness of an Automatic Conversion, as applicable, the rights of the holders of the shares of Class B Common Stock converted pursuant to such Class B Automatic Conversion and of Class C Common Stock converted pursuant to such Class C Automatic Conversion, as applicable, shall cease, and the holders shall be treated for all purposes as having become the record holder or holders of such shares of Class A Common Stock into which such shares of Class B Common Stock and Class C Common Stock, as applicable, were converted.
4.3 Conversion on Transfer. Each share of Class B Common Stock shall automatically, without further action by the Corporation or the holder thereof, be converted into one (1) fully paid and nonassessable share of Class A Common Stock upon the occurrence of a Class B Transfer (as defined below), other than a Permitted Transfer (as defined below), of such share of Class B Common Stock. The person(s) entitled to shares of Class A Common Stock upon a Class B Transfer shall be treated for all purposes as the record holders of such shares of Class A Common Stock as of the date of such Class B Transfer.
4.4 Policies and Procedures. The Corporation may, from time to time, establish such policies and procedures, not in violation of applicable law, this Certificate of Incorporation or the Bylaws, relating to the conversion of shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock into shares of Class A Common Stock as it may deem necessary or advisable. If the Corporation has reason to believe that a Class B Transfer that is not a Permitted Transfer has occurred, the Corporation may request that the purported transferor furnish affidavits or other evidence to the Corporation as it reasonably deems necessary to determine whether a Class B Transfer that is not a Permitted Transfer has occurred, and if such transferor does not, within ten (10) days after the date of such request, furnish sufficient (as reasonably determined by the Board of Directors (but not a committee thereof)) evidence to the Corporation (in the manner provided in the request) to enable the Corporation to determine that such Class B Transfer was a Permitted Transfer, any such shares of Class B Common Stock included in such Class B Transfer, to the extent not previously converted, shall be automatically converted into shares of Class A Common Stock on a one-to-one basis, and such conversion shall thereupon be registered on the books and records of the Corporation. In connection with any action of stockholders taken at a meeting, the stock ledger of the Corporation shall be presumptive evidence as to who are the stockholders entitled to vote in person or by proxy at any meeting of stockholders and the classes or series of shares held by each such stockholder and the number of shares of each class or series held by such stockholder.
4.5 Definitions. As used in this Certificate of Incorporation, the following terms shall have the meanings set forth below:
5
4.5.1 Applicable Holders shall mean each of Michael Intrator, Brannin McBee and Brian Venturo.
4.5.2 Cause shall mean: (a) such Applicable Holder willfully engages in conduct that is in bad faith and materially injurious to the Corporation, including but not limited to, misappropriation of trade secrets, fraud or embezzlement; (b) such Applicable Holder commits a material breach of any written agreement between such Applicable Holder and the Corporation that causes harm to the Corporation, which breach is not cured within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice describing in detail such breach to such Applicable Holder from the Board of Directors; (c) such Applicable Holder willfully refuses to implement or follow a directive by the Board of Directors, directly related to a breach of such Applicable Holders duties, which breach is not cured within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice describing in detail such breach to such Applicable Holder from the Board of Directors; (d) such Applicable Holder engages in material misfeasance or malfeasance demonstrated by a continued pattern of material failure to perform the essential job duties associated with such Applicable Holders position, which breach is not cured within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice describing in detail such breach to such Applicable Holder from the Board of Directors; or (e) such Applicable Holders conviction of, or plea of guilty or no contest to, a felony that results in, or would reasonably be expected to result in, a material loss, material reputational damage or other material harm to the Corporation, as determined in good faith by the Board of Directors (including a majority of the disinterested members of the Board of Directors).
4.5.3 Class B Transfer shall mean any direct or indirect sale, assignment, transfer, conveyance, pledge, mortgage, hypothecation, encumbrance or other transfer, disposition or encumbering of a share of Class B Common Stock, or any legal or beneficial interest in such share, whether or not for value and whether voluntary or involuntary or by operation of law, including, without limitation, a transfer of a share of Class B Common Stock to a broker or other nominee (regardless of whether there is a corresponding change in beneficial ownership), or the transfer of, or entering into a binding agreement with respect to, Voting Control over such share by proxy or otherwise; provided, however, that the following shall not be considered a Class B Transfer:
(a) the granting of a proxy to one or more officers or directors of the Corporation at the request of the Board of Directors in connection with actions to be taken at an annual or special meeting of stockholders;
(b) entering into a voting trust, agreement or arrangement (with or without granting a proxy) solely with stockholders who are holders of Class B Common Stock that (i) is disclosed either in a Schedule 13D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission or in writing to the Secretary of the Corporation, (ii) either has a term not exceeding one year or is terminable by the holder of the shares subject thereto at any time and (iii) does not involve any payment of cash, securities, property or other consideration to the holder of the shares subject thereto other than the mutual promise to vote shares in a designated manner;
(c) entering into a voting trust, agreement or arrangement (with or without granting a proxy) pursuant to a written agreement to which the Corporation is a party;
(d) the pledge of shares of Class B Common Stock by a stockholder that creates a mere security interest in such shares pursuant to a bona fide loan or indebtedness transaction for so long as such stockholder continues to exercise Voting Control (as defined below) over such pledged shares; provided, however, that a foreclosure on such shares or other similar action by the pledgee (including the exercise of any proxy authority granted to such pledgee pursuant to such pledge) shall constitute a Class B Transfer unless such foreclosure or similar action qualifies as a Permitted Transfer;
6
(e) the fact that the spouse of any holder of Class B Common Stock possesses or obtains an interest in such holders shares of Class B Common Stock arising solely by reason of the application of the community property laws of any jurisdiction, so long as no other event or circumstance shall exist or have occurred that constitutes a Class B Transfer of such shares of Class B Common Stock; provided, that any transfer of shares by any holder of shares of Class B Common Stock to such holders spouse, including a transfer in connection with a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement, shall constitute a Class B Transfer of such shares of Class B Common Stock unless otherwise exempt from the definition of Class B Transfer;
(f) entering into a trading plan pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, with a broker or other nominee; provided, however, that a sale of such shares of Class B Common Stock pursuant to such plan shall constitute a Class B Transfer at the time of such sale; or
(g) entering into a support, voting, tender or similar agreement or arrangement (in each case, with or without the grant of a proxy) in connection with a liquidation, bankruptcy, dissolution or winding up of the Corporation (whether voluntary or involuntary), a conversion, merger or consolidation of the Corporation with or into any other entity or any other transaction having an effect on stockholders substantially similar to that resulting from a conversion, merger or consolidation, a sale, lease, exclusive license or other disposition of all or substantially all of the assets of the Corporation, or a transaction or series of related transactions to which the Corporation is a party in which shares of the Corporation are transferred such that in excess of fifty percent (50%) of the Corporations voting power is transferred, or in connection with consummating the actions or transactions contemplated thereby (including, without limitation, tendering or voting shares of Class B Common Stock in connection with such a transaction, the consummation of such a transaction or the sale, assignment, transfer, conveyance, hypothecation or other transfer or disposition of shares of Class B Common Stock or any legal or beneficial interest in shares of Class B Common Stock in connection with such a transaction), in each case, as approved by the Board of Directors prior to taking such actions; provided, that any sale, tender, assignment, transfer, conveyance, hypothecation or other transfer or disposition of Class B Common Stock or any legal or economic interest therein pursuant to such a transaction, or any entry into a support, voting, tender or similar agreement or arrangement (in each case, with or without the grant of a proxy) over Class B Common Stock with respect to such a transaction without specific instructions as to how to vote such Class B Common Stock, in each case, will constitute a Class B Transfer of such Class B Common Stock unless such transaction was approved by the Board of Directors prior to the taking of such action.
A Class B Transfer shall also be deemed to have occurred with respect to a share of Class B Common Stock beneficially held by an entity that is a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA, if there occurs any act or circumstance that causes such entity to no longer be a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA.
4.5.4 Disability shall mean, with respect to an Applicable Holder, the permanent and total disability of such Applicable Holder such that such Applicable Holder is unable to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death within 12 months or which has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months as determined by a licensed medical practitioner jointly selected by any one of the Independent Directors and such Applicable Holder. If such Applicable Holder is incapable of selecting a licensed physician, then such Applicable Holders spouse shall make the selection on behalf of such Applicable Holder, or in the absence or incapacity of such Applicable Holders spouse, such Applicable Holders adult children by majority vote shall make the selection on behalf of such Applicable Holder, or in the absence of adult children of such Applicable Holder or their inability to act by majority vote, a natural person then acting as the successor trustee of a revocable
7
living trust which was created by such Applicable Holder and which holds more shares of all classes of capital stock of the Corporation than any other revocable living trust created by such Applicable Holder shall make the selection on behalf of such Applicable Holder, or in absence of any such successor trustee, the legal guardian or conservator of the estate of such Applicable Holder shall make the selection on behalf of the Applicable Holder.
4.5.5 Independent Directors shall mean the members of the Board of Directors designated as independent directors in accordance with (a) the requirements of any national stock exchange under which the Corporations equity securities are listed for trading that are generally applicable to companies with common equity securities listed thereon or (b) if the Corporations equity securities are not listed for trading on a national stock exchange, the requirements of the Nasdaq Stock Market generally applicable to companies with equity securities listed thereon.
4.5.6 Permitted Affiliate shall mean a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation, Permitted IRA or Permitted Transferee.
4.5.7 Permitted Entity shall mean with respect to an Applicable Holder: (a) a Permitted Trust; or (b) any general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability company, corporation or other entity (i) directly or indirectly owned by or managed by such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder and/or a Permitted Trust and (ii) for which such Applicable Holder, spouse of such Applicable Holder and/or Permitted Trust has Voting Control.
4.5.8 Permitted Foundation shall mean with respect to an Applicable Holder, a trust or private non-operating foundation that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), so long as (a) such Applicable Holder has dispositive power and Voting Control with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held by such trust or organization and (b) the Class B Transfer to such trust does not involve any payment of cash, securities, property or other consideration (other than an interest in such trust or organization) to such Applicable Holder.
4.5.9 Permitted IRA shall mean an Individual Retirement Account, as defined in Section 408(a) of the Code, or a pension, profit sharing, stock bonus or other type of plan or trust of which an Applicable Holder is a participant or beneficiary and which satisfies the requirements for qualification under Section 401 of the Code; provided, that in each case such Applicable Holder has sole dispositive power and exclusive Voting Control with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held in such account, plan or trust.
4.5.10 Permitted Transfer shall mean, and be restricted to, any Class B Transfer of a share of Class B Common Stock:
(a) by an Applicable Holder to (i) the spouse of such Applicable Holder; provided, that such transfer shall cease to be, and shall not be deemed to be, a Permitted Transfer following a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement with respect to such spouse, (ii) any Permitted Entity of such Applicable Holder, (iii) any Permitted Foundation of such Applicable Holder or (iv) any Permitted IRA of such Applicable Holder; or
(b) by a Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA of an Applicable Holder to (i) such Applicable Holder or (ii) any other Permitted Entity, Permitted Foundation or Permitted IRA of such Applicable Holder.
8
4.5.11 Permitted Transferee shall mean a transferee of shares of Class B Common Stock received in a Permitted Transfer.
4.5.12 Permitted Trust shall mean a bona fide trust where (a) an Applicable Holder or the spouse of such Applicable Holder is a trustee; or (b) the trustee is a professional in the business of providing trustee services, including private professional fiduciaries, trust companies and bank trust departments, and (i) such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder or a Permitted Entity either is, or has the right to appoint, direct or replace, the investment advisor or special investment advisor to such trust, (ii) such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder or a Permitted Entity has the right to substitute the shares of Class B Common Stock held by such trust with other assets, or (iii) such Applicable Holder, the spouse of such Applicable Holder or a Permitted Entity has Voting Control with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held in such Permitted Trust; provided, that a Permitted Trust whose trustee is the spouse of an Applicable Holder shall cease to be, and shall not be deemed to be, a Permitted Trust following a divorce proceeding, domestic relations order or similar legal requirement with respect to such spouse; provided, further, that, in the event that the shares of Class B Common Stock then held by a Permitted Trust are affirmatively voted (but excluding abstentions and broker non-votes of such shares then held by such Permitted Trust) at any meeting of the stockholders of the Corporation differently than the affirmative vote of the shares of the Applicable Holder affiliated with such Permitted Trust (but excluding abstentions and broker non-votes of such shares by such Applicable Holder), a Class B Transfer shall be deemed to have occurred with respect to the shares of Class B Common Stock held by such Permitted Trust immediately following such vote.
4.5.13 Public Offering Date shall mean the date on which the Companys Registration Statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-285512) is declared effective.
4.5.14 Threshold Shares shall mean, with respect to an Applicable Holder as of a particular time, the sum of (without duplication): (a) any shares of capital stock of the Corporation, including Class A Common Stock, Class B Common Stock and Class C Common Stock, held by such Applicable Holder or his Permitted Affiliates as of such time; and (b) any shares of capital stock of the Corporation, including Class A Common Stock, Class B Common Stock and Class C Common Stock, underlying any rights, options or warrants to subscribe for, purchase or otherwise acquire Common Stock held by such Applicable Holder or his Permitted Affiliates as of such time, whether such securities are vested or unvested, earned or unearned, convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable as of such time or in the future.
4.5.15 Voting Control shall mean, with respect to a share of Class B Common Stock, the power (whether exclusive or shared) to vote or direct the voting of such share by proxy, voting agreement or otherwise.
4.6 Status of Converted Stock. In the event any shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock are converted into shares of Class A Common Stock pursuant to this Section 4, the shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock, as applicable, so converted shall be retired and cancelled and may not be reissued.
4.7 Effect of Conversion on Payment of Dividends. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in Sections 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 of this Article IV, if the date on which any share of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock is converted into Class A Common Stock pursuant to the provisions of Sections 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 of this Article IV occurs after the record date for the determination of the holders of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock entitled to receive any dividend or distribution to be paid on the shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock, as applicable, the holder of such shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock, as applicable, as of such record date will be
9
entitled to receive such dividend or distribution on such payment date; provided, that, notwithstanding any other provision of this Certificate of Incorporation, to the extent that any such dividend or distribution is payable in shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock, such shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock, as applicable, shall automatically be converted to Class A Common Stock, on a one-to-one basis.
4.8 Reservation. The Corporation shall at all times reserve and keep available, out of its authorized and unissued shares of Class A Common Stock, solely for the purpose of effecting conversions of shares of Class B Common Stock or Class C Common Stock into Class A Common Stock, such number of duly authorized shares of Class A Common Stock as shall from time to time be sufficient to effect the conversion of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock and Class C Common Stock. If at any time the number of authorized and unissued shares of Class A Common Stock shall not be sufficient to effect the conversion of all then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock and Class C Common Stock, the Corporation shall promptly take such corporate action as may be necessary to increase its authorized but unissued shares of Class A Common Stock to such number of shares as shall be sufficient for such purpose, including, without limitation, obtaining the requisite stockholder approval of any necessary amendment to this Certificate of Incorporation. All shares of Class A Common Stock which are so issuable shall, when issued, be duly and validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable shares. The Corporation shall take all such action as may be necessary to ensure that all such shares of Class A Common Stock may be so issued without violation of any applicable law or regulation.
ARTICLE V: AMENDMENT OF BYLAWS
The Board of Directors shall have the power to adopt, amend or repeal the Bylaws. Any adoption, amendment or repeal of the Bylaws by the Board of Directors shall require the approval of a majority of the total number of authorized directors, whether or not there exist any vacancies in previously authorized directorships (the Whole Board). The stockholders shall also have power to adopt, amend or repeal the Bylaws; provided, however, that except as otherwise provided in this Certificate of Incorporation, and in addition to any requirements of law, the affirmative vote of the holders of at least two-thirds (2/3) of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the Corporations capital stock entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class, shall be required for the stockholders to adopt, amend or repeal any provision of the Bylaws; provided, further, that, in the case of any adoption, amendment or repeal of any provision of the Bylaws that the Board of Directors elects to submit to the stockholders for adoption and which is approved by at least two-thirds (2/3) of the Whole Board, then, except as otherwise provided in this Certificate of Incorporation, only the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the Corporations capital stock entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class (in addition to any requirements of law), shall be required to adopt, amend or repeal any such provision of the Bylaws.
ARTICLE VI: MATTERS RELATING TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
1. Director Powers. Except as otherwise provided by the General Corporation Law or this Certificate of Incorporation, the Corporations business and affairs shall be managed by or under the direction of the Board of Directors.
2. Number of Directors. Subject to the special rights of the holders of any class or series of Preferred Stock to elect additional directors under specified circumstances, the total number of directors constituting the Whole Board shall be fixed from time to time exclusively by resolution of the Board of Directors.
10
3. Classified Board. Subject to the special rights of the holders of one or more class or series of Preferred Stock to elect directors, the directors shall be divided, with respect to the time for which they severally hold office, into three classes, designated as Class I, Class II and Class III, respectively (the Classified Board). The Board of Directors is authorized to assign members of the Board of Directors already in office to such classes of the Classified Board, effective at the time the classification of the Board of Directors becomes effective. The initial term of office of the Class I directors shall expire at the Corporations first annual meeting of stockholders following the closing of the Corporations initial public offering pursuant to an effective registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), covering the offer and sale of Class A Common Stock to the public (the Initial Public Offering Closing), the initial term of office of the Class II directors shall expire at the Corporations second annual meeting of stockholders following the Initial Public Offering Closing, and the initial term of office of the Class III directors shall expire at the Corporations third annual meeting of stockholders following the Initial Public Offering Closing. At each succeeding annual meeting of stockholders following the Initial Public Offering Closing, directors elected to succeed those directors of the class whose terms then expire shall be elected for a term of office expiring at the third succeeding annual meeting of stockholders after their election.
4. Term and Removal. Each director shall hold office until such directors successor is duly elected and qualified, or until such directors earlier death, resignation, disqualification or removal. Any director may resign at any time upon notice to the Corporation given in writing or by any electronic transmission. Subject to the special rights of the holders of any class or series of Preferred Stock, no director may be removed from the Board of Directors except for cause and only by the affirmative vote of the holders of at least two-thirds (2/3) of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the Corporations capital stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors, voting together as a single class. No decrease in the number of directors constituting the Board of Directors shall shorten the term of any director.
5. Board Vacancies and Newly Created Directorships. Subject to the special rights of the holders of any class or series of Preferred Stock, any vacancy occurring in the Board of Directors for any cause, and any newly created directorship resulting from any increase in the authorized number of directors, shall be filled only by the affirmative vote of a majority of the directors then in office, even if less than a quorum, or by a sole remaining director, and shall not be filled by the stockholders. Any director elected in accordance with the preceding sentence shall hold office for the remainder of the term of the class of director in which the vacancy or new directorship was created and shall hold office until such directors successor shall have been duly elected and qualified, or until such directors earlier death, resignation, disqualification or removal.
6. Vote by Ballot. Election of directors need not be by written ballot unless the Bylaws shall so provide.
ARTICLE VII: LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
1. Limitation of Liability. To the fullest extent permitted by law, no director or officer of the Corporation shall be personally liable to the Corporation or its stockholders for monetary damages for breach of fiduciary duty as a director or officer, as applicable. Without limiting the effect of the preceding sentence, if the General Corporation Law is hereafter amended to authorize the further elimination or limitation of the liability of a director or officer, then the liability of a director or officer of the Corporation shall be eliminated or limited to the fullest extent permitted by the General Corporation Law, as so amended.
2. Change in Rights. Neither any amendment nor repeal of this Article VII, nor the adoption of any provision of this Certificate of Incorporation inconsistent with this Article VII, shall eliminate, reduce or otherwise adversely affect any limitation on the personal liability of a director of the Corporation existing at the time of such amendment, repeal or adoption of such an inconsistent provision.
11
ARTICLE VIII: MATTERS RELATING TO STOCKHOLDERS
1. No Action by Written Consent of Stockholders. Subject to the rights of any series of Preferred Stock then outstanding, no action shall be taken by the Corporations stockholders except at a duly called annual or special meeting of stockholders and no action shall be taken by the Corporations stockholders by written consent in lieu of a meeting. Notwithstanding the foregoing, so long as the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock represents greater than a majority of the combined voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the Corporations capital stock, any action required or permitted to be taken at any meeting of the stockholders of the Corporation, may be taken without a meeting if holders of a majority of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of capital stock of the Corporation entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class, consent thereto in writing or by electronic transmission.
2. Special Meeting of Stockholders. Special meetings of the Corporations stockholders may be called only by the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Corporations Chief Executive Officer, the Lead Independent Director (as defined in the Bylaws) or the Board of Directors acting pursuant to a resolution adopted by a majority of the Whole Board and may not be called by the stockholders or any other person or persons.
3. Advance Notice of Stockholder Nominations and Business Transacted at Special Meetings. Advance notice of stockholder nominations for the election of directors of the Corporation and of business to be brought by stockholders before any meeting of the Corporations stockholders shall be given in the manner provided in the Bylaws. Business transacted at special meetings of stockholders shall be limited to the purpose or purposes stated in the notice of meeting.
ARTICLE IX: INTERPRETATION
1. Ambiguity. In case of an ambiguity in the application of any provision set forth in this Certificate of Incorporation or in the meaning of any term or definition set forth in this Certificate of Incorporation, the Board of Directors or an authorized committee thereof shall have the power to determine, in its sole discretion, the application of any such provision or any such term or definition with respect to any situation based on the facts believed in good faith by it; provided, that, for so long as any shares of Class B Common Stock remain outstanding, only the Board of Directors (and not an authorized committee thereof) shall have the power to make the foregoing determinations with respect to any application of any provision in, or the meaning of any term or definition set forth in, Article IV hereof. A determination of the Board of Directors (or, if applicable and permissible, an authorized committee thereof) in accordance with the preceding sentence shall be conclusive and binding on the stockholders of the Corporation. Such determination shall be evidenced in a writing adopted by the Board of Directors (or, if applicable and permissible, an authorized committee thereof), and such writing shall be made available for inspection by any holder of capital stock of the Corporation at the principal executive offices of the Corporation. For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Certificate of Incorporation shall (i) modify the fiduciary duties of directors to the Corporation and its stockholders, (ii) alter the standard of review a court of competent jurisdiction may apply to review any action, interpretation, determination or calculation (or any omission with respect to the foregoing) by the Board of Directors (or an authorized committee thereof) for compliance with the directors fiduciary duties to the Corporation and its stockholders or (iii) provide for an elimination or limitation of the personal liability of directors to the Corporation or its stockholders for monetary damages for breach of fiduciary duty as a director to the extent not permitted by Section 102(b)(7) of the General Corporation Law.
12
2. Severability. If any provision of this Certificate of Incorporation shall be held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, then such provision shall nonetheless be enforced to the maximum extent possible consistent with such holding and the remaining provisions of this Certificate of Incorporation (including without limitation, all portions of any section of this Certificate of Incorporation containing any such provision held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, which is not invalid, illegal, or unenforceable) shall remain in full force and effect.
ARTICLE X: AMENDMENT OF CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION
1. General. The Corporation reserves the right to amend or repeal any provision contained in this Certificate of Incorporation in the manner prescribed by the laws of the State of Delaware and all rights conferred upon stockholders are granted subject to this reservation; provided, however, that except as otherwise provided in this Certificate of Incorporation, and in addition to any other vote, the affirmative vote of the holders of at least two-thirds (2/3) of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the Corporations capital stock entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class, shall be required to amend or repeal, or adopt any provision inconsistent with this Certificate of Incorporation (other than Section 1.1 of Article IV); provided, further, that, if two-thirds (2/3) of the Whole Board has approved such amendment or repeal of, or adoption of any provision inconsistent with, the provisions of this Certificate of Incorporation, except as otherwise provided in this Certificate of Incorporation, then only the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the Corporations capital stock entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class (in addition to any other vote required by law), shall be required to approve such amendment or repeal of, or adoption of any provision inconsistent with, the provisions of this Certificate of Incorporation. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, prior to an Automatic Conversion, and in addition to any other vote required pursuant to this Article X, the Corporation shall not, without the prior affirmative vote of the holders of at least two-thirds (2/3) of the then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock, voting separately as a single class:
1.1. directly or indirectly, whether by amendment, or through merger, recapitalization, reclassification, conversion, consolidation or otherwise, amend or repeal, or adopt any provision of this Certificate of Incorporation inconsistent with, or otherwise alter, any provision of this Certificate of Incorporation relating to the voting, conversion or other rights, powers, preferences, privileges or restrictions of the Class B Common Stock;
1.2. reclassify any outstanding shares of Class A Common Stock or Class C Common Stock into shares having rights as to dividends or liquidation that are senior to the Class B Common Stock or the right to have more than one (1) vote for each share thereof; or
1.3. authorize, or issue any shares of, any class or series of capital stock of the Corporation (other than Class B Common Stock) having the right to more than one (1) vote for each share thereof.
2. Changes to or Inconsistent with Section 3 of Article IV. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Certificate of Incorporation (including any Certificate of Designation) or any provision of law that might otherwise permit a lesser vote or no vote, but in addition to any vote of the holders of any class or series of the stock of the Corporation required by law or by this Certificate of Incorporation (including any Certificate of Designation), the affirmative vote of the holders of Class A Common Stock representing at least seventy-five percent (75%) of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of Class A Common Stock, voting separately as a single class, and the affirmative vote of the holders of Class B Common Stock representing at least seventy-five percent (75%) of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock, voting separately as a single class, shall be required to amend or repeal, or to adopt any provision inconsistent with, Section 3 of Article IV or this Section 2 of Article X.
* * * * * * * * * * *
13
COREWEAVE, INC.
(a Delaware corporation)
AMENDED AND RESTATED BYLAWS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page | ||||||||
Article I: Meetings of STOCKHOLDERS | 1 | |||||||
Section 1.1: | Annual Meetings | 1 | ||||||
Section 1.2: | Special Meetings | 1 | ||||||
Section 1.3: | Notice of Stockholders Meetings | 1 | ||||||
Section 1.4: | Adjournments | 1 | ||||||
Section 1.5: | Quorum | 2 | ||||||
Section 1.6: | Organization | 2 | ||||||
Section 1.7: | Voting; Proxies | 2 | ||||||
Section 1.8: | Fixing Date for Determination of Stockholders of Record | 3 | ||||||
Section 1.9: | List of Stockholders Entitled to Vote | 3 | ||||||
Section 1.10: | Inspectors of Elections | 4 | ||||||
Section 1.11: | Conduct of Meetings | 4 | ||||||
Section 1.12: | Advance Notice Procedures | 5 | ||||||
Article II: BOARD OF DIRECTORS | 14 | |||||||
Section 2.1: | Number; Qualifications | 14 | ||||||
Section 2.2: | Election; Resignation; Removal; Vacancies | 14 | ||||||
Section 2.3: | Regular Meetings | 14 | ||||||
Section 2.4: | Special Meetings | 14 | ||||||
Section 2.5: | Remote Meetings Permitted | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.6: | Quorum; Vote Required for Action | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.7: | Organization | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.8: | Unanimous Action by Directors in Lieu of a Meeting | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.9: | Powers | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.10: | Compensation of Directors | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.11: | Confidentiality | 15 | ||||||
Section 2.12 | Emergency Bylaws | 16 | ||||||
Article III: COMMITTEES | 16 | |||||||
Section 3.1: | Committees | 16 | ||||||
Section 3.2: | Committee Rules | 16 | ||||||
Article IV: OFFICERS; CHAIRPERSON; LEAD INDEPENDENT DIRECTOR | 17 | |||||||
Section 4.1: | Generally | 17 | ||||||
Section 4.2: | Chief Executive Officer | 17 | ||||||
Section 4.3: | Chairperson of the Board of Directors | 17 | ||||||
Section 4.4: | Lead Independent Director | 17 | ||||||
Section 4.5: | President | 18 | ||||||
Section 4.6: | Chief Financial Officer | 18 | ||||||
Section 4.7: | Treasurer | 18 | ||||||
Section 4.8: | Vice President | 18 | ||||||
Section 4.9: | Secretary | 18 | ||||||
Section 4.10: | Delegation of Authority | 18 | ||||||
Section 4.11: | Removal | 18 |
i
Article V: STOCK | 19 | |||||||
Section 5.1: | Certificates; Uncertificated Shares | 19 | ||||||
Section 5.2: | Lost, Stolen or Destroyed Stock Certificates; Issuance of New Certificates or Uncertificated Shares | 19 | ||||||
Section 5.3: | Other Regulations | 19 | ||||||
Article VI: INDEMNIFICATION | 19 | |||||||
Section 6.1: | Indemnification of Officers and Directors | 19 | ||||||
Section 6.2: | Advancement of Expenses | 20 | ||||||
Section 6.3: | Non-Exclusivity of Rights | 20 | ||||||
Section 6.4: | Indemnification of Others and Additional Rights | 20 | ||||||
Section 6.5: | Right of Indemnitee to Bring Suit | 21 | ||||||
Section 6.6: | Nature of Rights | 21 | ||||||
Section 6.7: | Amendment or Repeal | 21 | ||||||
Section 6.8: | Insurance | 21 | ||||||
Section 6.9: | Indemnification for Successful Defense | 21 | ||||||
Article VII: NOTICES | 22 | |||||||
Section 7.1: | Notice | 22 | ||||||
Section 7.2: | Waiver of Notice | 22 | ||||||
Article VIII: INTERESTED DIRECTORS | 22 | |||||||
Section 8.1: | Interested Directors | 22 | ||||||
Section 8.2: | Quorum | 23 | ||||||
Article IX: MISCELLANEOUS | 23 | |||||||
Section 9.1: | Fiscal Year | 23 | ||||||
Section 9.2: | Seal | 23 | ||||||
Section 9.3: | Form of Records | 23 | ||||||
Section 9.4: | Reliance Upon Books and Records | 23 | ||||||
Section 9.5: | Certificate of Incorporation Governs | 23 | ||||||
Section 9.6: | Severability | 23 | ||||||
Section 9.7: | Time Periods | 24 | ||||||
Article X: AMENDMENT | 24 | |||||||
Article XI: CHOICE OF FORUM; EXCLUSIVE FORUM | 24 |
ii
COREWEAVE, INC.
(a Delaware corporation)
AMENDED AND RESTATED BYLAWS
As Adopted , 2025 and
As Effective , 2025
ARTICLE I: MEETINGS OF STOCKHOLDERS
Section 1.1: Annual Meetings. If required by applicable law, an annual meeting of stockholders shall be held for the election of directors and such other proper business at such date and time as the Board of Directors (the Board of Directors) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Corporation), or its designee, shall each year fix. The meeting may be held either at a place, within or without the State of Delaware as permitted by the Delaware General Corporation Law (the General Corporation Law) as the Board of Directors, or its designee, shall fix, or solely by means of remote communication as the Board of Directors in its sole discretion may determine. Any proper business may be transacted at the annual meeting.
Section 1.2: Special Meetings. Special meetings of stockholders for any purpose or purposes shall be called in the manner set forth in the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of the Corporation (as the same may be amended and/or restated from time to time, the Certificate of Incorporation). The special meeting may be held either at a place, within or without the State of Delaware as the Board of Directors, or its designee, shall fix, or solely by means of remote communication as the Board of Directors in its sole discretion may determine. Business transacted at any special meeting of stockholders shall be limited to matters relating to the purpose or purposes stated in the notice of the meeting.
Section 1.3: Notice of Stockholders Meetings. Notice of all meetings of stockholders shall be given in accordance with applicable law (including, without limitation, as set forth in Section 7.1 hereof) stating the date, time and place, if any, of the meeting, the means of remote communications, if any, by which stockholders and proxy holders may be deemed to be present in person and vote at such meeting, and the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting (if such date is different from the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to notice of the meeting). In the case of a special meeting, such notice shall also set forth the purpose or purposes for which the meeting is called. Unless otherwise required by applicable law or the Certificate of Incorporation, notice of any meeting of stockholders shall be given not less than ten (10), nor more than sixty (60), days before the date of the meeting to each stockholder of record entitled to vote at such meeting as of the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to notice of the meeting.
Section 1.4: Adjournments. Notwithstanding Section 1.5 hereof, the chairperson of the meeting shall have the power to adjourn the meeting to another time, date and place (if any), regardless of whether a quorum is present, at any time and for any reason. Any meeting of stockholders, annual or special, may be adjourned from time to time (including an adjournment taken to address a technical failure to convene or continue a meeting using remote communication), and notice need not be given of any such adjourned meeting if the time, date and place (if any) thereof and the means of remote communication (if any) by which stockholders and proxy holders may be deemed to be present in person and vote at such adjourned meeting are (i) announced at the meeting at which the adjournment is taken, (ii) displayed, during the time scheduled for the meeting, on the same electronic network used to enable stockholders and proxy
holders to participate in the meeting by means of remote communication or (iii) set forth in the notice of meeting given in accordance with Section 222(a) of the General Corporation Law; provided, however, that if the adjournment is for more than thirty (30) days, a notice of the adjourned meeting shall be given to each stockholder of record entitled to vote at the meeting. If, after the adjournment, a new record date for determination of stockholders entitled to vote is fixed for the adjourned meeting, the Board of Directors shall fix a new record date for notice of such adjourned meeting in accordance with Section 213(a) of the General Corporation Law and Section 1.3 hereof, and shall give notice of the adjourned meeting to each stockholder of record as of the record date so fixed for notice of such adjourned meeting. At the adjourned meeting, the Corporation may transact any business that might have been transacted at the original meeting. If a quorum is present at the original meeting, it shall also be deemed present at the adjourned meeting. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Board of Directors may postpone, reschedule or cancel at any time and for any reason any previously scheduled special or annual meeting of stockholders before it is to be held, regardless of whether any notice or public disclosure with respect to any such meeting has been sent or made pursuant to Section 1.3 hereof or otherwise, in which case notice shall be provided to the stockholders of the new date, time and place, if any, of the meeting as provided in Section 1.3 above.
Section 1.5: Quorum. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, the Certificate of Incorporation, these Bylaws or the rules of any applicable stock exchange on which the Corporations securities are listed, at each meeting of stockholders the holders of a majority of the voting power of the shares of stock issued and outstanding and entitled to vote at the meeting, present in person or represented by proxy, shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business; provided, however, that where a separate vote by a class or classes or series of stock is required by applicable law, the Certificate of Incorporation, these Bylaws or the rules of any applicable stock exchange on which the Corporations securities are listed, the holders of a majority of the voting power of the shares of such class or classes or series of the stock issued and outstanding and entitled to vote on such matter, present in person or represented by proxy at the meeting, shall constitute a quorum entitled to take action with respect to the vote on such matter. If a quorum shall fail to attend any meeting, the chairperson of the meeting or the stockholders, by the affirmative vote of a majority of the votes cast affirmatively or negatively with respect thereto, may adjourn the meeting. A quorum, once established at a meeting, shall not be broken by the withdrawal of enough votes to leave less than a quorum.
Section 1.6: Organization. Meetings of stockholders shall be presided over by (a) such person as the Board of Directors may designate, or (b) in the absence of such designation, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, or (c) in the absence of such person, the Lead Independent Director (as defined below), or (d) in the absence of such person, the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation, or (e) in the absence of such person, the President of the Corporation, or (f) in the absence of such person, by a Vice President of the Corporation. Such person shall be the chairperson of the meeting. The Secretary of the Corporation (the Secretary) shall act as secretary of the meeting, but in such persons absence the chairperson of the meeting may appoint any person to act as secretary of the meeting.
Section 1.7: Voting; Proxies. Each stockholder of record entitled to vote at a meeting of stockholders may authorize another person or persons to act for such stockholder by proxy. Such a proxy may be prepared, transmitted and delivered in any manner permitted by applicable law. Except as may be required in the Certificate of Incorporation, directors shall be elected by a plurality of the votes cast by the holders of the shares present in person or represented by proxy at the meeting and entitled to vote on the election of directors. At all meetings of stockholders at which a quorum is present, unless a different or minimum vote is provided by applicable law, rule or regulation applicable to the Corporation or its securities, the rules or regulations of any applicable stock exchange on which the Corporations securities are listed, the Certificate of Incorporation or these Bylaws, in which case such different or minimum vote shall be the applicable vote on the matter, every matter other than the election of directors shall be decided by the affirmative vote of a majority of the votes cast affirmatively or negatively with respect thereto (or if there are two or more classes or series of stock entitled to vote as separate classes, then in the case of each class or series, the holders of a majority of the voting power of the shares of stock of that class or series present in person or represented by proxy at the meeting voting for or against such matter).
2
Any stockholder directly or indirectly soliciting proxies from other stockholders must use a proxy card color other than white, which shall be reserved for exclusive use by the Board of Directors.
Section 1.8: Fixing Date for Determination of Stockholders of Record. In order that the Corporation may determine the stockholders entitled to notice of any meeting of stockholders or any adjournment thereof, the Board of Directors may fix a record date, which record date shall not precede the date upon which the resolution fixing the record date is adopted by the Board of Directors, and which record date shall, unless otherwise required by applicable law, not be more than sixty (60) nor less than ten (10) days before the date of such meeting. If the Board of Directors so fixes a date, such date shall also be the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to vote at such meeting unless the Board of Directors determines, at the time it fixes such record date, that a later date on or before the date of the meeting shall be the date for making such determination. If no record date is fixed by the Board of Directors, the record date for determining stockholders entitled to notice of and to vote at a meeting of stockholders shall be at the close of business on the day next preceding the day on which notice is given, or, if notice is waived, at the close of business on the day next preceding the day on which the meeting is held. A determination of stockholders of record entitled to notice of or to vote at a meeting of stockholders shall apply to any adjournment of the meeting; provided, however, that the Board of Directors may fix a new record date for determination of stockholders entitled to vote at the adjourned meeting, and in such case shall also fix as the record date for stockholders entitled to notice of such adjourned meeting the same or an earlier date as that fixed for determination of stockholders entitled to vote in accordance herewith at the adjourned meeting.
In order that the Corporation may determine the stockholders entitled to receive payment of any dividend or other distribution or allotment of any rights, or entitled to exercise any rights in respect of any change, conversion or exchange of stock or for the purpose of any other lawful action, the Board of Directors may fix, in advance, a record date, which shall not precede the date upon which the resolution fixing the record date is adopted by the Board of Directors and which shall not be more than sixty (60) days prior to such action. If no such record date is fixed by the Board of Directors, then the record date for determining stockholders for any such purpose shall be at close of business on the day on which the Board of Directors adopts the resolution relating thereto.
Section 1.9: List of Stockholders Entitled to Vote. The Corporation shall prepare, no later than the tenth (10th) day before each meeting of stockholders, a complete list of stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting (provided, however, if the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to vote is less than ten (10) days before the date of the meeting, the list shall reflect the stockholders entitled to vote as of the tenth (10th) day before the meeting date), arranged in alphabetical order and showing the address of each stockholder and the number of shares registered in the name of each stockholder. Nothing in this Section 1.9 shall require the Corporation to include electronic mail addresses or other electronic contact information on such list. Such list shall be open to the examination of any stockholder, for any purpose germane to the meeting, for a period of ten (10) days ending on the day before the meeting date, either (a) on a reasonably accessible electronic network as permitted by applicable law (provided that the information required to gain access to the list is provided with the notice of the meeting), or (b) during ordinary business hours, at the principal place of business of the Corporation. In the event that the Corporation determines to make the list available on an electronic network, the Corporation may take reasonable steps to ensure that such information is available only to stockholders of the Corporation. Except as otherwise provided by applicable law, the stock ledger shall be the only evidence as to who are the stockholders entitled to examine the list of stockholders required by this Section 1.9 or to vote in person or by proxy at any meeting of stockholders.
3
Section 1.10: Inspectors of Elections.
1.10.1 Applicability. Unless otherwise required by the Certificate of Incorporation or by applicable law, the following provisions of this Section 1.10 shall apply only if and when the Corporation has a class of voting stock that is: (a) listed on a national securities exchange, (b) authorized for quotation on an interdealer quotation system of a registered national securities association, or (c) held of record by more than two thousand (2,000) stockholders. In all other cases, observance of the provisions of this Section 1.10 shall be optional, and at the discretion of the Board of Directors.
1.10.2 Appointment. The Corporation shall, in advance of any meeting of stockholders, appoint one or more inspectors of election to act at the meeting and make a written report thereof. The Corporation may designate one or more persons as alternate inspectors to replace any inspector who fails to act. If no inspector or alternate is able to act at a meeting of stockholders, the chairperson of the meeting shall appoint one or more inspectors to act at the meeting.
1.10.3 Duties of Inspectors. Inspectors of election shall take all actions as contemplated under Section 231 of the General Corporation Law. The inspectors of election shall perform their duties with strict impartiality and according to the best of their ability.
Section 1.11: Conduct of Meetings. The Board of Directors may adopt by resolution such rules and regulations for the conduct of the meeting of stockholders as it shall deem appropriate. Except to the extent inconsistent with such rules and regulations as adopted by the Board of Directors, the chairperson of a meeting of stockholders shall have the right and authority to convene and (for any or no reason) to recess and/or adjourn the meeting, to prescribe such rules, regulations and procedures and to do all such acts as, in the judgment of such chairperson, are appropriate for the proper conduct of the meeting. Such rules, regulations or procedures, whether adopted by the Board of Directors or prescribed by the chairperson of the meeting, may include, without limitation, the following: (a) the establishment of an agenda or order of business for the meeting, (b) rules and procedures for maintaining order at the meeting and the safety of those present, (c) limitations on attendance at or participation in the meeting to stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting, their duly authorized and constituted proxies or such other persons as the chairperson of the meeting or the Board of Directors shall determine, (d) restrictions on entry to the meeting after the time fixed for the commencement thereof, (e) limitations on the time allotted to questions or comments by participants, (f) restrictions on the use of audio/video recording devices and cell phones, (g) procedures for complying with any state and local laws and regulations concerning safety and security, (h) procedures (if any) requiring attendees to provide the Corporation advance notice of their intent to attend the meeting, and (i) any additional attendance or other procedures or requirements for proponents submitting a proposal pursuant to Rule 14a-8 promulgated under the Exchange Act (as defined below). The Board of Directors, or, at a meeting of stockholders (but subject to any rules and regulation adopted by, and the supervision of, the Board of Directors), the chairperson of the meeting shall, in addition to making any other determinations that may be appropriate to the conduct of the meeting, shall have the power to determine that a proposed director nomination or business matter was not properly brought before the meeting and to disregard any such nomination or business matter not properly brought before the meeting, notwithstanding that proxies or votes in respect thereof may have been received by the Corporation, which shall be disregarded. Unless and to the extent determined by the Board of Directors or the chairperson of the meeting, meetings of stockholders shall not be required to be held in accordance with the rules of parliamentary procedure.
4
Section 1.12: Advance Notice Procedures.
1.12.1 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.
(a) Nominations of persons for election to the Board of Directors and the proposal of other business to be considered by the stockholders may be made at an annual meeting of stockholders only: (i) pursuant to the Corporations notice of such meeting (or any supplement thereto), (ii) by or at the direction of the Board of Directors or any committee thereof or (iii) by any stockholder of the Corporation who was a stockholder of record at the time of giving of the notice required by this Section 1.12.1 and at the time of such meeting, who is entitled to vote at such meeting and who complies with the requirements and procedures set forth in this Section 1.12 in all applicable respects (the Record Stockholder), or (iv) as may be provided in the certificate of designations for any series of the Corporations Preferred Stock. For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing clause (iii) shall be the exclusive means for a stockholder to make nominations or propose business (other than business included in the Corporations proxy materials pursuant to Rule 14a-8 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (such act, and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder and any successors thereto, the Exchange Act)).
For nominations or other business to be properly brought before an annual meeting by a Record Stockholder (or a Qualified Representative (as defined below) thereof) pursuant to this Section 1.12.1(a):
(i) the Record Stockholder must have given timely notice thereof in writing to the Secretary and provide any updates or supplements to such notice at the times and in the forms required by this Section 1.12.1;
(ii) such business (other than the nomination of persons for election to the Board of Directors) must otherwise be a proper matter for stockholder action under Delaware law;
(iii) each Proposing Person (as defined below) shall have complied with the applicable requirements of the Exchange Act (including, without limitation, the applicable requirements of Rule 14a-19) and any Securities and Exchange Commission Staff (SEC) interpretations relating thereto;
(iv) in the case of a proposal other than the nomination of persons for election or reelection to the Board of Directors, (A) if a Proposing Person (as defined below) has provided the Corporation with a Solicitation Notice (as defined below), such Proposing Person (or the group of which such Proposing Person is a part) must have delivered, or made available, a proxy statement and form of proxy to holders of at least the percentage of the voting power of the Corporations shares required under applicable law to carry any such proposal and must have included in such materials the Solicitation Notice, or (B) if no Solicitation Notice relating thereto has been timely provided pursuant to this Section 1.12, a Proposing Person (or a group of which a Proposing Person is a part) must not have solicited a number of proxies sufficient to have required the delivery of such a Solicitation Notice under this Section 1.12; and
(v) in the case of a proposal for the nomination of persons for election or reelection to the Board of Directors, if the Proposing Person (or a group of which such Proposing Person is a part) provided notice pursuant to Rule 14a-19(b) promulgated under the Exchange Act, such Proposing Person must have delivered to the Secretary, no later than five (5) business days prior to the annual meeting or any adjournment, rescheduling, postponement or other delay thereof, reasonable evidence sufficient to demonstrate that the requirements of Rule 14a-19 have been satisfied.
5
(b) To be timely, a Record Stockholders notice must be delivered to the Secretary at the principal executive offices of the Corporation not later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the ninetieth (90th) day nor earlier than the one hundred and twentieth (120th) day prior to the first anniversary of the preceding years annual meeting; provided, however, that in the event that the date of the annual meeting is more than thirty (30) days before or more than sixty (60) days after such anniversary date, or if no annual meeting was held in the preceding year, notice by the Record Stockholder to be timely must be so delivered (A) no earlier than the one hundred and twentieth (120th) day prior to such annual meeting and (B) no later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the later of the ninetieth (90th) day prior to such annual meeting or the tenth (10th) day following the day on which Public Announcement (as defined below) of the date of such meeting is first made by the Corporation. In no event shall an adjournment, postponement, or rescheduling (or the Public Announcement thereof) of an annual meeting for which notice has been given or a Public Announcement of the meeting date has been made commence a new time period (or extend any time period) for providing the Record Stockholders notice. For purposes of this Section 1.12.1, the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders shall be deemed to have been held on June 1, 2025. Notwithstanding anything in this Section 1.12.1 to the contrary, in the event that the number of directors to be elected to the Board of Directors at an annual meeting is increased and there is no Public Announcement by the Corporation naming all of the nominees for director or specifying the size of the increased Board of Directors made by the Corporation at least ten (10) days prior to the last day a stockholder may deliver a notice in accordance with the first sentence of this paragraph, a stockholders notice required by this Section 1.12.1 shall also be considered timely, but only with respect to nominees for any new positions created by such increase, if it shall be delivered to the Secretary at the principal executive offices of the Corporation not later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the tenth (10th) day following the day on which such Public Announcement is first made by the Corporation.
(c) As to each person whom the Record Stockholder proposes to nominate for election or reelection as a director, in addition to the matters set forth in paragraph (e) below, such Record Stockholders notice shall set forth:
(i) the name, age, business address and residence address of such proposed nominee;
(ii) the principal occupation or employment of such proposed nominee;
(iii) the class, series and number of any shares of stock of the Corporation that are beneficially owned or owned of record by such proposed nominee, or his or her respective affiliates and associates;
(iv) the date or dates such shares were acquired and the investment intent of such acquisition, as well as evidence of such date(s);
(v) all other information relating to such proposed nominee that would be required to be disclosed in solicitations of proxies for election of directors in an election contest (even if an election contest is not involved), or would be otherwise required, in each case pursuant to and in accordance with Section 14(a) (or any successor provision) under the Exchange Act;
(vi) whether such proposed nominee would qualify as an independent director under the requirements of the stock exchange upon which the Corporations Class A Common Stock is primarily traded and the Policies (as defined below);
(vii) a description of all direct and indirect compensation and other material monetary agreements, arrangements and understandings during the past three (3) years, and any other material relationships, between or among any Proposing Person, on the one hand, and such proposed nominee, and his or her respective affiliates and associates, on the other hand, including, without limitation, all information that would be required to be disclosed pursuant to the U.S. federal securities laws or the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder (including Item 404 promulgated under Regulation S-K) if any Proposing Person were the registrant for purposes thereof and the proposed nominee were a director or executive officer of such registrant;
6
(viii) the date or dates of first contact between any Proposing Person and such proposed nominee with respect to (A) the Corporation or (B) any proposed nomination of any person or persons for election or reelection to the Board of Directors;
(ix) a description of any position of such proposed nominee as an officer or director of, or any material relationship with, any Competitor (as defined below) within the past three (3) years;
(x) a description of any business or personal interests that could place such proposed nominee in a potential conflict of interest with the Corporation or any of its affiliates and how the proposed nominee, if elected, intends to mitigate or reconcile any such potential conflict of interest; and
(xi) all completed and signed questionnaires, representations and agreements required by Section 1.12.2 below.
The Corporation may require any proposed nominee to furnish such other information as it may reasonably require to determine whether such proposed nominee would qualify as an independent director of the Corporation under the Exchange Act, applicable stock exchange rules and the Policies.
(d) As to any business, other than the nomination of a person for election or reelection as a director, that the Record Stockholder proposes to bring before the meeting, in addition to the matters set forth in paragraph (e) below, such Record Stockholders notice shall set forth:
(i) a brief description of the business desired to be brought before the meeting;
(ii) the text of the proposal or business (including the text of any resolutions proposed for consideration and in the event that such business includes a proposal to amend the Bylaws, the text of the proposed amendment);
(iii) the reasons for conducting such business at the meeting; and
(iv) any material interest in such business of any Proposing Person, including any anticipated benefit to any Proposing Person therefrom.
(e) As to each Proposing Person, the Record Stockholders notice shall set forth:
(i) the current name and address of such Proposing Person, including, if applicable, their name and address as they appear on the Corporations stock ledger;
(ii) (1) the class or series and number of shares of stock of the Corporation that are directly or indirectly owned of record or beneficially owned by such Proposing Person, including any shares of any class or series of the Corporation as to which such Proposing Person has a right to acquire beneficial ownership at any time in the future, and (2) a certification regarding whether such Proposing Person has complied with all applicable federal, state and other legal requirements in connection with such Proposing Persons acquisition of shares of capital stock or other securities of the Corporation, if any, and/or such Proposing Persons acts or omissions as a stockholder or beneficial owner of the Corporation;
7
(iii) a description of any of the following that are held directly or indirectly by, on behalf of or for the benefit of such Proposing Person: (x) any Derivative Instrument (as defined below), (y) any rights to dividends on the shares of any class or series of shares of the Corporation that are separated or separable from the underlying shares of the Corporation; or (z) any Short Interest (as defined below), including, in each case, the date thereof, the class, series and number of securities involved therein, the material economic or voting terms thereof, and the identities of all persons party thereto;
(iv) any proportionate interest in shares of the Corporation or Derivative Instruments held, directly or indirectly, by a general or limited partnership or limited liability company of which such Proposing Person is, directly or indirectly, a general partner, manager or managing member or, directly or indirectly, controls a general partner, manager or managing member of such a general or limited partnership or limited liability company;
(v) any direct or indirect material interest of such Proposing Person in any material contract or agreement with the Corporation, any affiliate of the Corporation or any Competitor (including, in any such case, any employment agreement, collective bargaining agreement or consulting agreement);
(vi) a description of any of the following that are held directly or indirectly by, on behalf of or for the benefit of such Proposing Person: (x) any significant equity interests in any Competitor or (y) any Derivative Instruments or Short Interests in any Competitor (including, the case of any Derivative Instrument or Short Interest, the date such instrument or interest was acquired, the class, series and number of securities involved therein, the material economic or voting terms thereof, and the identities of all persons party thereto);
(vii) any other material relationship between such Proposing Person, on the one hand, and the Corporation, any affiliate of the Corporation or any Competitor, on the other hand;
(viii) all information that would be required to be set forth in a Schedule 13D filed pursuant to Rule 13d-1(a) or an amendment pursuant to Rule 13d-2(a) pertaining to the Corporation and its securities, if such a statement were required to be filed under the Exchange Act by such Proposing Person, regardless of whether the requirement to file a Schedule 13D is applicable;
(ix) any other information relating to such Proposing Person that would be required to be disclosed in proxy materials or other filings required to be made in connection with solicitations of proxies or consents by such Proposing Person in support of the business or nomination proposed to be brought before the meeting pursuant to Section 14(a) (or any successor provision) under the Exchange Act;
(x) to the extent known by a Proposing Person, the names and addresses of any stockholder or beneficial owner that has provided or will provide financial support or material assistance in support of the nomination or business and a description of the nature of such support or assistance;
(xi) a description of any agreement, arrangement or understanding (including the identities of all the parties thereto) between or among such Proposing Person on the one hand and any other person or persons, on the other hand, with respect to, relating to, or in connection with the nomination or business;
8
(xii) a representation that the Record Stockholder is a holder of record of stock of the Corporation entitled to vote at such meeting and that such Record Stockholder (or a Qualified Representative thereof) will appear at the meeting to propose such business or nomination;
(xiii) a representation whether such Proposing Person intends (or is part of a group that intends) to (x) in the case of a proposal other than the nomination of persons for election to the Board of Directors, deliver a proxy statement and/or form of proxy to holders of at least the percentage of the Corporations voting shares required under applicable law to approve the proposal (an affirmative statement of such intent being a Solicitation Notice) and, if so, the name of each participant (as defined in Item 4 of Exchange Act Schedule 14A) in such solicitation, (y) in the case of a nomination or nominations, solicit the holders of shares representing at least 67% of the voting power of the shares entitled to vote on the election of directors in support of director nominees other than the Corporations nominees in accordance with Rule 14a-19, and the name of each participant (as defined in Item 4 of Exchange Act Schedule 14A) in such solicitation, and/or (z) otherwise solicit proxies from stockholders in support of such proposal or nomination;
(xiv) a description of any pending or, to such Proposing Persons knowledge, threatened legal proceeding in which such Proposing Person is a party or participant involving the Corporation or, to such Proposing Persons knowledge, any current or former officer, director, affiliate or associate of the Corporation; and
(xv) a description of any proxy (other than a revocable proxy given in response to a proxy solicitation made to more than ten (10) persons), contract, arrangement, or relationship pursuant to which the Proposing Person has a right to vote, directly or indirectly, any shares or other securities of the Corporation.
The disclosures to be made pursuant to the foregoing clauses (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vi) shall not include any information with respect to the ordinary course business activities of any broker, dealer, commercial bank, trust company or other nominee who is a Proposing Person solely as a result of being the stockholder directed to prepare and submit the notice required by these Bylaws on behalf of a beneficial owner.
(f) A stockholder providing written notice required by this Section 1.12.1 or Section 1.12.3, as applicable, shall update and supplement such notice, and any other information provided to the Corporation, in writing, so that the information provided or required to be provided in such notice is true and correct in all material respects as of (i) the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to notice of the meeting and (ii) 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the tenth (10th) business day prior to the meeting or any adjournment, postponement or rescheduling thereof. In the case of an update pursuant to clause (i) of the foregoing sentence, such update shall be received by the Secretary at the principal executive office of the Corporation not later than five (5) business days after the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to notice of the meeting, and in the case of an update pursuant to clause (ii) of the foregoing sentence, such update shall be received by the Secretary at the principal executive office of the Corporation not later than eight (8) business days prior to the date for the meeting and, if practicable, any adjournment, postponement or rescheduling thereof (and, if not practicable, on the first practicable date prior to the date to which the meeting has been adjourned, postponed or rescheduled). Notwithstanding the foregoing, if a Proposing Person (x) no longer plans to solicit proxies in accordance with its representation(s) pursuant to Section 1.12.1(e)(xiii) or (y) becomes aware of any inaccuracy or change in information submitted to the Corporation, then the stockholder providing the written notice shall inform the Corporation thereof and update such notice by delivering a writing to the Secretary at the principal executive offices of the Corporation no later than two (2) business days after the occurrence of such change or after such time the Proposing Person became so aware, as applicable. For the avoidance of doubt, the obligation to update as set forth in this paragraph shall not limit the Corporations rights with respect to any deficiencies in any
9
notice provided by a stockholder, extend any applicable deadlines hereunder or enable or be deemed to permit a stockholder who has previously submitted notice hereunder to amend or update any proposal or nomination or to submit any new proposal, including by changing or adding nominees, matters, business and/or resolutions proposed to be brought before a meeting of the stockholders. If a stockholder providing written notice fails to provide any written update in accordance with this Section 1.12, the information as to which such written update relates shall be deemed not to have been provided in accordance with these Bylaws.
(g) Notwithstanding anything in this Section 1.12 or any other provision hereof to the contrary, any person who a majority of the Whole Board (as defined below) has determined, in good faith, to have violated Section 2.11 or a Board Confidentiality Policy (as defined below) while serving as a director of the Corporation in the preceding five (5) years shall be ineligible to be nominated for election or reelection as a member of the Board of Directors, absent a prior waiver for such nomination approved by two-thirds of the Whole Board.
1.12.2 Submission of Questionnaire, Representation and Agreement. To be eligible to be a nominee of any stockholder for election or reelection as a director of the Corporation, the person proposed to be nominated must complete, sign and deliver (in accordance with the time periods prescribed for delivery of notice under this Section 1.12) to the Secretary at the principal executive offices of the Corporation a questionnaires in substantially the same form as the Corporation requests of the Board of Directors nominees for director (which form shall be provided within ten (10) days following a request therefor by a stockholder) and a signed representation and agreement (in the form available from the Secretary upon written request):
(a) that such person is not and will not become a party to any Voting Commitment (as defined below) that (i) has not been disclosed to the Corporation or (ii) could limit or interfere with such persons ability to comply, if elected as a director of the Corporation, with such persons fiduciary duties under applicable law;
(b) that such person is not and will not become a party to any Compensation Arrangement (as defined below) that has not been disclosed to the Corporation;
(c) that such person, if elected as a director of the Corporation, will comply with all informational and similar requirements of applicable insurance policies and laws and regulations in connection with service or action as a director of the Corporation;
(d) a statement as to whether such person, if elected as a director of the Corporation, intends to comply with the Policies;
(e) that such person acknowledges and agrees that, if elected as a director of the Corporation, he or she must and will act in the best interests of the Corporation and its stockholders generally and not in the interests of any individual constituencies;
(f) that such person consents to being named as a nominee in any proxy materials relating to the Corporations meeting at which the nominees election as a director will be considered/voted upon, agrees to serve if elected as a director, and intends to serve as a director for the full term for which such individual is to stand for election;
(g) that such persons candidacy or, if elected, Board of Directors membership, would not violate applicable state or federal law, the Certificate of Incorporation, these Bylaws, or the rules of any stock exchange on which shares of the Corporations Class A Common Stock are traded; and
10
(h) that such person, if elected as a director, acknowledges and agrees that he or she must and will provide facts, statements, and other information in all communications with the Corporation and its stockholders that are or will be true and correct in all material respects, and that do not and will not omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which they are made, not misleading.
1.12.3 Special Meetings of Stockholders.
(a) Only such business shall be conducted at a special meeting of stockholders as shall have been brought before the meeting pursuant to the Corporations notice of such meeting. Nominations of persons for election to the Board of Directors may be made at a special meeting of stockholders at which directors are to be elected pursuant to the Corporations notice of such meeting (i) by or at the direction of the Board of Directors or any committee thereof or (ii) by any stockholder of the Corporation who is a stockholder of record at the time of giving of notice of the special meeting, who shall be entitled to vote at the meeting and who complies with the notice and other procedures set forth in this Section 1.12 in all applicable respects. In the event the Corporation calls a special meeting of stockholders for the purpose of electing one or more directors to the Board of Directors, for nominations to be properly brought before such meeting by a stockholder (or a Qualified Representative thereof) pursuant to Section 1.12.3(a)(ii) below:
(i) the stockholder must have given timely notice thereof in writing to the Secretary of the Corporation setting forth such information, representations, certifications and agreements required by Sections 1.12.1 and 1.12.2 hereof and provide any updates or supplements to such notice at the times and in the forms required by this Section 1.12, in each case, with respect to stockholder nominations of persons for election to the Board of Directors at an annual meeting of stockholders;
(ii) each Proposing Person shall have complied with the applicable requirements of the Exchange Act and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder (including, without limitation, the applicable requirements of Rule 14a-19), as such rules and regulations may be amended from time to time by the SEC, including any SEC Staff interpretations relating thereto; and
(iii) if the Proposing Person (or a group of which such Proposing Person is a part) provided notice pursuant to Rule 14a-19(b) promulgated under the Exchange Act, such Proposing Person must have delivered to the Secretary, no later than five (5) business days prior to the special meeting or any adjournment, rescheduling or postponement or other delay thereof, reasonable evidence sufficient to demonstrate that the requirements of Rule 14a-19 have been satisfied.
(b) To be timely, a stockholders notice required by this Section 1.12.3 shall be delivered to the Secretary at the principal executive offices of the Corporation (i) no earlier than the one hundred and twentieth (120th) day prior to such special meeting and (ii) no later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the later of the ninetieth (90th) day prior to such special meeting or the tenth (10th) day following the day on which Public Announcement is first made of the date of the special meeting and of the nominees proposed by the Board of Directors to be elected at such meeting. In no event shall an adjournment, postponement or rescheduling (or the Public Announcement thereof) of a special meeting commence a new time period (or extend any time period) for providing such notice.
11
1.12.4 General.
(a) Except as otherwise expressly provided in any applicable rule or regulation promulgated under the Exchange Act, only such persons who are nominated in accordance with the procedures set forth in this Section 1.12 shall be eligible to be elected or reelected as directors at a meeting of stockholders and only such business shall be conducted at an annual meeting of stockholders as shall have been brought before the meeting in accordance with the procedures set forth in this Section 1.12. Except as otherwise provided by applicable law or these Bylaws, the Board of Directors or, at a meeting of stockholders (but subject to any rules and regulation adopted by, and the supervision of, the Board of Directors), the chairperson of the meeting shall have the power to determine whether a nomination or any other business proposed to be brought before the meeting was made or proposed, as the case may be, in accordance with the applicable requirements and procedures set forth in this Section 1.12 (including the stockholder and nominee, as applicable, acting in a manner consistent with any representation required hereby, satisfying the information requirements set forth herein with accurate and complete information and complying with all applicable laws, rules and regulations referred to herein) and, if any proposed nomination or business is not in compliance herewith, to declare that such defective proposal or nomination shall be disregarded (and any such nominee shall be disqualified from standing for election or re-election), notwithstanding that proxies in respect of such business or nominations may have been received by the Corporation. If a stockholder provides notice pursuant to Rule 14a-19(b) promulgated under the Exchange Act and subsequently fails to comply with the requirements of Rule 14a-19(a)(2) and Rule 14a-19(a)(3) promulgated under the Exchange Act, including the provision to the Corporation of notices required thereunder in a timely manner, then any such nominee shall be disqualified and the Corporation shall disregard any proxies or votes solicited for such stockholders director nominees. Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this Section 1.12, unless otherwise required by applicable law, if the stockholder (or a Qualified Representative of the stockholder) does not appear at the annual or special meeting of stockholders of the Corporation to present a nomination or proposed business, such nomination shall be disregarded (and any such nominee shall be disqualified from standing for election or reelection), and such proposed business shall not be transacted, notwithstanding that proxies or votes in respect thereof may have been received by the Corporation. Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this Section 1.12, unless otherwise permitted by applicable law, no stockholder shall solicit proxies in support of director nominees other than the Corporations nominees unless such stockholder has complied with Rule 14a-19 promulgated under the Exchange Act in connection with the solicitation of such proxies, including the provision to the Corporation of notices required thereunder in a timely manner.
(b) The number of nominees a stockholder may nominate for election at a meeting of stockholders (or in the case of a stockholder giving the notice on behalf of a beneficial owner, the number of nominees a stockholder may nominate for election at the meeting on behalf of such beneficial owner) shall not exceed the number of directors to be elected by the stockholders generally at such meeting. In addition, a stockholder may not designate any substitute or alternate nominees unless such stockholder provides timely notice of such substitute or alternate nominee(s) in accordance with Section 1.12.1, in the case of an annual meeting, or Section 1.12.2, in the case of a special meeting (and such notice contains all of the information, representations, agreements, questionnaires and certifications with respect to such substitute or alternate nominee(s) that are required by the Bylaws with respect to nominees for director election submitted by a stockholder).
(c) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this Section 1.12, a stockholder shall also comply with all applicable requirements of the Exchange Act with respect to the matters set forth herein, for the avoidance of doubt including, but not limited to, Rule 14a-19 of the Exchange Act, and any failure to comply therewith shall be deemed a failure to comply with this Section 1.12. Nothing in this Section 1.12 shall be deemed to affect any rights of (i) stockholders to request inclusion of proposals in the Corporations proxy statement pursuant to Rule 14a-8 under the Exchange Act or (ii) the holders of any series of the Corporations Preferred Stock to elect directors pursuant to any applicable provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation.
12
(d) For purposes of these Bylaws the following definitions shall apply:
(i) affiliate and associate shall have the meanings ascribed thereto in Rule 405 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act); provided, however, that the term partner as used in the definition of associate shall not include any limited partner that is not involved in the management of the relevant partnership;
(ii) Compensation Arrangement shall mean any direct or indirect compensatory payment or other financial agreement, arrangement or understanding with any person or entity other than the Corporation, including any agreement, arrangement or understanding with respect to any direct or indirect compensation, reimbursement or indemnification in connection with candidacy, nomination, service or action as a nominee or as a director of the Corporation;
(iii) Competitor shall mean any entity that the Board of Directors determines, in good faith, provides products or services that compete with or are alternatives to the principal products produced or services provided by the Corporation or its affiliates, a list of which entities shall be maintained by the Corporation and provided within ten (10) days following a request therefor by a stockholder;
(iv) Derivative Instrument shall mean any derivative interest in the Corporations equity securities, including without limitation any option, warrant, convertible security, stock appreciation right, cash-settled equity swap, total return swap, synthetic equity position or similar derivative arrangement or similar right with an exercise or conversion privilege or a settlement payment or mechanism at a price related to any class or series of shares of the Corporation or with a value derived in whole or in part from the value of any class or series of shares of the Corporation, whether settled in cash or stock or other property or securities;
(v) Policies shall mean all publicly disclosed corporate governance, conflict of interest, stock ownership requirements, confidentiality and training policies and guidelines of the Corporation applicable to directors;
(vi) Proposing Person shall mean (1) the Record Stockholder providing the notice of business proposed to be brought before an annual meeting or the Record Stockholder (or stockholder, in the case of a special meeting) providing notice of nomination of persons for election to the Board of Directors at a stockholder meeting, (2) any beneficial owner on whose behalf the proposal or nomination is made, and (3) any affiliate or associate of the foregoing persons;
(vii) Public Announcement shall mean disclosure in a press release reported by the Dow Jones News Service, Associated Press or other national news service or in a document publicly filed by the Corporation with the Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to Section 13, 14 or 15(d) of the Exchange Act or by such other means as is reasonably designed to inform the public or stockholders of the Corporation in general of such information;
(viii) a Qualified Representative of a stockholder shall mean a person who is (i) a duly authorized officer, manager, trustee or partner of such stockholder or (ii) authorized by a writing executed by such stockholder or an electronic transmission delivered by such stockholder to act for such stockholder as a proxy at the meeting of stockholders, which writing or electronic transmission, or a reliable reproduction of the writing or electronic transmission must be delivered to the Secretary at the principal executive offices of the Corporation by no later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the fifth (5th) business day before such meeting of stockholders;
13
(ix) Short Interest shall mean any short interest in any security of the Corporation that a person directly or indirectly, through any contract, arrangement, understanding, relationship or otherwise, has the opportunity to profit or share in any profit derived from any increase or decrease in the value of the subject security or any other agreement, arrangement or understanding (including without limitation any borrowing or lending of shares) the effect or intent of which is to mitigate loss to or manage risk or benefit of share price changes for, or to increase or decrease the voting power of, such person with respect to any share of stock of the Corporation; and
(x) Voting Commitment shall mean any agreement, arrangement or understanding with, or any commitment or assurance given to, any person or entity as to how a person will act or vote on any issue or question as a director of the Corporation.
1.12.5 Rule 14a-8. Nothing in this Section 1.12 shall be deemed to affect any rights of stockholders to have a proposal included in the Corporations proxy statement pursuant to Rule 14a-8 under the Exchange Act.
ARTICLE II: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Section 2.1: Number; Qualifications. The total number of directors constituting the Whole Board shall be fixed from time to time in the manner set forth in the Certificate of Incorporation and the term Whole Board shall have the meaning specified in the Certificate of Incorporation. No decrease in the authorized number of directors constituting the Whole Board shall shorten the term of any incumbent director. Directors need not be stockholders of the Corporation.
Section 2.2: Election; Resignation; Removal; Vacancies. Election of directors need not be by written ballot. Subject to the special rights of holders of any series of the Corporations Preferred Stock to elect directors, each director shall hold office until the annual meeting at which such directors term expires and until such directors successor is elected and qualified or until such directors earlier death, resignation, disqualification or removal. Any director may resign by delivering a resignation in writing or by electronic transmission to the Corporation at its principal office or to the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer, or the Secretary. Such resignation shall be effective upon delivery unless it is specified to be effective at a later time or upon the happening of an event. Subject to the special rights of holders of any series of the Corporations Preferred Stock to elect directors, directors may be removed only as provided by the Certificate of Incorporation and applicable law. All vacancies occurring in the Board of Directors and any newly created directorships resulting from any increase in the authorized number of directors shall be filled in the manner set forth in the Certificate of Incorporation.
Section 2.3: Regular Meetings. Regular meetings of the Board of Directors may be held at such places (if any), within or without the State of Delaware, and at such times as the Board of Directors may from time to time determine. Notice of regular meetings need not be given if the date, times and places thereof are fixed by resolution of the Board of Directors.
Section 2.4: Special Meetings. Special meetings of the Board of Directors may be called by the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer, the Lead Independent Director or a majority of the members of the Board of Directors then in office and may be held at any time, date or place (if any), within or without the State of Delaware, as the person or persons calling the meeting shall fix. Notice of the time, date and place (if any) of such meeting shall be given, orally, in writing or by electronic transmission (including electronic mail), by or at the direction of the person or persons calling the meeting to all directors at least four (4) days before the meeting if the notice is mailed, or at least twenty-four (24) hours before the meeting if such notice is given personally or by telephone, hand delivery or electronic transmission; provided, however, that if, under the circumstances, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Lead Independent Director, the Chief Executive Officer or the majority members of the Board of Directors calling a special meeting deems that more immediate action is necessary or appropriate, notice may be delivered on the day of such special meeting. Unless otherwise indicated in the notice, any and all business may be transacted at a special meeting.
14
Section 2.5: Remote Meetings Permitted. Members of the Board of Directors, or any committee of the Board of Directors, may participate in a meeting of the Board of Directors or such committee by means of conference telephone or other communications equipment by means of which all persons participating in the meeting can hear each other, and participation in a meeting pursuant to conference telephone or other communications equipment shall constitute presence in person at such meeting.
Section 2.6: Quorum; Vote Required for Action. At all meetings of the Board of Directors, a majority of the Whole Board shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. If a quorum shall fail to attend any meeting, a majority of those present may adjourn the meeting to another place, date or time. Except as otherwise provided herein or in the Certificate of Incorporation, or required by applicable law, the vote of a majority of the directors present at a meeting at which a quorum is present shall be the act of the Board of Directors.
Section 2.7: Organization. Meetings of the Board of Directors shall be presided over by (a) the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, or (b) in the absence of such person, the Lead Independent Director, or (c) in such persons absence, by the Chief Executive Officer, if a director, or (d) in such persons absence or if such person is not a director, by a director chosen by the Board of Directors at the meeting. The Secretary shall act as secretary of the meeting, but in such persons absence the chairperson of the meeting may appoint any person to act as secretary of the meeting.
Section 2.8: Unanimous Action by Directors in Lieu of a Meeting. Any action required or permitted to be taken at any meeting of the Board of Directors, or of any committee thereof, may be taken without a meeting if all members of the Board of Directors or such committee, as the case may be, consent thereto in writing or by electronic transmission. After an action is taken, the writing or writings or electronic transmission or transmissions shall be filed with the minutes of proceedings of the Board of Directors or the committee thereof, as applicable. Such filing shall be in paper form if the minutes are maintained in paper form and shall be in electronic form if the minutes are maintained in electronic form.
Section 2.9: Powers. The Board of Directors may exercise all of the powers of the Corporation except as otherwise provided by the General Corporation Law, the Certificate of Incorporation or these Bylaws.
Section 2.10: Compensation of Directors. Members of the Board of Directors, as such, may receive, pursuant to a resolution of the Board of Directors, fees and other compensation for their services as directors, including without limitation their services as members of committees of the Board of Directors. No such payment shall preclude any director from serving the Corporation in any other capacity and receiving compensation therefor.
Section 2.11: Confidentiality. Each director shall (i) maintain the confidentiality of any non-public information learned in their capacities as directors, including communications among Board of Directors members in their capacities as directors, and (ii) shall not share any such information with any third-party person or entity who has not entered into a specific written agreement with the Corporation, as approved by the Board of Directors, providing otherwise with respect to such information. The Board of Directors may adopt a board confidentiality policy further implementing and interpreting this Section 2.11 (a Board Confidentiality Policy).
15
Section 2.12 Emergency Bylaws. This Section 2.12 shall be operative during any emergency condition as contemplated by Section 110 of the General Corporation Law (an Emergency), notwithstanding any different or conflicting provisions in these Bylaws, the Certificate of Incorporation or the General Corporation Law. In the event of any Emergency the director or directors in attendance at a meeting of the Board of Directors or a standing committee thereof shall constitute a quorum. Such director or directors in attendance may further take action to appoint one or more of themselves or other directors to membership on any standing or temporary committees of the Board of Directors as they shall deem necessary and appropriate. In the event that no directors are able to attend a meeting of the Board of Directors or any committee thereof in an Emergency, then the Designated Officers in attendance shall serve as directors, or committee members, as the case may be, for the meeting and will have full powers to act as directors, or committee members, as the case may be, of the Corporation. Except as the Board of Directors may otherwise determine, during any Emergency, the Corporation and its directors and officers, may exercise any authority and take any action or measure contemplated by Section 110 of the General Corporation Law. For purposes of this Section 2.12, the term Designated Officer means an officer identified on a numbered list of officers of the Corporation who shall be deemed to be, in the order in which they appear on the list, directors of the Corporation, or members of a committee of the Board of Directors, as the case may be, to the extent required to obtain a quorum at a meeting, which list of Designated Officers shall be approved by the Board of Directors from time to time but in any event prior to such time or times as an Emergency may have occurred.
ARTICLE III: COMMITTEES
Section 3.1: Committees. The Board of Directors may designate one or more committees, each committee to consist of one or more of the directors of the Corporation. The Board of Directors may designate one or more directors as alternate members of any committee, who may replace any absent or disqualified member at any meeting of the committee. In the absence or disqualification of a member of the committee, the member or members thereof present at any meeting of such committee who are not disqualified from voting, whether or not such member or members constitute a quorum, may unanimously appoint another member of the Board of Directors to act at the meeting in place of any such absent or disqualified member. Any such committee, to the extent provided in a resolution of the Board of Directors, shall have and may exercise all the powers and authority of the Board of Directors in the management of the business and affairs of the Corporation and may authorize the seal of the Corporation to be affixed to all papers that may require it; but no such committee shall have the power or authority in reference to the following matters: (a) approving, adopting, or recommending to the stockholders any action or matter (other than the election or removal of members of the Board of Directors) expressly required by the General Corporation Law to be submitted to stockholders for approval or (b) adopting, amending or repealing any bylaw of the Corporation.
Section 3.2: Committee Rules. Each committee shall keep records of its proceedings and make such reports as the Board of Directors may from time to time request. Unless the Board of Directors otherwise provides, each committee designated by the Board of Directors may make, alter and repeal rules for the conduct of its business. In the absence of such rules, each committee shall conduct its business in the same manner as the Board of Directors conducts its business pursuant to Article II hereof. Except as otherwise provided in the Certificate of Incorporation, these Bylaws or the resolution of the Board of Directors designating the committee, any committee may create one or more subcommittees, each subcommittee to consist of one or more members of the committee and may delegate to any such subcommittee any or all of the powers and authority of the committee.
16
ARTICLE IV: OFFICERS; CHAIRPERSON; LEAD INDEPENDENT DIRECTOR
Section 4.1: Generally. The officers of the Corporation shall consist of a Chief Executive Officer (who may be the Chairperson of the Board of Directors or the President), a President, a Secretary and a Treasurer and may consist of such other officers, including, without limitation, a Chief Financial Officer, and one or more Vice Presidents, Assistant Secretaries or Assistant Treasurers, as may from time to time be appointed by the Board of Directors. All officers shall be elected by the Board of Directors; provided, however, that the Board of Directors may empower the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation to appoint any officer other than the Chief Executive Officer, the President, the Chief Financial Officer or the Treasurer. Except as otherwise provided by applicable law, by the Certificate of Incorporation or these Bylaws, each officer shall hold office until such officers successor is duly elected and qualified or until such officers earlier resignation, death, disqualification or removal. Any number of offices may be held by the same person. Any officer may resign by delivering a resignation in writing or by electronic transmission to the Corporation at its principal office or to the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer, or the Secretary. Such resignation shall be effective upon delivery unless it is specified to be effective at some later time or upon the happening of some later event. Any vacancy occurring in any office of the Corporation by death, resignation, removal or otherwise may be filled by the Board of Directors (or, if empowered by the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer) and the Board of Directors may, in its discretion, leave unfilled, for such period as it may determine, any offices. Each such successor shall hold office for the unexpired term of such officers predecessor and until a successor is duly elected and qualified or until such officers earlier resignation, death, disqualification or removal.
Section 4.2: Chief Executive Officer. Subject to the control of the Board of Directors and such supervisory powers, if any, as may be given by the Board of Directors, the powers and duties of the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation are:
(a) to have general supervision, direction and control of the business and affairs of the Corporation; and
(b) to affix the signature of the Corporation to all deeds, conveyances, mortgages, guarantees, leases, obligations, bonds, certificates and other papers and instruments in writing which have been authorized by the Board of Directors or which, in the judgment of the Chief Executive Officer, should be executed on behalf of the Corporation; to sign certificates for shares of stock of the Corporation (if any); and to have general charge of the property of the Corporation and to supervise and control all officers, agents and employees of the Corporation.
The person holding the office of President shall be the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation unless the Board of Directors shall designate another person to be the Chief Executive Officer.
Section 4.3: Chairperson of the Board of Directors. Subject to the provisions of Section 2.7 above, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors shall have the power to preside at all meetings of the Board of Directors and shall have such other powers and duties as provided in these Bylaws and as the Board of Directors may from time to time prescribe. The Chairperson of the Board of Directors shall not be deemed an officer of the Corporation unless otherwise determined by the Board of Directors.
Section 4.4: Lead Independent Director. The Board of Directors may, in its discretion, elect a lead independent director from among its members that are independent directors as determined under rules of the exchange upon which the Corporations Class A Common Stock is primarily traded (such director, the Lead Independent Director). The Lead Independent Director shall preside at all meetings or sessions of independent directors and exercise such other powers and duties as may from time to time be assigned to him or her by the Board of Directors or as prescribed by these Bylaws.
17
Section 4.5: President. The person holding the office of Chief Executive Officer shall be the President of the Corporation unless the Board of Directors shall have designated one individual as the President and a different individual as the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation. Subject to the provisions of these Bylaws and to the direction of the Board of Directors, and subject to the supervisory powers of the Chief Executive Officer (if the Chief Executive Officer is an officer other than the President), and subject to such supervisory powers and authority as may be given by the Board of Directors to the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, and/or to any other officer, the President shall have the responsibility for the general management and control of the business and affairs of the Corporation and the general supervision and direction of all of the officers, employees and agents of the Corporation (other than the Chief Executive Officer, if the Chief Executive Officer is an officer other than the President) and shall perform all duties and have all powers that are commonly incident to the office of President, or as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe.
Section 4.6: Chief Financial Officer. The person holding the office of Chief Financial Officer shall be the Treasurer of the Corporation unless the Board of Directors shall have designated another person as the Treasurer of the Corporation. Subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Financial Officer shall perform all duties and have all powers that are commonly incident to the office of Chief Financial Officer, or as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe.
Section 4.7: Treasurer. The person holding the office of Treasurer shall be the Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation unless the Board of Directors shall have designated another person as the Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation. The Treasurer shall have custody of all monies and securities of the Corporation. The Treasurer shall make such disbursements of the funds of the Corporation as are authorized and shall render from time to time an account of all such transactions. The Treasurer shall also perform such other duties and have such other powers as are commonly incident to the office of Treasurer, or as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe.
Section 4.8: Vice President. Each Vice President shall have all such powers and duties as are commonly incident to the office of Vice President or as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe. A Vice President may be designated by the Board of Directors to perform the duties and exercise the powers of the President in the event of the Presidents absence or disability.
Section 4.9: Secretary. The Secretary shall issue or cause to be issued all authorized notices for, and shall keep, or cause to be kept, minutes of all meetings of the stockholders and the Board of Directors. The Secretary shall have charge of the corporate minute books and similar records and shall perform such other duties and have such other powers as are commonly incident to the office of Secretary, or as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe.
Section 4.10: Delegation of Authority. The Board of Directors may from time to time delegate the powers or duties of any officer of the Corporation to any other officers or agents of the Corporation, notwithstanding any provision hereof.
Section 4.11: Removal. Any officer of the Corporation shall serve at the pleasure of the Board of Directors and may be removed at any time, with or without cause, by the Board of Directors; provided that if the Board of Directors has empowered the Chief Executive Officer to appoint any officer of the Corporation, then such officer may also be removed by the Chief Executive Officer, with or without cause. Such removal shall be without prejudice to the contractual rights of such officer, if any, with the Corporation.
18
ARTICLE V: STOCK
Section 5.1: Certificates; Uncertificated Shares. The shares of capital stock of the Corporation shall be uncertificated shares; provided, however, that the resolution of the Board of Directors that the shares of capital stock of the Corporation shall be uncertificated shares shall not apply to shares represented by a certificate until such certificate is surrendered to the Corporation (or the transfer agent or registrar, as the case may be). Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Board of Directors may provide by resolution or resolutions that some or all of any or all classes or series of its stock shall be certificated shares. Every holder of stock represented by certificates shall be entitled to have a certificate signed by, or in the name of the Corporation, by any two authorized officers of the Corporation (it being understood that each of the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Vice-Chairperson of the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer, the President, the Chief Financial Officer, any Vice President, the Treasurer, any Assistant Treasurer, the Secretary and any Assistant Secretary of the Corporation shall be an authorized officer for such purpose), representing the number of shares registered in certificate form. Any or all of the signatures on the certificate may be a facsimile. In case any officer, transfer agent or registrar who has signed or whose facsimile signature has been placed upon a certificate shall have ceased to be such officer, transfer agent or registrar before such certificate is issued, it may be issued by the Corporation with the same effect as if such person were an officer, transfer agent or registrar at the date of issue.
Section 5.2: Lost, Stolen or Destroyed Stock Certificates; Issuance of New Certificates or Uncertificated Shares. The Corporation may issue a new certificate of stock or uncertificated shares in the place of any certificate previously issued by it, alleged to have been lost, stolen or destroyed, upon the making of an affidavit of that fact by the person claiming the certificate of stock to be lost, stolen or destroyed, and the Corporation may require the owner of the lost, stolen or destroyed certificate, or such owners legal representative to give the Corporation a bond sufficient to indemnify it, against any claim that may be made against it on account of the alleged loss, theft or destruction of any such certificate or the issuance of such new certificate or uncertificated shares.
Section 5.3: Other Regulations. Subject to applicable law, the Certificate of Incorporation and these Bylaws, the issue, transfer, conversion and registration of shares represented by certificates and of uncertificated shares shall be governed by such other regulations as the Board of Directors may establish (or such other rules and procedures as the Corporations transfer agent may require).
ARTICLE VI: INDEMNIFICATION
Section 6.1: Indemnification of Officers and Directors. Each person who was or is made a party to, or is threatened to be made a party to, or is involved in any threatened, pending or completed action, suit or proceeding, whether civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, investigative, preliminary, informal or formal, or any other type whatsoever, including any investigation or any arbitration or other alternative dispute resolution (including but not limited to giving testimony or responding to a subpoena) and including any appeal of any of the foregoing (a Proceeding), by reason of the fact that such person (or a person of whom such person is the legal representative), is or was a director or officer of the Corporation designated by the Board of Directors to be entitled to the indemnification and advancement rights set forth in this Article VI or a Reincorporated Predecessor (as defined below) or, while serving as a director or officer of the Corporation or a Reincorporated Predecessor, is or was serving at the request of the Corporation as a director, officer, employee, agent or trustee of another corporation, or of a partnership, joint venture, trust or other enterprise or non-profit entity, including service with respect to employee benefit plans (for purposes of this Article VI, an Indemnitee), shall be indemnified and held harmless by
19
the Corporation to the fullest extent permitted by the General Corporation Law as the same exists or may hereafter be amended (but, in the case of any such amendment, only to the extent that such amendment permits the Corporation to provide broader indemnification rights than such law permitted the Corporation to provide prior to such amendment), against all expenses, costs, liability and loss (including attorneys fees, judgments, fines, ERISA excise taxes and penalties and amounts paid or to be paid in settlement) reasonably incurred or suffered by such Indemnitee in connection therewith, provided such Indemnitee acted in good faith and in a manner that the Indemnitee reasonably believed to be in or not opposed to the best interests of the Corporation, and, with respect to any criminal Proceeding, had no reasonable cause to believe the Indemnitees conduct was unlawful. Such indemnification shall continue as to an Indemnitee who has ceased to be a director or officer of the Corporation or a Reincorporated Predecessor (as defined below) or, while serving as a director or officer of the Corporation or a Reincorporated Predecessor, is or was serving at the request of the Corporation as a director, officer, employee, agent or trustee of another corporation, or of a partnership, joint venture, trust or other enterprise or non-profit entity, including service with respect to employee benefit plans and shall inure to the benefit of such Indemnitees heirs, executors and administrators. Notwithstanding the foregoing, subject to Section 6.5 of this Article VI, the Corporation shall indemnify any such Indemnitee seeking indemnity in connection with a Proceeding (or part thereof) initiated by such Indemnitee only if such Proceeding (or part thereof) was authorized by the Board of Directors or such indemnification is authorized by an agreement approved by the Board of Directors. As used in this Article VI, (i) the term the Reincorporated Predecessor means a corporation that is merged with and into the Corporation in a statutory merger where (a) the Corporation is the surviving corporation of such merger, and (b) the primary purpose of such merger is to change the corporate domicile of the Reincorporated Predecessor to Delaware, and (ii) an officer of the Corporation or of a Reincorporated Predecessor means an officer of the Corporation or of a Reincorporated Predecessor elected or appointed by the Board of Directors or governing body thereof, as applicable.
Section 6.2: Advancement of Expenses. Except as otherwise provided in a written indemnification agreement between the Corporation and the Indemnitee, the Corporation shall pay all reasonable expenses (including attorneys fees) incurred by an Indemnitee in defending any Proceeding in advance of its final disposition; provided, however, that the advancement of such expenses (i.e., payment of such expenses as incurred or otherwise in advance of the final disposition of the Proceeding) shall be made only upon delivery to the Corporation of an undertaking, by or on behalf of such Indemnitee, to repay such amounts if it shall ultimately be determined by final judicial decision from which there is no appeal that such Indemnitee is not entitled to be indemnified under this Article VI or otherwise. Any advances of expenses or undertakings to repay pursuant to this Section 6.2 shall be unsecured, interest free and without regard to Indemnitees ability to pay.
Section 6.3: Non-Exclusivity of Rights. The rights conferred on any person in this Article VI shall not be exclusive of any other right that such person may have or hereafter acquire under any statute, provision of the Certificate of Incorporation, Bylaws, agreement, vote or consent of stockholders or disinterested directors, or otherwise.
Section 6.4: Indemnification of Others and Additional Rights. The Corporation may grant rights to indemnification and to the advancement of expenses to any person who is or was a director, officer, employee or agent of the Corporation or Reincorporated Predecessor, or any person who is or was serving at the request of the Corporation as a director, officer, employee, agent or trustee of another corporation, partnership, joint venture, trust or other enterprise or non-profit entity, including employee benefit plans. Such rights may be greater than those provided in this Article VI.
20
Section 6.5: Right of Indemnitee to Bring Suit. The following shall apply to the extent not in conflict with any written indemnification agreement between the Corporation and the Indemnitee:
6.5.1 Right to Bring Suit. If a claim under Section 6.1 or 6.2 of this Article VI is not paid in full by the Corporation within sixty (60) days after a written claim has been received by the Corporation, except in the case of a claim for an advancement of expenses, in which case the applicable period shall be twenty (20) days, the Indemnitee may at any time thereafter bring suit against the Corporation to recover the unpaid amount of the claim. If the Indemnitee is successful in whole or in part in any such suit, or in a suit brought by the Corporation to recover an advancement of expenses pursuant to the terms of an undertaking, the Indemnitee also shall be entitled to be paid, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the expense of prosecuting or defending such suit. In any suit brought by the Indemnitee to enforce a right to indemnification hereunder (but not in a suit brought by the Indemnitee to enforce a right to an advancement of expenses) it shall be a defense that the Indemnitee has not met any applicable standard for indemnification set forth in applicable law. In any suit brought by the Corporation to recover the advancement of expenses pursuant to the terms of an undertaking, the Corporation shall be entitled to recover such expenses upon a final adjudication that, the Indemnitee has not met any applicable standard for indemnification set forth in applicable law.
6.5.2 Effect of Determination. Neither the absence of a determination by or on behalf of the Corporation prior to the commencement of such suit that indemnification of the Indemnitee is proper in the circumstances because the Indemnitee has met the applicable standard of conduct set forth in applicable law, nor an actual determination by or on behalf of the Corporation that the Indemnitee has not met such applicable standard of conduct, shall create a presumption that the Indemnitee has not met the applicable standard of conduct or, in the case of such a suit brought by the Indemnitee, be a defense to such suit.
6.5.3 Burden of Proof. In any suit brought by the Indemnitee to enforce a right to indemnification or to an advancement of expenses hereunder, or brought by the Corporation to recover an advancement of expenses pursuant to the terms of an undertaking, the burden of proving that the Indemnitee is not entitled to be indemnified, or to such advancement of expenses, under this Article VI, or otherwise, shall be on the Corporation.
Section 6.6: Nature of Rights. The rights conferred upon Indemnitees in this Article VI shall be contract rights and such rights shall continue as to an Indemnitee who has ceased to be a director or officer and shall inure to the benefit of the Indemnitees heirs, executors and administrators.
Section 6.7: Amendment or Repeal. Any amendment, repeal or modification of any provision of this Article VI that adversely affects any right of an Indemnitee or an Indemnitees successors shall be prospective only, and shall not adversely affect any right or protection conferred on a person pursuant to this Article VI and existing at the time of such amendment, repeal or modification.
Section 6.8: Insurance. The Corporation may purchase and maintain insurance, at its expense, to protect itself and any director, officer, employee or agent of the Corporation or another corporation, partnership, joint venture, trust or other enterprise or non-profit entity against any expense, liability or loss, whether or not the Corporation would have the power to indemnify such person against such expense, liability or loss under the General Corporation Law.
Section 6.9: Indemnification for Successful Defense. To the extent that an Indemnitee has been successful on the merits or otherwise in defense of any Proceeding (or in defense of any claim, issue or matter therein), such Indemnitee shall be indemnified under this Section 6.9 against expenses (including attorneys fees) actually and reasonably incurred in connection with such defense. Indemnification under this Section 6.9 shall not be subject to satisfaction of a standard of conduct, and the Corporation may not
21
assert the failure to satisfy a standard of conduct as a basis to deny indemnification or recover amounts advanced, including in a suit brought pursuant to Section 6.5 (notwithstanding anything to the contrary therein); provided, however, that, any Indemnitee who is not a current or former director or officer (as such term is defined in the final sentence of Section 145(c)(1) of the General Corporation Law) shall be entitled to indemnification under Section 6.1 and this Section 6.9 only if such Indemnitee has satisfied the applicable standard of conduct required for indemnification under Section 145(a) or Section 145(b) of the General Corporation Law.
ARTICLE VII: NOTICES
Section 7.1: Notice.
7.1.1 Form and Delivery. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, notice may be given in writing directed to a stockholders mailing address as it appears on the records of the Corporation and shall be given: (a) if mailed, when notice is deposited in the U.S. mail, postage prepaid; and (b) if delivered by courier service, the earlier of when the notice is received or left at such stockholders address. So long as the Corporation is subject to the Securities and Exchange Commissions proxy rules set forth in Regulation 14A under the Exchange Act, notice shall be given in the manner required by such rules. To the extent permitted by such rules, or if the Corporation is not subject to Regulation 14A, notice may be given by electronic mail directed to the stockholders electronic mail address as it appears on the records of the Corporation, and if so given, shall be given when directed to such stockholders electronic mail address unless the stockholder has notified the Corporation in writing or by electronic transmission of an objection to receiving notice by electronic mail or such notice is prohibited by Section 232(e) of the General Corporation Law. If notice is given by electronic mail, such notice shall comply with the applicable provisions of Sections 232(a) and 232(d) of the General Corporation Law. Notice may be given by other forms of electronic transmission with the consent of a stockholder in the manner permitted by Section 232(b) of the General Corporation Law and shall be deemed given as provided therein.
7.1.2 Affidavit of Giving Notice. An affidavit of the Secretary or an Assistant Secretary of the Corporation or of the transfer agent or other agent of the Corporation that the notice has been given shall, in the absence of fraud, be prima facie evidence of the facts stated therein.
Section 7.2: Waiver of Notice. Whenever notice is required to be given under any provision of the General Corporation Law, the Certificate of Incorporation or these Bylaws, a written waiver of notice, signed by the person entitled to notice, or waiver by electronic transmission by such person, whether before or after the time stated therein, shall be deemed equivalent to notice. Attendance of a person at a meeting shall constitute a waiver of notice of such meeting, except when the person attends a meeting for the express purpose of objecting at the beginning of the meeting to the transaction of any business because the meeting is not lawfully called or convened. Neither the business to be transacted at, nor the purpose of, any regular or special meeting of the stockholders, directors or members of a committee of directors need be specified in any waiver of notice.
ARTICLE VIII: INTERESTED DIRECTORS
Section 8.1: Interested Directors. No contract or transaction between the Corporation and one or more of its directors or officers, or between the Corporation and any other corporation, partnership, association or other organization in which one or more of its directors or officers are directors or officers of such other corporation, partnership, association or other organization, or have a financial interest, shall be void or voidable solely for this reason, or solely because the director or officer is present at or participates in the meeting of the Board of Directors or committee thereof that authorizes the contract or transaction, or solely because his, her or their votes are counted for such purpose, if: (a) the material facts as to his, her or
22
their relationship or interest and as to the contract or transaction are disclosed or are known to the Board of Directors or the committee, and the Board of Directors or committee in good faith authorizes the contract or transaction by the affirmative votes of a majority of the disinterested directors, even though the disinterested directors be less than a quorum, (b) the material facts as to his, her or their relationship or interest and as to the contract or transaction are disclosed or are known to the stockholders entitled to vote thereon, and the contract or transaction is specifically approved in good faith by vote of the stockholders, or (c) the contract or transaction is fair as to the Corporation as of the time it is authorized, approved or ratified by the Board of Directors, a committee thereof, or the stockholders.
Section 8.2: Quorum. Common or interested directors may be counted in determining the presence of a quorum at a meeting of the Board of Directors or of a committee which authorizes the contract or transaction described in Section 8.1.
ARTICLE IX: MISCELLANEOUS
Section 9.1: Fiscal Year. The fiscal year of the Corporation shall be determined by resolution of the Board of Directors.
Section 9.2: Seal. The Board of Directors may provide for a corporate seal, which may have the name of the Corporation inscribed thereon and shall otherwise be in such form as may be approved from time to time by the Board of Directors.
Section 9.3: Form of Records. Any records administered by or on behalf of the Corporation in the regular course of its business, including its stock ledger, books of account and minute books, may be kept on or by means of, or be in the form of, any other information storage device, method or one or more electronic networks or databases (including one or more distributed electronic networks or databases), electronic or otherwise, provided that the records so kept can be converted into clearly legible paper form within a reasonable time and otherwise comply with the General Corporation Law. The Corporation shall so convert any records so kept upon the request of any person entitled to inspect such records pursuant to any provision of the General Corporation Law.
Section 9.4: Reliance Upon Books and Records. A member of the Board of Directors, or a member of any committee designated by the Board of Directors shall, in the performance of such persons duties, be fully protected in relying in good faith upon the books and records of the Corporation and upon such information, opinions, reports or statements presented to the Corporation by any of the Corporations officers or employees, or committees of the Board of Directors, or by any other person as to matters the member reasonably believes are within such other persons professional or expert competence and who has been selected with reasonable care by or on behalf of the Corporation.
Section 9.5: Certificate of Incorporation Governs. In the event of any conflict between the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation and these Bylaws, the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation shall govern.
Section 9.6: Severability. If any provision of these Bylaws shall be held to be invalid, illegal, unenforceable or in conflict with the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation, then such provision shall nonetheless be enforced to the maximum extent possible consistent with such holding and the remaining provisions of these Bylaws (including without limitation, all portions of any section of these Bylaws containing any such provision held to be invalid, illegal, unenforceable or in conflict with the Certificate of Incorporation, that are not themselves invalid, illegal, unenforceable or in conflict with the Certificate of Incorporation) shall remain in full force and effect.
23
Section 9.7: Time Periods. In applying any provision of these Bylaws which requires that an act be done or not be done a specified number of days prior to an event or that an act be done during a period of a specified number of days prior to an event, calendar days shall be used (unless otherwise specified herein), the day of the doing of the act shall be excluded, and the day of the event shall be included.
ARTICLE X: AMENDMENT
Notwithstanding any other provision of these Bylaws, any alteration, amendment or repeal of these Bylaws, and any adoption of new Bylaws, shall require the approval of the Board of Directors or the stockholders of the Corporation as expressly provided in the Certificate of Incorporation.
ARTICLE XI: CHOICE OF FORUM; EXCLUSIVE FORUM
Unless the Corporation consents in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (or, if the Court of Chancery does not have jurisdiction, the federal district court for the District of Delaware) shall, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for: (i) any derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of the Corporation; (ii) any action asserting a claim that is based upon a breach of a fiduciary duty owed by, or other wrongdoing by, any current or former director, officer, stockholder, employee or agent of the Corporation to the Corporation or the Corporations stockholders; (iii) any action asserting a claim against the Corporation or any current or former director, officer, stockholder, employee or agent of the Corporation arising pursuant to any provision of the General Corporation Law, the Certificate of Incorporation or these Bylaws or as to which the General Corporation Law confers jurisdiction on the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware; (iv) any action to interpret, apply, enforce or determine the validity of the Certificate of Incorporation or these Bylaws; (v) any action asserting a claim against the Corporation governed by the internal affairs doctrine; or (vi) any action asserting an internal corporate claim as that term is defined in Section 115 of the General Corporation Law. Unless the Corporation consents in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the federal district courts of the United States of America shall be the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act, or any successor thereto. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in shares of capital stock of the Corporation shall be deemed to have notice of and to have consented to the provisions of this Article XI. Failure to enforce the foregoing provisions of this Article XI would cause the Corporation irreparable harm, and the Corporation shall be entitled to equitable relief, including injunctive relief and specific performance, to enforce the foregoing provisions.
24
CERTIFICATION OF AMENDED AND RESTATED BYLAWS
OF
COREWEAVE, INC.
(a Delaware Corporation)
I, Kristen McVeety, certify that I am Secretary of CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Corporation), that I am duly authorized to make and deliver this certification, that the attached Bylaws are a true and complete copy of the Amended and Restated Bylaws of the Corporation in effect as of the date of this certificate.
Dated: , 2025
Kristen McVeety |
Secretary |
25
Exhibit 4.1
ZQCERT|COY CLS/RGSTRY|ACCT#TRANSTYPE RUNFTRANS# CLASS A COMMON STOCK PAR VALUE 50.0001 Certificate Number THIS CERTIFIES THAT is the owner of CLASS A COMMON STOCK Core Weave CoreWeave, Inc. INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE MR SAMPLE & MRS. SAMPLE & MR-SAMPLE & MRS. SAMPLE ZERO HUNDRED THOUSAND ZERO HUNDRED AND ZERO Shares SEE REVERSE FOR CERTAIN DEFINITIONS CUSIP 218735 10 8 THIS CERTIFICATE IS TRANSFERADLE IN CITIES DESIGNATED BY THE TRANSPER AGENT, AVAILABLE ONLINE AT FULLY-PAID AND NON-ASSESSABLE SHARES OF CLASS A COMMON STOCK OF CoreWeave, Inc. (hereinafter called the Company), transferable on the books of the Company in person or by duly authorized attorney, upon surrender of this Certificate properly endorsed. This Certificate and the shares. represented hereby, are issued and shall be held subject to all of the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation, as amended, and the By-Laws, as amended, of the Company (copies of which are on file with the Company and with the Transfer Agent), to all of which each holder, by acceptance hereof, assents. This Certificate is not valid unless countersigned and registered by the Transfer Agent and Registrar. Witness the facsimile seal of the Company and the facsimile signatures of its duly authorized officers. WEAVE SEAL CUSIPIDENTIFIER Holder ID Insurance Value Number of Shares DTC Certificate Numbers 1234567890/1234567890 1234567890/1234567890 12345678 123456789012345 FACSIMILE SIGNATURE TO COME 500mtary DATED DO-MMM/YYYY COUNTERSIGNED AND REGISTERED COMPUTERSHARE TRUST COMPANY, N.A. TRANSFER AGENT AND REGISTRAR. By. AUTHORLD SIGNATURE FACSIMILE SIGNATURE TO COME 1234567 1234567890/1234567890 1234567890/1234567890 NumiNo, Denom. Total 1 1 123456 PO Box 43004, Providence RI 02940-3004MR A SAMPLEDESIGNATION (IF ANY) ADD 1 ADD 2 ADD 3 ADD 41234567890/1234567890 1234567890/1234567890 Total Transaction
.COREWEAVE, INC.THE COMPANY WILL FURNISH WITHOUT CHARGE TO EACH SHAREHOLDER WHO SO REQUESTS, A SUMMARY OF THE POWERS, DESIGNATIONS,
PREFERENCES AND RELATIVE, PARTICIPATING, OPTIONAL OR OTHER SPECIAL RIGHTS OF EACH CLASS OF STOCK OF THE COMPANY AND THE QUALIFICATIONS, LIMITATIONS OR RESTRICTIONS OF SUCH PREFERENCES AND RIGHTS, AND THE VARIATIONS IN RIGHTS, PREFERENCES AND
LIMITATIONS DETERMINED FOR EACH SERIES, WHICH ARE FIXED BY THE CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF THE COMPANY, AS AMENDED, AND THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE COMPANY, AND THE AUTHORITY OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS TO DETERMINE VARIATIONS
FOR FUTURE SERIES. SUCH REQUEST MAY BE MADE TO THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE COMPANY OR TO THE TRANSFER AGENT. THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS MAY REQUIRE THE OWNER OF A LOST OR DESTROYED STOCK CERTIFICATE, OR HIS LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES, TO GIVE THE
Exhibit 4.6
AMENDED AND RESTATED REGISTRATION RIGHTS AGREEMENT
THIS AMENDED AND RESTATED REGISTRATION RIGHTS AGREEMENT (this Agreement), is made as of October 17, 2022, by and among CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (including, without limitation, the SPAC entering into a SPAC Transaction (as such terms are defined below) that may hold 100% of the equity interests of the Company or any successor thereto after the consummation of such SPAC Transaction, the Company), each of the investors party to the First Transaction (as listed on Schedule A hereto), each of which is referred to in this Agreement as a First Investor, and each of the investors party to the Second Transaction (as listed on Schedule A hereto), each of which is referred to in this Agreement as a Second Investor, and together with each First Investor, each an Investor.
RECITAL
WHEREAS, the Company and the First Investors entered into that certain Note Purchase Agreement, dated as of October 19, 2021 (the First Purchase Agreement), which provided for the purchase of the First Notes (as defined below) issued pursuant to that certain Note Issuance Agreement, dated as of October 19, 2021, by and among the Company, as issuer, Magnetar Financial LLC (Magnetar), as representative of the holders of the First Notes, and U.S. Bank National Association, as Collateral Agent (the First Note Issuance Agreement);
WHEREAS, the Company and the First Investors entered into that certain Registration Rights Agreement, dated as of October 19, 2021 (the Original Agreement), in order to provide to the First Investors certain registration rights for the First Notes and Common Stock (as defined below) issuable upon conversion of the First Notes;
WHEREAS, the Company and the Second Investors are entering into that certain Note Purchase Agreement, dated as of the date hereof (the Second Purchase Agreement, and together with the First Purchase Agreement, each a Purchase Agreement), which provides for the purchase of the Second Notes (as defined below) issued pursuant to that certain Note Issuance Agreement, dated as of the date hereof, by and among the Company, as issuer, Magnetar, as representative of the holders of the Second Notes, and U.S. Bank National Association, as Collateral Agent (the Second Note Issuance Agreement, and together with the First Note Issuance Agreement, each a Note Issuance Agreement) and the Warrants (as defined below);
WHEREAS, the Second Purchase Agreement provides for this Agreement to be amended and restated as set forth herein in order to (a) provide to the First Investors certain registration rights for the First Notes and Common Stock issuable upon conversion of the First Notes and (b) provide to the Second Investors certain registration rights for the Second Notes, the Warrants and the Common Stock issuable upon exercise of the Warrants;
WHEREAS, the Company and the Investors hereby agree that this Agreement shall govern the registration rights for the Notes (as defined below), the Common Stock issuable upon conversion of the First Notes, the Warrants and the Common Stock issuable upon exercise of the Warrants;
WHEREAS, the Company and the Investors acknowledge and agree that the Company may not be the listed entity in any Qualified Public Company Event (as defined below). All of the provisions of this Agreement shall apply mutatis mutandis with respect to the entity whose Common Stock become publicly traded or listed (and, for the avoidance of doubt and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the provisions of this Agreement will apply to the SPAC if the Qualified Public Company Event is a SPAC Transaction); and
WHEREAS, capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to such terms in the applicable Purchase Agreement or in the applicable Note Issuance Agreement, as the context requires.
AGREEMENT
NOW, THEREFORE, the parties hereby agree as follows:
1. Definitions. For purposes of this Agreement:
1.1 Affiliate means, with respect to any specified Person, any other Person who, directly or indirectly, controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with such Person, including without limitation any general partner, managing member, officer, director or trustee of such Person, or any venture capital fund or registered investment company now or hereafter existing that is controlled by one or more general partners, managing members or investment adviser of, or shares the same management company or investment adviser with, such Person. With respect to the Holders, the term Affiliate shall include any funds managed by Magnetar Capital LLC or by other Affiliates of Magnetar Capital LLC.
1.2 Automatic Shelf Registration Statement means an automatic shelf registration statement as defined in Rule 405 promulgated under the Securities Act.
1.3 Board of Directors means the board of directors of the Company.
1.4 Common Stock shall have the meaning set forth in the applicable Note Issuance Agreement.
1.5 Damages means any loss, damage, claim, expense (including documented legal or other expenses reasonably incurred in connection with investigating, preparing, defending or enforcing any claim, proceeding or right to indemnification hereunder) and liability of any kind that arises out of or is based upon: (i) any untrue statement or alleged untrue statement of a material fact contained in any registration statement of the Company, including any preliminary prospectus or final prospectus contained therein or any amendments or supplements thereto, or in the Disclosure Package or any preliminary, final or summary prospectus or Free Writing Prospectus included in any such registration statement or any amendment or supplement thereto; (ii) an omission or alleged omission to state therein a material fact required to be stated therein, or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading; or (iii) any violation or alleged violation by the indemnifying party (or any of its agents or Affiliates) of the Securities Act, the Exchange Act, any other federal, state or foreign securities law, or any rule or regulation promulgated under the Securities Act, the Exchange Act, or any other federal, state or foreign securities law.
2
1.6 Disclosure Package means, with respect to any offering of securities, (i) the preliminary prospectus, (ii) the price to the public and the number of securities included in the offering; (iii) each Free Writing Prospectus and (iv) all other information that is deemed, under Rule 159 promulgated under the Securities Act, to have been conveyed to purchasers of securities at the time of sale of such securities (including a contract of sale).
1.7 Exchange Act means the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.
1.8 Excluded Registration means (i) a registration relating to the sale or grant of securities to employees of the Company or a subsidiary pursuant to a stock option, stock purchase, equity incentive or similar plan; (ii) a registration relating to an SEC Rule 145 transaction; (iii) a registration on any form that does not include substantially the same information as would be required to be included in a registration statement covering the sale of the Registrable Securities; or (iv) a registration in which the only Common Stock being registered is Common Stock issuable upon conversion of debt securities that are also being registered.
1.9 First Notes shall have the meaning given to the term Notes in the First Note Issuance Agreement.
1.10 Form S-1 means such form under the Securities Act as in effect on the date hereof or any successor registration form under the Securities Act subsequently adopted by the SEC.
1.11 Form S-3 means such form under the Securities Act as in effect on the date hereof or any registration form under the Securities Act subsequently adopted by the SEC that permits forward incorporation of substantial information by reference to other documents filed by the Company with the SEC.
1.12 Free Writing Prospectus means any free writing prospectus as defined in Rule 405 promulgated under the Securities Act.
1.13 Holder means any holder of Registrable Securities who is a party to this Agreement.
1.14 Immediate Family Member means a child, stepchild, grandchild, parent, stepparent, grandparent, spouse, sibling, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law, including, adoptive relationships, of a natural person referred to herein.
1.15 Initiating Holders means, collectively, Holders who properly initiate a registration or shelf takedown request, as applicable, under this Agreement.
1.16 Merger Registration Statement means both the registration statement on Form S-4 filed by the SPAC with the SEC in compliance with the Securities Act and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder for the purpose of registering Common Stock to be issued in connection with any SPAC Transaction and the registration statement on Form S-1 filed by the SPAC with the SEC in compliance with the Securities Act and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder pursuant to the Registration Rights Agreement(s) by and among the SPAC and each of the several subscribers signatory thereto (the PIPE Registration Rights Agreements) in connection with the SPAC Transaction Financing.
3
1.17 Notes means, individually and collectively, the First Notes and the Second Notes.
1.18 Person means any individual, corporation, partnership, trust, limited liability company, association or other entity.
1.19 Qualified Public Company Event shall have the meaning set forth in the First Note Issuance Agreement.
1.20 Registrable Securities means (i) the Notes (unless the Notes are then eligible for resale under Rule 144A and are then eligible for clearance and settlement through the facilities of DTC), (ii) the Common Stock issued upon conversion of the First Notes (or, before a Qualified Public Company Event, upon conversion of the Conversion Stock issued upon conversion of the First Notes), (iii) the Warrants, including all Warrants now owned or hereafter acquired by any Investor, (iv) the Common Stock issued upon exercise of the Warrants and (v) any Common Stock issued as a dividend or other distribution with respect to, or in exchange for or in replacement of, the shares referenced in clauses (ii) or (iv).
1.21 SEC means the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
1.22 SEC Rule 144 means Rule 144 promulgated by the SEC under the Securities Act.
1.23 SEC Rule 145 means Rule 145 promulgated by the SEC under the Securities Act.
1.24 Second Notes shall have the meaning given to the term Notes in the Second Note Issuance Agreement and includes all such Notes which have been, or may hereafter be, issued pursuant to the Second Purchase Agreement.
1.25 Securities Act means the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.
1.26 Selling Expenses means all underwriting discounts, selling commissions, and stock transfer taxes applicable to the sale of Registrable Securities, and fees and disbursements of counsel for any Holder in connection with the sale of Registrable Securities, except for the fees and disbursements of the Selling Holders Counsel which shall be borne and paid by the Company pursuant to and to the extent provided by Section 2.6.
1.27 Shelf Registration means a registration of securities pursuant to a registration statement filed with the SEC in accordance with and pursuant to Rule 415 promulgated under the Securities Act (or any successor rule then in effect).
4
1.28 SPAC shall have the meaning set forth in the First Note Issuance Agreement.
1.29 SPAC Transaction shall have the meaning set forth in the First Note Issuance Agreement.
1.30 SPAC Transaction Financing shall have the meaning set forth in the First Note Issuance Agreement.
1.31 Warrants shall have the meaning set forth in the Second Note Purchase Agreement.
1.32 Well-Known Seasoned Issuer means a well-known seasoned issuer as defined in Rule 405 promulgated under the Securities Act and which (i) is a well-known seasoned issuer under paragraph (1)(i)(A) of such definition or (ii) is a well-known seasoned issuer under paragraph (1)(i)(B) of such definition and is also eligible to register a primary offering of its securities relying on General Instruction I.B.1 of Form S-3 or Form F-3 under the Securities Act.
2. Registration Rights. The Company covenants and agrees as follows:
2.1 Demand Registration; Shelf Registrations.
(a) Automatic Demand. If the Company closes the SPAC Transaction or other Qualified Public Company Event, the Company covenants and agrees to file a registration statement for a Shelf Registration registering the resale of the Registrable Securities on a delayed or continuous basis, on Form S-1 (the Initial Registration Statement and together with any Subsequent Shelf Registration (as defined below), the Shelf), if any, no later than sixty (60) days after the closing of the SPAC Transaction or other Qualified Public Company Event and use its reasonable best efforts to have the Initial Registration Statement declared effective as soon as practicable after the filing thereof, but no later than one hundred twenty (120) days following the closing of the SPAC Transaction or other Qualified Public Company Event (or one hundred eighty (180) days if the SEC notifies the SPAC or the Company, as applicable, that it will review the Initial Registration Statement). The Shelf shall provide for the resale of Registrable Securities from time to time, and pursuant to any method or combination of methods legally available to, and requested by, the Holders. The Company shall maintain the Shelf in accordance with the terms hereof, and shall prepare and file with the SEC such amendments, including post-effective amendments, and supplements as may be necessary to keep such Shelf effective and in compliance with the provisions of the Securities Act. In the event the Company files a Shelf on Form S-1, the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to convert such Shelf (and any Subsequent Shelf Registration) to a Shelf on Form S-3 as soon as practicable after the Company is eligible to use Form S-3. To the extent practicable, the obligation of the Company to file the Initial Registration Statement shall be satisfied if the Registrable Securities are registered for resale on the Merger Registration Statement.
5
(b) Subsequent Shelf Registration. If any Shelf ceases to be effective under the Securities Act for any reason, the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to, as promptly as is practicable, cause such Shelf to again become effective under the Securities Act (including obtaining the prompt withdrawal of any order suspending the effectiveness of such Shelf), and shall use its reasonable best efforts to, as promptly as is practicable, amend such Shelf in a manner reasonably expected to result in the withdrawal of any order suspending the effectiveness of such Shelf or file an additional registration statement as a Shelf Registration (a Subsequent Shelf Registration) registering the resale from time to time by the Holders thereof of all securities that are Registrable Securities as of the time of such filing. If a Subsequent Shelf Registration is filed, the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts to (i) cause such Subsequent Shelf Registration to become effective under the Securities Act as promptly as is practicable after the filing thereof (it being agreed that the Subsequent Shelf Registration shall be an Automatic Shelf Registration Statement if the Company is a Well-Known Seasoned Issuer (and not subject to the limitations imposed as a former shell company under the Securities Act) and (ii) keep such Subsequent Shelf Registration continuously effective. Any such Subsequent Shelf Registration shall be on Form S-3 to the extent that the Company is eligible to use such form. Otherwise, such Subsequent Shelf Registration shall be on another appropriate form and shall provide for the registration of such Registrable Securities for resale by the Holders in accordance with any reasonable method of distribution elected by a majority in interest of the Holders.
(c) Shelf Takedown. At any time and from time to time after the effective date of the Shelf, Holders may request to sell in an underwritten offering that is registered pursuant to the Shelf (a Shelf Takedown) all or a portion of their Registrable Securities (1) having an anticipated aggregate offering price, net of Selling Expenses, in excess of $15,000,000 or (2) constituting the total aggregate Registrable Securities then held by all Holders. Upon the Companys receipt of any such request, the Company shall (x) within three (3) Business Days after the date such request is given, give notice thereof (a Shelf Takedown Demand Notice) to all Holders other than the Initiating Holders, if applicable, and any other holders of equivalent securities that the Company is obligated to register pursuant to written contractual arrangements with such persons (the Other Holders); and (y) as soon as practicable, include in such Shelf Takedown all Registrable Securities that the Initiating Holders requested to be registered and any additional Registrable Securities or equivalent securities requested to be included in such registration by any other Holders or Other Holders, as specified by notice given by each such Holder or Other Holder to the Company within ten (10) days after the Company sends the Shelf Takedown Demand Notice, and in each case, subject to the limitations of Sections 2.1(f). In connection with any Shelf Takedown, the Company shall not effect any public sale or distribution of its equity securities or any securities convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for such securities (except pursuant to registrations on Form S-8 or Form S-1 relating to an employee benefit plan, or on Form S-4 under the Securities Act), during the seven (7) days prior to and the ninety (90) day period beginning on the date of pricing of such Shelf Takedown or such other period provided in the underwriting, placement or similar agreement executed in connection with such Shelf Takedown. The Company shall not be obligated to effect, or to take any action to effect, any Shelf Takedown pursuant to this Section 2.1(c) after the Company has effected two (2) Shelf Takedowns pursuant to this Section 2.1(c). A Shelf Takedown is not be counted as effected for purposes of this Section 2.1(c) until such time as the applicable prospectus supplement has been filed with the SEC, unless the Initiating Holders withdraw their request for such Shelf Takedown, in which case the Holders shall have be deemed to have forfeited their right to one Shelf Takedown and such Shelf Takedown shall be counted as effected for purposes of this Section 2.1(c); provided, that if such withdrawal is during a period the Company has deferred taking action pursuant to Section 2.1(f), then the Initiating Holders may withdraw their request for a Shelf Takedown and such Shelf Takedown shall not be counted as effected for purposes of this Section 2.1(c).
6
(d) Form S-1 Demand. If at any time after the date that is one hundred and eighty (180) days after the effective date of the registration statement mentioned in Section 2.1(a) and (b), the Company receives a request from Holders that the Company file a Form S-1 registration statement with respect to Registrable Securities (1) having an anticipated aggregate offering price, net of Selling Expenses, in excess of $15,000,000 or (2) constituting the total aggregate Registrable Securities then held by all Holders, then the Company shall (x) within ten (10) days after the date such request is given, give notice thereof (the Demand Notice) to all Holders other than the Initiating Holders, if applicable, and any Other Holders; and (y) as soon as practicable, and in any event within sixty (60) days after the date such request is given by the Initiating Holders, file a Form S-1 registration statement under the Securities Act covering all Registrable Securities that the Initiating Holders requested to be registered and any additional Registrable Securities or equivalent securities requested to be included in such registration by any other Holders or Other Holders, as specified by notice given by each such Holder or Other Holder to the Company within twenty (20) days of the date the Demand Notice is given, and in each case, subject to the applicable limitations of Sections 2.1(f) and 2.3; provided that the Company may use a Form S-3 registration statement instead of a Form S-1 registration statement pursuant to this Section 2.1(d) if the Company would qualify to use a Form S-3 registration statement within sixty (60) days after the date on which the request from Holders is received in accordance with this Section 2.1(d).
(e) Form S-3 Demand. If at any time when it is eligible to use a Form S-3 registration statement, the Company receives a request from Holders of Registrable Securities that the Company file a Form S-3 registration statement with respect to outstanding Registrable Securities of such Holders having an anticipated aggregate offering price, net of Selling Expenses, of at least $5,000,000, then the Company shall (i) within ten (10) days after the date such request is given, give a Demand Notice to all Holders other than the Initiating Holders, if applicable, and any Other Holders; and (ii) as soon as practicable, and in any event within forty-five (45) days after the date such request is given by the Initiating Holders, file a Form S-3 registration statement under the Securities Act covering all Registrable Securities or equivalent securities requested to be included in such registration by any other Holders or Other Holders, as specified by notice given by each such Holder or Other Holder to the Company within twenty (20) days of the date the Demand Notice is given, and in each case, subject to the applicable limitations of Sections 2.1(f) and 2.3.
(f) Notwithstanding the foregoing obligations, if the Company furnishes to Holders requesting or provided a registration pursuant to this Section 2.1 a certificate signed by the Companys chief executive officer stating that in the good faith judgment of the Board of Directors it would be materially detrimental to the Company and its stockholders for such registration statement to be filed or to either become effective or remain effective for as long as such registration statement otherwise would be required to remain effective, in either case because such action would (i) materially interfere with a significant acquisition, corporate reorganization, or other similar transaction involving the Company; (ii) require premature disclosure of non-public material information that the Company has a bona fide business purpose for preserving as confidential, the disclosure of which would reasonably be expected to materially and adversely
7
affect the Company; or (iii) be prohibited under the Securities Act or Exchange Act, then the Company shall have the right to defer taking action with respect to such filing, and any time periods (and any associated liquidated damages, if any) with respect to filing or effectiveness thereof shall be tolled correspondingly, for a period of not more than sixty (60) days after the request of the Initiating Holders is given; provided, however, that the Company may not invoke this right more than once in any twelve (12) month period; and provided further that the Company shall not register any securities for its own account or that of any other stockholder during such period other than an Excluded Registration.
(g) The Company shall not be obligated to effect, or to take any action to effect, any registration pursuant to Sections 2.1(b), 2.1(c) or 2.1(d): (i) during the period that is thirty (30) days before the Companys good faith estimate of the date of filing of, and ending on a date that is ninety (90) days after the effective date of, a Company-initiated registration (other than an Excluded Registration or pursuant to a Merger Registration Statement), provided that the Company is actively employing its reasonable best efforts to cause such registration statement to become effective or (ii) (A) in the case of the registration rights under Section 2.1(d), after the Company has effected, in the aggregate, two (2) registrations pursuant to Section 2.1(d), (B) in the case of the registration rights under Sections 2.1(b), after the Company has filed one Subsequent Shelf Registration Statement; and (C) in the case of the registration rights under Section 2.1(c), after the Company has effected, in the aggregate, two (2) Shelf Takedowns. The Company shall not be obligated to effect, or to take any action to effect, any registration pursuant to Section 2.1(e): (i) during the period that is thirty (30) days before the Companys good faith estimate of the date of filing of, and ending on a date that is ninety (90) days after the effective date of, a Company-initiated registration (other than an Excluded Registration or pursuant to a Merger Registration Statement), provided that the Company is actively employing its reasonable best efforts to cause such registration statement to become effective; or (ii) if the Company has effected two (2) registrations pursuant to Section 2.1(e) within the twelve (12) month period immediately preceding the date of such request. A registration shall not be counted as effected for purposes of this Section 2.1(g) until such time as the applicable registration statement has been declared effective by the SEC, unless the Initiating Holders withdraw their request for such registration, in which case the Holders shall have be deemed to have forfeited their right to one demand registration statement or Shelf Takedown, as applicable, pursuant to Sections 2.1(c), 2.1(d) or 2.1(e), as the case may be, and such withdrawn registration statement shall be counted as effected for purposes of this Section 2.1(g); provided, that if such withdrawal is during a period the Company has deferred taking action pursuant to Section 2.1(f), then the Initiating Holders may withdraw their request for registration and such registration will not be counted as effected for purposes of this Section 2.1(g).
(h) Liquidated Damages. For each 30-day delay in the filing or effectiveness of the Initial Registration Statement pursuant to Section 2.1(a) (including for each 30-day period the Initial Registration Statement ceases to be effective or is otherwise unavailable for use after it is initially declared effective) (any such failure set forth above, an Event and the date on which such Event occurs, the Event Date), in each case, subject to the applicable limitations of Sections 2.1(f) and 2.3, in addition to any other rights the Holders may have hereunder or under applicable law, the Company shall pay to the Holders on each Event Date and each monthly anniversary of each such Event Date (if the applicable Event shall not have been cured by such date) an amount in cash, as partial liquidated damages and not as a penalty, equal to
8
the product of 0.25% multiplied by the principal amount of the Note (the Monthly Liquidated Damage Amount); provided, however, that the Monthly Liquidated Damage Amount will be capped at the product of 3.0% multiplied by the principal amount of the Note for any delay beyond one year. The liquidated damages pursuant to the terms hereof shall apply on a daily pro rata basis for any portion of a month prior to the cure.
2.2 Company Registration. If the Company proposes to register (including, for this purpose, a registration effected by the Company for stockholders other than the Holders, including pursuant to any Other Registration Rights Agreement (as defined below)) any of its securities under the Securities Act or consummate an underwritten offering pursuant to a previously filed registration statement (in each case other than in an Excluded Registration or pursuant to a Merger Registration Statement), the Company shall, at such time, promptly give each Holder notice of such registration or underwritten offering. Upon the request of each Holder given within twenty (20) days after such notice is given by the Company, the Company shall, subject to the provisions of Section 2.3, cause to be registered for resale all of the Registrable Securities that each such Holder has requested to be included in such registration and/or use its reasonable best efforts to include all of the Registrable Securities that each such Holder has requested to be included in such underwritten offering. If the registration referred to in this Section 2.2 is proposed to be underwritten or the Company proposes to consummate an underwritten offering pursuant to a previously filed registration statement (in each case other than in an Excluded Registration or pursuant to a Merger Registration Statement), the Company will so advise the Holders as a part of the written notice given pursuant to this Section 2.2 and the terms of Section 2.3 shall apply to such underwritten offering. The Company shall have the right to terminate or withdraw any registration or underwritten offering initiated by it before the effective date of such registration or offering, as applicable, whether or not any Holder has elected to include Registrable Securities in such registration or underwritten offering. The expenses (other than Selling Expenses) of such withdrawn registration shall be borne by the Company in accordance with Section 2.6. No withdrawn registration statement filed under this Section 2.2 shall count as one of the permitted demand registrations granted to the Holders under Sections 2.1(c), 2.1(d) or 2.1(e). Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Agreement, if the Company proposes to register (including, for this purpose, a registration effected by the Company for stockholders other than the Holders) any of its securities under the Securities Act pursuant to an Excluded Registration or pursuant to a Merger Registration Statement, the Company shall not be required to include any of the Holders Registrable Securities in such offering.
2.3 Underwriting Requirements.
(a) If, pursuant to Section 2.1, the Initiating Holders intend to distribute the Registrable Securities covered by a registration statement by means of an underwriting, they shall either in the case of (i) an underwriting under a registration statement filed pursuant to Section 2.1(d) or 2.1(e) or (ii) an Underwritten Shelf Takedown, so advise the Company as a part of their request made pursuant to Section 2.1, and the Company shall include such information in the Demand Notice or Shelf Takedown Demand Notice, as applicable. The underwriter(s) will be selected by a majority in interest of the Initiating Holders and shall be reasonably acceptable to the Board of Directors. In such event, the right of any Holder or any other Requesting Holder (as defined below) to include such Holders Registrable Securities and the Requesting Holders securities in such registration shall be conditioned upon such Holders and Requesting Holders,
9
if applicable, participation in such underwriting and the inclusion of such Holders Registrable Securities and the Requesting Holders securities, if applicable, in the underwriting to the extent provided herein. All Holders and Requesting Holders proposing to distribute their securities through such underwriting shall (together with the Company as provided in Section 2.4(e)) enter into an underwriting agreement in customary form with the underwriter(s) selected for such underwriting (which, if the Company is required to be a party thereto, shall be reasonably acceptable to the Company). Notwithstanding any other provision of this Section 2.3, if the managing underwriter(s) advise(s) the Initiating Holders in writing that marketing factors require a limitation on the number of shares to be underwritten, then the Initiating Holders shall so advise all Holders of Registrable Securities, including all Requesting Holders, if applicable, that otherwise would be underwritten pursuant hereto, and the number of securities that may be included in the underwriting shall be allocated among such Holders of Registrable Securities, including the Initiating Holders, and any such other holders of shares of Common Stock that the Company is obligated to register pursuant to written contractual arrangements with such persons (any such agreement, including the PIPE Registration Rights Agreements, an Other Registration Rights Agreement and any such requesting holders thereunder, the Requesting Holders) pro rata in accordance with the number of shares that each such Person has requested be included in such registration, regardless of the number of shares held by each such Person (such proportion is referred to herein as Pro Rata), or in such other proportions as shall mutually be agreed to by all such owners of Common Stock under this Agreement or the Other Registration Rights Agreements; provided, however, that (x) the number of Registrable Securities held by the Holders or equivalent securities held by the Requesting Holders, if applicable, to be included in such underwriting shall not be reduced unless all other securities are first entirely excluded from the underwriting, and (y) the shares held by the Requesting Holders to be underwritten in such offering may be allocated as between the Requesting Holders themselves in accordance with such Other Registration Rights Agreement to which such Requesting Holders may be parties. To facilitate the allocation of shares in accordance with the above provisions, the Company or the underwriters may round the number of shares allocated to any Holder or Requesting Holder to the nearest one hundred (100) shares.
(b) In connection with any offering involving an underwriting of shares of the Companys capital stock pursuant to Section 2.2, the Company shall not be required to include any of the Holders Registrable Securities in such underwriting unless the Holders accept the terms of the underwriting as agreed upon between the Company and its underwriters, and then only in such quantity as the underwriters in their sole discretion determine will not jeopardize the success of the offering by the Company. If the total number of securities, including Registrable Securities, requested by Holders to be included in such offering exceeds the number of securities to be sold (other than by the Company) that the underwriters in their reasonable discretion determine is compatible with the success of the offering, then the Company shall be required to include in the offering only that number of such securities, including Registrable Securities, which the underwriters and the Company in their sole discretion determine will not jeopardize the success of the offering. If the underwriters determine that less than all of the securities, including Registrable Securities, requested to be registered can be included in such offering, then the securities that are included in such offering shall be allocated among (i) first, the Company; and (ii) second, the selling Holders and Requesting Holders on a Pro Rata basis, or in such other proportions as shall mutually be agreed to by the Company and all such owners of Common Stock under this Agreement or the Other Registration Rights Agreements. To facilitate the allocation of
10
shares in accordance with the above provisions, the Company or the underwriters may round the number of shares allocated to any Holder or Requesting Holder to the nearest one hundred (100) shares. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in no event shall (i) the number of Registrable Securities under this Agreement or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements included in the offering be reduced unless all other securities (other than securities to be sold by the Company) are first entirely excluded from the offering, or (ii) the number of Registrable Securities under this Agreement or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements, if applicable, included in the offering be reduced below thirty percent (30%) of the total number of securities included in such offering, unless such offering is the IPO, in which case the selling Holders under this Agreement or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements may be excluded further if the underwriters make the determination described above and no other stockholders securities are included in such offering. For purposes of the provision in this Section 2.3(b) concerning apportionment, for any selling Holder (under this Agreement, or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements) that is a partnership, limited liability company, or corporation, the partners, members, retired partners, retired members, stockholders, and Affiliates of such Holder (under this Agreement, or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements), or the estates and Immediate Family Members of any such partners, retired partners, members, and retired members and any trusts for the benefit of any of the foregoing Persons, shall be deemed to be a single selling Holder (under this Agreement, or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements) and any Pro Rata reduction with respect to such selling Holder shall be based upon the aggregate number of Registrable Securities (under this Agreement or the equivalent under the Other Registration Rights Agreements) owned by all Persons included in such selling Holder, as defined in this sentence.
(c) For purposes of Section 2.1, a registration shall not be counted as effected if, as a result of an exercise of the underwriters cutback provisions in Section 2.3(a), fewer than fifty percent (50%) of the total number of Registrable Securities that Holders have requested to be included in such registration statement are actually included.
2.4 Obligations of the Company. Whenever required under this Section 2 to effect the registration of any Registrable Securities pursuant to a registration statement or Shelf Takedown, as applicable, the Company shall, as expeditiously as reasonably possible:
(a) prepare and file with the SEC a registration statement and timely pay all required filing fees in respect thereof, with respect to such Registrable Securities and use its reasonable best efforts to cause such registration statement to become effective and keep such registration statement effective until the distribution contemplated in the registration statement has been completed;
(b) prepare and file with the SEC, and timely pay all required filing fees in respect of, any such amendments and supplements to such registration statement, and the prospectus used in connection with such registration statement, (i) as may be necessary to comply with the Securities Act, including post-effective amendments to each registration statement as may be necessary to keep such registration statement continuously effective for the applicable time period required hereunder, and if applicable, file any registration statements pursuant to Rule 462(b) promulgated under the Securities Act; (ii) cause the related prospectus to be supplemented by any required prospectus supplement, and as so supplemented to be filed pursuant to Rule 424
11
(or any similar provisions then in force) promulgated under the Securities Act, (iii) as may be necessary to comply with the provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act and any applicable securities exchange or other recognized trading market with respect to the disposition of all securities covered by such Registration Statement during such period in accordance with the intended methods of disposition by the selling Holders thereof set forth in such registration statement as so amended or in such prospectus as so supplemented; (iv) provide additional information related to each registration statement as requested by, and obtain any required approval necessary from, the SEC or any Governmental Entity; and (v) respond as promptly as practicable to any comments received from the SEC and request acceleration of effectiveness promptly after it learns that the SEC will not review the registration statement or after it has satisfied comments received from the SEC;
(c) (i) prior to making any such filings described in clauses (a) or (b) above, at the Companys expense, furnish to the Holders whose securities are covered by the applicable registration statement copies of all such documents, other than documents that are incorporated by reference, proposed to be filed and such other documents reasonably requested by such Holders no less than five (5) Business Days prior to the proposed filing date and (ii) promptly following any such filing, notify the Holders of such filing, the effectiveness of any post-effective amendment, and any written comments by the SEC, blue sky or securities commissioner or regulator of any state with respect to any such filing;
(d) furnish to the selling Holders such numbers of copies of a prospectus, including a preliminary prospectus, as required by the Securities Act, and such other documents as the Holders may reasonably request in order to facilitate their disposition of their Registrable Securities;
(e) use its reasonable best efforts (i) to register and qualify the securities covered by such registration statement under such other securities or blue-sky laws of such jurisdictions as shall be reasonably requested by the selling Holders, (ii) to keep such registration or qualification in effect for so long as such registration statement remains in effect and (iii) to, upon reasonable advance notice from a majority in interest of the Holders, do any and all other acts and things which may be reasonably necessary or advisable to enable such selling Holder to consummate the disposition in such jurisdictions of the Registrable Securities owned by such selling Holder; provided that the Company shall not be required to qualify to do business or to file a general consent to service of process in any such states or jurisdictions, unless the Company is already subject to service in such jurisdiction and except as may be required by the Securities Act;
(f) in the event of any underwritten public offering, enter into and perform its obligations under such customary agreements, in usual and customary form, with the underwriter(s) of such offering (including underwriting agreements in customary form, including customary representations and warranties and provisions with respect to indemnification and contribution) and take all such other actions as the Holders of a majority in interest of the Registrable Securities included in such Shelf Takedown or the underwriters, if any, reasonably request in order to expedite or facilitate the disposition of such Registrable Securities (including effecting a stock split, a combination of shares, or other recapitalization) and provide reasonable cooperation, including causing appropriate officers to attend and participate in road shows and analyst or investor presentations and such other selling or other informational meetings organized by the underwriters, if any, to the extent reasonably requested by the lead or managing underwriters, with all out-of-pocket costs and expenses incurred by the Company or such officers in connection with such attendance and participation to be paid by the Company;
12
(g) use its reasonable best efforts to cause all such Registrable Securities covered by such registration statement to be listed on a national securities exchange or trading system and each securities exchange and trading system (if any) on which similar securities issued by the Company are then listed;
(h) provide a transfer agent and registrar for all Registrable Securities registered pursuant to this Agreement and provide a CUSIP number for all such Registrable Securities, in each case not later than the effective date of such registration;
(i) for a reasonable period prior to the filing of any registration statement, upon reasonable notice and during normal business hours, promptly make available for inspection and copying by the selling Holders, any managing underwriter(s) participating in any disposition pursuant to such registration statement or Shelf Takedown, and any attorney or accountant or other agent retained by any such Holder or underwriter or selected by the selling Holders, those financial and other records, pertinent corporate documents, and properties of the Company, and cause the Companys officers, directors, employees, and independent accountants to supply all information reasonably requested by any such seller, underwriter, attorney, accountant, or agent, in each case, as necessary, advisable or desirable solely for purposes of such registration statement or Shelf Takedown, as applicable, and to conduct appropriate due diligence in connection therewith; provided that the recipient agrees to keep such information confidential (to the extent the Company indicates such information is confidential);
(j) in the event of any underwritten public offering, permit any Holder of Registrable Securities registering shares in such offering (provided that the aggregate offering price of the Registrable Securities to be registered by such Holder in such offering, net of such Holders Pro Rata share of the Selling Expenses for such offering, is anticipated to equal or exceed $5,000,000), such Holders respective counsel, any underwriter participating in any disposition pursuant to a registration statement, and any other attorney, accountant or other agent retained by any such Holder of Registrable Securities or underwriter, to participate (including, but not limited to, reviewing, commenting on and attending all meetings) in the preparation of such registration statement and any prospectus supplements relating to a Shelf Takedown, if applicable;
(k) notify each selling Holder, promptly after the Company receives notice thereof, of the time when such registration statement has been declared effective or a supplement to any prospectus forming a part of such registration statement has been filed, unless such notice shall have been made public on the SECs EDGAR website;
(l) after such registration statement becomes effective, notify each selling Holder of any request by the SEC that the Company amend or supplement such registration statement or prospectus;
13
(m) use its reasonable best efforts to cooperate with each Holder of Registrable Securities and each underwriter participating in the disposition of such Registrable Securities and underwriters counsel in connection with filings required to be made with FINRA, if any, including using reasonable best efforts to obtain FINRAs pre-clearance and pre-approval of the applicable registration statement and prospectus upon filing with the SEC;
(n) obtain and furnish to each such Holder of Registrable Securities, including Registrable Securities in a Shelf Takedown or underwritten offering, copies of (i) a customary cold comfort and bring down letter from the Companys independent public accountants, (ii) a customary legal opinion of counsel to the Company addressed to the relevant underwriters, in each case in customary form and covering such matters of the type customarily covered by such letters as the managing underwriters in such Shelf Takedown reasonably request, (iii) a negative assurances letter of counsel to the Company in customary form and covering such matters of the type customarily covered by such letters as the managing underwriters in such Shelf Takedown reasonably request, and (iv) customary certificates executed by authorized officers of the Company as may be requested by any Holder or any underwriter of such Registrable Securities included in such Shelf Takedown;
(o) with respect to each Free Writing Prospectus or other materials to be included in the Disclosure Package, ensure that no Registrable Securities be sold by means of (as defined in Rule 159A(b) promulgated under the Securities Act) such Free Writing Prospectus or other materials without the prior written consent of a majority of the Holders of the Registrable Securities that are being sold pursuant to such Free Writing Prospectus;
(p) pay the fees of the Companys transfer agent and any reasonable, documented legal fees of outside counsel to the Company to provide an opinion to the effect that such transfer is permitted under the Securities Act and applicable state laws (or if outside counsel to the Company is unwilling or unavailable to provide such opinion, the reasonable, documented legal fees of one outside counsel to the Holders to provide such opinion) to effectuate the transfer of Registrable Securities from Holders to other Persons, as permitted by Section 3.1; provided, in each case, that such Holders shall provide such certificates and other documentation as the Company or the Companys transfer agent shall reasonably request in connection with such opinions and transfers; and
(q) use its reasonable best efforts to take all other actions necessary to effect the registration and sale of the Registrable Securities contemplated hereby.
2.5 Furnish Information. It shall be a condition precedent to the obligations of the Company to take any action pursuant to this Section 2 with respect to the Registrable Securities of any selling Holder that such Holder shall furnish to the Company such information regarding itself, the Registrable Securities held by it, and the intended method of disposition of such securities as is reasonably required to effect the registration of such Holders Registrable Securities.
2.6 Expenses of Registration. All expenses (other than Selling Expenses) arising from, incident to or incurred in connection with registrations, filings, or qualifications pursuant to this Agreement, including, without limitation, all registration, filing, listing and qualification fees; printers and accounting fees; fees and disbursements of counsel for the Company and its independent public accountants and any other accounting and legal fees, charges
14
and expenses incurred by the Company (including any expenses arising from any special audits or comfort letters required in connection with or incident to any sale of Registrable Securities pursuant to a registration); the reasonable and documented fees and disbursements, not to exceed $25,000 per registration, of one counsel for the selling Holders (Selling Holders Counsel); fees and expenses incurred in connection with any road show for underwritten offerings, including travel expenses, shall be borne and paid by the Company, not to exceed $50,000; provided, however, that if any registration proceeding begun pursuant to Section 2.1 is subsequently withdrawn at the request of the Holders of a majority of the Registrable Securities to be registered (other than during a period of delay under Section 2.1(f)), then the Holders shall be deemed to have forfeited their right to one registration (representing such withdrawn registration) pursuant to Sections 2.1(c), 2.1(d) or 2.1(e), unless the Company is reimbursed by such Holders requesting withdrawal for all reasonable and documented out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the Company in connection with such registration (including reasonable fees of outside legal counsel and third party accountants; provided, further, that if at the time of such withdrawal, the Holders shall have learned of a material adverse change in the condition, business or prospects of the Company from that known to the Holders at the time of their request and have withdrawn the request within a reasonable time after learning such information, then the Holders shall not be required to pay any such expenses and shall not forfeit their right to one registration pursuant to Sections 2.1(c), 2.1(d) or 2.1(e). All Selling Expenses relating to Registrable Securities registered pursuant to this Section 2 shall be borne and paid by the Holders Pro Rata on the basis of the number of Registrable Securities registered on their behalf.
2.7 Delay of Registration. No Holder shall have any right to obtain or seek an injunction restraining or otherwise delaying any registration pursuant to this Agreement as the result of any controversy that might arise with respect to the interpretation or implementation of this Section 2.
2.8 Indemnification. If any Registrable Securities are included in a registration statement under this Section 2:
(a) To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Company will indemnify and hold harmless each Holder of Registrable Securities, and the Affiliates, partners, members, managers, officers, directors, and equityholders of each such Holder; legal counsel and accountants for each such Holder; any underwriter (as defined in the Securities Act) for each such Holder; and each Person, if any, who controls such Holder or underwriter within the meaning of the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, against any Damages; provided, however, that the indemnity agreement contained in this Section 2.8(a) shall not apply to amounts paid in settlement of any such claim or proceeding if such settlement is effected without the consent of the Company, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, nor shall the Company be liable for any Damages to the extent that they arise out of or are based upon actions or omissions made in reliance upon and in conformity with written information furnished by or on behalf of any such Holder, underwriter, controlling Person, or other aforementioned Person expressly for use in connection with such registration.
15
(b) To the fullest extent permitted by law, each Holder of Registrable Securities, severally and not jointly, will indemnify and hold harmless the Company, and each of its Affiliates, directors, each of its officers who has signed the registration statement, each Person (if any), who controls the Company within the meaning of the Securities Act, legal counsel and accountants for the Company, any underwriter (as defined in the Securities Act), against any Damages, in each case only to the extent that such Damages arise out of or are based upon actions or omissions made in reliance upon and in conformity with written information furnished by or on behalf of such Holder expressly for use in connection with such registration; provided, however, that the indemnity agreement contained in this Section 2.8(b) shall not apply to amounts paid in settlement of any such claim or proceeding if such settlement is effected without the consent of the majority in interest of the Holders, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld; and provided further that in no event shall the aggregate amounts payable by any Holder by way of indemnity or contribution under Sections 2.8(b) and 2.8(d) exceed the proceeds from the offering received by such Holder (net of any Selling Expenses paid or incurred by such Holder), except in the case of fraud or willful misconduct by such Holder; provided, further, that a Holder shall not be liable in any case to the extent that prior to the filing of any such registration statement or Disclosure Package, or any amendment thereof or supplement thereto, such Holder has furnished in writing to the Company, information expressly for use in, and within a reasonable period of time prior to the effectiveness of such registration statement or Disclosure Package, or any amendment thereof or supplement thereto which corrected or made not misleading information previously provided to the Company.
(c) Promptly after receipt by an indemnified party under this Section 2.8 of notice of the commencement of any action (including any governmental action) for which a party may be entitled to indemnification hereunder, such indemnified party will, if a claim in respect thereof is to be made against any indemnifying party under this Section 2.8, give the indemnifying party notice of the commencement thereof. The indemnifying party shall have the right to participate in such action and, to the extent the indemnifying party so desires, participate jointly with any other indemnifying party to which notice has been given, and to assume the defense thereof with counsel mutually satisfactory to the parties; provided, however, that an indemnified party (together with all other indemnified parties that may be represented without conflict by one counsel) shall have the right to retain one separate counsel, with the fees and expenses to be paid by the indemnifying party, if representation of such indemnified party by the counsel retained by the indemnifying party would be inappropriate due to actual or potential differing interests between such indemnified party and any other party represented by such counsel in such action. Any failure on the part of the applicable indemnified party to give notice to the indemnifying party will not relieve the indemnifying party of any liability that it may have to any indemnified party under this Section 2.8 to the extent that such failure to give notice is not materially prejudicial to the indemnifying party.
(d) To provide for just and equitable contribution to joint liability under the Securities Act in any case in which either: (i) any party otherwise entitled to indemnification hereunder makes a claim for indemnification pursuant to this Section 2.8 but it is judicially determined (by the entry of a final judgment or decree by a court of competent jurisdiction and the expiration of time to appeal or the denial of the last right of appeal) that such indemnification may not be enforced in such case, notwithstanding the fact that this Section 2.8 provides for indemnification in such case, or (ii) contribution under the Securities Act may be required on the part of any party hereto for which indemnification is provided under this Section 2.8, then, and in each such case, such parties will contribute to the aggregate losses, claims, damages, liabilities, or expenses to which they may be subject (after contribution from others) in such proportion as is appropriate to reflect the relative fault of each of the indemnifying party and the indemnified party
16
in connection with the statements, omissions, or other actions that resulted in such loss, claim, damage, liability, or expense, as well as to reflect any other relevant equitable considerations. The relative fault of the indemnifying party and of the indemnified party shall be determined by reference to, among other things, whether the untrue or allegedly untrue statement of a material fact, or the omission or alleged omission of a material fact, relates to information supplied by the indemnifying party or by the indemnified party and the parties relative intent, knowledge, access to information, and opportunity to correct or prevent such statement or omission; provided, however, that, in any such case (x) no Holder will be required to contribute any amount in excess of the public offering price of all such Registrable Securities offered and sold by such Holder pursuant to such registration statement, and (y) no Person guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation (within the meaning of Section 11(f) of the Securities Act) will be entitled to contribution from any Person who was not guilty of such fraudulent misrepresentation; and provided further that in no event shall a Holders liability pursuant to this Section 2.8(d), when combined with the amounts paid or payable by such Holder pursuant to Section 2.8(b), exceed the proceeds from the offering received by such Holder (net of any Selling Expenses paid or incurred by such Holder), except in the case of willful misconduct or fraud by such Holder. For the avoidance of doubt, the amount paid or payable by an indemnified party as a result of the Damages (or actions in respect thereof) referred to above in this Section 2.8(d) shall be deemed to include any documented legal or other expenses reasonably incurred by such indemnified party in connection with investigating, preparing or defending any such action or claim.
(e) Notwithstanding the foregoing, to the extent that the provisions on indemnification and contribution contained in the underwriting agreement entered into in connection with the underwritten public offering are in conflict with the foregoing provisions, the provisions in the underwriting agreement shall control; provided, however, that the foregoing provisions shall control as to any matter provided for or addressed therein that are not provided for or addressed in the underwriting agreement.
(f) Unless otherwise superseded by an underwriting agreement entered into in connection with the underwritten public offering, the obligations of the Company and Holders under this Section 2.8 shall survive the completion of any offering of Registrable Securities in a registration under this Section 2, and otherwise shall survive the termination of this Agreement or any provisions hereof.
2.9 Reports Under Exchange Act. With a view to making available to the Holders the benefits of SEC Rule 144 and any other rule or regulation of the SEC that may at any time permit a Holder to sell securities of the Company to the public without registration or pursuant to a registration on Form S-1 or Form S-3, the Company shall:
(a) make and keep available adequate current public information, as those terms are understood and defined in SEC Rule 144, at all times after the effective date of the registration statement filed by the Company for any Qualified Public Company Event;
(b) use reasonable best efforts to file with the SEC in a timely manner all reports and other documents required of the Company under the Securities Act and the Exchange Act (at any time after the Company has become subject to such reporting requirements);
17
(c) furnish to any Holder, so long as the Holder owns any Registrable Securities, forthwith upon request (i) to the extent accurate, a written statement by the Company that it has complied with the reporting requirements of SEC Rule 144 (at any time after ninety (90) days after the effective date of the registration statement filed by the Company for any Qualified Public Company Event), the Securities Act, and the Exchange Act (at any time after the Company has become subject to such reporting requirements), or that it qualifies as a registrant whose securities may be resold pursuant to Form S-3 (at any time after the Company so qualifies); and (ii) such other information as may be reasonably requested in availing any Holder of any rule or regulation of the SEC that permits the selling of any such securities without registration (at any time after the Company has become subject to the reporting requirements under the Exchange Act) or pursuant to Form S-3 (at any time after the Company so qualifies to use such form); and
(d) upon request of any Holder, upon receipt by the Company of an opinion of counsel reasonably satisfactory to the Company and its outside legal counsel to the effect that any legend affixed to any Registrable Securities is no longer required under the Securities Act and applicable state laws, the Company shall promptly cause such legend to be removed from any certificate for any Registrable Securities, including by providing any opinion of counsel to the Company that may be required by the transfer agent to effect such removal.
2.10 Limitations on Subsequent Registration Rights. From and after the date of this Agreement, the Company shall not, without the prior written consent of the Holders of a majority of the Registrable Securities then outstanding, enter into any agreement with any holder or prospective holder of any securities of the Company that would (i) other than pursuant to an underwriter cutback under an Other Registration Rights Agreement that is consistent with Section 2.3, allow such holder or prospective holder to include such securities in any registration unless, under the terms of such agreement, such holder or prospective holder may include such securities in any such registration only to the extent that the inclusion of such securities will not reduce the number of the Registrable Securities of the Holders that are included except on a pari passu and pro rata basis based on the number of shares to be registered in an offering by the Holders and such other holders or prospective holders; or (ii) allow such holder or prospective holder to initiate a demand for registration of any securities held by such holder or prospective holder.
2.11 Termination of Registration Rights. The right of any Holder to request registration or inclusion of Registrable Securities in any registration pursuant to Sections 2.1 or 2.2 shall terminate upon the earlier to occur of fifth (5th) anniversary of the IPO, Direct Listing or SPAC Transaction, whichever occurs earlier.
2.12 Successor Indemnification. If the Company or any of its successors or assignees consolidates with or merges into any other Person and is not the continuing or surviving corporation or entity of such consolidation or merger, then to the extent necessary, proper provision shall be made so that the successors and assignees of the Company assume the obligations of the Company with respect to indemnification of members of the Board of Directors as in effect immediately before such transaction, whether such obligations are contained in the Companys operating documents, or elsewhere, as the case may be.
18
2.13 Most Favored Nation. Without limiting Section 2.10, to the extent that the Company, on or after the date hereof, grants any such superior or more favorable rights or terms relating to the subject matter of this Agreement to any Person (including pursuant to Other Registration Rights Agreements) than those provided to the Holders as set forth herein, any such superior or more favorable rights or terms shall also be deemed to have been granted simultaneously to each Holder on the date of such grant and the Company shall amend this Agreement to reflect such superior or more favorable rights.
3. Miscellaneous.
3.1 Successors and Assigns. The rights under this Agreement may be assigned (but only with all related obligations) by a Holder to any transferee or assignee in connection with any transfer, assignment or other conveyance of Registrable Securities (other than a transfer pursuant to a registration statement or under Rule 144 promulgated under the Securities Act); provided, however, that (x) the Company is, within a reasonable time after such transfer, furnished with written notice of the name and address of such transferee and the Registrable Securities with respect to which such rights are being transferred; and (y) such transferee agrees in a written instrument delivered to the Company to be bound by and subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. For the purposes of determining the number of shares of Registrable Securities held by a transferee, the holdings of a transferee that is an Affiliate or stockholder of a Holder shall be aggregated together and with those of the transferring Holder; provided that all transferees who would not qualify individually for assignment of rights shall, as a condition to the applicable transfer, establish a single attorney-in-fact for the purpose of exercising any rights, receiving notices, or taking any action under this Agreement. The terms and conditions of this Agreement inure to the benefit of and are binding upon the respective successors and permitted assignees of the parties. Nothing in this Agreement, express or implied, is intended to confer upon any party other than the parties hereto or their respective successors and permitted assignees any rights, remedies, obligations or liabilities under or by reason of this Agreement, except as expressly provided herein.
3.2 Governing Law. This Agreement shall be governed by the internal law of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict of law principles that would result in the application of any law other than the law of the State of Delaware.
3.3 Counterparts. This Agreement may be executed in two (2) or more counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original, but all of which together shall constitute one and the same instrument. Counterparts may be delivered via facsimile, electronic mail (including pdf or any electronic signature complying with the U.S. federal ESIGN Act of 2000, e.g., www.docusign.com) or other transmission method and any counterpart so delivered shall be deemed to have been duly and validly delivered and be valid and effective for all purposes.
3.4 Titles and Subtitles. The titles and subtitles used in this Agreement are for convenience only and are not to be considered in construing or interpreting this Agreement.
19
3.5 Notices.
(a) All notices and other communications given or made pursuant to this Agreement shall be in writing and shall be deemed effectively given upon the earlier of actual receipt or (i) personal delivery to the party to be notified; (ii) when sent, if sent by electronic mail (provided no notice of non-delivery is generated); (iii) five (5) days after having been sent by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, postage prepaid; or (iv) one (1) Business Day after the Business Day of deposit with a nationally recognized overnight courier, freight prepaid, specifying next-day delivery, with written verification of receipt. All communications shall be sent to the respective parties at their addresses as set forth on the signature pages or Schedule A hereto, or to the principal office of the Company and to the attention of Michael Intrator in the case of the Company, or to such email address, facsimile number, or address as subsequently modified by written notice given in accordance with this Section 3.5. If notice is given to the Company, a copy (which copy shall not constitute notice) shall also be sent to McGrath North Mullin & Kratz, PC LLO, Attention: Jason D. Benson, and if notice is given to the Holders, a copy (which copy shall not constitute notice) shall also be given to Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, Attention: Eric Halperin and Sean Ewen.
(b) Consent to Electronic Notice. Each Investor consents to the delivery of any stockholder notice pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law (the DGCL), as amended or superseded from time to time, by electronic transmission pursuant to Section 232 of the DGCL (or any successor thereto) at the electronic mail address or the facsimile number set forth below such Investors name on the Schedules hereto, as updated from time to time by notice to the Company, or as on the books of the Company. To the extent that any notice given by means of electronic transmission is returned or undeliverable for any reason, the foregoing consent shall be deemed to have been revoked until a new or corrected electronic mail address has been provided, and such attempted Electronic Notice shall be ineffective and deemed to not have been given. Each Investor agrees to promptly notify the Company of any change in such Investors electronic mail address, and that failure to do so shall not affect the foregoing.
3.6 Amendments and Waivers. Any term of this Agreement may be amended, modified or terminated and the observance of any term of this Agreement may be waived (either generally or in a particular instance, and either retroactively or prospectively) only with the written consent of the Company and the holders of a majority of the Registrable Securities; provided that any provision hereof may be waived by any waiving party on such partys own behalf, without the consent of any other party. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Schedule A hereto may be amended by the Company from time to time to add transferees of any Registrable Securities in compliance with the terms of this Agreement without the consent of the other parties. The Company shall give prompt notice of any amendment, modification or termination hereof or waiver hereunder to any party hereto that did not consent in writing to such amendment, modification, termination, or waiver. Any amendment, modification, termination, or waiver effected in accordance with this Section 3.6 shall be binding on all parties hereto, regardless of whether any such party has consented thereto. No waivers of or exceptions to any term, condition, or provision of this Agreement, in any one or more instances, shall be deemed to be or construed as a further or continuing waiver of any such term, condition, or provision.
3.7 Severability. In case any one or more of the provisions contained in this Agreement is for any reason held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any respect, such invalidity, illegality, or unenforceability shall not affect any other provision of this Agreement, and such invalid, illegal, or unenforceable provision shall be reformed and construed so that it will be valid, legal, and enforceable to the maximum extent permitted by law.
20
3.8 Aggregation of Stock; Apportionment. All shares of Registrable Securities held or acquired by Affiliates shall be aggregated together for the purpose of determining the availability of any rights under this Agreement and such Affiliated persons may apportion such rights as among themselves in any manner they deem appropriate.
3.9 Entire Agreement. This Agreement (including any Schedules and Exhibits hereto) constitutes the full and entire understanding and agreement among the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof, and any other written or oral agreement relating to the subject matter hereof existing between the parties is expressly canceled.
3.10 Dispute Resolution. The parties (a) hereby irrevocably and unconditionally submit to the jurisdiction of the state courts of Delaware and to the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware for the purpose of any suit, action or other proceeding arising out of or based upon this Agreement, (b) agree not to commence any suit, action or other proceeding arising out of or based upon this Agreement except in the state courts of Delaware or the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, and (c) hereby waive, and agree not to assert, by way of motion, as a defense, or otherwise, in any such suit, action or proceeding, any claim that it is not subject personally to the jurisdiction of the above-named courts, that its property is exempt or immune from attachment or execution, that the suit, action or proceeding is brought in an inconvenient forum, that the venue of the suit, action or proceeding is improper or that this Agreement or the subject matter hereof may not be enforced in or by such court.
WAIVER OF JURY TRIAL: EACH PARTY HEREBY WAIVES ITS RIGHTS TO A JURY TRIAL OF ANY CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION BASED UPON OR ARISING OUT OF THIS AGREEMENT, THE OTHER NOTE ISSUANCE AGREEMENT DOCUMENTS, THE SECURITIES OR THE SUBJECT MATTER HEREOF OR THEREOF. THE SCOPE OF THIS WAIVER IS INTENDED TO BE ALL ENCOMPASSING OF ANY AND ALL DISPUTES THAT MAY BE FILED IN ANY COURT AND THAT RELATE TO THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THIS TRANSACTION, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, CONTRACT CLAIMS, TORT CLAIMS (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), BREACH OF DUTY CLAIMS, AND ALL OTHER COMMON LAW AND STATUTORY CLAIMS. THIS SECTION HAS BEEN FULLY DISCUSSED BY EACH OF THE PARTIES HERETO AND THESE PROVISIONS WILL NOT BE SUBJECT TO ANY EXCEPTIONS. EACH PARTY HERETO HEREBY FURTHER WARRANTS AND REPRESENTS THAT SUCH PARTY HAS REVIEWED THIS WAIVER WITH ITS LEGAL COUNSEL, AND THAT SUCH PARTY KNOWINGLY AND VOLUNTARILY WAIVES ITS JURY TRIAL RIGHTS FOLLOWING CONSULTATION WITH LEGAL COUNSEL.
The prevailing party shall be entitled to reasonable attorneys fees, costs, and necessary disbursements in addition to any other relief to which such party may be entitled.
3.11 Delays or Omissions. No delay or omission to exercise any right, power, or remedy accruing to any party under this Agreement, upon any breach or default of any other party under this Agreement, shall impair any such right, power, or remedy of such non-breaching or non-defaulting party, nor shall it be construed to be a waiver of or acquiescence to any such breach or default, or to any similar breach or default thereafter occurring, nor shall any waiver of any single breach or default be deemed a waiver of any other breach or default theretofore or thereafter occurring. All remedies, whether under this Agreement or by law or otherwise afforded to any party, shall be cumulative and not alternative.
21
3.12 Effect of Restatement. This Agreement amends, restates and replaces in its entirety the Original Agreement. All rights, benefits, liabilities and obligations of the parties to the Original Agreement are hereby amended, restated, replaced and superseded in their entirety according to the terms and provisions set forth herein.
[Signature Pages Follow]
22
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed this Registration Rights Agreement as of the date first written above.
COMPANY: | ||
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Name: Michael Intrator | ||
Title: Chief Executive Officer | ||
Email: | ||
Address: |
INVESTORS: | ||
MAGNETAR XING HE MASTER FUND LTD | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
MAGNETAR SC FUND LTD | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
MAGNETAR LONGHORN FUND, LP | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
PURPOSE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT FUND - F LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel |
PURPOSE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT FUND T LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
MAGNETAR LAKE CREDIT FUND, LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
MAGNETAR ALPHA STAR FUND LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
MAGNETAR CONSTELLATION MASTER FUND, LTD | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its Investment Manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel | ||
MAGNETAR STRUCTURED CREDIT FUND, LP | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its General Partner | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: Karl Wachter | ||
Title: General Counsel |
Address for Investors:
c/o Magnetar Financial LLC Attention: Chief Legal Officer Telephone: Fax: Email: |
SCHEDULE A
Investors
REGISTRATION RIGHTS WAIVER AND AMENDMENT
This Registration Rights Waiver and Amendment (this Waiver) is given as of March 19, 2025, by the undersigned parties in connection with that certain Amended and Restated Registration Rights Agreement, dated as of October 17, 2022 (as amended, restated or otherwise modified from time to time, including pursuant to this Waiver, the Rights Agreement), by and among CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), the entities listed on Schedule A-1 party to the Rights Agreement immediately prior to the execution of this Waiver (the Existing Investors) and the entities listed on Schedule A-2 joining the Rights Agreement pursuant to this Waiver (the New Investors and, together with the Existing Investors, the Investors) and Magnetar Financial LLC (the Magnetar Representative), on behalf of the Investors. Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the Rights Agreement.
RECITALS
WHEREAS, the Company is planning an underwritten public offering of the Companys Class A Common Stock (the Public Offering) pursuant to a Registration Statement on Form S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 3, 2025, as may be amended.
WHEREAS, the Company has agreed to allow the stockholders listed on Schedule B attached hereto (the Selling Stockholders) to sell, at maximum, the certain amount of Class A Common Stock in the Public Offering as set forth opposite each Person listed on Schedule B.
WHEREAS, certain investors (the IRA Investors) party to that certain Third Amended and Restated Investors Rights Agreement, dated as of May 16, 2024 (as amended, restated or otherwise modified from time to time, the Investor Rights Agreement), have agreed to waive certain rights provided to the IRA Investors pursuant to the Investor Rights Agreement in connection with the Public Offering.
WHEREAS, in connection with the Public Offering, and as an inducement for the Company and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, and Goldman, Sachs & Co. LLC, as the representatives of the several underwriters that are underwriting the Public Offering (collectively, the Representatives), to continue their efforts in connection with the Public Offering, the undersigned Investors shall enter into this Waiver.
WHEREAS, the Companys Board of Directors has determined it is in the best interests of the Company and its stockholders to request the Investors to waive certain of the provisions in the Rights Agreement with respect to registration rights.
WHEREAS, Section 3.6 of the Rights Agreement requires the written consent of the Company and the holders of a majority of the Registrable Securities to waive provisions of the Rights Agreement relating to registration rights (the Requisite Majority).
WHEREAS, the undersigned Investors represent the Requisite Majority and, individually and on behalf of all other Investors, desire to waive certain of the registration rights provided in Section 2.2 of the Rights Agreement with respect to the Public Offering and effect the amendments to the Rights Agreement set forth herein.
NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the foregoing recitals and for other good and valuable consideration, the adequacy and sufficiency of which are hereby acknowledged, the undersigned hereby agree as follows:
1. Incorporation of Recitals. Each of the above recitals is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Waiver of Certain Registration Rights. Subject to the satisfaction of the Waiver Conditions (as defined below), the undersigned parties, collectively representing the Requisite Majority, hereby waive on behalf of themselves and all other Investors, the registration rights provided Section 2.2 of the Rights Agreement with respect to the Public Offering only (the IPO Participation Rights), and any related notice rights or other procedural requirements that are directly and solely connected to the IPO Participation Rights.
For purposes of this Waiver, the Waiver Conditions means each of the following is true and correct in all respects:
(i) No Person is included or permitted to be included in such Public Offering other than the Company and the Selling Stockholders and, with respect to the Selling Stockholders, no Selling Stockholder is permitted to participate or participates in an amount in excess of the maximum set forth on Schedule B applicable thereto (prior to giving effect to any stock split contemplated in connection with the Public Offering); and
(ii) Each IRA Investor, each stockholder individually owning more than 1.0% of the Companys outstanding capital stock (in each case, after giving effect to all conversions of Preferred Stock) enters and delivers a counterpart to the underwriter lock-up agreement related to the Public Offering attached hereto as Schedule C (the Lock-up Agreement) (it being understood that any deviations from the form attached hereto as Schedule C shall be provided to the Magnetar Representative in advance of execution and no underwriter lock-up agreement granting any superior or more favorable rights to a stockholder than those set forth in Schedule C may be executed without consent (which may be by email) by the Magnetar Representative).
3. Waiver Consent. Prior to and during the Restricted Period, the Company hereby acknowledges and agrees that it shall not, execute or provide in any manner any amendment or waiver with respect to, grant any early release in respect of or otherwise modify obligations of any other person relating to the subject matter of this Waiver, the Rights Agreement, the Investor Rights Agreement or any contractual agreement between the Company and any Person in which such Person covenants to refrain from disposing of any securities of the Company in any respect, in each case without the prior written consent of the Magnetar Representative.
4. Applicability of Waiver. The undersigned parties understand and acknowledge that by executing this Waiver, and conditioned upon satisfaction of the Waiver Conditions, the waivers set forth in Section 2 shall be effective and binding on the undersigned parties, each holder of any Registrable Securities, each future holder of all such Registrable Securities, and the Company.
5. Amendments and Modifications to Rights Agreement. The undersigned parties hereby acknowledge and agree that:
a. | Each of the undersigned entities listed on Schedule A-2 shall become a party to the Rights Agreement, benefiting therefrom and becoming bound thereby, with all of the attendant rights, benefits and duties stated therein, with the same force and effect as if originally named therein as an Investor and a Holder. |
b. | Section 1.20 of the Rights Agreement is hereby amended and restated in its entirety to read as follows: |
1.20 Registrable Securities means (i) the Common Stock issued upon conversion of the First Notes (or, before a Qualified Public Company Event, upon conversion of the Conversion Stock issued upon conversion of the First Notes), (ii) the Warrants, including all Warrants owned by any Investor as of the date any series or class of the Companys securities becomes listed on an exchange registered as a national securities exchange under Section 6 of the Exchange Act (a National Securities Exchange), (iii) the Common Stock issued upon exercise of the Warrants, (iv) any shares of the Companys Class A Common Stock of the Company held by any Investor as of the date any series or class of the Companys securities becomes listed on a National Securities Exchange, including, without limitation, such shares (x) issuable or issued upon conversion of the preferred stock of the Company or (y) issued or issuable (directly or indirectly) upon conversion and/or exercise of any other securities of the Company, owned as of the date any series or class of the Companys securities becomes listed on a National Securities Exchange; and (v) any Common Stock issued as a dividend or other distribution with respect to, or in exchange for or in replacement of, the shares referenced in clauses (i) through (v) above.
c. | The section header and first sentence of Section 2.1(a) are hereby amended and restated in their entirety as follows: |
2.1 Shelf Demand. If the Company closes the SPAC Transaction or other Qualified Public Company Event, the Company covenants and agrees, upon the request of one or more of the Holders, to file a registration statement for a Shelf Registration registering the resale of the Registrable Securities on a delayed or continuous basis, on Form S-1 or Form S-3 (if available) (the Initial Registration Statement and together with any Subsequent Shelf Registration (as defined below), the Shelf), if any, no later than forty five (45) days such request and use its reasonable best efforts to have the Initial Registration Statement declared effective as soon as practicable after the filing thereof, but no later than seventy-five (75) days following such request (or ninety (90) days if the SEC notifies the SPAC or the Company, as applicable, that it will review the Initial Registration Statement).
6. Covenants of the Company. The Company agrees with the several Investors that:
(a) Prior to and during the Restricted Period (as defined in the Lock-up Agreement) the Company shall not permit any Person, other than the Investors, to have any superior or more favorable rights or terms relating to the subject matter of the Rights Agreement or the Investor Rights Agreement than those provided to the Magnetar Entities (as defined below).
(b) With respect to securities of the Company held by Magnetar Entities, so long as such securities are not subject to any contractual lock up agreement with the underwriters in the Public Offering, upon request by the applicable Magnetar Entity or the Magnetar Representative on any such Persons behalf, the Company shall, at its expense, cause, upon satisfactory receipt by the Company of customary and reasonable representation letters (in the form attached as Exhibit A attached hereto) from the applicable Magnetar Entities, its internal counsel and use best efforts to cause its external counsel to deliver required legal opinions, certificates and other instruments to the Companys transfer agent to remove restrictive legends from the applicable securities that are restricted securities upon a sale pursuant to, and in compliance with, Rule 144 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), that is executed at least six months following the acquisition thereof, or, in the absence of a sale and so long as the holder thereof is not, and has not been for the immediately preceding 90 days prior to the date of sale, an affiliate of the Company (it being understood and agreed that
based upon the information concerning the Magnetar Entities set forth in the Registration Statement on Form S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 20, 2025, the Company and the Magnetar Entities acknowledge that upon consummation of the Public Offering, none of the Magnetar Entities will be an affiliate of the Company) and such securities have otherwise been held for longer than one year following the acquisition date thereof (in each case, taking into account permitted tacking under Rule 144 under the Securities Act). At the option of any Magnetar Entity in its sole discretion or the Magnetar Representative on any such Persons behalf, such Magnetar Entity may elect, if then permitted by the Companys transfer agent, to have its counsel deliver any required opinion and in such case the Company will instruct its transfer agent to accept a legal opinion delivered by counsel to the undersigned in connection with the foregoing . The Company shall use best efforts to cause securities of the Company held by Magnetar Entities to be eligible for book-entry deposit and trading through The Depository Trust Company (DTC) upon legend removal, including, without limitation, the execution of any certificates or other instruments to one or more broker/dealers nominated by a Magnetar Entity.
For purposes of this Waiver, the Magnetar Entities means (a) Magnetar Financial LLC or any affiliate thereof, (b) any entity, investment vehicle, account or fund that is directly or indirectly owned, managed, advised, sub-advised or controlled by or under common control or ownership with Magnetar Financial LLC or any affiliate thereof or (c) Magnetar Constellation Master Fund Ltd; Magnetar Structured Credit Fund LP; Magnetar Xing He Master Fund Ltd; Magnetar SC Fund Ltd; Magnetar Longhorn Fund LP; Purpose Alternative Credit Fund F LLC; Purpose Alternative Credit Fund T LLC; Magnetar Lake Credit Fund LLC; Magnetar Alpha Star Fund LLC; Magnetar Capital Master Fund; Longhorn Special Opportunities Fund LP; CW Opportunity LLC; and CW Opportunity 2 LP.
7. Specific Performance. The parties hereto agree that irreparable damage would occur if any provision of this Waiver or the Rights Agreement were not performed in accordance with the terms hereof or thereof, as applicable, and that, in addition to any other remedy available at law or in equity, the Investors shall be entitled to an injunction or injunctions to prevent breaches of this Waiver or the Rights Agreement and to enforce specifically the performance of the terms and provisions hereof and thereof, as applicable.
8. Assignability of Waiver. This waiver is not assignable by the Company and shall be assignable by the Investors to any Magnetar Entity. The Representatives shall be third party beneficiaries hereof. The undersigned understands that the Company and the Representatives are relying upon this Waiver.
9. Waiver Expiration. The waivers and amendments set forth herein shall expire upon the earliest to occur, if any, of (i) the date the Company advises the Representatives, in writing, prior to the execution of an underwriting agreement (the Underwriting Agreement) providing for the Public Offering, that it has determined not to proceed with the Public Offering, (ii) the date of the termination of the Underwriting Agreement if prior to the closing of the Public Offering or (iii) April 30, 2025 if (x) the Underwriting Agreement has not been executed and delivered by the Company by such date or (y) the registration statement in respect of the Public Offering has not become effective as of such date, and in each case, the Waiver shall automatically terminate and be null and void.
10. Counterparts. This Waiver may be executed in counterparts, delivered by facsimile or portable document format (.pdf or similar format), each of which will constitute an original and all of which together will constitute one agreement.
11. Miscellaneous. Except as expressly set forth herein, this Waiver shall not apply to any other provisions of the Rights Agreement. Sections 3.2, 3.4, 3.5, 3.7, 3.10 and 3.11 of the Rights Agreement are incorporated herein and shall apply hereto, mutatis mutandis.
12. Amendments and Waivers. Any term of this Waiver may be amended, modified or terminated and the observance of any term of this Waiver may be waived (directly or indirectly, either generally or in a particular instance, and either retroactively or prospectively) only with the written consent of the Magnetar Representative and the Company; provided that any provision hereof may be waived by any waiving party on such partys own behalf, without the consent of any other party.
[Signature Pages to Follow]
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed and delivered this Registration Rights Waiver.
COMPANY: | ||
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Name: | Michael Intrator | |
Title: | Chief Executive Officer |
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed and delivered this Registration Rights Waiver.
INVESTORS: | ||
LONGHORN SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES FUND LP | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR CONSTELLATION MASTER FUND, LTD. | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR CAPITAL MASTER FUND, LTD. | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
Date: | March 19, 2025 |
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed and delivered this Registration Rights Waiver.
INVESTORS: | ||
CW OPPORTUNITY 2 LP | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR STRUCTURED CREDIT FUND, LP | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
CW OPPORTUNITY LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR ALPHA STAR FUND LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
Date: | March 19, 2025 |
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed and delivered this Registration Rights Waiver.
INVESTORS: | ||
MAGNETAR LAKE CREDIT FUND LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR LONGHORN FUND LP | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR SC FUND LTD | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
MAGNETAR XING HE MASTER FUND LTD | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
Date: | March 19, 2025 |
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have executed and delivered this Registration Rights Waiver.
INVESTORS: | ||
PURPOSE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT FUND F LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
PURPOSE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT FUND T LLC | ||
By: Magnetar Financial LLC, its investment manager | ||
By: | /s/ Karl Wachter | |
Name: | Karl Wachter | |
Title: | General Counsel | |
Date: | March 19, 2025 |
Schedule A-1
Existing Investors
Magnetar Xing He Master Fund Ltd
Magnetar SC Fund Ltd
Magnetar Longhorn Fund, LP
Purpose Alternative Credit Fund F LLC
Purpose Alternative Credit Fund T LLC
Magnetar Lake Credit Fund LLC
Magnetar Alpha Star Fund LLC
Magnetar Constellation Master Fund, Ltd
Magnetar Structured Credit Fund, LP
Schedule A-2
New Investors
Magnetar Capital Master Fund
Longhorn Special Opportunities Fund LP
CW Opportunity LLC
CW Opportunity 2 LP
Schedule B
Schedule C
Form of Lock-Up Agreement
Exhibit A
[Date]
[Company Address]
Re: Removal of Restrictive Legend from [NUMBER OF SHARES] shares of Class A Common Stock (the Shares) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Issuer) Pursuant to Rule 144 (Rule 144), promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act).
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:
The undersigned stockholder (the Stockholder) would like to have the restrictive legend on [NUMBER OF SHARES] shares of Class A Common Stock of the Issuer removed and is submitting this letter to present all facts necessary under Rule 144 to authorize such removal. In this connection, the Stockholder represents to you and warrants as follows:
1. | [Taking into account Rule 144(d)(3) with respect to determining the period securities have been held and based in part upon information furnished by the Issuer, the Shares are fully paid and a minimum of one year has elapsed since the date that the Shares were acquired from the Issuer or an affiliate thereof as described in Rule 144.][Taking into account Rule 144(d)(3) with respect to determining the period securities have been held and based in part upon information furnished by the Issuer, the Shares are fully paid and a minimum of six months has elapsed since the date that the Shares were acquired from the Issuer or an affiliate thereof as described in Rule 144 and the undersigned has sold the Shares pursuant to and in compliance with Rule 144 or such a sale is imminent.] |
2. | To the best of its knowledge, the Stockholder is not currently an affiliate of the Issuer and has not been an affiliate of the Issuer in the preceding 90 days. The term affiliate shall have the meaning set forth in Rule 144(a)(1). |
3. | The Stockholder will comply with any applicable requirements of the Securities Act, including, but not limited to, those requirements of Rule 144, in connection with any sale or transfer of the Shares. |
The Stockholder is familiar with the aforesaid Rule 144 and agrees that, in connection with the matters described above, you [and your counsel, Fenwick & West LLP][and our counsel, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP], are relying on the statements made herein. [Fenwick & West LLP][Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP] and Computershare Trust Company, N.A may rely on such statements as if this letter were addressed to them.
Very truly yours,
[Magnetar Entity]
Exhibit 5.1
![]() |
801 California Street | 650.988.8500 | ||
Mountain View, CA 94041 | Fenwick.com |
March 20, 2025
CoreWeave, Inc.
290 W Mt. Pleasant Ave., Suite 4100
Livingston, NJ 07039
Re: | Registration Statement on Form S-1 |
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As counsel to CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), we have examined the Registration Statement on Form S-1 (File Number 333-285512) initially filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the Commission) on or about March 3, 2025 (the Registration Statement), as subsequently amended on March 12, 2025 and March 20, 2025, including a related prospectus included in the Registration Statement (the Prospectus), in connection with the registration under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), of up to an aggregate of 56,350,000 shares of Class A common stock, par value $0.000005 per share of the Company (the Common Stock), 54,528,660 of which are being offered by the Company (the Company Shares) and 1,821,340 of which are being offered by certain selling stockholders (the Selling Stockholders) (the Selling Stockholder Shares, and, together with the Company Shares, the Shares). This letter is being furnished in connection with the requirements of Item 601(b)(5) of Regulation S-K under the Securities Act, and no opinion is expressed herein as to any matter pertaining to the contents of the Registration Statement or related Prospectus, other than as expressly stated herein with respect to the issue of the Shares.
As to matters of fact relevant to the opinions rendered herein, we have examined such documents, certificates and other instruments which we have deemed necessary or advisable, including a certificate addressed to us and dated the date hereof executed by the Company. We have not undertaken any independent investigation to verify the accuracy of any such information, representations or warranties or to determine the existence or absence of any fact, and no inference as to our knowledge of the existence or absence of any fact should be drawn from our representation of the Company or the rendering of the opinions set forth below. We have not considered parol evidence in connection with any of the agreements or instruments reviewed by us in connection with this letter.
In our examination of documents for purposes of this letter, we have assumed, and express no opinion as to, the genuineness and authenticity of all signatures on original documents, the authenticity and completeness of all documents submitted to us as originals, that each document is what it purports to be, the conformity to originals of all documents submitted to us as copies or facsimile copies, the absence of any termination, modification or waiver of or amendment to any document reviewed by us (other than as has been disclosed to us), the legal competence or capacity of all persons or entities (other than the Company) executing the same and (other than the Company) the due authorization, execution and delivery of all documents by each party thereto. We have also assumed the conformity of the documents filed with the Commission via the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval System (EDGAR), except for required EDGAR formatting changes, to physical copies submitted for our examination.
CoreWeave, Inc.
March 20, 2025
Page 2
The opinions in this letter are limited to the existing General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware now in effect. We express no opinion with respect to any other laws.
In connection with our opinion expressed below, we have assumed that (i) the Registration Statement and any amendments (including any necessary post-effective amendments) will have been declared effective under the Securities Act, (ii) the Registration Statement will apply to the offer and sale of the Shares and will not have been modified or rescinded and (iii) the Companys Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation, a form of which has been filed as an exhibit to the Registration Statement, is filed with the Secretary of State of the State of Delaware before issuance of the Shares.
Based upon the foregoing, and subject to the qualifications and exceptions contained herein, we are of the opinion that (i) the Selling Stockholder Shares to be sold by the Selling Stockholders pursuant to the Registration Statement are validly issued, fully paid and nonassessable and (ii) the Company Shares, when issued, sold and delivered in the manner and for the consideration stated in the Registration Statement and the Prospectus, and in accordance with the resolutions adopted by the Companys board of directors and to be adopted by the Pricing Committee thereof, will be validly issued, fully paid and nonassessable.
We consent to the use of this opinion as an exhibit to the Registration Statement and further consent to all references to us, if any, in the Registration Statement, the Prospectus and any amendments thereto. In giving this consent, we do not thereby admit that we come within the category of persons whose consent is required under Section 7 of the Securities Act or the rules and regulations of the Commission thereunder.
[Concluding Paragraph Follows on Next Page]
CoreWeave, Inc.
March 20, 2025
Page 3
This opinion is intended solely for use in connection with the issuance and sale of the Shares subject to the Registration Statement and is not to be relied upon for any other purpose. In providing this letter, we are opining only as to the specific legal issues expressly set forth above, and no opinion shall be inferred as to any other matter or matters. This opinion is rendered on, and speaks only as of, the date of this letter first written above, is based solely on our understanding of facts in existence as of such date after the aforementioned examination and does not address any potential changes in facts, circumstance or law that may occur after the date of this opinion letter. We assume no obligation to advise you of any fact, circumstance, event or change in the law or the facts that may hereafter be brought to our attention, whether or not such occurrence would affect or modify any of the opinions expressed herein.
Very truly yours, |
/s/ Fenwick & West LLP |
FENWICK & WEST LLP |
Exhibit 10.2
ATLANTIC CRYPTO CORPORATION
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
AS ADOPTED ON JULY 31, 2019
1. PURPOSE. The purpose of this Plan is to provide incentives to attract, retain and motivate eligible persons whose present and potential contributions are important to the success of the Company, its Parent and Subsidiaries by offering eligible persons an opportunity to participate in the Companys future performance through the grant of Awards covering Shares. Capitalized terms not defined in the text are defined in Section 11 hereof. Although this Plan is intended to be a written compensatory benefit plan within the meaning of Rule 701, grants may be made pursuant to this Plan that do not qualify for exemption under Rule 701 or applicable state blue sky rules and regulations.
2. SHARES SUBJECT TO THE PLAN.
2.1 Number of Shares Available. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, the total number of Shares reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to this Plan will be 1,333,333 Shares. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, Shares subject to Awards that are cancelled, forfeited, settled in cash, used to pay withholding obligations or pay the exercise price of an Option or that expire by their terms at any time will again be available for grant and issuance in connection with other Awards. In the event that Shares previously issued under the Plan are reacquired by the Company pursuant to a forfeiture provision, right of first refusal, or repurchase by the Company, such Shares shall be added to the number of Shares then available for issuance under the Plan. At all times the Company will reserve and keep available a sufficient number of Shares as will be required to satisfy the requirements of all Awards granted and outstanding under this Plan. In no event shall the total number of Shares issued (counting each reissuance of a Share that was previously issued and then forfeited or repurchased by the Company as a separate issuance) under the Plan upon exercise of ISOs exceed 13,333,330 Shares (adjusted in proportion to any adjustments under Section 2.2 hereof) over the term of the Plan (the ISO Limit). Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, in the event that the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan is increased, the ISO Limit shall be automatically increased by such number of Shares such that the ISO Limit equals (a) ten (10) multiplied by (b) the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan.
2.2 Adjustment of Shares. In the event that the number of outstanding shares of the Companys Common Stock is changed by a stock dividend, recapitalization, stock split, reverse stock split, subdivision, combination, reclassification or other change in the capital structure of the Company affecting Shares without consideration, then in order to prevent diminution or enlargement of the benefits or potential benefits intended to be made available under the Plan (a) the number of Shares reserved for issuance under this Plan, (b) the Exercise Prices of and number of Shares subject to outstanding Options, and (c) the Purchase Prices of and/or number of Shares subject to other outstanding Awards will be proportionately adjusted, subject to any required action by the Board or the stockholders of the Company and compliance with applicable securities laws; provided however, that fractions of a Share will not be issued but will either be paid in cash at the Fair Market Value of such fraction of a Share or will be rounded down to the nearest whole Share, as determined by the Committee.
1
3. PLAN FOR BENEFIT OF SERVICE PROVIDERS.
3.1 Eligibility. The Committee will have the authority to select persons to receive Awards. ISOs (as defined in Section 4 hereof) may be granted only to employees (including officers and directors who are also employees) of the Company or of a Parent or Subsidiary of the Company. NQSOs (as defined in Section 4 hereof) and all other types of Awards may be granted to employees, officers, directors and consultants of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company; provided such consultants render bona fide services not in connection with the offer and sale of securities in a capital-raising transaction when Rule 701 is to apply to the Award granted for such services. A person may be granted more than one Award under this Plan.
3.2 No Obligation to Employ. Nothing in this Plan or any Award granted under this Plan will confer or be deemed to confer on any Participant any right to continue in the employ of, or to continue any other relationship with, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary or limit in any way the right of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary to terminate Participants employment or other relationship at any time, with or without Cause.
4. OPTIONS. The Committee may grant Options to eligible persons described in Section 3 hereof and will determine whether such Options will be Incentive Stock Options within the meaning of the Code (JSOs) or Nonqualified Stock Options (NQSOs), the number of Shares subject to the Option, the Exercise Price of the Option, the period during which the Option may be exercised, and all other terms and conditions of the Option, subject to the following.
4.1 Form of Option Grant. Each Option granted under this Plan will be evidenced by an Award Agreement which will expressly identify the Option as an ISO or an NQSO (Stock Option Agreement), and will be in such form and contain such provisions (which need not be the same for each Participant) as the Committee may from time to time approve, and which will comply with and be subject to the terms and conditions of this Plan.
4.2 Date of Grant. The date of grant of an Option will be the date on which the Committee makes the determination to grant such Option, unless a later date is otherwise specified by the Committee. The Stock Option Agreement and a copy of this Plan will be delivered to the Participant within a reasonable time after the granting of the Option.
4.3 Exercise Period. Options may be exercisable within the time or upon the events determined by the Committee in the Award Agreement and may be awarded as immediately exercisable but subject to repurchase pursuant to Section IO hereof or may be exercisable within the times or upon the events determined by the Committee as set forth in the Stock Option Agreement governing such Option; provided however, that (a) no Option will be exercisable after the expiration of ten (10) years from the date the Option is granted; and (b) no ISO granted to a person who directly or by attribution owns more than ten percent (I 0%) of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock of the Company or of any Parent or Subsidiary (Ten Percent Stockholder) will be exercisable after the expiration of five (5) years from the date the ISO is granted. The Committee also may provide for Options to become exercisable at one time or from time to time, periodically or otherwise, in such number of Shares or percentage of Shares as the Committee determines.
2
4.4 Exercise Price. The Exercise Price of an Option will be determined by the Committee when the Option is granted and shall not be less than the Fair Market Value per Share unless expressly determined in writing by the Committee on the Options date of grant; provided that the Exercise Price of an ISO granted to a Ten Percent Stockholder will not be less than one hundred ten percent (110%) of the Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date of grant. Payment for the Shares purchased must be made in accordance with Section 8 hereof.
4.5 Method of Exercise. Options may be exercised only by delivery to the Company of a stock option exercise agreement (the Exercise Agreement) in the form specified by the Committee, which may be electronic or written form (and which need not be the same for each Participant). The Exercise Agreement will state (a) the number of Shares being purchased, (b) the restrictions imposed on the Shares purchased under such Exercise Agreement, if any, and (c) such representations and agreements regarding Participants investment intent and access to information and other matters, if any, as may be required or desirable by the Company to comply with applicable securities laws. Each Participants Exercise Agreement may be modified by (i) agreement of Participant and the Company or (ii) substitution by the Company, upon becoming a public company, in order to add the payment terms set forth in Section 8.1 that apply to a public company and such other terms as shall be necessary or advisable in order to exercise a public company option. Upon exercise of an Option, Participant shall execute and deliver to the Company the Exercise Agreement then in effect, together with payment in full of the Exercise Price for the number of Shares being purchased and payment of any applicable taxes. No adjustment will be made for a dividend or other right for which the record date is prior to the date the Shares are issued, except as provided in Section 2.2 of the Plan. Exercising an Option in any manner will decrease the number of Shares thereafter available, both for purposes of the Plan and for sale under the Option, by the number of Shares as to which the Option is exercised.
4.6 Termination. Subject to earlier termination pursuant to Sections 11 and 13.1 hereof and notwithstanding the exercise periods set forth in the Stock Option Agreement, exercise of an Option will always be subject to the following terms and conditions.
4.6.1 Other than Death or Disability or for Cause. If the Participant is Terminated for any reason other than death, Disability or for Cause, then the Participant may exercise such Participants Options only to the extent that such Options are exercisable as to Vested Shares upon the Termination Date or as otherwise determined by the Committee. Such Options must be exercised by the Participant, if at all, as to all or some of the Vested Shares calculated as of the Termination Date or such other date determined by the Committee, within three (3) months after the Termination Date (or within such shorter time period, not less than thirty (30) days, or within such longer time period after the Termination Date as may be determined by the Committee or expressly provided in a separate agreement with the Participant, with any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participant ceases to be an employee deemed to be an NQSO) but in any event, no later than the expiration date of the Options.
3
4.6.2 Death or Disability. If the Participant is Terminated because of Participants death or Disability (or the Participant dies within three (3) months after a Termination other than for Cause), then Participants Options may be exercised only to the extent that such Options are exercisable as to Vested Shares by Participant on the Termination Date or as otherwise determined by the Committee. Such options must be exercised by Participant (or Participants legal representative or authorized assignee), if at all, as to all or some of the Vested Shares calculated as of the Termination Date or such other date determined by the Committee, within twelve (12) months after the Termination Date (or within such shorter time period, not less than six (6) months, or within such longer time period, after the Termination Date as may be determined by the Committee, with any exercise beyond (a) three (3) months after the date Participant ceases to be an employee when the Termination is for any reason other than the Participants death or disability, within the meaning of Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, or (b) twelve (12) months after the date Participant ceases to be an employee when the Termination is for Participants disability, within the meaning of Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, deemed to be an NQSO) but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options.
4.6.3 For Cause. If the Participant is terminated for Cause, all Options, vested or unvested that Participant has not exercised prior to the Termination Date shall be cancelled on such Participants Termination Date, or at such later time and on such conditions as are determined by the Committee.
4.7 Limitations on Exercise. The Committee may specify a reasonable minimum number of Shares that may be purchased on any exercise of an Option, provided that such minimum number will not prevent Participant from exercising the Option for the full number of Shares for which it is then exercisable.
4.8 Limitations on ISOs. The aggregate Fair Market Value (determined as of the date of grant) of Shares with respect to which ISOs are exercisable for the first time by a Participant during any calendar year (under this Plan or under any other incentive stock option plan of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company) will not exceed One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000). If the Fair Market Value of Shares on the date of grant with respect to which ISOs are exercisable for the first time by a Participant during any calendar year exceeds One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000), then the Options for the first One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000) worth of Shares to become exercisable in such calendar year will be ISOs and the Options for the amount in excess of One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000) that become exercisable in that calendar year will be NQSOs. In the event that the Code or the regulations promulgated thereunder are amended after the Effective Date (as defined in Section 13.1 hereof) to provide for a different limit on the Fair Market Value of Shares permitted to be subject to ISOs, then such different limit will be automatically incorporated herein and will apply to any Options granted after the effective date of such amendment.
4.9 Modification, Extension or Renewal. The Committee may modify, extend or renew outstanding Options and authorize the grant of new Options in substitution therefor, provided that any such action may not, without the written consent of a Participant, impair any of such Participants rights under any Option previously granted. Any outstanding ISO that is modified, extended, renewed or otherwise altered will be treated in accordance with Section 424(h) of the Code. Subject to Section 4.10 hereof, the Committee may reduce the Exercise Price of outstanding Options without the consent of Participants by a written notice to them; provided, however, that the Exercise Price may not be reduced below the minimum Exercise Price that would be permitted under Section 4.4 hereof for Options granted on the date the action is taken to reduce the Exercise Price.
4
4.10 No Disqualification. Notwithstanding any other provision in this Plan, no term of this Plan relating to ISOs will be interpreted, amended or altered, nor will any discretion or authority granted under this Plan be exercised, so as to disqualify this Plan under Section 422 of the Code or, without the consent of the Participant, to disqualify any Participants ISO under Section 422 of the Code.
5. PAYMENT FOR PURCHASES AND EXERCISES.
5.1 Payment in General. Payment for Shares acquired pursuant to this Plan may be made in cash (by check) or, where expressly approved for the Participant by the Committee and where permitted by law:
(a) by cancellation of indebtedness of the Company owed to the Participant;
(b) by surrender of shares of the Company that are clear of all liens, claims, encumbrances or security interests and: (i) for which the Company has received full payment of the purchase price within the meaning of SEC Rule 144 (and, if such shares were purchased from the Company by use of a promissory note, such note has been fully paid with respect to such shares) or (ii) that were obtained by Participant in the public market;
(c) by tender of a full recourse promissory note having such terms as may be approved by the Committee and bearing interest at a rate sufficient to avoid imputation of income under Sections 483 and 1274 of the Code; provided. however, that Participants who are not employees or directors of the Company will not be entitled to purchase Shares with a promissory note unless the note is adequately secured by collateral other than the Shares; provided. further, that the portion of the Exercise Price equal to the par value (if any) of the Shares must be paid in cash or other legal consideration permitted by the laws under which the Company is then incorporated or organized;
(d) by waiver of compensation due or accrued to the Participant from the Company for services rendered;
(e) by participating in a formal cashless exercise program implemented by the Committee in connection with the Plan;
(f) subject to compliance with applicable law and solely in the discretion of the Committee, provided that a public market for the Companys Common Stock exists, by exercising through a same day sale commitment from the Participant and a broker-dealer whereby the Participant irrevocably elects to exercise the Award and to sell a portion of the Shares so purchased sufficient to pay the total Exercise Price, and whereby the broker-dealer irrevocably commits upon receipt of such Shares to forward the total Exercise Price directly to the Company; or
5
(g) by any combination of the foregoing or any other method of payment approved by the Committee.
5.2 Withholding Taxes.
5.2.1 Withholding Generally. Whenever Shares are to be issued in satisfaction of Awards granted under this Plan, the Company may require the Participant to remit to the Company an amount sufficient to satisfy applicable tax withholding requirements prior to the delivery of any certificate or certificates for such Shares. Whenever, under this Plan, payments in satisfaction of Awards are to be made in cash by the Company, such payment will be net of an amount sufficient to satisfy applicable tax withholding requirements.
5.2.2 Stock Withholding. When, under applicable tax laws, a Participant incurs tax liability in connection with the exercise or vesting of any Award that is subject to tax withholding and the Participant is obligated to pay the Company the amount required to be withheld, the Committee may in its sole discretion allow the Participant to satisfy the minimum tax withholding obligation by electing to have the Company withhold from the Shares to be issued up to the minimum number of Shares having a Fair Market Value on the date that the amount of tax to be withheld is to be determined that is not more than the minimum amount to be withheld; or to arrange a mandatory sell to cover on Participants behalf (without further authorization) but in no event will the Company withhold Shares or sell to cover if such withholding would result in adverse accounting consequences to the Company. Any elections to have Shares withheld or sold for this purpose will be made in accordance with the requirements established by the Committee for such elections and be in writing in a form acceptable to the Committee.
6. RESTRICTIONS ON AWARDS.
6.1 Transferability. Except as permitted by the Committee, Awards granted under this Plan, and any interest therein, will not be transferable or assignable by Participant, other than by will or by the laws of descent and distribution, and, with respect to NQSOs, by instrument to an inter vivos or testamentary trust in which the NQSOs are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the trustor (settlor), or by gift to family member as that term is defined in Rule 701, and may not be made subject to execution, attachment or similar process. For the avoidance of doubt, the prohibition against assignment and transfer applies to a stock option and, prior to exercise , the shares to be issued on exercise of a stock option, and pursuant to the foregoing sentence shall be understood to include, without limitation, a prohibition against any pledge, hypothecation, or other transfer, including any short position, any put equivalent position or any call equivalent position (in each case, as defined in Rule 16a-1 promulgated under the Exchange Act). During the lifetime of the Participant an Award will be exercisable only by the Participant or Participants legal representative and any elections with respect to an Award may be made only by the Participant or Participants legal representative. The terms of an Option shall be binding upon the executor, administrator, successors and assigns of the Participant who is a party thereto.
6
6.2 Securities Law and Other Regulatory Compliance. Although this Plan is intended to be a written compensatory benefit plan within the meaning of Rule 701 promulgated under the Securities Act, grants may be made pursuant to this Plan that do not qualify for exemption under Rule 701 or applicable state blue sky rules and regulations. Notwithstanding, an Award will not be effective unless such Award is in compliance with all applicable federal and state securities laws, rules and regulations of any governmental body, and the requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system upon which the Shares may then be listed or quoted, as they are in effect on the date of grant of the Award and also on the date of exercise or other issuance. Notwithstanding any other provision in this Plan, the Company will have no obligation to issue or deliver certificates for Shares under this Plan prior to (a) obtaining any approvals from governmental agencies that the Company determines are necessary or advisable, and/or (b) compliance with any exemption, completion of any registration or other qualification of such Shares under any state or federal law or ruling of any governmental body that the Company determines to be necessary or advisable. The Company will be under no obligation to register the Shares with the SEC or to effect compliance with the exemption, registration, qualification or listing requirements of any state securities laws, stock exchange or automated quotation system, and the Company will have no liability for any inability or failure so do.
6.3 Exchange and Buyout of Awards. The Committee may, at any time or from time to time, authorize the Company, with the consent of the respective Participants, to issue new Awards in exchange for the surrender and cancellation of any or all outstanding Awards. Without prior stockholder approval the Committee may reprice Options (and where such repricing is a reduction in the Exercise Price of outstanding Options, the consent of the affected Participants is not required provided written notice is provided to them). The Committee may at any time buy from a Participant an Award previously granted with payment in cash, Shares (including Restricted Stock) or other consideration, based on such terms and conditions as the Committee and the Participant may agree.
7. RESTRICTIONS ON SHARES.
7.1 Privileges of Stock Ownership. No Participant will have any of the rights of a stockholder with respect to any Shares until such Shares are issued to the Participant. After Shares are issued to the Participant, the Participant will be a stockholder and have all the rights of a stockholder with respect to such Shares, including the right to vote and receive all dividends or other distributions made or paid with respect to such Shares; provided, that if such Shares are restricted in any way, then any new, additional or different securities the Participant may become entitled to receive with respect to such Shares by virtue of a stock dividend, stock split or any other change in the corporate or capital structure of the Company will be subject to the same restrictions. The Participant will have no right to retain such stock dividends or stock distributions with respect to Unvested Shares that are repurchased as described in this Section 7.
7.2 Rights of First Refusal and Repurchase. At the discretion of the Committee, the Company may reserve to itself and/or its assignee(s) in the Award Agreement (a) a right of first refusal to purchase all Shares that a Participant (or a subsequent transferee) may propose to transfer to a third party, provided that such right of first refusal terminates upon the Companys initial public offering of Common Stock pursuant to an effective registration statement filed under the Securities Act and (b) a right to repurchase Unvested Shares held by a Participant for cash and/or cancellation of purchase money indebtedness owed to the Company by the Participant following such Participants Termination at any time.
7
7.3 Escrow; Pledge of Shares. To enforce any restrictions on a Participants Shares, the Committee may require the Participant to deposit all certificates representing Shares, together with stock powers or other instruments of transfer approved by the Committee, appropriately endorsed in blank, with the Company or an agent designated by the Company to hold in escrow until such restrictions have lapsed or terminated. The Committee may cause a legend or legends referencing such restrictions to be placed on the certificate. Any Participant who is permitted to execute a promissory note as partial or full consideration for the purchase of Shares under this Plan will be required to pledge and deposit with the Company all or part of the Shares so purchased as collateral to secure the payment of Participants obligation to the Company under the promissory note; provided. however, that the Committee may require or accept other or additional forms of collateral to secure the payment of such obligation and, in any event, the Company will have full recourse against the Participant under the promissory note notwithstanding any pledge of the Participants Shares or other collateral. In connection with any pledge of the Shares, Participant will be required to execute and deliver a written pledge agreement in such form as the Committee will from time to time approve. The Shares purchased with the promissory note may be released from the pledge on a pro rata basis as the promissory note is paid.
7.4 Securities Law Restrictions. All certificates for Shares or other securities delivered under this Plan will be subject to such stock transfer orders, legends and other restrictions as the Committee may deem necessary or advisable, including restrictions under any applicable federal, state or foreign securities law, or any rules, regulations and other requirements of the SEC or any stock exchange or automated quotation system upon which the Shares may be listed or quoted.
8. CORPORATE TRANSACTIONS.
8.1 Acquisitions or Other Combinations. In the event that the Company is subject to an Acquisition or Other Combination, outstanding Awards acquired under the Plan shall be subject to the agreement evidencing the Acquisition or Other Combination, which need not treat all outstanding Awards in an identical manner. Such agreement, without the Participants consent, shall provide for one or more of the following with respect to all outstanding Awards as of the effective date of such Acquisition or Other Combination:
(a) The continuation of such outstanding Awards by the Company (if the Company is the successor entity).
(b) The assumption of outstanding Awards by the successor or acquiring entity (if any) in such Acquisition or Other Combination (or by any of its Parents, if any), which assumption, will be binding on all Participants; provided that the exercise price and the number and nature of shares issuable upon exercise of any such option or stock appreciation right, or any award that is subject to Section 409A of the Code, will be adjusted appropriately pursuant to Section 424(a) and Section 409A of the Code. For the purposes of this Section 11, an Award will be considered assumed if, following the Acquisition or Other Combination, the Award confers the right to purchase or receive, for each Share subject to the Award immediately prior to the Acquisition or Other Combination, the consideration (whether stock, cash, or other securities or property) received in the Acquisition or Other Combination by holders of Shares for each Share held on the effective date of the transaction (and if holders were offered a choice of consideration,
8
the type of consideration chosen by the holders of a majority of the outstanding Shares); provided, however, that if such consideration received in the Acquisition or Other Combination is not solely common stock of the successor corporation or its Parent, the Committee may, with the consent of the successor corporation, provide for the consideration to be received upon the exercise of an Option or Stock Appreciation Right or upon the payout of a Restricted Stock Unit, for each Share subject to such Award, to be solely common stock of the successor corporation or its Parent equal in fair market value to the per share consideration received by holders of Common Stock in the Acquisition or Other Combination.
(c) The substitution by the successor or acquiring entity in such Acquisition or Other Combination (or by any of its Parents, if any) of equivalent awards with substantially the same terms for such outstanding Awards (except that the exercise price and the number and nature of shares issuable upon exercise of any such option or stock appreciation right, or any award that is subject to Section 409A of the Code, will be adjusted appropriately pursuant to Section 424(a) and Section 409A of the Code).
(d) The full or partial exercisability or vesting and accelerated expiration of outstanding Awards.
(e) The settlement of the full value of such outstanding Award (whether or not then vested or exercisable) in cash, cash equivalents, or securities of the successor entity (or its Parent, if any) with a Fair Market Value equal to the required amount, followed by the cancellation of such Awards; provided however, that such Award may be cancelled without consideration if such Award has no value, as determined by the Committee, in its discretion. Subject to Section 409A of the Code, such payment may be made in installments and may be deferred until the date or dates when the Award would have become exercisable or vested. Such payment may be subject to vesting based on the Participants continued service, provided that without the Participants consent, the vesting schedule shall not be less favorable to the Participant than the schedule under which the Award would have become vested or exercisable. For purposes of this Section 11.l(e), the Fair Market value of any security shall be determined without regard to any vesting conditions that may apply to such security.
(f) The cancellation of outstanding Awards in exchange for no consideration.
Immediately following an Acquisition or Other Combination, outstanding Awards shall terminate and cease to be outstanding, except to the extent such Awards, have been continued, assumed or substituted, as described in Sections 11. l(a), (b) and/or (c).
8.2 Assumption of Awards by the Company. The Company, from time to time, also may substitute or assume outstanding awards granted by another entity, whether in connection with an acquisition of such other entity or otherwise, by either (a) granting an Award under this Plan in substitution of such other entitys award or (b) assuming and/or converting such award as if it had been granted under this Plan if the terms of such assumed award could be applied to an Award granted under this Plan. Such substitution or assumption will be permissible if the holder of the substituted or assumed award would have been eligible to be granted an Award under this Plan if the other entity had applied the rules of this Plan to such grant. In the event the Company
9
assumes an award granted by another entity, the terms and conditions of such award will remain unchanged (except that the exercise price and the number and nature of shares issuable upon exercise of any such option or stock appreciation right, or any award that is subject to Section 409A of the Code, will be adjusted appropriately pursuant to Section 424(a) of the Code). In the event the Company elects to grant a new Option rather than assuming an existing option, such new Option may be granted with a similarly adjusted Exercise Price.
9. ADMINISTRATION.
9.1 Committee Authority. This Plan will be administered by the Committee or the Board if no Committee is created by the Board. Subject to the general purposes, terms and conditions of this Plan, and to the direction of the Board, the Committee will have full power to implement and carry out this Plan. Without limitation, the Committee will have the authority to:
(a) construe and interpret this Plan, any Award Agreement and any other agreement or document executed pursuant to this Plan;
(b) prescribe, amend, expand, modify and rescind or terminate rules and regulations relating to this Plan;
(c) approve persons to receive Awards;
(d) determine the form and terms of Awards;
(e) determine the number of Shares or other consideration subject to Awards granted under this Plan;
(f) determine the Fair Market Value in good faith and interpret the applicable prov1s10ns of this Plan and the definition of Fair Market Value in connection with circumstances that impact the Fair Market Value, if necessary;
(g) determine whether Awards will be granted singly, in combination with, in tandem with, in replacement of, or as alternatives to, other Awards under this Plan or awards under any other incentive or compensation plan of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company;
(h) grant waivers of any conditions of this Plan or any Award;
(i) determine the terms of vesting, exercisability and payment of Awards to be granted pursuant to this Plan;
(j) correct any defect, supply any omission, or reconcile any inconsistency in this Plan, any Award, any Award Agreement or any Exercise Agreement;
(k) determine whether an Award has been earned;
(l) extend the vesting period beyond a Participants Termination Date;
10
(m) adopt rules and/or procedures (including the adoption of any subplan under this Plan) relating to the operation and administration of the Plan to accommodate requirements of local law and procedures outside of the United States;
(n) delegate any of the foregoing to a subcommittee consisting of one or more executive officers pursuant to a specific delegation as may otherwise be permitted by applicable law; and
(o) make all other determinations necessary or advisable in connection with the administration of this Plan.
9.2 Committee Composition and Discretion. The Board may delegate full administrative authority over the Plan and Awards to a Committee consisting of at least three (3) members of the Board (or such greater number as may then be required by applicable law). Unless in contravention of any express terms of this Plan or Award, any determination made by the Committee with respect to any Award will be made in its sole discretion either (a) at the time of grant of the Award, or (b) subject to Section 4.9 hereof, at any later time. Any such determination will be final and binding on the Company and on all persons having an interest in any Award under this Plan. To the extent permitted by applicable law, the Committee may delegate to one or more officers of the Company the authority to grant an Award under this Plan. provided that each such officer is a member of the Board.
9.3 Non-exclusivity of the Plan. Neither the adoption of this Plan by the Board, the submission of this Plan to the stockholders of the Company for approval, nor any provision of this Plan will be construed as creating any limitations on the power of the Board to adopt such additional compensation arrangements as it may deem desirable, including, without limitation, the granting of stock options and other equity awards otherwise than under this Plan, and such arrangements may be either generally applicable or applicable only in specific cases.
9.4 Governing Law. This Plan and all agreements hereunder shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without giving effect to that body of laws pertaining to conflict of laws.
10. EFFECTIVENESS, AMENDMENT AND TERMINATION OF THE PLAN.
10.1 Adoption and Stockholder Approval. This Plan will become effective on the date that it is adopted by the Board (the Effective Date). This Plan will be approved by the stockholders of the Company (excluding Shares issued pursuant to this Plan), consistent with applicable laws, within three (3) months before or after the Effective Date. Upon the Effective Date, the Board may grant Awards pursuant to this Plan; provided, however, that: (a) no Option may be exercised prior to initial stockholder approval of this Plan; and (b) no Option granted pursuant to an increase in the number of Shares approved by the Board shall be exercised prior to the time such increase has been approved by the stockholders of the Company.
10.2 Term of Plan. Unless earlier terminated as provided herein, this Plan will automatically terminate ten (10) years after the later of (i) the Effective Date, or (ii) the most recent increase in the number of Shares reserved under Section 2 that was approved by stockholders.
11
10.3 Amendment or Termination of Plan. Subject to Section 4.9 hereof, the Board may at any time (a) terminate or amend this Plan in any respect, including without limitation amendment of any form of Award Agreement or instrument to be executed pursuant to this Plan and (b) terminate any and all outstanding Options upon a dissolution or liquidation of the Company, followed by the payment of creditors and the distribution of any remaining funds to the Companys stockholders; provided, however, that the Board will not, without the approval of the stockholders of the Company, amend this Plan in any manner that requires such stockholder approval pursuant to the Code or the regulations promulgated under the Code as such provisions apply to ISO plans. The termination of the Plan, or any amendment thereof, shall not affect any Share previously issued or any Award previously granted under the Plan.
11. DEFINITIONS. For all purposes of this Plan, the following terms will have the following meanings.
Acquisition, for purposes of Section 11, means:
(a) any consolidation or merger in which the Company is a constituent entity or is a party in which the voting stock and other voting securities of the Company that are outstanding immediately prior to the consummation of such consolidation or merger represent, or are converted into, securities of the surviving entity of such consolidation or merger (or of any Parent of such surviving entity) that, immediately after the consummation of such consolidation or merger, together possess less than fifty percent (50%) of the total voting power of all voting securities of such surviving entity (or of any of its Parents, if any) that are outstanding immediately after the consummation of such consolidation or merger;
(b) a sale or other transfer by the holders thereof of outstanding voting stock and/or other voting securities of the Company possessing more than fifty percent (50%) of the total voting power of all outstanding voting securities of the Company, whether in one transaction or in a series of related transactions, pursuant to an agreement or agreements to which the Company is a party and that has been approved by the Board, and pursuant to which such outstanding voting securities are sold or transferred to a single person or entity, to one or more persons or entities who are Affiliates of each other, or to one or more persons or entities acting in concert; or
(c) the sale, lease, transfer or other disposition, in a single transaction or series of related transactions, by the Company and/or any Subsidiary or Subsidiaries of the Company, of all or substantially all the assets of the Company and its Subsidiaries taken as a whole, (or, if substantially all of the assets of the Company and its Subsidiaries taken as a whole are held by one or more Subsidiaries, the sale or disposition (whether by consolidation, merger, conversion or otherwise) of such Subsidiaries of the Company), except where such sale, lease, transfer or other disposition is made to the Company or one or more wholly owned Subsidiaries of the Company (an Acquisition by Sale of Assets).
Affiliate of a specified person means a person that directly, or indirectly through one or more intermediaries, controls or is controlled by, or is under common control with, the person specified (where, for purposes of this definition, the term control (including the terms controlling, controlled by and under common control with) means the possession, direct or indirect, of the power to direct or cause the direction of the management and policies of a person, whether through the ownership of voting securities, by contract, or otherwise.
12
Award means any Option awarded pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Plan, including any ISO or NQSO.
Award Agreement means, with respect to each Award, the signed written agreement between the Company and the Participant setting forth the terms and conditions of the Award as approved by the Committee.
Board means the Board of Directors of the Company.
Cause means Termination because of (a) Participants unauthorized misuse of the Company or a Parent or Subsidiary of the Companys trade secrets or proprietary information, (b) Participants conviction of or plea of nolo contendere to a felony or a crime involving moral turpitude, (c) Participants committing an act of fraud against the Company or a Parent or Subsidiary of the Company or (d) Participants gross negligence or willful misconduct in the performance of his or her duties that has had or will have a material adverse effect on the Company or Parent or Subsidiary of the Company reputation or business.
Code means the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.
Committee means the committee created and appointed by the Board to administer this Plan, or if no committee is created and appointed, the Board.
Company means Atlantic Crypto Corporation, or any successor corporation.
Disability means a disability, whether temporary or permanent, partial or total, as determined by the Committee.
Exchange Act means the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
Exercise Price means the price per Share at which a holder of an Option may purchase Shares issuable upon exercise of the Option.
Fair Market Value means, as of any date, the value of a share of the Companys Common Stock determined as follows:
(a) if such Common Stock is then publicly traded on a national securities exchange, its closing price on the date of determination on the principal national securities exchange on which the Common Stock is listed or admitted to trading as reported in The Wall Street Journal;
(b) if such Common Stock is publicly traded but is not listed or admitted to trading on a national securities exchange, the average of the closing bid and asked prices on the date of determination as reported by The Wall Street Journal (or, if not so reported, as otherwise reported by any newspaper or other source as the Committee may determine); or
(c) (c) if none of the foregoing is applicable to the valuation in question, by the Committee in good faith.
13
Option means an award of an option to purchase Shares pursuant to Section 4 of this Plan.
Other Combination for purposes of Section 8 means any (a) consolidation or merger in which the Company is a constituent entity and is not the surviving entity of such consolidation or merger or (b) any conversion of the Company into another form of entity; provided that such consolidation, merger or conversion does not constitute an Acquisition.
Parent of a specified entity means, any entity that, either directly or indirectly, owns or controls such specified entity, where for this purpose, control means the ownership of stock, securities or other interests that possess at least a majority of the voting power of such specified entity (including indirect ownership or control of such stock, securities or other interests).
Participant means a person who receives an Award under this Plan.
Plan means this 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time.
Purchase Price II means the price at which a Participant may purchase Restricted Stock pursuant to this Plan.
Rule 701 means Rule 701 et seq. promulgated by the Commission under the Securities Act.
SEC means the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Securities Act means the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
Shares means shares of the Companys Common Stock reserved for issuance under this Plan, as adjusted pursuant to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, and any successor security.
Subsidiary means any entity (other than the Company) in an unbroken chain of entities beginning with the Company if each of the entities other than the last entity in the unbroken chain owns stock or other equity securities representing fifty percent (50%) or more of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock or other equity securities in one of the other entities in such chain.
Termination or Terminated means, for purposes of this Plan with respect to a Participant, that the Participant has for any reason ceased to provide services as an employee, officer, director or consultant to the Company or a Parent or Subsidiary of the Company. A Participant will not be deemed to have ceased to provide services while the Participant is on a bona fide leave of absence, if such leave was approved by the Company in writing and if the continued crediting of service for this purpose is expressly required by the terms of such leave or by applicable law (as determined by the Committee). In the case of an approved leave of absence, the Committee may make such provisions respecting crediting of service; including suspension of vesting of the Award (including pursuant to a formal policy adopted from time to time by the Company) it may deem appropriate, except that in no event may an Option be exercised after the expiration of the term set forth in the Stock Option Agreement. The Committee will have sole discretion to determine whether a Participant has ceased to provide services and the effective date on which the Participant ceased to provide services (the Termination Date).
Unvested Shares means Unvested Shares as defined in the Award Agreement for an Award.
Vested Shares means Vested Shares as defined in the Award Agreement.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
14
FIRST AMENDMENT TO
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
CoreWeave, Inc.
THIS FIRST AMENDMENT to 2019 Stock Option Plan (the Plan) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) was duly approved by the Stock Option Committee of the Board of Directors of the Company on December 21, 2021.
WHEREAS, the Plan currently provides for a total of 1,333,333 shares of Common Stock of the Company to be reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to the Plan; and
WHEREAS, the Company now wishes to amend Section 2.1 of the Plan to increase the number of shares of Common Stock reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to the Plan by 825,000 shares to an aggregate of 2,158,333 shares.
NOW, THEREFORE, effective as of December 21, 2021, the Plan is hereby amended as follows:
8. | Section 2.1 of the Plan is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following: |
Number of Shares Available. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, the total number of Shares reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to this Plan will be 2,158,333 Shares. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, Shares subject to Awards that are cancelled, forfeited, settled in cash, used to pay withholding obligations or pay the exercise price of an Option or that expire by their terms at any time will again be available for grant and issuance in connection with other Awards. In the event that Shares previously issued under the Plan are reacquired by the Company pursuant to a forfeiture provision, right of first refusal, or repurchase by the Company, such Shares shall be added to the number of Shares then available for issuance under the Plan. At all times the Company will reserve and keep available a sufficient number of Shares as will be required to satisfy the requirements of all Awards granted and outstanding under this Plan. In no event shall the total number of Shares issued (counting each reissuance of a Share that was previously issued and then forfeited or repurchased by the Company as a separate issuance) under the Plan upon exercise of ISOs exceed 21,583,330 Shares (adjusted in proportion to any adjustments under Section 2.2 hereof) over the term of the Plan (the ISO Limit). Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, in the event that the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan is increased, the ISO Limit shall be automatically increased by such number of Shares such that the ISO Limit equals (a) ten (10) multiplied by (b) the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan.
9. | Except as set forth herein, the Plan shall remain in full force and effect following the date of this Amendment. |
[Signature Page Follows]
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned has caused this Amendment to be executed as of the date first set forth above.
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Name: Michael Intrator | ||
Title: Chief Executive Officer |
SECOND AMENDMENT TO
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
CoreWeave, Inc.
THIS SECOND AMENDMENT to 2019 Stock Option Plan (as amended, the Plan) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) was duly approved by the Board of Directors and stockholders of the Company on April 13, 2023.
WHEREAS, the Plan currently provides for a total of 2,158,333 shares of Common Stock of the Company to be reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to the Plan;
WHEREAS, the Company now wishes to amend Section 2.1 of the Plan to increase the number of shares of Common Stock reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to the Plan by 659,217 shares to an aggregate of 2,817,550 shares; and
WHEREAS, the Company desires to amend the term of the Plan through an amendment to Section 10.2 of the Plan.
NOW, THEREFORE, effective as of April 13, 2023, the Plan is hereby amended as follows:
5. | Section 2.1 of the Plan is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following: |
Number of Shares Available. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, the total number of Shares reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to this Plan will be 2,817,550 Shares. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, Shares subject to Awards that are cancelled, forfeited, settled in cash, used to pay withholding obligations or pay the exercise price of an Option or that expire by their terms at any time will again be available for grant and issuance in connection with other Awards. In the event that Shares previously issued under the Plan are reacquired by the Company pursuant to a forfeiture provision, right of first refusal, or repurchase by the Company, such Shares shall be added to the number of Shares then available for issuance under the Plan. At all times the Company will reserve and keep available a sufficient number of Shares as will be required to satisfy the requirements of all Awards granted and outstanding under this Plan. In no event shall the total number of Shares issued (counting each reissuance of a Share that was previously issued and then forfeited or repurchased by the Company as a separate issuance) under the Plan upon exercise of ISOs exceed 28,175,500 Shares (adjusted in proportion to any adjustments under Section 2.2 hereof) over the term of the Plan (the ISO Limit). Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, in the event that the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan is increased, the ISO Limit shall be automatically increased by such number of Shares such that the ISO Limit equals (a) ten (10) multiplied by (b) the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan.
6. | Section 10.2 of the Plan is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following: |
Term of Plan. Unless earlier terminated as provided herein, this Plan will automatically terminate ten (10) years after the Effective Date.
7. | Except as set forth herein, the Plan shall remain in full force and effect following the date of this Amendment. |
[Signature Page Follows]
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned has caused this Amendment to be executed as of the date first set forth above.
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Name: Michael Intrator | ||
Title: Chief Executive Officer |
THIRD AMENDMENT TO
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
CoreWeave, Inc.
THIS THIRD AMENDMENT to 2019 Stock Option Plan (as amended, the Plan) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) was duly approved by the Board of Directors and stockholders of the Company on November 9, 2023.
WHEREAS, the Plan currently allows the Board of Directors of the Company (the Board) or a committee established by the Board, to grant stock options to eligible persons;
WHEREAS, the Company now wishes to amend the Plan by adding a new Section 5 which allows for the Company to grant Restricted Stock Units to eligible persons; and
WHEREAS, the Company is authorized to amend the Plan pursuant to Section 10.3 of the Plan.
NOW, THEREFORE, effective as of November 9, 2023, the Plan is hereby amended as follows:
3. | Section 5 of the Plan is hereby added and the subsequent sections are renumbered sequentially: |
5. RESTRICTED STOCK UNITS. The Committee may grant Restricted Stock Units or RSUs to eligible persons described in Section 3 hereof subject to the terms of this Section.
5.1. Restricted Stock Unit Awards. Each Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement will be in such form and will contain such terms and conditions as the Board deems appropriate. The terms and conditions of the Award Agreements may change from time to time, and the terms and conditions of separate Award Agreements need not be identical. Each Award Agreement will conform to (through incorporation of the provisions hereof by reference in the Agreement or otherwise) the substance of each of the following provisions:
5.1.1 Consideration. At the time of grant of a Restricted Stock Unit Award, the Board will determine the consideration, if any, to be paid by the Participant upon delivery of each share of Common Stock subject to the Restricted Stock Unit Award. The consideration to be paid (if any) by the Participant for each share of Common Stock subject to a Restricted Stock Unit Award may be paid in any form of legal consideration that may be acceptable to the Board, in its sole discretion, and permissible under applicable law.
5.1.2. Vesting. At the time of the grant of a Restricted Stock Unit Award, the Board may impose such restrictions on or conditions to the vesting of the Restricted Stock Unit Award as it, in its sole discretion, deems appropriate.
5.1.3. Payment. A Restricted Stock Unit Award may be settled by the delivery of shares of Common Stock, their cash equivalent, any combination thereof or in any other form of consideration, as determined by the Board and contained in the Award Agreement.
5.1.4. Additional Restrictions. At the time of the grant of a Restricted Stock Unit Award, the Board, as it deems appropriate, may impose such restrictions or conditions that delay the delivery of the shares of Common Stock (or their cash equivalent) subject to a Restricted Stock Unit Award to a time after the vesting of such Restricted Stock Unit Award.
5.1.5. Dividend Equivalents. Dividend equivalents may be credited in respect of shares of Common Stock covered by a Restricted Stock Unit Award, as determined by the Board and contained in the Award Agreement.
5.1.6. Termination of Participants Continuous Service. Except as otherwise provided in the applicable Award Agreement, such portion of the Restricted Stock Unit Award that has not vested will be forfeited upon the Participants termination of service.
5.1.7. Compliance with Section 409A of the Code. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary set forth herein, any Restricted Stock Unit Award granted under the Plan that is not exempt from the requirements of Section 409A of the Code shall contain such provisions so that such Restricted Stock Unit Award will comply with the requirements of Section 409A of the Code. Such restrictions, if any, shall be determined by the Board and contained in the Award Agreement evidencing such Restricted Stock Unit Award. For example, such restrictions may include, without limitation, a requirement that any Common Stock that is to be issued in a year following the year in which the Restricted Stock Unit Award vests must be issued in accordance with a fixed pre-determined schedule.
4. | Section 11 of the Plan is hereby amended by restating or adding the following definitions: |
Award means any Option or Restricted Stock Unit awarded pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Plan including, with respect to Options, any ISO or NQSO.
Change of Control shall have the meaning set forth in Treasury Regulation Section 1.409A-3(i)(5).
Restricted Stock Units or RSUs means an award of RSUs pursuant to Section 5 of this Plan.
Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement or RSU Agreement means the Award Agreement described in Section 5 of this Plan.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned has caused this Amendment to be executed as of the date first set forth above.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned has caused this Amendment to be executed as of the date first set forth above.
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Name: Michael Intrator | ||
Title: Chief Executive Officer |
FOURTH AMENDMENT TO
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
CoreWeave, Inc.
THIS FOURTH AMENDMENT to 2019 Stock Option Plan (as amended, the Plan) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) was duly approved by the Board of Directors of the Company on December 6, 2023.
WHEREAS, the Plan currently provides for a total of 2,817,550 shares of Common Stock of the Company to be reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to the Plan; and
WHEREAS, the Company now wishes to amend Section 2.1 of the Plan to increase the number of shares of Common Stock reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to the Plan by 514,330 shares to an aggregate of 3,331,880 shares.
NOW, THEREFORE, effective as of December 6, 2023, the Plan is hereby amended as follows:
1. | Section 2.1 of the Plan is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following: |
Number of Shares Available. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, the total number of Shares reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to this Plan will be 3,331,880 Shares. Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, Shares subject to Awards that are cancelled, forfeited, settled in cash, used to pay withholding obligations or pay the exercise price of an Option or that expire by their terms at any time will again be available for grant and issuance in connection with other Awards. In the event that Shares previously issued under the Plan are reacquired by the Company pursuant to a forfeiture provision, right of first refusal, or repurchase by the Company, such Shares shall be added to the number of Shares then available for issuance under the Plan. At all times the Company will reserve and keep available a sufficient number of Shares as will be required to satisfy the requirements of all Awards granted and outstanding under this Plan. In no event shall the total number of Shares issued (counting each reissuance of a Share that was previously issued and then forfeited or repurchased by the Company as a separate issuance) under the Plan upon exercise of ISOs exceed 33,318,800 Shares (adjusted in proportion to any adjustments under Section 2.2 hereof) over the term of the Plan (the ISO Limit). Subject to Sections 2.2 and 8 hereof, in the event that the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan is increased, the ISO Limit shall be automatically increased by such number of Shares such that the ISO Limit equals (a) ten (10) multiplied by (b) the number of Shares reserved for issuance under the Plan.
2. | Except as set forth herein, the Plan shall remain in full force and effect following the date of this Amendment. |
[Signature Page Follows]
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned has caused this Amendment to be executed as of the date first set forth above.
COREWEAVE, INC. | ||
By: | /s/ Michael Intrator | |
Name: Michael Intrator | ||
Title: Chief Executive Officer |
ATLANTIC CRYPTO CORPORATION
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
The Optionee named below (Optionee) has been granted an option (this Option) to purchase shares of Common Stock, $0.0001 par value per share (the Common Stock), of Atlantic Crypto Corporation, a Delaware corporation (the Company), pursuant to the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan) on the terms, and subject to the conditions, described below and in the Stock Option Agreement attached hereto as Exhibit A, including its annexes (the Agreement).
Optionee: | [________] | |
Maximum Number of Shares Subject | ||
to this Option (the Shares): | ]________ | |
Exercise Price Per Share: | []________ | |
Date of Grant: | []________ | |
Vesting Start Date: | [________] | |
Exercise Schedule: | This Option will become exercisable during its term with respect to portions of the Shares in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth below. | |
Expiration Date: | The date ten (10) years after the Date of Grant set forth above, subject to earlier expiration in the event of Termination as provided in Section 3 of the Stock Option Agreement. | |
Tax Status of Option: | [________] | |
(Check Only One Box): | ||
Vesting Schedule: | [________ |
General; Agreement: By Optonees acceptance of this Option, Optionee and the Company agree that this Option is granted under and governed by this Notice of Stock Option Grant (this Grant Notice) and by the provisions of the Plan and the Stock Option Agreement. The Plan and the Stock Option Agreement are incorporated herein by reference. Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings given to them in the Plan or in the Stock Option Agreement, as applicable. By acceptance of this Option, Optionee acknowledges receipt of a copy of this Grant Notice, the Plan and the Stock Option Agreement, represents that Optionee has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions, and hereby accepts the Option subject to all of their respective terms and conditions. Optionee acknowledges that there may be adverse tax consequences upon exercise of the Option or disposition of the Shares and that Optionee should consult a tax adviser prior to such exercise or disposition.
Execution and Delivery: This Grant Notice may be executed and delivered electronically whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of a third party or via email or any other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company. By Optionees acceptance hereof (whether written, electronic or otherwise), Optionee agrees, to the fullest extent permitted by law, that in lieu of receiving documents in paper format, Optionee accepts the electronic delivery of any documents that the Company (or any third
party the Company may designate), may deliver in connection with this grant (including the Plan, this Grant Notice, the Stock Option Agreement, the information described in Rules 70l(e)(2), (3), (4) and (5) under the Securities Act (the 701 Disclosures), account statements, or other communications or information) whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of such third party or via email or such other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company.
ATTACHMENT: Exhibit A - Stock Option Agreement
2
EXHIBIT A
STOCK OPTION AGREEMENT
EXHIBIT A
STOCK OPTION AGREEMENT
ATLANTIC CRYPTO CORPORATION
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
This Stock Option Agreement (this Agreement) is made and entered into as of the date of grant (the Date of Grant) set forth on the Notice of Stock Option Grant attached as the facing page to this Agreement (the Grant Notice) by and between Atlantic Crypto Corporation, a Delaware corporation (the Company), and the optionee named on the Grant Notice (the Optionee). Capitalized terms not defined in this Agreement shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan), or in the Grant Notice, as applicable.
1. GRANT OF OPTION. The Company hereby grants to Optionee an option (this Option) to purchase up to the total number of shares of Common Stock of the Company, $0.0001 par value per share (the Common Stock), set forth in the Grant Notice as the Shares (the Shares) at the Exercise Price Per Share set forth in the Grant Notice (the Exercise Price), subject to all of the terms and conditions of the Grant Notice, this Agreement and the Plan. If designated as an Incentive Stock Option in the Grant Notice, this Option is intended to qualify as an incentive stock option (the ISO) within the meaning of Section 422 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), except that if on the Date of Grant Optionee is not subject to U.S. income tax, then this Option shall be a NQSO.
2. EXERCISE PERIOD.
2.1 Exercise Period of Option. This Option is considered to be vested with respect to any particular Shares when this Option is exercisable with respect to such Shares. This Option will become vested during its term as to portions of the Shares in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Grant Notice. Notwithstanding any provision in the Plan or this Agreement to the contrary, on or after Optionees Termination Date, this Option may not be exercised with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares on Optionees Termination Date.
2.2 Vesting of Option Shares. Shares with respect to which this Option is vested and exercisable at a given time pursuant to the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Grant Notice are Vested Shares. Shares with respect to which this Option is not vested and exercisable at a given time pursuant to the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Grant Notice are Unvested Shares.
2.3 Expiration. The Option shall expire on the Expiration Date set forth in the Grant Notice or earlier as provided in Section 3 below.
3. TERMINATION.
3.1 Termination for Any Reason Except Death, Disability or Cause. Except as provided in subsection 3.2 in a case in which Optionee dies within three (3) months after Optionee is Terminated other than for Cause, if Optionee is Terminated for any reason (other than Optionees death or Disability or for Cause), then (a) on and after Optionees Termination Date,
this Option shall expire immediately with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares and may not be exercised with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares on Optionees Termination Date and (b) this Option to the extent (and only to the extent) that it is exercisable with respect to Vested Shares on Optionees Termination Date, may be exercised by Optionee no later than three (3) months after Optionees Termination Date (but m no event may this Option be exercised after the Expiration Date).
3.2 Termination Because of Death or Disability. If Optionee is Terminated because of Optionees death or Disability (or if Optionee dies within three (3) months of the date of Optionees Termination for any reason other than for Cause), then (a) on and after Optionees Termination Date, this Option shall expire immediately with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares and may not be exercised with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares on Optionees Termination Date and (b) this Option, to the extent (and only to the extent) that it is exercisable with respect to Vested Shares on Optionees Termination Date, may be exercised by Optionee (or Optionees legal representative) no later than twelve (12) months after Optionees Termination Date, but in no event later than the Expiration Date. Any exercise of this Option beyond (i) three (3) months after the date Optionee ceases to be an employee when Optionees Termination is for any reason other than Optionees death or disability, within the meaning of Section 22(e)(3) of the Code; or (ii) twelve (12) months after the date Optionee ceases to be an employee when the termination is for Optionees disability, within the meaning of Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, is deemed to be an NQSO.
3.3 Termination for Cause. If Optionee is Terminated for Cause, then Optionee may exercise this Option, but only with respect to any Shares that are Vested Shares on Optionees Termination Date, and this Option shall expire on Optionees Termination Date, or at such later time and on such conditions as may be affirmatively determined by the Board. On and after Optionees Termination Date, this Option shall expire immediately with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares and may not be exercised with respect to any Shares that are Unvested Shares on Optionees Termination Date.
3.4 No Obligation to Employ. Nothing in the Plan or this Agreement shall confer on Optionee any right to continue in the employ of, or other relationship with, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or limit in any way the right of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company to terminate Optionees employment or other relationship at any time, with or without Cause.
4. MANNER OF EXERCISE.
4.1 Stock Option Exercise Notice and Agreement. To exercise this Option, Optionee (or in the case of exercise after Optionees death or incapacity, Optionees executor, administrator, heir or legatee, as the case may be) must deliver to the Company an executed Stock Option Exercise Notice and Agreement in the form attached hereto as Annex A. or in such other form as may be approved by the Board from time to time (the Exercise Agreement) and payment for the shares being purchased in accordance with this Agreement. The Exercise Agreement shall set forth, among other things, (i) Optionees election to exercise this Option, (ii) the number of Shares being purchased, (iii) any representations, warranties and agreements regarding Optionees investment intent and access to information as may be required by the Company to comply with
2
applicable securities laws in connection with any exercise of this Option, (iv) any other agreements required by the Company and (v) Optionees obligation to execute and deliver certain Stock Powers and Assignments Separate from Stock Certificate to the Company. If someone other than Optionee exercises this Option, then such person must submit documentation reasonably acceptable to the Company verifying that such person has the legal right to exercise this Option and such person shall be subject to all of the restrictions contained herein as if such person were Optionee.
4.2 Limitations on Exercise. This Option may not be exercised unless such exercise is in compliance with all applicable federal and state securities laws, as they are in effect on the date of exercise.
4.3 Payment. The Exercise Agreement shall be accompanied by full payment of the Exercise Price for the shares being purchased in cash (by check or wire transfer), or where permitted by law:
(a) by cancellation of indebtedness of the Company owed to Optionee;
(b) by surrender of shares of the Company that are free and clear of all security interests, pledges, liens, claims or encumbrances and: (i) for which the Company has received full payment of the purchase price within the meaning of SEC Rule 144 (and, if such shares were purchased from the Company by use of a promissory note, such note has been fully paid with respect to such shares) or (ii) that were obtained by Optionee in the public market;
(c) by participating in a formal cashless exercise program implemented by the Board in connection with the Plan;
(d) provided that a public market for the Common Stock exists and subject to compliance with applicable law, by exercising as set forth below, through a same day sale commitment from Optionee and a broker-dealer whereby Optionee irrevocably elects to exercise this Option and to sell a portion of the Shares so purchased sufficient to pay the total Exercise Price, and whereby the broker-dealer irrevocably commits upon receipt of such Shares to forward the total Exercise Price directly to the Company; or
(e) by any combination of the foregoing or any other method of payment approved by the Board that constitutes legal consideration for the issuance of Shares.
4.4 Tax Withholding. Prior to the issuance of the Shares upon exercise of the Option, Optionee must pay or provide for any applicable federal, state and local withholding obligations of the Company. If the Committee permits, Optionee may provide for payment of withholding taxes upon exercise of the Option by requesting that the Company retain the minimum number of Shares with a Fair Market Value equal to the minimum amount of taxes required to be withheld; or to arrange a mandatory sell to cover on Participants behalf (without further authorization); but in no event will the Company withhold Shares or sell to cover if such withholding would result in adverse accounting consequences to the Company. In case of stock withholding or a sell to cover, the Company shall issue the net number oi Shares to the Optionee by deducting the Shares retained from the Shares issuable upon exercise.
3
4.5 Issuance of Shares. Provided that the Exercise Agreement and payment are in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, the Company shall issue the Shares issuable upon a valid exercise of this Option registered in the name of Optionee, Optionees authorized assignee, or Optionees legal representative, and shall deliver certificates representing the Shares with the appropriate legends affixed thereto.
5. COMPLIANCE WITH LAWS AND REGULATIONS. The Plan and this Agreement are intended to comply with Section 25102(o) and Rule 701. Any provision of this Agreement that is inconsistent with Section 25102(o) or Rule 701 shall, without further act or amendment by the Company or the Board, be reformed to comply with the requirements of Section 25102(o) and/or Rule 701. The exercise of this Option and the issuance and transfer of Shares shall be subject to compliance by the Company and Optionee with all applicable requirements of federal and state securities laws and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange on which the Common Stock may be listed at the time oi such issuance or transfer. Optionee understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with the SEC, any state securities commission or any stock exchange to effect such compliance.
6. NONTRANSFERABILITY OF OPTION. This Option may not be transferred in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent and distribution, and, with respect to NQSOs, by instrument to a testamentary trust in which the options are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the trustor (settlor) or a revocable trust, or by gift to immediate family as that term is defined in 17 C.F.R. 240. l 6a-1(e), and may be exercised during the lifetime of Optionee only by Optionee or in the event of Optionees incapacity, by Optionees legal representative. The terms of this Option shall be binding upon the executors, administrators, successors and assigns of Optionee.
7. RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFER.
7.1 Disposition of Shares. Optionee hereby agrees that Optionee shall make no disposition of any of the Shares (other than as permitted by this Agreement) unless and until:
(a) Optionee shall have notified the Company of the proposed disposition and provided a written summary of the terms and conditions of the proposed disposition;
(b) Optionee shall have complied with all requirements of this Agreement applicable to the disposition of the Shares;
(c) Optionee shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, that (i) the proposed disposition does not require registration of the Shares under the Securities Act or under any applicable state securities laws or (ii) all appropriate actions necessary for compliance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act or of any exemption from registration available under the Securities Act (including Rule 144) or applicable state securities laws have been taken; and
(d) Optionee shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to the Company, that the proposed disposition will not result in the contravention of any transfer restrictions applicable to the Shares pursuant to the provisions of the regulations promulgated under Section 25102(o), Rule 701 or under any other applicable securities laws or adversely affect the Companys ability to rely on the exemption(s) from registration under the Securities Act or under any other applicable securities laws for the grant of the Option, the issuance o1 Shares thereunder or any other issuance of securities under the Plan.
4
7.2 Restriction on Transfer. Optionee shall not transfer, assign, grant a lien or security interest in, pledge, hypothecate, encumber or otherwise dispose of any of the Shares which are subject to the Companys Right of First Refusal described below, except as permitted by this Agreement.
7.3 Transferee Obligations. Each person (other than the Company) to whom the Shares are transferred by means of one of the permitted transfers specified in this Agreement must, as a condition precedent to the validity of such transfer, acknowledge in writing to the Company that such person is bound by the provisions of this Agreement and that the transferred Shares are subject to (i) the Companys Right of First Refusal granted hereunder and (ii) the market stand-off provisions of Section 8 below, to the same extent such Shares would be so subject if retained by Optionee.
8. MARKET STANDOFF AGREEMENT. Optionee agrees that, subject to any early release provisions that apply pro rata to stockholders of the Company according to their holdings of Common Stock (determined on an as-converted into Common Stock basis), Optionee will not, if requested by the managing underwriter(s) in the initial underwritten sale of Common Stock of the Company to the public pursuant to a registration statement filed with, and declared effective by, the SEC under the Securities Act (the IPO), for a period of up to one hundred eighty (180) days following the effective date of the registration statement relating to such IPO, directly or indirectly sell, offer to sell, grant any option for the sale of, or otherwise dispose of any Common Stock or securities convertible into Common Stock, except for: (i) transfers of Shares permitted under Section 9.6 hereof so long as such transferee furnishes to the Company and the managing underwriter their written consent to be bound by this Section 8 as a condition precedent to such transfer; and (ii) sales of any securities to be included in the registration statement for the IPO. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of this Section shall only apply to the IPO. The restricted period shall in any event terminate two (2) years after the closing date of the IPO. In order to enforce the foregoing covenant, the Company shall have the right to place restrictive legends on the certificates representing the Shares subject to this Section and to impose stop transfer instructions with respect to the Shares until the end of such period. Optionee further agrees to enter into any agreement reasonably required by the underwriters to implement the foregoing restrictions on transfer. For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing provisions of this Section shall not apply to any registration of securities of the Company (a) under an employee benefit plan or (b) in a merger, consolidation, business combination or similar transaction.
9. COMPANYS RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL. Before any Shares held by Optionee or any transferee of such Shares (either sometimes referred to herein as the Holder) may be sold or otherwise transferred (including, without limitation, a transfer by gift or operation of law), the Company and/or its assignee(s) will have a right of first refusal to purchase the Shares to be sold or transferred (the Offered Shares) on the terms and conditions set forth in this Section (the Right of First Refusal).
5
9.1 Notice of Proposed Transfer. The Holder of the Offered Shares will deliver to the Company a written notice (the Notice) stating: (i) the Holders bona fide intention to sell or otherwise transfer the Offered Shares; (ii) the name and address of each proposed purchaser or other transferee (the Proposed Transferee); (iii) the number of Offered Shares to be transferred to each Proposed Transferee; (iv) the bona fide cash price or other consideration for which the Holder proposes to transfer the Offered Shares (the Offered Price); and (v) that the Holder acknowledges this Notice is an offer to sell the Offered Shares to the Company and/or its assignee(s) pursuant to the Companys Right of First Refusal at the Offered Price as provided for in this Agreement.
9.2 Exercise of Right of First Refusal. At any time within thirty (30) days after the date of the Notice, the Company and/or its assignee(s) may, by giving written notice to the Holder, elect to purchase all (or, with the consent of the Holder, less than all) the Offered Shares proposed to be transferred to any one or more of the Proposed Transferees named in the Notice, at the purchase price, determined as specified below.
9.3 Purchase Price. The purchase price for the Offered Shares purchased under this Section will be the Offered Price, provided, that if the Offered Price consists of no legal consideration (as, for example, in the case of a transfer by gift) then the purchase price will be the fair market value of the Offered Shares as determined in good faith by the Board. If the Offered Price includes consideration other than cash, then the value of the non-cash consideration, as determined in good faith by the Committee, will conclusively be deemed to be the cash equivalent value of such non-cash consideration.
9.4 Payment. Payment of the purchase price for the Offered Shares will be payable, at the option of the Company and/or its assignee(s) (as applicable), by check or by cancellation of all or a portion of any outstanding purchase money indebtedness owed by the Holder to the Company (or to such assignee, in the case of a purchase of Offered Shares by such assignee) or by any combination thereof. The purchase price will be paid without interest within sixty (60) days after the Companys receipt of the Notice, or, at the option of the Company and/or its assignee(s), in the manner and at the time(s) set forth in the Notice.
9.5 Holders Right to Transfer. If all of the Offered Shares proposed in the Notice to be transferred to a given Proposed Transferee are not purchased by the Company and/or its assignee(s) as provided in this Section, then the Holder may sell or otherwise transfer such Offered Shares to each Proposed Transferee at the Offered Price or at a higher price, provided that (i) such sale or other transfer is consummated within ninety (90) days after the date of the Notice, (ii) any such sale or other transfer is effected in compliance with all applicable securities laws, and (iii) each Proposed Transferee agrees in writing that the provisions of this Section will continue to apply to the Offered Shares in the hands of such Proposed Transferee. If the Offered Shares described in the Notice are not transferred to each Proposed Transferee within such ninety (90) day period, then a new Notice must be given to the Company pursuant to which the Company will again be offered the Right of First Refusal before any Shares held by the Holder may be sold or otherwise transferred.
6
9.6 Exempt Transfers. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Section, the following transfers of Shares will be exempt from the Right of First Refusal: (i) the transfer of any or all of the Shares during Optionees lifetime by gift or on Optionees death by will or intestacy to any member(s) of Optionees Immediate Family (as defined below) or to a trust for the benefit of Optionee and/or member(s) of Optionees Immediate Family, provided that each transferee or other recipient agrees in a writing satisfactory to the Company that the provisions of this Section will continue to apply to the transferred Shares in the hands of such transferee or other recipient; (ii) any transfer of Shares made pursuant to a statutory merger, statutory consolidation of the Company with or into another corporation or corporations or a conversion of the Company into another form of legal entity (except that the Right of First Refusal will continue to apply thereafter to such Shares, in which case the surviving corporation of such merger or consolidation or the resulting entity of such conversion shall succeed to the rights of the Company under this Section unless the agreement of merger or consolidation or conversion expressly othe1wise provides); or (iii) any transfer of Shares pursuant to the winding up and dissolution of the Company. As used herein, the term Immediate Family will mean Optionees spouse, the lineal descendant or antecedent, father, mother, brother or sister, child, adopted child, grandchild or adopted grandchild of Optionee or Optionees spouse, or the spouse of any of the above or Spousal Equivalent, as defined herein. As used herein, a person is deemed to be a Spousal Equivalent provided the following circumstances are true: (i) irrespective of whether or not the Optionee and the Spousal Equivalent are the same sex, they are the sole spousal equivalent of the other for the last twelve (12) months, (ii) they intend to remain so indefinitely, (iii) neither are married to anyone else, (iv) both are at least 18 years of age and mentally competent to consent to contract, (v) they are not related by blood to a degree of closeness that which would prohibit legal marriage in the state in which they legally reside, (vi) they are jointly responsible for each others common welfare and financial obligations, and (vii) they reside together in the same residence for the last twelve (12) months and intend to do so indefinitely.
9.7 Termination of Right of First Refusal. The Right of First Refusal will terminate as to all Shares: (i) on the effective date of the first sale of Common Stock of the Company to the general public pursuant to a registration statement filed with and declared effective by the SEC under the Securities Act (other than a registration statement relating solely to the issuance of Common Stock pursuant to a business combination or an employee incentive or benefit plan); (ii) on any transfer or conversion of Shares made pursuant to a statutory merger or statutory consolidation of the Company with or into another corporation or corporations if the common stock of the surviving corporation or any direct or indirect parent corporation thereof is registered under the Exchange Act; or (iii) on any transfer or conversion of Shares made pursuant to a statutory conversion of the Company into another form of legal entity if the common equity (or comparable equity security) of entity resulting from such conversion is registered under the Exchange Act.
9.8 Encumbrances on Shares. Optionee may grant a lien or security interest in, or pledge, hypothecate or encumber Shares only if each party to whom such lien or security interest is granted, or to whom such pledge, hypothecation or other encumbrance is made, agrees in a writing satisfactory to the Company that: (i) such lien, security interest, pledge, hypothecation or encumbrance will not adversely affect or impair the Right of First Refusal or the rights of the Company and/or its assignee(s) with respect thereto and will not apply to such Shares after they are acquired by the Company and/or its assignees under this Section; and (ii) the provisions of this Agreement will continue to apply to such Shares in the hands of such party and any transferee of such party.
7
10. RIGHTS AS A STOCKHOLDER. Optionee shall not have any of the rights of a stockholder with respect to any Shares unless and until such Shares are issued to Optionee. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Optionee will have all of the rights of a stockholder of the Company with respect to the Shares from and after the date that Shares are issued to Optionee pursuant to, and in accordance with, the terms of the Exercise Agreement until such time as Optionee disposes of the Shares or the Company and/or its assignee(s) exercise(s) the Right of First Refusal. Upon an exercise of the Right of First Refusal, Optionee will have no further rights as a holder of the Shares so purchased upon such exercise, other than the right to receive payment for the Shares so purchased in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement, and Optionee will promptly surrender the stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares so purchased to the Company for transfer or cancellation.
11. ESCROW. As security for Optionees faithful performance of this Agreement, Optionee agrees, immediately upon issuance of the stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares, to consent to the delivery of such certificate(s), together with two (2) copies of a blank Stock Power and Assignment Separate from Stock Ce1tificate in the form attached to the Exercise Agreement (the Stock Powers), both executed by Purchaser (and Purchasers spouse, if any) (with the transferee, certificate number, date and number of Shares left blank), to the Secretary of the Company or other designee of the Company (the Escrow Holder), who is hereby appointed to hold such certificate(s) and Stock Powers in escrow and to take all such actions and to effectuate all such transfers and/or releases of such Shares as are in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. Optionee and the Company agree that Escrow Holder will not be liable to any party to this Agreement (or to any other party) for any actions or omissions unless Escrow Holder is grossly negligent or intentionally fraudulent in carrying out the duties of Escrow Holder under this Agreement. Escrow Holder may rely upon any letter, notice or other document executed with any signature purported to be genuine and may rely on the advice of counsel and obey any order of any court with respect to the transactions contemplated by this Agreement and will not be liable for any act or omission taken by Escrow Holder in good faith reliance on such documents, the advice of counsel or a court order. The Shares will be released from escrow upon termination of the Right of First Refusal.
12. RESTRICTIVE LEGENDS AND STOP-TRANSFER ORDERS.
12.1 Legends. Optionee understands and agrees that the Company will place the legends set forth below or similar legends on any stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares, together with any other legends that may be required by state or U.S. Federal securities laws, the Companys Certificate of Incorporation or Bylaws, any other agreement between Optionee and the Company, or any agreement between Optionee and any third party (and any other legend(s) that the Company may become obligated to place on the stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares under the terms of any agreement to which the Company is or may become bound or obligated):
(a) THE SECURITIES REPRESENTED HEREBY HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (THE SECURITIES ACT), OR UNDER THE SECURITIES LAWS OF CERTAIN STATES. THESE SECURITIES ARE SUBJECT TO RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFERABILITY AND RESALE AND MAY NOT BE TRANSFERRED OR RESOLD EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT AND APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS, PURSUANT TO
8
REGISTRATION OR EXEMPTION THEREFROM. INVESTORS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THEY MAY BE REQUIRED TO BEAR THE FINANCIAL RISKS OF THIS INVESTMENT FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD OF TIME. THE ISSUER OF THESE SECURITIES MAY REQUIRE AN OPINION OF COUNSEL IN FORM AND SUBSTANCE SATISFACTORY TO THE ISSUER TO THE EFFECT THAT ANY PROPOSED TRANSFER OR RESALE IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE SECURITIES ACT AND ANY APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS.
(b) THE SHARES REPRESENTED BY THIS CERTIFICATE ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS ON RESALE AND TRANSFER, INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL HELD BY THE ISSUER AND/OR ITS ASSIGNEE(S) AS SET FORTH IN A STOCK OPTION AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE ISSUER AND THE ORIGINAL HOLDER OF THESE SHARES, A COPY OF WHICH MAY BE OBTAINED AT THE PRINCIPAL OFFICE OF THE ISSUER. SUCH SALE AND TRANSFER RESTRICTIONS, INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL, ARE BINDING ON TRANSFEREES OF THESE SHARES.
(c) THE SHARES REPRESENTED BY THIS CERTIFICATEARE SUBJECT TO A MARKET STANDOFF RESTRICTION AS SET FORTH IN A CERTAIN STOCK OPTION AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE ISSUER AND THE ORIGINAL HOLDER OF THESE SHARES, A COPY OF WHICH MAY BE OBTAINED AT THE PRINCIPAL OFFICE OF THE ISSUER. AS A RESULT OF SUCH AGREEMENT, THESE SHARES MAY NOT BE TRADED PRIOR TO 180 DAYS AFTER THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF CERTAIN PUBLIC OFFERINGS OF THE COMMON STOCK OF THE ISSUER HEREOF. SUCH RESTRICTION IS BINDING ON TRANSFEREES OF THESE SHARES.
12.2 Stop-Transfer Instructions. Optionee agrees that, to ensure compliance with the restrictions imposed by this Agreement, the Company may issue appropriate stop-transfer instructions to its transfer agent, if any, and if the Company transfers its own securities, it may make appropriate notations to the same effect in its own records.
12.3 Refusal to Transfer. The Company will not be required (i) to transfer on its books any Shares that have been sold or otherwise transferred in violation of any of the provisions of this Agreement or (ii) to treat as owner of such Shares, or to accord the right to vote or pay dividends to any purchaser or other transferee to whom such Shares have been so transferred.
13. CERTAIN TAX CONSEQUENCES. Set forth below is a brief summary as of the Effective Date of the Plan of some of the federal tax consequences of exercise of the Option and disposition of the Shares. THIS SUMMARY IS NECESSARILY INCOMPLETE, AND THE TAX LAWS AND REGULATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. OPTIONEE SHOULD CONSULT AT AX ADVISER BEFORE EXERCISING THE OPTION OR DISPOSING OF THE SHARES.
13.1 Exercise of ISO. If the Option qualifies as an ISO, there will be no regular federal income tax liability upon the exercise of the Option, although the excess, if any, of the Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date of exercise over the Exercise Price will be treated as a tax preference item for federal alternative minimum tax purposes and may subject the Optionee to the alternative minimum tax in the year of exercise.
9
13.2 Exercise of Nonqualified Stock Option. If the Option does not qualify as an ISO, there may be a regular federal income tax liability upon the exercise of the Option. Optionee will be treated as having received compensation income (taxable at ordinary income tax rates) equal to the excess, if any, of the Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date of exercise over the Exercise Price. If Optionee is a current or former employee of the Company, the Company may be required to withhold from Optionees compensation or collect from Optionee and pay to the applicable taxing authorities an amount equal to a percentage of this compensation income at the time of exercise.
13.3 Disposition of Shares. The following tax consequences may apply upon disposition of the Shares.
(a) Incentive Stock Options. If the Shares are held for more than twelve (12) months after the date of purchase of the Shares pursuant to the exercise of an ISO and are disposed oi more than two (2) years after the Date of Grant, any gain realized on disposition of the Shares will be treated as long term capital gain for federal income tax purposes. If Shares purchased under an ISO are disposed of within the applicable one (1) year or two (2) year period, any gain realized on such disposition will be treated as compensation income (taxable at ordinary income rates in the year of the disposition) to the extent of the excess, if any, of the Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date oi exercise over the Exercise Price.
(b) Nonqualified Stock Options. If the Shares are held for more than twelve (12) months after the date of purchase of the Shares pursuant to the exercise of an NQSO, any gain realized on disposition of the Shares will be treated as long term capital gain.
14. GENERAL PROVISIONS.
14.1 Interpretation. Any dispute regarding the interpretation of this Agreement shall be submitted by Optionee or the Company to the Committee for review. The resolution of such a dispute by the Board shall be final and binding on the Company and Optionee.
14.2 Entire Agreement. The Plan, the Grant Notice and the Exercise Agreement are each incorporated herein by reference. This Agreement, the Grant Notice, the Plan and the Exercise Agreement constitute the entire agreement of the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersede all prior undertakings and agreements with respect to such subject matter.
15. NOTICES. Any and all notices required or permitted to be given to a party pursuant to the provisions of this Agreement will be in writing and will be effective and deemed to provide such party sufficient notice under this Agreement on the earliest of the following: (i) at the time of personal delivery, if delivery is in person; (ii) at the time an electronic confirmation of receipt is received, if delivery is by email; (iii) at the time of transmission by facsimile, addressed to the other party at its facsimile number specified herein (or hereafter modified by subsequent notice to the parties hereto), with confirmation of receipt made by both telephone and printed confirmation sheet verifying successful transmission of the facsimile; (iv) one (1) business day after deposit with an express overnight courier for United States deliveries, or two (2) business
10
days after such deposit for deliveries outside of the United States, with proof of delivery from the courier requested; or (v) three (3) business days after deposit in the United States mail by certified mail (return receipt requested) for United States deliveries. Any notice for delivery outside the United States will be sent by email, facsimile or by express courier. Any notice not delivered personally or by email will be sent with postage and/or other charges prepaid and properly addressed to Optionee at the last known address or facsimile number on the books of the Company, or at such other address or facsimile number as such other party may designate by one of the indicated means of notice herein to the other parties hereto or, in the case of the Company, to it at its principal place of business. Notices to the Company will be marked Attention: Corporate Secretary. Notices by facsimile shall be machine verified as received.
16. SUCCESSORS AND ASSIGNS. The Company may assign any of its rights under this Agreement including its rights to purchase Shares under the Right of First Refusal. This Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the successors and assigns of the Company. Subject to the restrictions on transfer set forth herein, this Agreement shall be binding upon Optionee and Optionees heirs, executors, administrators, legal representatives, successors and assigns.
17. GOVERNING LAW. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of New Jersey as such laws are applied to agreements between New Jersey residents entered into and to be performed entirely within New Jersey. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by a court of law to be illegal or unenforceable, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible and the other provisions will remain fully effective and enforceable.
18. FURTHER ASSURANCES. The parties agree to execute such further documents and instruments and to take such further actions as may be reasonably necessary to carry out the purposes and intent of this Agreement.
19. TITLES AND HEADINGS. The titles, captions and headings of this Agreement are included for ease of reference only and will be disregarded in interpreting or construing this Agreement. Unless otherwise specifically stated, all references herein to sections and exhibits will mean sections and exhibits to this Agreement.
20. COUNTERPARTS. This Agreement may be executed in any number of counterparts, each of which when so executed and delivered will be deemed an original, and all of which together shall constitute one and the same agreement.
21. SEVERABILITY. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by any court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any respect, such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, such provision shall be stricken from this Agreement and the remainder of this Agreement shall be enforced as if such invalid, illegal or unenforceable clause or provision had (to the extent not enforceable) never been contained in this Agreement. Notwithstanding the forgoing, if the value of this Agreement based upon the substantial benefit of the bargain for any party is materially impaired, which determination as made
11
by the presiding court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction shall be binding, then both parties agree to substitute such provision(s) through good faith negotiations.
* * * * *
Attachment: Annex A: Form of Stock Option Exercise Notice and Agreement
12
ANNEX A
FORM OF STOCK OPTION EXERCISE NOTICE AND AGREEMENT
STOCK OPTION EXERCISE NOTICE AND AGREEMENT
ATLANTIC CRYPTO CORPORATION
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
*NOTE: | You must sign this Notice on Page 3 before submitting it to Atlantic Crypto Corporation, (the Company). |
OPTIONEE INFORMATION: Please provide the following information about yourself (Optionee):
Name: | Social Security Number: | |||||||
Address: | ||||||||
OPTION INFORMATION: Please provide this information on the option being exercised (the Option):
Grant No: | Type of Stock Option: |
Date of Grant: |
Option Price Per Share: |
Total number of shares of Common Stock of the Company subject to the Option: |
EXERCISE INFORMATION:
Number of shares of Common Stock of the Company for which the Option is now being exercised ________________. (These shares are referred to below as the Purchased Shares.)
Total Exercise Price Being Paid for the Purchased Shares: $__________
Form of payment [check all that apply1]:
Check for $__________, payable to Atlantic Crypto Corporation.
Certificate(s) for __________ shares of Common Stock of the Company, These shares will be valued as of the date this notice is received by the Company. [Requires Company consent.]
[ACH]
AGREEMENTS, REPRESENTATIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OF OPTIONEE: By signing this Stock Option Exercise Notice and Agreement, Optionee hereby agrees with, and represents to, the Company as follows:
1 | If you are a non-U.S. Optionee, please see the Company for permitted forms of payment. |
14
1. | Terms Governing. I acknowledge and agree with the Company that I am acquiring the Purchased Shares by exercise of this Option subject to all other terms and conditions of the Notice of Stock Option Grant and the Stock Option Agreement that govern the Option, including without limitation the terms of the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as it may be amended (the Plan). |
2. | Investment Intent; Securities Law Restrictions. I represent and warrant to the Company that I am acquiring and will hold the Purchased Shares for investment for my account only, and not with a view to, or for resale in connection with, any distribution of the Purchased Shares within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act). I understand that the Purchased Shares have not been registered under the Securities Act by reason of a specific exemption from such registration requirement and that the Purchased Shares must be held by me indefinitely, unless they are subsequently registered under the Securities Act or I obtain an opinion of counsel (in form and substance satisfactory to the Company and its counsel) that registration is not required. I acknowledge that the Company is under no obligation to register the Purchased Shares under the Securities Act or under any other securities law. |
3. | Restrictions on Transfer: Rule 144. I will not sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of the Purchased Shares in violation of the Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, or the rules promulgated thereunder (including Rule 144 under the Securities Act described below Rule 144)) or of any other applicable securities laws. I am aware of Rule 144, which permits limited public resales of securities acquired in a non-public offering, subject to satisfaction of certain conditions, which include (without limitation) that: (a) certain current public information about the Company is available; (b) the resale occurs only after the holding period required by Rule 144 has been met; (c) the sale occurs through an unsolicited brokers transaction; and (d) the amount of securities being sold during any three -month period does not exceed specified limitations. I understand that the conditions for resale set forth in Rule I 44 have not been satisfied and that the Company has no plans to satisfy these conditions in the foreseeable future. |
4. | Access to Information; Understanding of Risk in Investment. I acknowledge that I have received and had access to such information as I consider necessary or appropriate for deciding whether to invest in the Purchased Shares and that I had an opportunity to ask questions and receive answers from the Company regarding the terms and conditions of the issuance of the Purchased Shares. I am aware that my investment in the Company is a speculative investment that has limited liquidity and is subject to the risk of complete loss. I am able, without impairing my financial condition, to hold the Purchased Shares for an indefinite period and to suffer a complete loss of my investment in the Purchased Shares. |
5. | Rights of First Refusal; Market Stand-off. I acknowledge that the Purchased Shares remain subject to the Companys Right of First Refusal and the market stand-off covenants (sometimes referred to as the lock-up), all in accordance with the applicable Notice of Stock Option Grant and the Stock Option Agreement that govern the Option. |
6. | Form of Ownership. I acknowledge that the Company has encouraged me to consult my own adviser to determine the form of ownership of the Purchased Shares that is appropriate for me. In the event that I choose to transfer my Purchased Shares to a trust, I agree to sign a Stock Transfer Agreement. In the event that I choose to transfer my Purchased Shares to a trust that is not an eligible revocable trust, I also acknowledge that the transfer will be treated as a disposition for tax purposes. As a result, the favorable ISO tax treatment will be unavailable and other unfavorable tax consequences may occur. |
15
7. | Investigation of Tax Consequences. I acknowledge that the Company has encouraged me to consult my own adviser to determine the tax consequences of acquiring the Purchased Shares at this time. |
8. | Other Tax Matters. I agree that the Company does not have a duty to design or administer the Plan or its other compensation programs in a manner that minimizes my tax liabilities. I will not make any claim against the Company or its Board, officers or employees related to tax liabilities arising from my options or my other compensation. In particular, I acknowledge that my options (including the Option) are exempt from section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code only if the exercise price per share is at least equal to the fair market value per share of the Common Stock at the time the option was granted by the Board. Since shares of the Common Stock are not traded on an established securities market, the determination of their fair market value was made by the Board and/or by an independent valuation firm retained by the Company. I acknowledge that there is no guarantee in either case that the Internal Revenue Service will agree with the valuation, and I will not make any claim against the Company or its Board, officers or employees in the event that the Internal Revenue Service asserts that the valuation was too low. |
9. | Spouse Consent. I agree to seek the consent of my spouse to the extent required by the Company to enforce the foregoing. |
10. | Tax Withholding. As a condition of exercising this Option, I agree to make adequate provision for foreign, federal, state or other tax withholding obligations, if any, which arise upon the grant, vesting or exercise of this Option, or disposition of the Purchased Shares, whether by withholding, direct payment to the Company, or otherwise. |
The undersigned hereby executes and delivers this Stock Option Exercise Notice and Agreement and agrees to be bound by its terms
SIGNATURE: | DATE: | |||
Optionees Name: |
|
[Signature Page to Stock Option Exercise Notice and Agreement]
16
NOTICE OF RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD
COREWEAVE, INC.
2019 STOCK AWARD PLAN
The Participant named below has been granted a Restricted Stock Unit Award or RSU Award, with each Unit represented by one share of Common Stock, $0.0001 par value per share (the Common Stock), of CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), pursuant to the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan) on the terms, and subject to the conditions, described below and in the Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement attached hereto as Exhibit A (the RSU Agreement).
Participant:
RSUs Subject to this Award:
Date of Grant:
Vesting Start State:
Expiration Date: The date ten (10) years after the Date of Grant set forth above, subject to earlier expiration in the event of Termination, as provided in Section 3 hereof.
Vesting Schedule: The occurrence of both of the following:
| Time Based Component. Four years from the date of grant as follows: After one (1) year from the Vesting Start Date, one-fourth (1/4) of the Award shall vest; and thereafter, one-sixteenth (1/16) of the Award shall vest quarterly; and |
| Liquidity Event Component. The earlier of (1) a Change of Control; or (2) the effective date of a registration statement of the Company filed for the initial public offering of the Companys commons stock. |
General; Agreement: By Participants acceptance of this Award, Participant and the Company agree that this Award is granted under and governed by this Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award (this Notice) and by the provisions of the Plan and the RSU Agreement. The Plan and the RSU Agreement are incorporated herein by reference. Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings given to them in the Plan or in the RSU Agreement as applicable. By acceptance of this Award, Participant acknowledges receipt of a copy of this Notice the Plan and the RSU Agreement, represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions and hereby accepts the Award subject to all of their respective terms and conditions. Participant acknowledges that there will be tax consequences upon vesting of the Award and that Participant should consult a tax adviser prior to vesting.
Execution and Delivery: This Notice may be executed and delivered electronically whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of a third party or via email or any other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company. By Participants acceptance hereof (whether written, electronic or otherwise), Participant agrees, to the fullest extent permitted by law, that in lieu of receiving documents in paper format, Participant accepts the electronic delivery of any documents that the Company (or any third party the Company may designate), may deliver in connection with this Award (including the Plan, this Notice, the
RSU Agreement, the information described in Rules 701(e)(2), (3), (4) and (5) under the Securities Act (the 701 Disclosures), account statements, or other communications or information) whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of such third party or via email or such other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company.
ATTACHMENT: Exhibit A Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement
COREWEAVE, INC. | PARTICIPANT | |||||||
Name: | ||||||||
Name: | Date: | |||||||
Title: | ||||||||
Date: |
18
EXHIBIT A
RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
COREWEAVE INC.
2019 STOCK AWARD PLAN
This Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement (this Agreement) is made and entered into as of the date of grant (the Date of Grant) set forth on the Notice of RSU Award attached as the facing page to this Agreement (the Notice) by and between CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), and the Participant named on the Notice (the Participant). Capitalized terms not defined in this Agreement shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the Companys 2019 Stock Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan), or in the Notice, as applicable.
1. | GRANT OF AWARD. The Company hereby awards the Participant an Award of RSUs with each RSU equal to one unit of Common Stock of the Company, $0.0001 par value per share (the RSUs), set forth in the Notice as the Units (the Units), subject to all of the terms and conditions of the Notice, this Agreement and the Plan. |
2. | VESTING. |
(a) Vesting Generally. This Award will become vested during its term as to portions of the Units in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice.
(b) Vesting of Award Shares. Units with respect to which this Award is vested at a given time pursuant to the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice are Vested Units. Shares with respect to which this Award is not vested at a given time pursuant to the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice are Unvested Units.
3. | TERMINATION. |
(a) Termination. If a Participant is Terminated for any reason, then: (a) on and after Participants Termination Date, this Award shall expire immediately with respect to any RSUs that are Unvested Units; and (b) this Award to the extent (and only to the extent) with respect to Vested Units on Participants Termination Date shall not be affected by such Termination. Notwithstanding the foregoing, upon Termination for Cause, Vested Units and Unvested Units shall be forfeited.
(b) No Obligation to Employ. Nothing in the Plan or this Agreement shall confer on Participant any right to continue in the employ of, or other relationship with, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or limit in any way the right of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company to terminate Participants employment or other relationship at any time, with or without Cause.
4. | MANNER OF PAYMENT. Upon vesting, the RSUs shall be settled in cash, Common Stock or a combination of cash or Common Stock at the election of the Company. |
19
(a) Tax Withholding. Upon vesting of the Units, Participant must pay or provide for any applicable federal, state and local withholding obligations of the Company. If the Committee permits, Participant may provide for payment of withholding taxes by requesting that the Company retain the minimum number of cash or Shares with a Fair Market Value equal to the minimum amount of taxes required to be withheld; or to arrange a mandatory sell to cover on Participants behalf (without further authorization); but in no event will the Company withhold Shares or sell to cover if such withholding would result in adverse accounting consequences to the Company. In case of stock withholding or a sell to cover, the Company shall issue the net number of Shares to the Participant by deducting the Shares retained from the Shares issuable pursuant to the Award.
(b) Issuance of Shares. Provided the form of payment is Common Stock and payment are in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, the Company shall issue the Shares issuable upon vesting in the name of Participant, Participants authorized assignee, or Participants legal representative, and shall deliver certificates representing the Shares with the appropriate legends affixed thereto.
5. | COMPLIANCE WITH LAWS AND REGULATIONS. The Plan and this Agreement are intended to comply with Section 25102(o) and Rule 701. Any provision of this Agreement that is inconsistent with Section 25102(o) or Rule 701 shall, without further act or amendment by the Company or the Committee, be reformed to comply with the requirements of Section 25102(o) and/or Rule 701. The grant of this Award and the issuance and transfer of Shares shall be subject to compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable requirements of federal and state securities laws and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange on which the Common Stock may be listed at the time of such issuance or transfer. Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with the SEC, any state securities commission or any stock exchange to effectuate such compliance. |
6. | NONTRANSFERABILITY OF AWARD. This Award may not be transferred in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent and distribution, with respect to a testamentary trust or a revocable trust in which Awards are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the settlor or by gift to an immediate family member as that term is defined in 17 C.F.R. 240.16a-1(e). The terms of this Award shall be binding upon the executors, administrators, successors and assigns of Participant. |
7. | RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFER. |
(a) Disposition of Shares. Participant hereby agrees that Participant shall make no disposition of any of the Shares (other than as permitted by this Agreement) unless and until:
(i) Participant shall have notified the Company of the proposed disposition and provided a written summary of the terms and conditions of the proposed disposition;
(ii) Participant shall have complied with all requirements of this Agreement applicable to the disposition of the Shares;
(iii) Participant shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, that: (i) the proposed disposition does not require registration of the Shares under the Securities Act or under any applicable state securities laws; or (ii) all appropriate actions necessary for compliance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act or of any exemption from registration available under the Securities Act (including Rule 144) or applicable state securities laws have been taken; and
20
(iv) Participant shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to the Company, that the proposed disposition will not result in the contravention of any transfer restrictions applicable to the Shares pursuant to the provisions of the regulations promulgated under Section 25102(o), Rule 701 or under any other applicable securities laws or adversely affect the Companys ability to rely on the exemption(s) from registration under the Securities Act or under any other applicable securities laws for the grant of the Award, the issuance of Shares thereunder or any other issuance of securities under the Plan.
8. | MARKET STANDOFF AGREEMENT. Participant agrees that, subject to any early release provisions that apply pro rata to stockholders of the Company according to their holdings of Common Stock (determined on an as-converted into Common Stock basis), Participant will not, if requested by the managing underwriter(s) in the initial underwritten sale of Common Stock of the Company to the public pursuant to a registration statement filed with, and declared effective by, the SEC under the Securities Act (the IPO), for a period of up to one hundred eighty (180) days following the effective date of the registration statement relating to such IPO, directly or indirectly sell, offer to sell, grant any Award for the sale of, or otherwise dispose of any Common Stock or securities convertible into Common Stock, except for sales of any securities to be included in the registration statement for the IPO. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of this Section shall only apply to the IPO. The restricted period shall in any event terminate two (2) years after the closing date of the IPO. In order to enforce the foregoing covenant, the Company shall have the right to place restrictive legends on the certificates representing the Shares subject to this Section and to impose stop transfer instructions with respect to the Shares until the end of such period. Participant further agrees to enter into any agreement reasonably required by the underwriters to implement the foregoing restrictions on transfer. For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing provisions of this Section shall not apply to any registration of securities of the Company: (a) under an employee benefit plan; or (b) in a merger, consolidation, business combination or similar transaction. |
9. | RIGHTS AS A STOCKHOLDER. Participant shall not have any of the rights of a stockholder with respect to any Shares unless and until such Shares are issued to Participant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Participant will have all of the rights of a stockholder of the Company with respect to the Shares from and after the date that Shares are issued to Participant pursuant to, and in accordance with, the terms of the RSU Agreement until such time as Participant disposes of the Shares or the Company. |
10. | RESTRICTIVE LEGENDS AND STOP-TRANSFER ORDERS. |
(a) Legends. Participant understands and agrees that the Company will place the legends set forth below or similar legends on any stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares, together with any other legends that may be required by state or U.S. Federal securities laws, the Companys Certificate of Incorporation or Bylaws, any other agreement between Participant and the Company, or any agreement between Participant and any third party (and any other legend(s) that the Company may become obligated to place on the stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares under the terms of any agreement to which the Company is or may become bound or obligated):
(i) THE SECURITIES REPRESENTED HEREBY HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (THE SECURITIES ACT), OR UNDER THE SECURITIES LAWS OF CERTAIN STATES. THESE SECURITIES ARE SUBJECT TO RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFERABILITY AND RESALE AND MAY NOT BE TRANSFERRED OR RESOLD EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT AND APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS, PURSUANT TO REGISTRATION OR EXEMPTION THEREFROM. INVESTORS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THEY MAY BE REQUIRED TO BEAR THE FINANCIAL
21
RISKS OF THIS INVESTMENT FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD OF TIME. THE ISSUER OF THESE SECURITIES MAY REQUIRE AN OPINION OF COUNSEL IN FORM AND SUBSTANCE SATISFACTORY TO THE ISSUER TO THE EFFECT THAT ANY PROPOSED TRANSFER OR RESALE IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE SECURITIES ACT AND ANY APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS.
(ii) THE SHARES REPRESENTED BY THIS CERTIFICATE ARE SUBJECT TO A MARKET STANDOFF RESTRICTION AS SET FORTH IN A CERTAIN RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE ISSUER AND THE ORIGINAL HOLDER OF THESE SHARES, A COPY OF WHICH MAY BE OBTAINED AT THE PRINCIPAL OFFICE OF THE ISSUER. AS A RESULT OF SUCH AGREEMENT, THESE SHARES MAY NOT BE TRADED PRIOR TO 180 DAYS AFTER THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF CERTAIN PUBLIC OFFERINGS OF THE COMMON STOCK OF THE ISSUER HEREOF. SUCH RESTRICTION IS BINDING ON TRANSFEREES OF THESE SHARES.
(b) Stop-Transfer Instructions. Participant agrees that, to ensure compliance with the restrictions imposed by this Agreement, the Company may issue appropriate stop-transfer instructions to its transfer agent, if any, and if the Company transfers its own securities, it may make appropriate notations to the same effect in its own records.
(c) Refusal to Transfer. The Company will not be required (i) to transfer on its books any Shares that have been sold or otherwise transferred in violation of any of the provisions of this Agreement or (ii) to treat as owner of such Shares, or to accord the right to vote or pay dividends to any purchaser or other transferee to whom such Shares have been so transferred.
11. | CERTAIN TAX CONSEQUENCES. Set forth below is a brief summary as of the Effective Date of the Plan of some of the federal tax consequences of the disposition of the Shares. THIS SUMMARY IS NECESSARILY INCOMPLETE, AND THE TAX LAWS AND REGULATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER BEFORE EXERCISING THE AWARD OR DISPOSING OF THE SHARES. |
(a) Disposition of Shares. If the Shares are held for more than twelve (12) months after the date of receipt of the Shares, any gain realized on disposition of the Shares will be treated as long term capital gain.
12. | GENERAL PROVISIONS. |
(a) Interpretation. Any dispute regarding the interpretation of this Agreement shall be submitted by Participant or the Company to the Committee for review. The resolution of such a dispute by the Committee shall be final and binding on the Company and Participant.
(b) Entire Agreement. The Plan and the Notice are each incorporated herein by reference. This Agreement, the Notice, and the Plan constitute the entire agreement of the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersede all prior undertakings and agreements with respect to such subject matter.
13. | NOTICES. Any and all notices required or permitted to be given to a party pursuant to the provisions of this Agreement will be in writing and will be effective and deemed to provide such party sufficient notice under this Agreement on the earliest of the following: (i) at the time of personal delivery, if delivery is in person; (ii) at the time an electronic confirmation of receipt is received, if delivery is by email; (iii) at the time of transmission by facsimile, addressed to the other party at its facsimile number specified herein (or hereafter modified |
22
by subsequent notice to the parties hereto), with confirmation of receipt made by both telephone and printed confirmation sheet verifying successful transmission of the facsimile; (iv) one (1) business day after deposit with an express overnight courier for United States deliveries, or two (2) business days after such deposit for deliveries outside of the United States, with proof of delivery from the courier requested; or (v) three (3) business days after deposit in the United States mail by certified mail (return receipt requested) for United States deliveries. Any notice for delivery outside the United States will be sent by email, facsimile or by express courier. Any notice not delivered personally or by email will be sent with postage and/or other charges prepaid and properly addressed to Participant at the last known address or facsimile number on the books of the Company, or at such other address or facsimile number as such other party may designate by one of the indicated means of notice herein to the other parties hereto or, in the case of the Company, to it at its principal place of business. Notices to the Company will be marked Attention: Chief Financial Officer. Notices by facsimile shall be machine verified as received. |
14. | SUCCESSORS AND ASSIGNS. The Company may assign any of its rights under this Agreement. This Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the successors and assigns of the Company. This Agreement shall be binding upon Participant and Participants heirs, executors, administrators, legal representatives, successors and assigns. |
15. | GOVERNING LAW. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of Delaware as such laws are applied to agreements between New Jersey residents entered into and to be performed entirely within New Jersey. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by a court of law to be illegal or unenforceable, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible and the other provisions will remain fully effective and enforceable. |
16. | FURTHER ASSURANCES. The parties agree to execute such further documents and instruments and to take such further actions as may be reasonably necessary to carry out the purposes and intent of this Agreement. |
17. | TITLES AND HEADINGS. The titles, captions and headings of this Agreement are included for ease of reference only and will be disregarded in interpreting or construing this Agreement. Unless otherwise specifically stated, all references herein to sections and exhibits will mean sections and exhibits to this Agreement. |
18. | COUNTERPARTS. This Agreement may be executed in any number of counterparts, each of which when so executed and delivered will be deemed an original, and all of which together shall constitute one and the same agreement. |
19. | SEVERABILITY. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by any court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any respect, such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, such provision shall be stricken from this Agreement and the remainder of this Agreement shall be enforced as if such invalid, illegal or unenforceable clause or provision had (to the extent not enforceable) never been contained in this Agreement. Notwithstanding the forgoing, if the value of this Agreement based upon the substantial benefit of the bargain for any party is materially impaired, which determination as made by the presiding court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction shall be binding, then both parties agree to substitute such provision(s) through good faith negotiations. |
23
[End of Agreement]
24
NOTICE OF RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD
COREWEAVE, INC.
2019 STOCK AWARD PLAN
The Participant named below has been granted a Restricted Stock Unit Award or RSU Award, with each Unit represented by one share of Common Stock, $0.0001 par value per share (the Common Stock), of CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), pursuant to the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan) on the terms, and subject to the conditions, described below and in the Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement attached hereto as Exhibit A (the RSU Agreement).
Participant:
RSUs Subject to this Award:
Date of Grant:
Vesting Start State:
Expiration Date: The date ten (10) years after the Date of Grant set forth above, subject to earlier expiration in the event of Termination, as provided in Section 3 hereof.
Vesting Schedule: The occurrence of both of the following:
| Time Based Component. Four years from the date of grant as follows: one-sixteenth (1/16) of the Award shall vest quarterly; and |
| Liquidity Event Component. The earlier of (1) a Change of Control; or (2) the effective date of a registration statement of the Company filed for the initial public offering of the Companys commons stock. |
General; Agreement: By Participants acceptance of this Award, Participant and the Company agree that this Award is granted under and governed by this Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award (this Notice) and by the provisions of the Plan and the RSU Agreement. The Plan and the RSU Agreement are incorporated herein by reference. Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings given to them in the Plan or in the RSU Agreement as applicable. By acceptance of this Award, Participant acknowledges receipt of a copy of this Notice the Plan and the RSU Agreement, represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions and hereby accepts the Award subject to all of their respective terms and conditions. Participant acknowledges that there will be tax consequences upon vesting of the Award and that Participant should consult a tax adviser prior to vesting.
Execution and Delivery: This Notice may be executed and delivered electronically whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of a third party or via email or any other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company. By Participants acceptance hereof (whether written, electronic or otherwise), Participant agrees, to the fullest extent permitted by law, that in lieu of receiving documents in paper format, Participant accepts the electronic delivery of any documents that the Company (or any third party the Company may designate), may deliver in connection with this Award (including the Plan, this
Notice, the RSU Agreement, the information described in Rules 701(e)(2), (3), (4) and (5) under the Securities Act (the 701 Disclosures), account statements, or other communications or information) whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of such third party or via email or such other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company.
ATTACHMENT: Exhibit A Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement
COREWEAVE, INC. | PARTICIPANT | |||||||
Name: | ||||||||
Name: | Date: | |||||||
Title: | ||||||||
Date: |
26
EXHIBIT A
RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
COREWEAVE INC.
2019 STOCK AWARD PLAN
This Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement (this Agreement) is made and entered into as of the date of grant (the Date of Grant) set forth on the Notice of RSU Award attached as the facing page to this Agreement (the Notice) by and between CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), and the Participant named on the Notice (the Participant). Capitalized terms not defined in this Agreement shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the Companys 2019 Stock Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan), or in the Notice, as applicable.
1. | GRANT OF AWARD. The Company hereby awards the Participant an Award of RSUs with each RSU equal to one unit of Common Stock of the Company, $0.0001 par value per share (the RSUs), set forth in the Notice as the Units (the Units), subject to all of the terms and conditions of the Notice, this Agreement and the Plan. |
2. | VESTING. |
(a) Vesting Generally. This Award will become vested during its term as to portions of the Units in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice.
(b) Vesting of Award Shares. Units with respect to which this Award is vested at a given time pursuant to the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice are Vested Units. Shares with respect to which this Award is not vested at a given time pursuant to the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice are Unvested Units.
3. | TERMINATION. |
(a) Termination. If a Participant is Terminated for any reason, then: (a) on and after Participants Termination Date, this Award shall expire immediately with respect to any RSUs that are Unvested Units; and (b) this Award to the extent (and only to the extent) with respect to Vested Units on Participants Termination Date shall not be affected by such Termination. Notwithstanding the foregoing, upon Termination for Cause, Vested Units and Unvested Units shall be forfeited.
(b) No Obligation to Employ. Nothing in the Plan or this Agreement shall confer on Participant any right to continue in the employ of, or other relationship with, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or limit in any way the right of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company to terminate Participants employment or other relationship at any time, with or without Cause.
4. | MANNER OF PAYMENT. Upon vesting, the RSUs shall be settled in cash, Common Stock or a combination of cash or Common Stock at the election of the Company. |
(a) Tax Withholding. Upon vesting of the Units, Participant must pay or provide for any applicable federal, state and local withholding obligations of the Company. If the Committee permits, Participant may provide for payment of withholding taxes by requesting that the Company retain the minimum number of cash or Shares with a Fair Market Value equal to the minimum amount of taxes required to be withheld; or to arrange a mandatory sell to cover on Participants behalf (without further authorization); but in no event will the Company withhold Shares or sell to cover if such withholding would result in adverse accounting consequences to the Company. In case of stock withholding or a sell to cover, the Company shall issue the net number of Shares to the Participant by deducting the Shares retained from the Shares issuable pursuant to the Award.
(b) Issuance of Shares. Provided the form of payment is Common Stock and payment are in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, the Company shall issue the Shares issuable upon vesting in the name of Participant, Participants authorized assignee, or Participants legal representative, and shall deliver certificates representing the Shares with the appropriate legends affixed thereto.
5. | COMPLIANCE WITH LAWS AND REGULATIONS. The Plan and this Agreement are intended to comply with Section 25102(o) and Rule 701. Any provision of this Agreement that is inconsistent with Section 25102(o) or Rule 701 shall, without further act or amendment by the Company or the Committee, be reformed to comply with the requirements of Section 25102(o) and/or Rule 701. The grant of this Award and the issuance and transfer of Shares shall be subject to compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable requirements of federal and state securities laws and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange on which the Common Stock may be listed at the time of such issuance or transfer. Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with the SEC, any state securities commission or any stock exchange to effectuate such compliance. |
6. | NONTRANSFERABILITY OF AWARD. This Award may not be transferred in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent and distribution, with respect to a testamentary trust or a revocable trust in which Awards are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the settlor or by gift to an immediate family member as that term is defined in 17 C.F.R. 240.16a-1(e). The terms of this Award shall be binding upon the executors, administrators, successors and assigns of Participant. |
7. | RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFER. |
(a) Disposition of Shares. Participant hereby agrees that Participant shall make no disposition of any of the Shares (other than as permitted by this Agreement) unless and until:
(i) Participant shall have notified the Company of the proposed disposition and provided a written summary of the terms and conditions of the proposed disposition;
(ii) Participant shall have complied with all requirements of this Agreement applicable to the disposition of the Shares;
(iii) Participant shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, that: (i) the proposed disposition does not require registration of the Shares under the Securities Act or under any applicable state securities laws; or (ii) all appropriate actions necessary for compliance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act or of any exemption from registration available under the Securities Act (including Rule 144) or applicable state securities laws have been taken; and
28
(iv) Participant shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to the Company, that the proposed disposition will not result in the contravention of any transfer restrictions applicable to the Shares pursuant to the provisions of the regulations promulgated under Section 25102(o), Rule 701 or under any other applicable securities laws or adversely affect the Companys ability to rely on the exemption(s) from registration under the Securities Act or under any other applicable securities laws for the grant of the Award, the issuance of Shares thereunder or any other issuance of securities under the Plan.
8. | MARKET STANDOFF AGREEMENT. Participant agrees that, subject to any early release provisions that apply pro rata to stockholders of the Company according to their holdings of Common Stock (determined on an as-converted into Common Stock basis), Participant will not, if requested by the managing underwriter(s) in the initial underwritten sale of Common Stock of the Company to the public pursuant to a registration statement filed with, and declared effective by, the SEC under the Securities Act (the IPO), for a period of up to one hundred eighty (180) days following the effective date of the registration statement relating to such IPO, directly or indirectly sell, offer to sell, grant any Award for the sale of, or otherwise dispose of any Common Stock or securities convertible into Common Stock, except for sales of any securities to be included in the registration statement for the IPO. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of this Section shall only apply to the IPO. The restricted period shall in any event terminate two (2) years after the closing date of the IPO. In order to enforce the foregoing covenant, the Company shall have the right to place restrictive legends on the certificates representing the Shares subject to this Section and to impose stop transfer instructions with respect to the Shares until the end of such period. Participant further agrees to enter into any agreement reasonably required by the underwriters to implement the foregoing restrictions on transfer. For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing provisions of this Section shall not apply to any registration of securities of the Company: (a) under an employee benefit plan; or (b) in a merger, consolidation, business combination or similar transaction. |
9. | RIGHTS AS A STOCKHOLDER. Participant shall not have any of the rights of a stockholder with respect to any Shares unless and until such Shares are issued to Participant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Participant will have all of the rights of a stockholder of the Company with respect to the Shares from and after the date that Shares are issued to Participant pursuant to, and in accordance with, the terms of the RSU Agreement until such time as Participant disposes of the Shares or the Company. |
10. | RESTRICTIVE LEGENDS AND STOP-TRANSFER ORDERS. |
(a) Legends. Participant understands and agrees that the Company will place the legends set forth below or similar legends on any stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares, together with any other legends that may be required by state or U.S. Federal securities laws, the Companys Certificate of Incorporation or Bylaws, any other agreement between Participant and the Company, or any agreement between Participant and any third party (and any other legend(s) that the Company may become obligated to place on the stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares under the terms of any agreement to which the Company is or may become bound or obligated):
29
(i) THE SECURITIES REPRESENTED HEREBY HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (THE SECURITIES ACT), OR UNDER THE SECURITIES LAWS OF CERTAIN STATES. THESE SECURITIES ARE SUBJECT TO RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFERABILITY AND RESALE AND MAY NOT BE TRANSFERRED OR RESOLD EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT AND APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS, PURSUANT TO REGISTRATION OR EXEMPTION THEREFROM. INVESTORS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THEY MAY BE REQUIRED TO BEAR THE FINANCIAL RISKS OF THIS INVESTMENT FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD OF TIME. THE ISSUER OF THESE SECURITIES MAY REQUIRE AN OPINION OF COUNSEL IN FORM AND SUBSTANCE SATISFACTORY TO THE ISSUER TO THE EFFECT THAT ANY PROPOSED TRANSFER OR RESALE IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE SECURITIES ACT AND ANY APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS.
(ii) THE SHARES REPRESENTED BY THIS CERTIFICATE ARE SUBJECT TO A MARKET STANDOFF RESTRICTION AS SET FORTH IN A CERTAIN RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE ISSUER AND THE ORIGINAL HOLDER OF THESE SHARES, A COPY OF WHICH MAY BE OBTAINED AT THE PRINCIPAL OFFICE OF THE ISSUER. AS A RESULT OF SUCH AGREEMENT, THESE SHARES MAY NOT BE TRADED PRIOR TO 180 DAYS AFTER THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF CERTAIN PUBLIC OFFERINGS OF THE COMMON STOCK OF THE ISSUER HEREOF. SUCH RESTRICTION IS BINDING ON TRANSFEREES OF THESE SHARES.
(b) Stop-Transfer Instructions. Participant agrees that, to ensure compliance with the restrictions imposed by this Agreement, the Company may issue appropriate stop-transfer instructions to its transfer agent, if any, and if the Company transfers its own securities, it may make appropriate notations to the same effect in its own records.
(c) Refusal to Transfer. The Company will not be required (i) to transfer on its books any Shares that have been sold or otherwise transferred in violation of any of the provisions of this Agreement or (ii) to treat as owner of such Shares, or to accord the right to vote or pay dividends to any purchaser or other transferee to whom such Shares have been so transferred.
11. | CERTAIN TAX CONSEQUENCES. Set forth below is a brief summary as of the Effective Date of the Plan of some of the federal tax consequences of the disposition of the Shares. THIS SUMMARY IS NECESSARILY INCOMPLETE, AND THE TAX LAWS AND REGULATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER BEFORE EXERCISING THE AWARD OR DISPOSING OF THE SHARES. |
(a) Disposition of Shares. If the Shares are held for more than twelve (12) months after the date of receipt of the Shares, any gain realized on disposition of the Shares will be treated as long term capital gain.
12. | GENERAL PROVISIONS. |
(a) Interpretation. Any dispute regarding the interpretation of this Agreement shall be submitted by Participant or the Company to the Committee for review. The resolution of such a dispute by the Committee shall be final and binding on the Company and Participant.
30
(b) Entire Agreement. The Plan and the Notice are each incorporated herein by reference. This Agreement, the Notice, and the Plan constitute the entire agreement of the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersede all prior undertakings and agreements with respect to such subject matter.
13. | NOTICES. Any and all notices required or permitted to be given to a party pursuant to the provisions of this Agreement will be in writing and will be effective and deemed to provide such party sufficient notice under this Agreement on the earliest of the following: (i) at the time of personal delivery, if delivery is in person; (ii) at the time an electronic confirmation of receipt is received, if delivery is by email; (iii) at the time of transmission by facsimile, addressed to the other party at its facsimile number specified herein (or hereafter modified by subsequent notice to the parties hereto), with confirmation of receipt made by both telephone and printed confirmation sheet verifying successful transmission of the facsimile; (iv) one (1) business day after deposit with an express overnight courier for United States deliveries, or two (2) business days after such deposit for deliveries outside of the United States, with proof of delivery from the courier requested; or (v) three (3) business days after deposit in the United States mail by certified mail (return receipt requested) for United States deliveries. Any notice for delivery outside the United States will be sent by email, facsimile or by express courier. Any notice not delivered personally or by email will be sent with postage and/or other charges prepaid and properly addressed to Participant at the last known address or facsimile number on the books of the Company, or at such other address or facsimile number as such other party may designate by one of the indicated means of notice herein to the other parties hereto or, in the case of the Company, to it at its principal place of business. Notices to the Company will be marked Attention: Chief Financial Officer. Notices by facsimile shall be machine verified as received. |
14. | SUCCESSORS AND ASSIGNS. The Company may assign any of its rights under this Agreement. This Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the successors and assigns of the Company. This Agreement shall be binding upon Participant and Participants heirs, executors, administrators, legal representatives, successors and assigns. |
15. | GOVERNING LAW. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of Delaware as such laws are applied to agreements between New Jersey residents entered into and to be performed entirely within New Jersey. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by a court of law to be illegal or unenforceable, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible and the other provisions will remain fully effective and enforceable. |
16. | FURTHER ASSURANCES. The parties agree to execute such further documents and instruments and to take such further actions as may be reasonably necessary to carry out the purposes and intent of this Agreement. |
17. | TITLES AND HEADINGS. The titles, captions and headings of this Agreement are included for ease of reference only and will be disregarded in interpreting or construing this Agreement. Unless otherwise specifically stated, all references herein to sections and exhibits will mean sections and exhibits to this Agreement. |
18. | COUNTERPARTS. This Agreement may be executed in any number of counterparts, each of which when so executed and delivered will be deemed an original, and all of which together shall constitute one and the same agreement. |
31
19. | SEVERABILITY. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by any court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any respect, such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, such provision shall be stricken from this Agreement and the remainder of this Agreement shall be enforced as if such invalid, illegal or unenforceable clause or provision had (to the extent not enforceable) never been contained in this Agreement. Notwithstanding the forgoing, if the value of this Agreement based upon the substantial benefit of the bargain for any party is materially impaired, which determination as made by the presiding court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction shall be binding, then both parties agree to substitute such provision(s) through good faith negotiations. |
[End of Agreement]
32
NOTICE OF RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD
COREWEAVE, INC.
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
The Participant named below (Participant) has been granted a Restricted Stock Unit Award (RSU(s) or this Award), with each Unit representing one share of Common Stock, US$0.0001 par value per share (the Common Stock), of CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), pursuant to the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan) on the terms, and subject to the conditions, described below in this Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award (Notice of Grant) and in the Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement attached hereto as Exhibit A (the RSU Agreement).
(a) Two-Tiered Vesting. The vesting of the RSUs is conditioned on satisfaction of two vesting requirements before the Expiration Date or earlier termination of the RSUs pursuant to the Plan or the RSU Agreement: a time- and service-based requirement (the Time Based Component) and a liquidity-event requirement (the Liquidity Event Component), provided that Participant is in Continuous Service through each applicable date each as described below.
(i) Time Based Component. For so long as Participant is in Continuous Service (as defined below) through each applicable date, the time- and service requirement will be satisfied over [_______________].
(ii) Liquidity Event Component. The earlier of (1) a Change of Control (as defined in the Plan) or (2) the effective date of a registration statement of the Company filed in connection with the initial public offering of the Common Stock under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the earlier of the prong (1) or (2) to occur, the Initial Vesting Event).
(b) RSUs Vested at Initial Vesting Event. If at the time of the Initial Vesting Event, Participant is not in Continuous Service, then no portion of the RSUs shall vest. If at the time of the Initial Vesting Event, Participant is in Continuous Service, then the RSUs shall vest as to the number of RSUs, if any, that have satisfied the Time Based Component as of the Initial Vesting Event in accordance with clause (a)(i) above.
(c) RSUs Vested after Initial Vesting Event. If Participant is in Continuous Service at the time of the Initial Vesting Event, then with respect to RSUs that have not vested as of the Initial Vesting Event under the preceding clause (b) above, vesting shall continue after the Initial Vesting Event in accordance with the Time Based Component set forth in clause (a)(i) above (each subsequent vesting date, a Subsequent Vesting Event).
Continuous Service means Participant continues to provide services as an employee, officer, director or consultant to the Company or a Subsidiary or Parent of the Company.
Settlement: RSUs shall be settled no later than March 15 of the calendar year following the calendar year in which all or a portion of the RSUs vest. Settlement means the delivery of the Shares vested under an RSU. Settlement of RSUs shall be in Shares. Settlement of vested RSUs shall occur whether or not Participant is in Continuous Service at the time of settlement. No fractional RSUs or rights for fractional Shares shall be created pursuant to this Notice.
General; Agreement: By Participants acceptance of this Award, Participant and the Company agree that this Award is granted under and governed by this Notice of Grant and by the provisions of the Plan and the RSU Agreement. The Plan and the RSU Agreement are incorporated herein by reference. Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings given to them in the Plan or in the RSU Agreement as applicable. By acceptance of this Award, Participant acknowledges receipt of a copy of this Notice the Plan and the RSU Agreement, represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions and hereby accepts this Award subject to all of their respective terms and conditions. Participant acknowledges that there will be tax consequences upon vesting of this Award and that Participant should consult a tax adviser prior to vesting.
Execution and Delivery: This Notice may be executed and delivered electronically whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of a third party or via email or any other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company. By Participants acceptance hereof (whether written, electronic or otherwise), Participant agrees, to the fullest extent permitted by law, that in lieu of receiving documents in paper format, Participant accepts the electronic delivery of any documents that the Company (or any third party the Company may designate), may deliver in connection with this Award (including the Plan, this Notice, the RSU Agreement, the information described in Rules 701(e)(2), (3), (4) and (5) under the U.S. Securities Act (the 701 Disclosures), account statements, or other communications or information) whether via the Companys intranet or the Internet site of such third party or via email or such other means of electronic delivery specified by the Company.
ATTACHMENT: Exhibit A Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement
COREWEAVE, INC. | PARTICIPANT | |||||||
| ||||||||
Name: | Name: | |||||||
Title: | Date: | |||||||
Date: |
Exhibit A
RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
COREWEAVE INC.
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
This Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement (this Agreement) is made and entered into as of the date of grant (the Date of Grant) set forth on the Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award attached as the facing page to this Agreement (the Notice) by and between CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), and the Participant named on the Notice (Participant). Capitalized terms not defined in this Agreement shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended from time to time (the Plan), or in the Notice, as applicable.
1. GRANT OF AWARD. The Company hereby awards Participant RSUs as set forth in the Notice, subject to all of the terms and conditions of the Notice, this Agreement and the Plan.
2. VESTING. This Award will become vested during its term as to portions of the RSUs in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice.
3. TERMINATION.
3.1. Termination. The RSUs shall terminate on the Expiration Date or earlier as provided in this Section 3. If a Participant is Terminated for any reason, all unvested RSUs will be forfeited to the Company forthwith, and all rights of Participant to such RSUs will immediately terminate without payment of any consideration to Participant. Notwithstanding the foregoing, upon a Termination for Cause, vested RSUs and unvested RSUs shall be forfeited. In case of any dispute as to whether a Termination has occurred, the Committee shall have sole discretion to determine whether a Termination has occurred and the effective date of such Termination.
3.2. No Obligation to Employ. Nothing in the Plan or this Agreement shall confer on Participant any right to continue in the employ of, or other relationship with, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or limit in any way the right of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company to terminate Participants employment or other relationship at any time, with or without Cause.
4. MANNER OF PAYMENT. Upon vesting, the RSUs shall be settled in Common Stock. The Company shall issue the Shares issuable upon vesting in the name of Participant, Participants authorized assignee, or Participants legal representative, and shall deliver certificates representing the Shares with the appropriate legends affixed thereto.
5. TAX WITHHOLDING. When the RSUs are vested and/or settled, the fair market value of the Shares shall be treated as income subject to withholding by the Company for income and employment taxes if Participant is or was an employee of the Company. Prior to any relevant taxable or tax withholding event, as applicable, Participant shall pay or make adequate arrangements satisfactory to the Company to satisfy any or all income tax, social insurance, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account and other tax-related items related to Participants participation in this Plan and legally applicable to Participant (collectively, Tax-Related Obligations). In this regard, Participant authorizes the Company to withhold all applicable Tax-Related Obligations legally payable by Participant from Participants wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or a Parent or Subsidiary of the Company. With the Companys consent, these arrangements may also include, if permissible under local law, (i) withholding Shares that otherwise would be issued to Participant when Participants RSUs are settled; (ii) having the Company withhold taxes from the proceeds of the sale of
the Shares, through a voluntary sale or through a mandatory sale arranged by the Company (on Participants behalf and Participant hereby authorizes such sales by this authorization); (iii) Participants payment of a cash amount; or (iv) any other arrangement approved by the Company; all under such rules as may be established by the Committee and in compliance with the Companys insider trading policy and 10b5-1 trading plan policy, if applicable; provided, however, that if Participant is a Section 16 officer of the Company under the U.S. Exchange Act, then the Committee (as constituted in accordance with Rule 16b-3 under the U.S. Exchange Act) will establish the method of withholding from alternatives (i) (iv) above, and the Committee will establish such method prior to the Tax-Related Obligations withholding event.
Depending on the withholding method, the Company and/or a Parent or Subsidiary of the Company may withhold or account for Tax-Related Obligations by considering applicable minimum statutory withholding rates or other applicable withholding rates, including maximum applicable rates, in which case Participant may receive a refund of any over-withheld amount in cash and will have no entitlement to the equivalent in Shares. In the case of withholding in Shares, the Company shall issue the net number of Shares to Participant by deducting the Shares retained for Tax-Related Obligations from the Shares issuable upon vesting. For tax purposes, Participant is deemed to have been issued the full number of Shares subject to the vested RSUs, notwithstanding that a number of the Shares are held back solely for the purpose of paying the Tax-Related Obligations.
6. CODE SECTION 409A. If Participant is a U.S. taxpayer, to the extent applicable, for purposes of this Agreement, a termination of employment will be determined consistent with the rules relating to a separation from service as defined in Section 409A of the Code and the regulations thereunder (Section 409A). Notwithstanding anything else provided herein, to the extent any payments provided under this Agreement in connection with Participants termination of employment constitute deferred compensation subject to Section 409A, and Participant is deemed at the time of Termination of employment to be a specified employee under Section 409A, then the payment shall not be made or commence until the earlier of (i) the expiration of the six-month period measured from Participants separation from service from the Company or (ii) the date of Participants death following a separation from service; provided, however, that such deferral shall only be effected to the extent required to avoid adverse tax treatment to Participant including, without limitation, the additional tax for which Participant would otherwise be liable under Section 409A(a)(1)(B) in the absence of such a deferral. The first payment thereof will include a catch-up payment covering the amount that would have otherwise been paid during the period between Participants termination of employment and the first payment date but for the application of this provision, and the balance of the installments (if any) will be payable in accordance with their original schedule. Participants Continuous Service is required through the Initial Vesting Event and Subsequent Vesting Event for vesting of the RSUs, and settlements thereof related to the Initial Vesting Event and any Subsequent Vesting Event are each intended to be an exempt short-term deferral, within the meaning of Section 409A, and the Company intends that its initial tax position on its tax return will be consistent with this intent absent a change in legal guidance or other circumstance. To the extent that any provision of this Agreement is ambiguous as to its compliance with Section 409A, the provision will be read in such a manner so that all payments hereunder comply with Section 409A. To the extent any payment under this Agreement may be classified as a short-term deferral within the meaning of Section 409A, such payment shall be deemed a short-term deferral, even if it may also qualify for an exemption from Section 409A under another provision of Section 409A. Payments pursuant to this section are intended to constitute separate payments for purposes of Section 1.409A-2(b)(2) of the U.S. Treasury Regulations.
7. COMPLIANCE WITH LAWS AND REGULATIONS. The Plan and this Agreement are intended to comply with Section 25102(o) and Rule 701. If deemed necessary by the Company, any provision of this Agreement that is inconsistent with Section 25102(o) or Rule 701 shall, without further act or amendment by the Company or the Committee, be reformed to comply with the requirements of Section 25102(o) and/or Rule 701. The grant of this Award and the issuance and transfer of Shares shall be subject to compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable requirements of federal and state securities laws and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange on which the Common Stock may be listed at the time of such issuance or transfer. Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with the SEC, any state securities commission or any stock exchange to effectuate such compliance.
8. NONTRANSFERABILITY OF AWARD. This Award may not be transferred in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent and distribution, with respect to a testamentary trust or a revocable trust in which Awards are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the settlor or by gift to an immediate family member as that term is defined in 17 C.F.R. 240.16a-1(e). The terms of this Award shall be binding upon the executors, administrators, successors and assigns of Participant.
9. RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFER.
9.1. Disposition of Shares. Participant hereby agrees that Participant shall make no disposition of any of the Shares (other than as permitted by this Agreement) unless and until:
(a) Participant shall have notified the Company of the proposed disposition and provided a written summary of the terms and conditions of the proposed disposition;
(b) Participant shall have complied with all requirements of this Agreement applicable to the disposition of the Shares;
(c) Participant shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to counsel for the Company, that: (i) the proposed disposition does not require registration of the Shares under the Securities Act or under any applicable state securities laws; or (ii) all appropriate actions necessary for compliance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act or of any exemption from registration available under the Securities Act (including Rule 144) or applicable state securities laws have been taken; and Participant shall have provided the Company with written assurances, in form and substance satisfactory to the Company, that the proposed disposition will not result in the contravention of any transfer restrictions applicable to the Shares pursuant to the provisions of the regulations promulgated under Section 25102(o), Rule 701 or under any other applicable securities laws or adversely affect the Companys ability to rely on the exemption(s) from registration under the Securities Act or under any other applicable securities laws for the grant of this Award, the issuance of Shares thereunder or any other issuance of securities under the Plan.
10. MARKET STANDOFF AGREEMENT. Participant agrees that, subject to any early release provisions that apply pro rata to stockholders of the Company according to their holdings of Common Stock (determined on an as-converted into Common Stock basis), Participant will not, if requested by the managing underwriter(s) in the initial underwritten sale of Common Stock of the Company to the public pursuant to a registration statement filed with, and declared effective by, the SEC under the Securities Act (the IPO), for a period of up to one hundred eighty (180) days following the effective date of the registration statement relating to such IPO, directly or indirectly sell, offer to sell, grant any Award for the sale of, or otherwise dispose of any Common Stock or securities convertible into Common Stock, except for (a) transfers of Shares permitted under Sections 8 or 9 hereof so long as such transferee furnishes to the Company and the managing underwriter their written consent to be bound by this Section 10 as a condition precedent to such transfer; and (b) sales of any securities to be included in the registration statement for the IPO. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of this Section shall only apply to the IPO. The restricted period shall in any event terminate two (2) years after the closing date of the IPO. In order to enforce the foregoing covenant, the Company shall have the right to place
restrictive legends on the certificates representing the Shares subject to this Section and to impose stop transfer instructions with respect to the Shares until the end of such period. Participant further agrees to enter into any agreement reasonably required by the underwriters to implement the foregoing restrictions on transfer. For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing provisions of this Section shall not apply to any registration of securities of the Company: (a) under an employee benefit plan; or (b) in a merger, consolidation, business combination or similar transaction.
11. RIGHTS AS A STOCKHOLDER. Participant shall not have any of the rights of a stockholder with respect to any Shares unless and until such Shares are issued to Participant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Participant will have all of the rights of a stockholder of the Company with respect to the Shares from and after the date that Shares are issued to Participant pursuant to, and in accordance with, the terms of this Agreement until such time as Participant disposes of the Shares or the Company. Dividend equivalents, if any, shall not be credited to Participant in respect of Participants RSUs, except as otherwise permitted by the Committee.
12. RESTRICTIVE LEGENDS AND STOP-TRANSFER ORDERS.
12.1. Legends. Participant understands and agrees that the Company will place the legends set forth below or similar legends on any stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares, together with any other legends that may be required by state or U.S. Federal securities laws, the Companys Certificate of Incorporation or Bylaws, any other agreement between Participant and the Company, or any agreement between Participant and any third party (and any other legend(s) that the Company may become obligated to place on the stock certificate(s) evidencing the Shares under the terms of any agreement to which the Company is or may become bound or obligated):
(a) THE SECURITIES REPRESENTED HEREBY HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE U.S. SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (THE SECURITIES ACT), OR UNDER THE SECURITIES LAWS OF CERTAIN STATES. THESE SECURITIES ARE SUBJECT TO RESTRICTIONS ON TRANSFERABILITY AND RESALE AND MAY NOT BE TRANSFERRED OR RESOLD EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT AND APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS, PURSUANT TO REGISTRATION OR EXEMPTION THEREFROM. INVESTORS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THEY MAY BE REQUIRED TO BEAR THE FINANCIAL RISKS OF THIS INVESTMENT FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD OF TIME. THE ISSUER OF THESE SECURITIES MAY REQUIRE AN OPINION OF COUNSEL IN FORM AND SUBSTANCE SATISFACTORY TO THE ISSUER TO THE EFFECT THAT ANY PROPOSED TRANSFER OR RESALE IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE SECURITIES ACT AND ANY APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS.
(b) THE SHARES REPRESENTED BY THIS CERTIFICATE ARE SUBJECT TO A MARKET STANDOFF RESTRICTION AS SET FORTH IN A CERTAIN RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE ISSUER AND THE ORIGINAL HOLDER OF THESE SHARES, A COPY OF WHICH MAY BE OBTAINED AT THE PRINCIPAL OFFICE OF THE ISSUER. AS A RESULT OF SUCH AGREEMENT, THESE SHARES MAY NOT BE TRADED PRIOR TO 180 DAYS AFTER THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF CERTAIN PUBLIC OFFERINGS OF THE COMMON STOCK OF THE ISSUER HEREOF. SUCH RESTRICTION IS BINDING ON TRANSFEREES OF THESE SHARES.
12.2. Stop-Transfer Instructions. Participant agrees that, to ensure compliance with the restrictions imposed by this Agreement, the Company may issue appropriate stop-transfer instructions to its transfer agent, if any, and if the Company transfers its own securities, it may make appropriate notations to the same effect in its own records.
12.3. Refusal to Transfer. The Company will not be required (i) to transfer on its books any Shares that have been sold or otherwise transferred in violation of any of the provisions of this Agreement or (ii) to treat as owner of such Shares, or to accord the right to vote or pay dividends to any purchaser or other transferee to whom such Shares have been so transferred.
13. CERTAIN TAX CONSEQUENCES. Set forth below is a brief summary as of the Effective Date of the Plan of some of the federal tax consequences of the disposition of the Shares. THIS SUMMARY IS NECESSARILY INCOMPLETE, AND THE TAX LAWS AND REGULATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER BEFORE RSU GRANT, RSU VESTING, OR DISPOSING OF THE SHARES.
13.1. Disposition of Shares. If the Shares are held for more than twelve (12) months after the date of receipt of the Shares, any gain realized on disposition of the Shares will be treated as long term capital gain.
14. GENERAL PROVISIONS.
14.1. Interpretation. Any dispute regarding the interpretation of this Agreement shall be submitted by Participant or the Company to the Committee for review. The resolution of such a dispute by the Committee shall be final and binding on the Company and Participant.
14.2. Entire Agreement. The Plan and the Notice are each incorporated herein by reference. This Agreement, the Notice, and the Plan constitute the entire agreement of the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersede all prior undertakings and agreements with respect to such subject matter.
15. NOTICES. Any and all notices required or permitted to be given to a party pursuant to the provisions of this Agreement will be in writing and will be effective and deemed to provide such party sufficient notice under this Agreement on the earliest of the following: (i) at the time of personal delivery, if delivery is in person; (ii) at the time an electronic confirmation of receipt is received, if delivery is by email; (iii) at the time of transmission by facsimile, addressed to the other party at its facsimile number specified herein (or hereafter modified by subsequent notice to the parties hereto), with confirmation of receipt made by both telephone and printed confirmation sheet verifying successful transmission of the facsimile; (iv) one (1) business day after deposit with an express overnight courier for United States deliveries, or two (2) business days after such deposit for deliveries outside of the United States, with proof of delivery from the courier requested; or (v) three (3) business days after deposit in the United States mail by certified mail (return receipt requested) for United States deliveries. Any notice for delivery outside the United States will be sent by email, facsimile or by express courier. Any notice not delivered personally or by email will be sent with postage and/or other charges prepaid and properly addressed to Participant at the last known address or facsimile number on the books of the Company, or at such other address or facsimile number as such other party may designate by one of the indicated means of notice herein to the other parties hereto or, in the case of the Company, to it at its principal place of business. Notices to the Company will be marked Attention: Chief Financial Officer. Notices by facsimile shall be machine verified as received.
16. SUCCESSORS AND ASSIGNS. The Company may assign any of its rights under this Agreement. This Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the successors and assigns of the Company. This Agreement shall be binding upon Participant and, subject to the restrictions on transfer set forth herein, Participants heirs, executors, administrators, legal representatives, successors and assigns.
17. AWARD SUBJECT TO COMPANY CLAWBACK OR RECOUPMENT. As a condition to receipt of the RSUs and to the extent permitted by applicable law, the RSUs and any benefits or proceeds therefrom will be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by the Board (or a committee thereof) or required by law during the term of Participants employment or other Service that is applicable to Participant (and the provisions of any such policy are hereby incorporated into this Agreement without any further requirement that Participant consent to such policy). In addition to any other remedies available under such policy and applicable law, the Company may require the cancellation of Participants RSUs (whether vested or unvested) and the recoupment of any gains realized with respect to Participants RSUs.
18. GOVERNING LAW AND VENUE. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without giving effect to that body of laws pertaining to conflict of laws. For purposes of any action, lawsuit or other proceedings brought to enforce this Agreement, relating to it, or arising from it, the parties hereby submit to and consent to the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New York County, New York, or the federal courts for the United States for the Southern District of New York, and no other courts, where this grant is made and/or to be performed.
19. ADDENDUM. Notwithstanding any provisions in this Agreement, the RSUs shall be subject to any additional terms and conditions set forth in the Addendum attached hereto (the Addendum) if Participants country of residence and/or service is other than the United States, including the additional terms and conditions (if any) set forth in the countries included in the Addendum. Moreover, if Participant relocates to a country other than the United States, the additional terms and conditions set forth in the Addendum, including the additional terms and conditions (if any) set forth beneath the name of such country on the Addendum, will apply to Participant to the extent the Company determines that the application of such terms and conditions is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons. The Addendum constitutes an integral part of this Agreement.
20. FURTHER ASSURANCES. The parties agree to execute such further documents and instruments and to take such further actions as may be reasonably necessary to carry out the purposes and intent of this Agreement.
21. TITLES AND HEADINGS. The titles, captions and headings of this Agreement are included for ease of reference only and will be disregarded in interpreting or construing this Agreement. Unless otherwise specifically stated, all references herein to sections and exhibits will mean sections and exhibits to this Agreement.
22. COUNTERPARTS. This Agreement may be executed in any number of counterparts, each of which when so executed and delivered will be deemed an original, and all of which together shall constitute one and the same agreement.
23. SEVERABILITY. If any provision of this Agreement is determined by any court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any respect, such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, such provision shall be stricken from this Agreement and the remainder of this Agreement shall be enforced as if such invalid, illegal or unenforceable clause or provision had (to the extent not enforceable) never been contained in this Agreement. Notwithstanding the forgoing, if the value of this Agreement based upon the substantial benefit of the bargain for any party is materially impaired, which determination as made by the presiding court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction shall be binding, then both parties agree to substitute such provision(s) through good faith negotiations.
[End of Agreement]
ADDENDUM
Terms and Conditions
This Addendum includes additional terms and conditions that govern the RSUs granted to Participant under the Plan if Participant resides and/or works outside the United States.
If Participant is a citizen or resident of a country other than the one in which he or she is currently working and/or residing, transfers to another country after the RSU Date of Grant, is a consultant, changes employment status to a consultant position or is considered a resident of another country for local law purposes, the Company shall, in its discretion, determine the extent to which the additional terms and conditions contained herein apply to Participant.
Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the Notice, this Agreement, and/or the Plan, as applicable.
Notifications
This Addendum also includes information regarding exchange controls and certain other issues of which Participant should be aware with respect to Participants participation in the Plan. The information is provided solely for the convenience of Participant and is based on the securities, exchange control and other laws in effect in the respective countries as of February 2025. Such laws are often complex and change frequently. As a result, the Company strongly recommends that Participant not rely on the information noted herein as the only source of information relating to the consequences of Participants participation in the Plan because the information may be out of date by the time Participant vests in the RSUs, the RSUs are settled or Participant sells any acquired Shares.
In addition, the information contained in this Addendum is general in nature and may not apply to Participants particular situation, and the Company is not in a position to assure Participant of any particular result. Accordingly, Participant is advised to seek appropriate professional advice as to how the applicable laws in his or her country may apply to his or her situation.
Finally, Participant understands that if he or she is a citizen or resident of a country other than the one in which he or she is currently residing and/or working, transfers to another country after the RSU Date of Grant, or is considered a resident of another country for local law purposes, the notifications contained herein may not be applicable to Participant in the same manner.
GLOBAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLICABLE TO PARTICIPANTS OUTSIDE THE U.S.
1. TAX WITHHOLDING. The following provision supplements Section 5 of this Agreement:
1.1 In addition to all applicable Tax-Related Obligations set forth in Section 5 of this Agreement, Tax-Related Obligations includes all applicable non-U.S. federal, national, state, cantonal, and local income taxes, social insurance contributions, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account, withholding and other tax-related items related to the RSUs and Participants participation in the Plan and legally or deemed legally applicable to Participant.
1.2 Participant acknowledges and agrees that, regardless of any action taken by the Company and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company with respect to any or all Tax-Related Obligations in connection with this Agreement and legally applicable to Participant including, without limitation, in connection with the acquisition or sale of Shares and/or the receipt of any dividends on such Shares, the ultimate liability for all Tax-Related Obligations is and remains Participants. Furthermore, Participant acknowledges that the Company and/or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company (a) make no representations or undertakings regarding the treatment of any Tax-Related Obligations in connection with any aspect of the RSU or the Shares and (b) do not commit to and are under no obligation to structure the terms of the RSU to reduce or eliminate Participants liability for Tax-Related Obligations or achieve any particular tax result. Further, if Participant becomes subject to tax in more than one jurisdiction or changes his or her jurisdiction of primary residence or service between the Date of Grant and the date of any relevant taxable or tax withholding event, as applicable, Participant acknowledges that the Company and/or and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company may be required to withhold or account for Tax-Related Obligations in more than one jurisdiction.
1.3 Prior to RSU vesting or any other relevant taxable or tax withholding event, Participant agrees to make adequate arrangements satisfactory to the Company to satisfy all Tax-Related Obligations. In this regard, Participant authorizes the Company and/or and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company or their respective agents, at their discretion, to satisfy the obligations with regard to all Tax-Related Obligations. Finally, Participant agrees to pay to the Company and/or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company any amount of Tax-Related Obligations that the Company or and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company may be required to withhold that cannot be satisfied by the means previously described. The Company may refuse to issue or deliver the Shares or the proceeds of the sale of Shares if Participant fails to comply with his or her obligations in connection with the Tax-Related Obligations.
2. DATA PRIVACY. Participant voluntarily consents to the collection, use and transfer, in electronic or other form, of his or her personal data as described in this Agreement and any other Award materials (Data as defined below) by and among, as applicable, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering, and managing his or her participation in the Plan.
2.1 Participant understands that the Company and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company may hold certain personal information about him or her, including, but not limited to, his or her name, home address and telephone number, date of birth, social insurance number or other identification number, salary, nationality, job title, any shares of stock or directorships held in the Company, details of all equity awards or any other entitlement to stock awarded, canceled, exercised, vested, unvested or outstanding in his or her favor (Data), for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering, and managing the Plan.
2.2 Participant understands that Data will be transferred to one or more stock plan service provider(s) selected by the Company, which may assist the Company with the implementation, administration, and management of the Plan. Participant understands that the recipients of the Data may be located in the United States or elsewhere, and that the recipients country (e.g., the United States) may have different data privacy laws and protections than his or her country. Participant understands that if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may request a list with the names and addresses of any potential recipients of the Data by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Participant authorizes the Company and any other possible recipients that may assist the Company (presently or in the future) with implementing, administering and managing the Plan to receive, possess, use, retain and transfer the Data, in electronic or other form, for the sole purposes of implementing, administering and managing his or her participation in the Plan.
2.3 Participant understands that Data will be held only as long as is necessary to implement, administer and manage his or her participation in the Plan. Participant understands that if he or she resides in certain jurisdictions outside the United States, to the extent required by applicable laws, he or she may, at any time, request access to Data, request additional information about the storage and processing of Data, require any necessary amendments to Data or refuse or withdraw the consents given by accepting these RSUs, in any case without cost, by contacting in writing his or her local human resources representative. Further, Participant understands that he or she is providing these consents on a purely voluntary basis. If Participant does not consent or if he or she later seeks to revoke his or her consent, his or her engagement as a service provider with the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company will not be adversely affected; the only consequence of refusing or withdrawing his or her consent is that the Company will not be able to grant him or her awards under the Plan or administer or maintain awards. Therefore, Participant understands that refusing or withdrawing his or her consent may affect his or her ability to participate in the Plan (including the right to retain these RSUs). Participant understands that he or she may contact his or her local human resources representative for more information on the consequences of his or her refusal to consent or withdrawal of consent.
2.4 GDPR COMPLIANCE. If Participant resides and/or works in a member country of the European Union and/or the European Economic Area, including the United Kingdom, the following provisions supplement this Section 2:
(a) To the satisfaction and on the direction of the Committee, all operations of the Plan and the RSUs (at the time of grant and as necessary thereafter) shall include or be supported by appropriate agreements, notifications and arrangements in respect of Data and its use and processing under the Plan, in order to secure (a) the reasonable freedom of the Company and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, as appropriate, to operate the Plan and for connected purposes, and (b) compliance with the data-protection requirements applicable from time to time, including, if applicable, and without limitation, Regulation EU 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016.
(b) Participant has certain rights under data protection legislation as summarized below:
(i) Right of Access. Participant has the right to obtain from the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, as applicable, confirmation as to whether or not Data concerning Participant is being processed, and, where that is the case, to request access to the Data, as well as certain information on how the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, as applicable, is processing such data.
(ii) Right to Rectification. Participant has the right to obtain from the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, as applicable, the rectification of inaccurate Data concerning Participant. Considering the purpose of the processing, Participant may also, in some cases, be entitled to supplemental information regarding incomplete Data.
(iii) Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten). Participant may, in certain circumstances, have his or her Data deleted, for example if Participants Data is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was collected, if Participant has objected to the processing of Data and the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, as applicable, does not have a legitimate interest which outweighs Participants interest, if the Data has been processed unlawfully, or if the Data must be deleted to comply with a legal obligation.
(iv) Right to Restriction of Processing. Participant may require that the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company restrict the processing of Participants Data in certain cases, for example where the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company no longer needs Participants Data but Participant needs it to determine, enforce or defend legal claims or Participant has objected to processing based on the Companys or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company legitimate interest in order to enable the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company to check if its interest overrides Participant interest.
(v) Right to Data Portability. In some circumstances, Participant may be entitled to receive the Data concerning Participant which Participant provided to the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and Participant has the right to transmit those Data to another controller.
(vi) Right to Object. Participant has the right to object to the processing of Participants Data in certain circumstances, for example where the processing is based on the Companys or any Parents or Subsidiaries legitimate interest. If so, in order to continue processing, the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company must be able to show compelling legitimate grounds that override Participants interests, rights and freedoms.
(c) Participants rights will in each case be subject to the restrictions set out in applicable data protection laws. Further information on these rights, and the circumstances in which they may arise in connection with the Companys or any Parents or Subsidiaries processing of Participants Data, can be obtained by contacting Participants local human resources representative. If Participant wants to review, verify, correct or request erasure of Participants Data, object to the processing of Participants Data, or request that the Company transfer a copy of Participants Data to another party, please contact Participants local human resources representative.
(d) The Company agrees to ensure that Data transferred outside the European Economic Area will be done pursuant to a lawful transfer mechanism (for example, European Commission approved model contract clauses).
(e) The Company will separately provide Participant with information in a data privacy notice on the collection, processing and transfer of their Data, including the grounds for processing.
(f) If Participant has any grievance, issue or problem in respect of the handling or processing of Participants Data in any way, Participant has the right to lodge a complaint to the competent data protection authority. The list of national data protection authorities for each country in the European Union and their contact details are available at: https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm.
2. INSIDER TRADING RESTRICTIONS/MARKET ABUSE LAWS. Participant acknowledges that, if and when the Shares are publicly listed on any stock exchange, depending on his or her country, Participant may be subject to insider trading restrictions and/or market abuse laws in applicable jurisdictions, which may affect his or her ability to directly or indirectly, accept, acquire, sell or attempt to sell or otherwise dispose of Shares or rights to the Shares, or rights linked to the value of Shares during such times as Participant is considered to have inside information regarding the Company (as defined by the laws and/or regulations in applicable jurisdictions or Participants country). Local insider trading laws and
regulations may prohibit the cancellation or amendment of orders placed by Participant before possessing the inside information. Furthermore, Participant may be prohibited from (i) disclosing inside information to any third party, including fellow employees and other service providers (other than on a need to know basis) and (ii) tipping third parties or causing them to otherwise buy or sell securities. Any restrictions under these laws or regulations are separate from and in addition to any restrictions that may be imposed under any applicable Company insider trading policy. Participant acknowledges that it is Participants responsibility to comply with any applicable restrictions, and Participant is advised to speak to his or her personal advisor on this matter.
3. LANGUAGE. Participant acknowledges that he or she is sufficiently proficient in English or has consulted with an advisor who is sufficiently proficient in English so as to allow Participant to understand the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Furthermore, if Participant has received this Agreement, or any other document related to the RSUs and/or the Plan translated into a language other than English and if the meaning of the translated version is different than the English version, the English version will control, unless otherwise required by applicable law.
4. FOREIGN ASSET/ACCOUNT REPORTING REQUIREMENTS. Participant acknowledges that there may be certain foreign asset and/or account reporting requirements which may affect Participants ability to acquire or hold Shares acquired under the Plan or cash received from participating in the Plan in a brokerage account outside his or her country. Participant may also be required to repatriate sale proceeds or other funds received as a result of participating in the Plan to his or her country through a designated bank or broker within a certain time after receipt. It is Participants responsibility to be compliant with such regulations and Participant should speak with his or her personal advisor on this matter.
5. FOREIGN EXCHANGE CONSIDERATIONS. Participant understands and agrees that neither the Company nor any Parent, Subsidiary of the Company shall be liable for any foreign exchange rate fluctuation between Participants local currency and the U.S. dollar that may affect the value of the RSU, or of any amounts due to Participant under the Plan or as a result of vesting in the RSUs and/or the subsequent sale of any Shares acquired under the Plan. Participant agrees and acknowledges that he or she will bear any and all risk associated with the exchange or fluctuation of currency associated with his or her participation in the Plan. Participant acknowledges and agrees that he or she may be responsible for reporting inbound transactions or fund transfers that exceed a certain amount. Participant is advised to seek appropriate professional advice as to how the exchange control regulations apply to the RSUs and Participants specific situation and understands that the relevant laws and regulations can change frequently and occasionally on a retroactive basis.
6. EXTRAORDINARY COMPENSATION. The value of the RSU and the underlying Shares is an extraordinary item of compensation outside the scope of Participants employment or service contract, if any, and is not to be considered part of his or her normal or expected compensation for any purpose including, but not limited to, calculating severance, resignation, redundancy, end of service payments, bonuses, long-service awards, pension or retirement benefits or similar payments.
7. ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND AGREEMENTS. By accepting the RSUs, Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that:
7.1 the Plan is established voluntarily by the Company, it is discretionary in nature, and may be amended, suspended or terminated by the Company at any time, to the extent permitted by the Plan;
7.2 the grant of the RSUs is voluntary and occasional and does not create any contractual or other right to receive future grants of restricted stock units, or benefits in lieu of restricted stock units, even if restricted stock units have been granted in the past;
7.3 all decisions with respect to future restricted stock units or other grants, if any, will be at the sole discretion of the Company;
7.4 the RSUs and Participants participation in the Plan shall not create a right to employment or other service or be interpreted as forming or amending an employment or service contract with the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company and shall not interfere with the ability of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, as applicable, to terminate Participants employment or other service relationship;
7.5 Participant is voluntarily participating in the Plan;
7.6 the RSUs and any Shares acquired under the Plan are not intended to replace any pension or retirement rights or compensation;
7.7 the future value of the Shares underlying the RSUs is unknown, indeterminable, and cannot be predicted with certainty;
7.8 if Participant acquires Shares upon settlement of the RSUs, the value of such Shares may increase or decrease in value;
7.9 no claim or entitlement to compensation or damages shall arise from forfeiture of the RSUs resulting from the Termination of Participants service (for any reason whatsoever, whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is rendering services or the terms of Participants employment or other service agreement, if any), and in consideration of the grant of the RSUs to which Participant is otherwise not entitled, Participant irrevocably agrees never to institute any claim against the Company, and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, waives his or her ability, if any, to bring any such claim, and releases the Company, and or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, from any such claim; if, notwithstanding the foregoing, any such claim is allowed by a court of competent jurisdiction, then, by participating in the Plan, Participant shall be deemed irrevocably to have agreed not to pursue such claim and agree to execute any and all documents necessary to request dismissal or withdrawal of such claim; and
7.10 unless otherwise provided in the Plan or by the Company in its discretion, the RSUs and the benefits evidenced by this Agreement do not create any entitlement to have the RSUs or any such benefits transferred to, or assumed by, another company nor to be exchanged, cashed out or substituted for, in connection with any corporate transaction affecting the shares of the Company.
COUNTRY-SPECIFIC PROVISIONS APPLICABLE TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE COUNTRIES INCLUDED BELOW
CANADA
Terms and Conditions
Award Payable Only in Shares. The grant of the RSUs does not give Participant any right to receive a cash payment, and the RSUs are payable in Shares only.
Termination of Active Status. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary provided in this Agreement, Participants active service status shall be considered terminated (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not the termination is later found to be invalid, unlawful or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or providing services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) as of the date that is the earliest of (a) the date Participant receives notice of termination of his or her service; (b) the date Participant terminates service; or (c) the date Participant is no longer actively providing services to the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, regardless of any notice period or period of pay in lieu of such notice required under local law (including, but not limited to statutory law, regulatory law and/or common law); in the event that Participants termination date cannot be reasonably determined under the terms of this Agreement and/or the Plan, the Committee shall have the exclusive discretion to determine when Participants Continuous Service status shall be considered terminated for purposes of the RSUs (including when Participant may still be considered to be providing services while on a leave of absence). If, notwithstanding the foregoing, applicable employment legislation explicitly requires continued vesting during a statutory notice period, Participants right to vest in the RSUs will terminate effective as of the last date of the minimum statutory notice period, but Participant will not earn or be entitled to prorated vesting if the vesting date falls after the end of Participants statutory notice period, nor will Participant be entitled to any compensation for lost vesting.
French Language Provisions. The following provisions apply if Participant is a resident of Quebec:
The parties acknowledge that it is their express wish that this Agreement, as well as all documents, notices and legal proceedings entered into, given or instituted pursuant hereto or relating directly or indirectly hereto, be drawn up in English.
Les parties reconnaissent avoir exigé la redaction en anglais de cette convention (Agreement), ainsi que de tous documents exécutés, avis donnés et procedures judiciaries intentées, directement ou indirectement, relativement à la présente convention.
Notifications
Tax Reporting. Foreign property (including the RSUs granted under the Plan and the underlying Shares) held by Canadian residents must be reported annually on Form T1135 (Foreign Income Verification Statement) if the total value of such foreign property exceeds CAD 100,000 at any time during the year. The form must be filed by April 30 of the following year.
FRANCE
Notifications
Foreign Asset/Account Reporting. French residents must declare all foreign bank and brokerage accounts in which they hold cash or securities (including Shares acquired under the Plan), including accounts that were opened and/or closed during the tax year, on an annual basis on a special form N° 3916, together with their income tax return. Participant should consult with a personal tax advisor to ensure compliance with applicable reporting obligations.
IRELAND
Notifications
Director Reporting Obligation. Participant understands that if he or she is a director, shadow director, or secretary of the Company or Subsidiary in Ireland, Participant must notify the Company or Irish Subsidiary in writing within five business days of receiving or disposing of an interest in the Company (e.g., RSUs, Shares), or within five business days of becoming aware of the event giving rise to the notification requirement, or within five days of becoming a director or secretary if such an interest exists at the time. This notification requirement also applies with respect to the interests of Participants spouse or children under the age of 18 (whose interests will be attributed to Participant if he or she is a director, shadow director, or secretary).
NORWAY
No country-specific provisions.
SPAIN
Notifications
Foreign Assets Reporting. Participant may be subject to certain tax reporting requirements with respect to assets, rights, or foreign currency that Participant holds outside of Spain, including bank accounts, securities and real estate if the aggregate value for particular category of assets exceeds 50,000 as of December 31 each year. Vested RSUs are subject to this reporting requirement. Participant also must report his or her foreign assets on Form 720 by no later than March 31 following the end of the relevant year. After the rights and/or assets are initially reported, the reporting obligation will only apply if the value of previously reported rights or assets increases by more than 20,000 as of each subsequent December 31; additional reporting requirements may apply if Participants assets or asset increases exceed these amounts.
In addition, Participant must notify the Registry of Investments at the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of investments in securities of companies not listed in Spain, which are deposited in a non-resident account. Participant must file form D-6 by January 31 each year stating the value of their investments in non-Spanish listed shares as of December 31 of the previous calendar year.
Share Reporting Requirement. The acquisition of Shares must be declared for statistical purposes to the Direccion General de Comercio e Inversiones, the Bureau for Commerce and Investments, which is a department of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Generally, the declaration must be filed in January for shares owned as of December 31 of each year; however, if the value of the shares acquired or the amount of the sale proceeds exceeds a designated amount the declaration must be filed within one month of the acquisition or sale, as applicable.
Foreign Currency Payments. When receiving foreign currency payments exceeding 50,000 derived from the ownership of shares (i.e., dividends or proceeds from the sale of the shares), Participant must inform the financial institution receiving the payment of the basis upon which such payment is made. Participant will need to provide the following information: (i) Participants name, address, and fiscal identification number; (ii) the name and corporate domicile of the Company; (iii) the amount of the payment and the currency used; (iv) the country of origin; (v) the reasons for the payment; and (vi) further information that may be required.
SWEDEN
Notifications
Exchange Controls. Participant understands that foreign and local banks or financial institutions (including brokers) engaged in cross-border transactions generally may be required to report any payments to or from a foreign country exceeding a certain amount to The National Tax Board, which receives the information on behalf of the Swedish Central Bank (Sw.Riksbanken). This requirement may apply even if Participant has a brokerage account with a foreign broker.
UNITED KINGDOM
Terms and Conditions
Tax-Related Obligations. The following provisions supplement Section 5 of this Agreement and Section 1 of this Addendum:
Tax-Related Obligations include Primary and to the extent legally possible secondary class 1 National Insurance Contributions (NIC(s)). Participant agrees that the Company or the employer may calculate the Tax-Related Obligations to be withheld and accounted for by reference to the maximum applicable rates, without prejudice to any right Participant may have to recover any overpayment from relevant U.K. tax authorities. Participant understands and agrees that if payment or withholding of any income tax liability arising in connection with Participants participation in the Plan is not made by Participant to Participants employer within 90 days of the event giving rise to such income tax liability or such other period specified in Section 222(1)I of the U.K. Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (the Due Date), that the amount of any uncollected income tax will constitute a loan owed by Participant to Participants employer, effective on the Due Date. Participant understands and agrees that the loan will bear interest at the then-current official rate of His Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC), it will be immediately due and repayable by Participant, and the Company and/or Participants employer may recover it at any time thereafter by any of the means referred to in the Plan and/or this Agreement.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, Participant understands and agrees that if Participant is a director or an executive officer of the Company (within the meaning of such terms for purposes of Section 13(k) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended), Participant will not be eligible for such a loan to cover the income tax liability. Participant further understands that, in the event that he or she is such a director or executive officer and the income tax is not collected from or paid by Participant by the Due Date, the amount of any uncollected income tax will constitute an additional benefit to Participant on which additional income tax and NICs will be payable. Participant understands and agrees that he or she is responsible for reporting and paying any income tax due on this additional benefit directly to HMRC under the self-assessment regime and for reimbursing the Company or Participants employer (as appropriate) for the value of any primary and (to the extent legally possible) secondary class 1 NICs due on this additional benefit which the Company or Participants employer may recover from Participant by any of the means referred to in the Plan and/or this Agreement.
At the discretion of the Company, the RSUs cannot be settled until Participant has entered into an election with the Company (or Participants employer) (as appropriate) in a form approved by the Company and HMRC:
(a) | to treat any liability of the Company and/or Participants employer for employers NICs arising in respect of the granting, vesting, settlement of or other dealing in the RSUs, or the acquisition of Shares on the settlement of the RSUs, as transferred to and met by Participant pursuant to Paragraph 3B(1) of Schedule 1 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (Joint Election to Transfer U.K. Employers National Insurance Contributions) attached hereto as Exhibit B; and/or |
(b) | to treat the Shares settled at RSU vesting and their market value as if they were not restricted securities for the relevant income tax and NIC purposes pursuant section 431(1) of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions Act) 2003 (a Joint Election under Section 431). |
As a condition of Participants participation in the Plan, Participant unconditionally and irrevocably agrees:
(a) | to indemnify the Company in respect of all applicable liability to U.K. income tax and NICs and, if so required by the Company all liability to NICs for which the Company is liable which arises as a consequence of or in connection with Participants participation in the Plan; |
(b) | to permit the Company to sell such number of Shares settled to Participant following RSU vesting as will provide the Company with an amount equal to Participants U.K. tax liability; and to permit the Company to withhold an amount from any amount paid or payable to Participant; |
(c) | if so required by the Company, and, to the extent permitted by law, to enter into a joint election or other arrangements under which the liability for all or part of such employers NICs liability is transferred to Participant; |
(d) | if so required by the Company, to enter into a joint election within Section 431 of (U.K.) Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 in respect of computing any tax charge on the acquisition of restricted securities; and |
(e) | to sign all documents required by the Company to effect the terms of this provision. |
As a condition of Participants participation in the Plan, Participant unconditionally and irrevocably agrees to indemnify the Company in respect of all applicable liability to U.K. income tax and employee NICs.
EXHIBIT B
COREWEAVE, INC.
2019 STOCK OPTION PLAN
Joint Election for the Transfer of UK Employers National Insurance Contributions
1. Between
The Company, CoreWeave UK Limited (the Secondary Contributor who is the employer), whose Registered Office is Second Floor, Connexion House, Dray Walk, London, England E1 6QL (Company Registration no. 15272646), and [insert name of employee], the Employee, whose National Insurance number is [insert NI no.].
2. Purpose and scope of election
(a) | This election covers the grant of employment related securities options and/or the award of employment related restricted securities under the CoreWeave, Inc. 2019 Stock Option Plan on or after [DD/MM/202Y]. |
(b) | This joint election is made in accordance with Paragraph 3B(1) of Schedule 1 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (SSCBA 1992). |
(c) | The Company requests the Employee to enter into this joint election to transfer the liability for the secondary contributors National Insurance contributions (NICs) that arise on any relevant employment income covered by this election from the secondary contributor to the Employee. |
(d) | The employers National Insurance liability that shall transfer from the employer to the Employee under this joint election is the whole of the secondary liability. |
Relevant employment income from securities and options specified in 2(a) on which employers NICs becomes due is defined as:
(i) | an amount that counts as employment income of the earner under section 426 of ITEPA 2003 (restricted securities: charge on certain post-acquisition events), |
(ii) | an amount that counts as employment income of the earner under section 438 of that Act (convertible securities: charge on certain post-acquisition events), or |
(iii) | any gain that is treated as remuneration derived from the earners employment by virtue of section 4(4)(a) SSCBA 1992. |
(e) | This joint election will not apply to the extent that it relates to relevant employment income which is employment income of the earner by virtue of Chapter 3A of Part 7 of ITEPA 2003 (employment income: securities with artificially depressed market value). |
(f) | This election does not apply in relation to any liability, or any part of any liability, arising as a result of regulations being given retrospective effect by virtue of section 4B(2) of either the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 or the Social Security Contributions and Benefits (Northern Ireland) Act 1992. |
3. Arrangements for payment of secondary NICs
(a) | In signing this joint-election the Employee authorises the Company, or other body (if applicable), to recover an amount sufficient to cover the liability for the employers NICs transferred under this election in accordance with the arrangements summarised below: |
| A deduction from salary or other payments due. |
| The delivery in cleared funds from the Employee in sufficient time to enable the Company to make payment to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). |
| The sale of sufficient shares acquired from the Employees securities option or restricted securities, as authorized by the Employee in the relevant award agreement, the proceeds of which must be delivered to the Company in sufficient time for payment to be made to HMRC by the due date. |
| A deduction from any cash payment, treated as Relevant Employment Income, given to the Employee. |
| Where the proceeds of the gain are to be made through a third party, the Employee will authorise that party to withhold an amount from the payment or to sell shares sufficient to cover the secondary NICs transferred. Such amount will be paid in sufficient time to enable the Company to make payment to HMRC by the due date. |
(b) | The Company and the Employee will ensure that payment of the liability for the secondary NICs will be made to HMRC within 14 days following the end of the Income Tax month in which the relevant employment income arises the due date. |
The Employee understands that in making this election they will be personally liable for the secondary NICs covered by this election.
4. Duration of this election
(a) | This joint election shall continue in force from the time it is made until whichever of the following first takes place: |
| the Company gives notice to the Employee terminating the joint election |
| it is cancelled jointly by the Company and the Employee |
| it ceases to have effect in accordance with the terms of the joint election |
| HMRC serves notice on the Company that the approval of the joint election has been withdrawn |
(b) | The terms of this joint election will continue in full force regardless of whether the Employee ceases to be an employee of the Company. |
By signing below, the Employee and the Company agree to be bound by the provisions of this joint election.
Employee | Company | |||
|
| |||
[Name] | [Name and Title] | |||
|
| |||
Date | Date |
Exhibit 10.3
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
1. PURPOSE. The purpose of this Plan is to provide incentives to attract, retain and motivate eligible persons whose present and potential contributions are important to the success of the Company, and any Parents, Subsidiaries and Affiliates that exist now or in the future, by offering them an opportunity to participate in the Companys future performance through the grant of Awards. Capitalized terms not defined elsewhere in the text are defined in Section 28.
2. SHARES SUBJECT TO THE PLAN.
2.1. Number of Shares Available. Subject to Sections 2.4, 2.6 and 21 and any other applicable provisions hereof, the total number of Shares reserved and available for grant and issuance pursuant to this Plan as of the Effective Date, is Fifty Million (50,000,000) Shares, plus: (a) any reserved shares not issued or subject to outstanding awards granted under the Companys 2019 Stock Option Plan, as amended (the 2019 Plan) on the Effective Date; (b) shares that are subject to stock options or other awards granted under the 2019 Plan that cease to be subject to such stock options or other awards by forfeiture or otherwise after the Effective Date; (c) shares issued under the 2019 Plan before or after the Effective Date pursuant to the exercise of stock options that are, after the Effective Date, forfeited; (d) shares issued under the 2019 Plan that are repurchased by the Company at the original issue price or are otherwise forfeited and (e) shares that are subject to stock options or other awards under the 2019 Plan that are used to pay the Exercise Price of a stock option or withheld to satisfy the withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items related to any award. Any of the Companys Class B common stock that becomes available for grant pursuant to this Section 2.1 will be issued only as Shares. After the Effective Date, no further awards can be granted under the 2019 Plan.
2.2. Lapsed, Returned Awards. Shares subject to Awards, and Shares issued under the Plan under any Award, will again be available for grant and issuance in connection with subsequent Awards under this Plan to the extent such Shares: (a) are subject to issuance upon exercise of an Option or SAR granted under this Plan but which cease to be subject to the Option or SAR for any reason other than exercise of the Option or SAR; (b) are subject to Awards granted under this Plan that are forfeited or are repurchased by the Company at the original issue price; (c) are subject to Awards granted under this Plan that otherwise terminate without such Shares being issued or (d) are surrendered pursuant to an Exchange Program. To the extent an Award under the Plan is paid out in cash rather than Shares, such cash payment will not result in reducing the number of Shares available for issuance under the Plan. Shares used to pay the Exercise Price of an Award or withheld to satisfy the withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items related to an Award will become available for future grant and issuance under the Plan. For the avoidance of doubt, Shares that otherwise become available for grant and issuance because of the provisions of this Section 2.2 will not include Shares subject to Awards that initially became available because of the substitution clause in Section 21.2 hereof.
2.3. Minimum Share Reserve. At all times the Company will reserve and keep available a sufficient number of Shares as will be required to satisfy the requirements of all outstanding Awards granted under this Plan.
2.4. Automatic Share Reserve Increase. The number of Shares available for grant and issuance under the Plan will be increased on January 1 of 2026 through 2035 by the lesser of (a) five percent (5%) of the sum of the total number of shares of all classes of common stock plus the total number of shares of the Companys common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock (if any), in each case outstanding on the immediately preceding December 31st (rounded down to the nearest whole share) or (b) such number of Shares determined by the Board or Committee.
2.5. ISO Limitation. No more than One Hundred Fifty Million (150,000,000) Shares will be issued pursuant to the exercise of ISOs granted under the Plan.
2.6. Adjustment of Shares. If the number or class of outstanding Shares is changed by a stock dividend, extraordinary dividend or distribution (whether in cash, shares or other property, other than a regular cash dividend), recapitalization, stock split, reverse stock split, subdivision, combination, consolidation, reclassification, spin-off or similar change in the capital structure of the Company, without consideration, then (a) the number and class of Shares reserved for issuance and future grant under the Plan set forth in Section 2.1, including shares reserved under sub-clauses (a)-(e) of Section 2.1, (b) the Exercise Prices of and number and class of Shares subject to outstanding Options and SARs, (c) the number and class of Shares subject to other outstanding Awards and (d) the maximum number and class of Shares that may be issued as ISOs set forth in Section 2.5, will be proportionately adjusted, subject to any required action by the Board or the stockholders of the Company and in compliance with applicable securities laws; provided that fractions of a Share will not be issued.
If, by reason of an adjustment pursuant to this Section 2.6, a Participants Award Agreement or other agreement related to any Award, or the Shares subject to such Award, covers additional or different shares of stock or securities, then such additional or different shares, and the Award Agreement or such other agreement in respect thereof, will be subject to all of the terms, conditions and restrictions that were applicable to the Award or the Shares subject to such Award prior to such adjustment.
3. ELIGIBILITY. ISOs may be granted only to Employees. All other Awards may be granted to Employees, Consultants, Directors and Non-Employee Directors; provided such Consultants and Non-Employee Directors render bona fide services not in connection with the offer and sale of securities in a capital-raising transaction.
4. ADMINISTRATION.
4.1. Committee Composition; Authority. This Plan will be administered by the Committee or by the Board acting as the Committee. Subject to the general purposes, terms and conditions of this Plan, and to the direction of the Board, the Committee will have full power to implement and carry out this Plan, except, however, the Board will establish the terms for the grant of an Award to Non-Employee Directors. The Committee will have the authority to:
(a) construe and interpret this Plan, any Award Agreement and any other agreement or document executed pursuant to this Plan;
(b) prescribe, amend, and rescind rules and regulations relating to this Plan or any Award;
(c) select persons to receive Awards;
(d) determine the form and terms and conditions, not inconsistent with the terms of the Plan, of any Award granted hereunder. Such terms and conditions include, but are not limited to, the Exercise Price, the time or times when Awards may vest and be exercised (which may be based on performance criteria) or settled, any vesting acceleration or waiver of forfeiture restrictions, the method to satisfy withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items or any other tax liability legally due and any restriction or limitation regarding any Award or the Shares relating thereto, based in each case on such factors as the Committee will determine;
(e) determine the number of Shares or other consideration subject to Awards;
(f) determine the Fair Market Value in good faith and interpret the applicable provisions of this Plan and the definition of Fair Market Value in connection with circumstances that impact the Fair Market Value, if necessary;
(g) determine whether Awards will be granted singly, in combination with, in tandem with, in replacement of, or as alternatives to, other Awards under this Plan or any other incentive or compensation plan of the Company or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate;
(h) grant waivers of Plan or Award conditions;
(i) determine the vesting, exercisability, settlement and payment of Awards;
(j) correct any defect, supply any omission or reconcile any inconsistency in this Plan, any Award or any Award Agreement;
(k) determine whether an Award has been vested and/or earned;
(l) determine the terms and conditions of, and institute, any Exchange Program;
(m) reduce, waive or modify any criteria with respect to Performance Factors;
(n) adjust Performance Factors;
(o) adopt terms and conditions, rules and/or procedures (including the adoption of any subplan under this Plan) relating to the operation and administration of the Plan to accommodate requirements of local law and procedures outside of the United States or to qualify Awards for special tax treatment under laws of jurisdictions other than the United States;
(p) exercise discretion with respect to Performance Awards;
(q) make all other determinations necessary or advisable for the administration of this Plan; and
(r) delegate any of the foregoing to a subcommittee or to one or more executive officers pursuant to a specific delegation as permitted by applicable law.
4.2. Committee Interpretation and Discretion. Any determination made by the Committee with respect to any Award will be made in its sole discretion at the time of grant of the Award or, unless in contravention of any express term of the Plan or Award, at any later time, and such determination will be final and binding on the Company and all persons having an interest in any Award under the Plan. Any dispute regarding the interpretation of the Plan or any Award Agreement will be submitted by the Participant or Company to the Committee for review. The resolution of such a dispute by the Committee will be final and binding on the Company and the Participant. The Committee may delegate to one or more executive officers the authority to review and resolve disputes with respect to Awards held by Participants who are not Insiders, and such resolution will be final and binding on the Company and the Participant.
4.3. Section 16 of the Exchange Act. Awards granted to Participants who are subject to Section 16 of the Exchange Act must be approved by two or more non-employee directors (as defined in the regulations promulgated under Section 16 of the Exchange Act).
4.4. Documentation. The Award Agreement for a given Award, the Plan and any other documents may be delivered to, and accepted by, a Participant or any other person in any manner (including electronic distribution or posting) that meets applicable legal requirements.
4.5. Foreign Award Recipients. Notwithstanding any provision of the Plan to the contrary, to facilitate the administration of the Plan and compliance with the laws and practices in other countries in which the Company, its Subsidiaries or Affiliates operate or have Employees or other individuals eligible for Awards, the Committee, in its sole discretion, will have the power and authority to: (a) determine which Subsidiaries and Affiliates will be covered by the Plan; (b) determine which individuals outside the United States are eligible to participate in the Plan, which may include individuals who provide Services to the Company, Subsidiary or Affiliate under an agreement with a foreign nation or agency and/or who are employed or engaged by a third party agency but provide Services to the Company or a Subsidiary or Affiliate at the direction of the Company, Subsidiary or Affiliate, in each case, in accordance with applicable securities laws; (c) modify the terms and conditions of any Award granted to individuals outside the United States or foreign nationals to comply with applicable foreign laws, policies, customs and practices; (d) establish subplans and modify exercise procedures, vesting conditions, and other terms and procedures to the extent the Committee determines such actions to be necessary or advisable (and such subplans and/or modifications will be attached to this Plan and/or to Award Agreements as appendices, if necessary); and (e) take any action, before or after an Award is made, that the Committee determines to be necessary or advisable to obtain approval or facilitate compliance with any local governmental regulatory exemptions or approvals; provided, however, that no action taken under this Section 4.5 will increase the Share limitations contained in Section 2.1 hereof. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Committee may not take any actions hereunder, and no Awards will be granted, that would violate the Exchange Act or any other applicable United States securities law, the Code, or any other applicable United States governing statute or law.
5. OPTIONS. An Option is the right but not the obligation to purchase a Share, subject to certain conditions, if applicable. The Committee may grant Options to eligible Employees, Consultants and Directors and will determine whether such Options will be Incentive Stock Options within the meaning of the Code (ISOs) or Nonqualified Stock Options (NSOs), the number of Shares subject to the Option, the Exercise Price of the Option, the period during which the Option may vest and be exercised, and all other terms and conditions of the Option, subject to the following terms of this section.
5.1. Option Grant. Each Option granted under this Plan will be evidenced by an Award Agreement, which will identify the Option as an ISO or an NSO. An Option may be, but need not be, awarded upon satisfaction of such Performance Factors during any Performance Period as are set out in advance in the Participants individual Award Agreement. If the Option is being earned upon the satisfaction of Performance Factors, then the Committee will: (a) determine the nature, length and starting date of any Performance Period for each Option; and (b) select from among the Performance Factors to be used to measure the performance, if any. Performance Periods may overlap and Participants may participate simultaneously with respect to Options that are subject to different performance goals and other criteria.
5.2. Date of Grant. The date of grant of an Option will be the date on which the Committee makes the determination to grant such Option, or a specified future date. The Award Agreement will be delivered to the Participant within a reasonable time after the granting of the Option.
5.3. Exercise Period. Options may be vested and exercisable within the times or upon the conditions as set forth in the Award Agreement governing such Option; provided, however, that no Option will be exercisable after the expiration of ten (10) years from the date the Option is granted; and provided further that no ISO granted to a person who, at the time the ISO is granted, directly or by attribution owns more than ten percent (10%) of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock of the Company or of any Parent or Subsidiary (Ten Percent Stockholder) will be exercisable after the expiration of five (5) years from the date the ISO is granted. The Committee also may provide for Options to become exercisable at one time or from time to time, periodically or otherwise, in such number of Shares or percentage of Shares as the Committee determines.
5.4. Exercise Price. The Exercise Price of an Option will be determined by the Committee when the Option is granted; provided that: (a) the Exercise Price of an Option will be not less than one hundred percent (100%) of the Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date of grant (with the exception of Options issued in substitution of another companys awards pursuant to, and to the extent permitted by, Section 21.2) and (b) the Exercise Price of any ISO granted to a Ten Percent Stockholder will not be less than one hundred ten percent (110%) of the Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date of grant. Payment for the Shares purchased may be made in accordance with Section 11 and the Award Agreement and in accordance with any procedures established by the Company.
5.5. Method of Exercise. Any Option granted hereunder will be vested and exercisable according to the terms of the Plan and at such times and under such conditions as determined by the Committee and set forth in the Award Agreement. An Option may not be exercised for a fraction of a Share. An Option will be deemed exercised when the Company and/or an authorized third party administrator (the Third Party Administrator) receives: (a) notice of exercise (in such form as the Committee may specify from time to time) from the person entitled to exercise the Option and/or via electronic execution through the authorized Third Party Administrator, and (b) full payment for the Shares with respect to which the Option is exercised (together with an amount sufficient to satisfy withholding obligations for any applicable Tax-Related Items). Full payment may consist of any consideration and method of payment authorized by the Committee and permitted by the Award Agreement and the Plan. Shares issued upon exercise of an Option will be issued in the name of the Participant. Until the Shares are issued (as evidenced by the appropriate entry on the books of the Company or of a duly authorized transfer agent of the Company), no right to vote or receive dividends or any other rights as a stockholder will exist with respect to the Shares, notwithstanding the exercise of the Option. The Company will issue (or cause to be issued) such Shares promptly after the Option is exercised. No adjustment will be made for a dividend or other right for which the record date is prior to the date the Shares are issued, except as provided in Section 2.6. Exercising an Option in any manner will decrease the number of Shares thereafter available, both for purposes of the Plan and for sale under the Option, by the number of Shares as to which the Option is exercised.
5.6. Termination of Service. If the Participants Service terminates for any reason except for Cause or the Participants death or Disability, then the Participant may exercise such Participants Options only to the extent that such Options would have been exercisable by the Participant on the date Participants Service terminates, except as otherwise determined by the Committee or required by applicable law. Such Options must be exercised by the Participant no later than three (3) months after the date Participants Service terminates (or such shorter or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, with any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participants employment terminates deemed to be the exercise of an NSO), but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options.
(a) Death. If the Participants Service terminates because of the Participants death (or the Participant dies within three (3) months after Participants Service terminates other than for Cause or because of the Participants Disability), then the Participants Options may be exercised only to the extent that such Options would have been exercisable by the Participant on the date Participants Service terminates. Such Options must be exercised by the Participants legal representative, or authorized assignee, no later than twelve (12) months after the date Participants Service terminates (or such shorter or longer time period-as may be determined by the Committee), but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options.
(b) Disability. If the Participants Service terminates because of the Participants Disability, then the Participants Options may be exercised only to the extent that such Options would have been exercisable by the Participant on the date Participants Service terminates. Such Options must be exercised by the Participant (or the Participants legal representative or authorized assignee) no later than twelve (12) months after the date Participants Service terminates (or such shorter or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee with (a) any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participants employment terminates when the termination of Service is for a Disability that is not a
permanent and total disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, or (b) any exercise beyond twelve (12) months after the date Participants employment terminates when the termination of Service is for a Disability that is a permanent and total disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, deemed to be exercise of an NSO), but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options.
(c) Cause. Unless otherwise determined by the Committee, if the Participants Service terminates for Cause, or if the Committee has reasonably determined in good faith that such cessation of Services has resulted in connection with an act or failure to act constituting Cause (or such Participants Services could have been terminated for Cause (without regard to the lapsing of any required notice or cure periods in connection therewith) at the time such Participant terminated Service), then Participants Options (whether or not vested) shall expire effective as of such Participants date of termination of Service, or at such later time and on such conditions as are determined by the Committee, but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options. Unless otherwise provided in an employment agreement, Award Agreement, or other applicable agreement, Cause will have the meaning set forth in the Plan.
5.7. Limitations on Exercise. The Committee may specify a minimum number of Shares that may be purchased on any exercise of an Option, provided that such minimum number will not prevent any Participant from exercising the Option for the full number of Shares for which it is then exercisable.
5.8. Limitations on ISOs. With respect to Awards granted as ISOs, to the extent that the aggregate Fair Market Value of the Shares with respect to which such ISOs are exercisable for the first time by the Participant during any calendar year (under all plans of the Company and any Parent or Subsidiary) exceeds one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), such Options will be treated as NSOs. For purposes of this section, ISOs will be taken into account in the order in which they were granted. The Fair Market Value of the Shares will be determined as of the time the Option with respect to such Shares is granted. In the event that the Code or the regulations promulgated thereunder are amended after the Effective Date to provide for a different limit on the Fair Market Value of Shares permitted to be subject to ISOs, such different limit will be automatically incorporated herein and will apply to any Options granted after the effective date of such amendment.
5.9. Modification, Extension or Renewal. The Committee may modify, extend or renew outstanding Options and authorize the grant of new Options in substitution therefor, provided that any such action may not, without the written consent of a Participant, impair any of such Participants rights under any Option previously granted, unless for the purpose of complying with applicable laws and regulations. Any outstanding ISO that is modified, extended, renewed or otherwise altered will be treated in accordance with Section 424(h) of the Code. Subject to Section 18, by written notice to affected Participants, the Committee may reduce the Exercise Price of outstanding Options without the consent of such Participants; provided, however, that the Exercise Price may not be reduced below the Fair Market Value on the date the action is taken to reduce the Exercise Price.
5.10. No Disqualification. Notwithstanding any other provision in this Plan, no term of this Plan relating to ISOs will be interpreted, amended or altered, nor will any discretion or authority granted under this Plan be exercised, so as to disqualify this Plan under Section 422 of the Code or, without the consent of the Participant affected, to disqualify any ISO under Section 422 of the Code.
6. RESTRICTED STOCK UNITS. A Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) is an award to an eligible Employee, Consultant, or Director covering a number of Shares that may be settled in cash, or by issuance of those Shares (which may consist of Restricted Stock) or a combination of both. All RSUs will be made pursuant to an Award Agreement.
6.1. Terms of RSUs. The Committee will determine the terms of an RSU including, without limitation: (a) the number of Shares subject to the RSU; (b) the time or times during which the RSU may be settled; (c) the consideration to be distributed on settlement and (d) the effect of the Participants termination of Service on each RSU; provided that no RSU will have a term longer than ten (10) years. An RSU may be awarded upon satisfaction of such performance goals based on Performance Factors during any Performance Period as are set out in advance in the Participants Award Agreement. If the RSU is being earned upon satisfaction of Performance Factors, then the Committee will: (i) determine the nature, length and starting date of any Performance Period for the RSU; (ii) select from among the Performance Factors to be used to measure the performance, if any; and (iii) determine the number of Shares deemed subject to the RSU. Performance Periods may overlap and Participants may participate simultaneously with respect to RSUs that are subject to different Performance Periods and different performance goals and other criteria.
6.2. Form and Timing of Settlement. Payment of earned RSUs will be made as soon as practicable after the date(s) determined by the Committee and set forth in the Award Agreement. The Committee, in its sole discretion, may settle earned RSUs in cash, Shares, or a combination of both. The Committee may also permit a Participant to defer payment under a RSU to a date or dates after the RSU is earned provided that the terms of the RSU and any deferral satisfy the requirements of Section 409A of the Code to the extent applicable.
6.3. Termination of Service. Except as may be set forth in the Participants Award Agreement, vesting ceases on such date Participants Service terminates (unless determined otherwise by the Committee).
7. RESTRICTED STOCK AWARDS. A Restricted Stock Award is an offer by the Company to sell to an eligible Employee, Consultant, or Director Shares that are subject to restrictions (Restricted Stock). The Committee will determine to whom an offer will be made, the number of Shares the Participant may purchase, the Purchase Price, the restrictions under which the Shares will be subject and all other terms and conditions of the Restricted Stock Award, subject to the Plan.
7.1. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement. All purchases under a Restricted Stock Award will be evidenced by an Award Agreement. Except as may otherwise be provided in an Award Agreement, a Participant accepts a Restricted Stock Award by signing and delivering to the Company an Award Agreement and/or via electronic acceptance through the Third-Party Administrator with full payment of the Purchase Price, within thirty (30) days from the date the Award Agreement was delivered to the Participant. If the Participant does not accept such Award within thirty (30) days, then the offer to purchase such Restricted Stock Award will terminate, unless the Committee determines otherwise.
7.2. Purchase Price. The Purchase Price for Shares issued pursuant to a Restricted Stock Award will be determined by the Committee and may be less than Fair Market Value on the date the Restricted Stock Award is granted. Payment of the Purchase Price must be made in accordance with Section 11, the Award Agreement and any procedures established by the Company.
7.3. Terms of Restricted Stock Awards. Restricted Stock Awards will be subject to such restrictions as the Committee may impose or are required by law. These restrictions may be based on completion of a specified period of Service or upon completion of Performance Factors, if any, during any Performance Period as set out in advance in the Participants Award Agreement. Prior to the grant of a Restricted Stock Award, the Committee will: (a) determine the nature, length and starting date of any Performance Period for the Restricted Stock Award; (b) select from among the Performance Factors to be used to measure performance goals, if any; and (c) determine the number of Shares that may be awarded to the Participant. Performance Periods may overlap and a Participant may participate simultaneously with respect to Restricted Stock Awards that are subject to different Performance Periods and having different performance goals and other criteria.
7.4. Termination of Service. Except as may be set forth in the Participants Award Agreement, vesting ceases on such date Participants Service terminates (unless determined otherwise by the Committee).
8. STOCK BONUS AWARDS. A Stock Bonus Award is an award to an eligible Employee, Consultant, or Director of Shares for Services to be rendered or for past Services already rendered to the Company or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate. All Stock Bonus Awards will be made pursuant to an Award Agreement. No payment from the Participant will be required for Shares awarded pursuant to a Stock Bonus Award.
8.1. Terms of Stock Bonus Awards. The Committee will determine the number of Shares to be awarded to the Participant under a Stock Bonus Award and any restrictions thereon. These restrictions may be based upon completion of a specified period of Service or upon satisfaction of performance goals based on Performance Factors during any Performance Period as set out in advance in the Participants Stock Bonus Agreement. Prior to the grant of any Stock Bonus Award the Committee will: (a) determine the nature, length and starting date of any Performance Period for the Stock Bonus Award; (b) select from among the Performance Factors to be used to measure performance goals; and (c) determine the number of Shares that may be awarded to the Participant. Performance Periods may overlap and a Participant may participate simultaneously with respect to Stock Bonus Awards that are subject to different Performance Periods and different performance goals and other criteria.
8.2. Form of Payment to Participant. Payment, if any, may be made in the form of cash, whole Shares, or a combination thereof, based on the Fair Market Value of the Shares earned under a Stock Bonus Award on the date of payment, as determined in the sole discretion of the Committee.
8.3. Termination of Service. Except as may be set forth in the Participants Award Agreement, vesting ceases on such date Participants Service terminates (unless determined otherwise by the Committee).
9. STOCK APPRECIATION RIGHTS. A Stock Appreciation Right (SAR) is an award to an eligible Employee, Consultant, or Director that may be settled in cash, or Shares (which may consist of Restricted Stock), having a value equal to (a) the difference between the Fair Market Value on the date of exercise less the Exercise Price multiplied by (b) the number of Shares with respect to which the SAR is being settled (subject to any maximum number of Shares that may be issuable as specified in an Award Agreement). All SARs will be made pursuant to an Award Agreement.
9.1. Terms of SARs. The Committee will determine the terms of each SAR including, without limitation: (a) the number of Shares subject to the SAR; (b) the Exercise Price and the time or times during which the SAR may be exercised and settled; (c) the consideration to be distributed on exercise and settlement of the SAR; and (d) the effect of the Participants termination of Service on each SAR. The Exercise Price of the SAR will be determined by the Committee when the SAR is granted, and may not be less than Fair Market Value of the Shares on the date of grant (with the exception of SARs issued in substitution of another companys awards pursuant to, and to the extent permitted by, Section 21.2). A SAR may be awarded upon satisfaction of Performance Factors, if any, during any Performance Period as are set out in advance in the Participants individual Award Agreement. If the SAR is being earned upon the satisfaction of Performance Factors, then the Committee will: (i) determine the nature, length and starting date of any Performance Period for each SAR; and (ii) select from among the Performance Factors to be used to measure the performance, if any. Performance Periods may overlap and Participants may participate simultaneously with respect to SARs that are subject to different Performance Factors and other criteria.
9.2. Exercise Period and Expiration Date. A SAR will be exercisable within the times or upon the occurrence of events determined by the Committee and set forth in the Award Agreement governing such SAR. The SAR Agreement will set forth the expiration date; provided that no SAR will be exercisable after the expiration of ten (10) years from the date the SAR is granted. The Committee may also provide for SARs to become exercisable at one time or from time to time, periodically or otherwise (including, without limitation, upon the attainment during a Performance Period of performance goals based on Performance Factors), in such number of Shares or percentage of the Shares subject to the SAR as the Committee determines. Except as may be set forth in the Participants Award Agreement, vesting ceases on the date Participants Service terminates (unless determined otherwise by the Committee). Notwithstanding the foregoing, the rules of Section 5.6 also will apply to SARs.
9.3. Form of Settlement. Upon exercise of a SAR, a Participant will be entitled to receive payment from the Company in an amount determined by multiplying (a) the difference between the Fair Market Value of a Share on the date of exercise less the Exercise Price; times (b) the number of Shares with respect to which the SAR is exercised. At the discretion of the Committee, the payment from the Company for the SAR exercise may be in cash, in Shares of equivalent value, or in some combination thereof. The portion of a SAR being settled may be paid currently or on a deferred basis with such interest, if any, as the Committee determines, provided that the terms of the SAR and any deferral satisfy the requirements of Section 409A of the Code to the extent applicable.
9.4. Termination of Service. Except as may be set forth in the Participants Award Agreement, vesting ceases on the date Participants Service terminates (unless determined otherwise by the Committee).
10. PERFORMANCE AWARDS. A Performance Award is an award to an eligible Employee, Consultant, or Director of the Company or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate that is based upon the attainment of performance goals, as established by the Committee, and other terms and conditions specified by the Committee, and may be settled in cash, or by issuance of those Shares (which may consist of, without limitation, Restricted Stock), other property, or any combination thereof, and may be cash-based. Grants of Performance Awards will be made pursuant to an Award Agreement.
10.1. Performance Awards will include Performance Shares, Performance Units, and cash-based Awards as set forth in Sections 10.1(a), 10.1(b), and 10.1(c) below.
(a) Performance Shares. The Committee may grant Awards of Performance Shares, designate the Participants to whom Performance Shares are to be awarded and determine the number of Performance Shares and the terms and conditions of each such Award. Performance Shares will consist of a unit valued by reference to a designated number of Shares, the value of which may be paid to the Participant by delivery of Shares or, if set forth in the instrument evidencing the Award, of such property as the Committee will determine, including, without limitation, cash, Shares, other property, or any combination thereof, upon the attainment of performance goals, as established by the Committee, and other terms and conditions specified by the Committee. The amount to be paid under an Award of Performance Shares may be adjusted on the basis of such further consideration as the Committee will determine in its sole discretion.
(b) Performance Units. The Committee may grant Awards of Performance Units, designate the Participants to whom Performance Units are to be awarded and determine the number of Performance Units and the terms and conditions of each such Award. Performance Units will consist of a unit valued by reference to a designated amount of property other than Shares, which value may be paid to the Participant by delivery of such property as the Committee will determine, including, without limitation, cash, Shares, other property, or any combination thereof, upon the attainment of performance goals, as established by the Committee, and other terms and conditions specified by the Committee.
(c) Cash-Settled Performance Awards. The Committee may also grant cash-settled Performance Awards to Participants under the terms of this Plan. Such awards will be based on the attainment of performance goals using the Performance Factors within this Plan that are established by the Committee for the relevant performance period.
10.2. Terms of Performance Awards. Performance Awards will be based on the attainment of performance goals using the Performance Factors within this Plan that are established by the Committee for the relevant Performance Period. The Committee will determine, and each Award Agreement will set forth, the terms of each Performance Award including, without limitation: (a) the amount of any cash bonus, (b) the number of Shares deemed subject to an award of Performance Shares; (c) the Performance Factors and Performance Period that will determine the time and extent to which each award of Performance Shares will be settled; (d) the consideration to be distributed on settlement, and (e) the effect of the Participants termination of Service on each Performance Award. In establishing Performance Factors and the Performance Period the Committee will: (x) determine the nature, length and starting date of any Performance Period; (y) select from among the Performance Factors to be used; and (z) determine the number of Shares deemed subject to the award of Performance Shares. Prior to settlement the Committee will determine the extent to which Performance Awards have been earned. Performance Periods may overlap and Participants may participate simultaneously with respect to Performance Awards that are subject to different Performance Periods and different performance goals and other criteria.
10.3. Termination of Service. Except as may be set forth in the Participants Award Agreement, vesting ceases on the date Participants Service terminates (unless determined otherwise by the Committee).
11. PAYMENT FOR SHARE PURCHASES. Payment from a Participant for Shares purchased pursuant to this Plan may be made in cash or by cash equivalent or, where expressly approved for the Participant by the Committee and where permitted by law (and to the extent not otherwise set forth in the applicable Award Agreement):
(a) by cancellation of indebtedness of the Company to the Participant;
(b) by surrender of shares of the Company held by the Participant that have a Fair Market Value on the date of surrender equal to the aggregate Exercise Price of the Shares as to which said Award will be exercised or settled;
(c) by waiver of compensation due or accrued to the Participant for services rendered or to be rendered to the Company or a Parent or Subsidiary or Affiliate;
(d) by consideration received by the Company pursuant to a broker-assisted or other form of cashless exercise program implemented by the Company in connection with the Plan;
(e) by any combination of the foregoing; or
(f) by any other method of payment as is permitted by applicable law.
The Committee may limit the availability of any method of payment, to the extent the Committee determines, in its sole discretion, such limitation is necessary or advisable to comply with applicable law or facilitate the administration of the Plan. Unless determined otherwise by the Committee, all payments under any of the methods indicated above shall be made in United States dollars.
12. GRANTS TO NON-EMPLOYEE DIRECTORS.
12.1. Grants and Eligibility. Awards pursuant to this Section 12 shall be granted only to Non-Employee Directors, who are eligible to receive any type of Award offered under this Plan except ISOs. Awards pursuant to this Section 12 may be automatically made pursuant to a policy adopted by the Board, or granted from time to time as determined in the discretion of the Board.
12.2. Calendar Year Limitation. The aggregate value of all compensation granted or paid, as applicable, to any individual for service as a Non-Employee Director with respect to any calendar year following the year in which the IPO Registration Date occurs, including Awards granted and cash fees paid by the Company to such Non-Employee Director, will not exceed (x) $1,000,000 in value (as described below) for continuing directors, or (y) $1,500,000 in value (as described below) for the year in which the Non-Employee Director is first appointed or elected. The value of Awards for purposes of complying with this maximum will be determined as follows: (a) for Options and SARs, grant date fair value will be calculated using the Black-Scholes valuation methodology or the Companys regular valuation methodology for determining the grant date fair value of Options or SARs for reporting purposes, and (b) for all other Awards other than Options and SARs, grant date fair value will be determined by either (i) calculating the product of the Fair Market Value per Share on the date of grant and the aggregate number of Shares subject to the Award, or (ii) calculating the product using an average of the Fair Market Value over a number of trading days and the aggregate number of Shares subject to the Award as determined by the Committee. Awards granted, or cash compensation paid, to an individual while he or she was serving in the capacity as an Employee or in consideration of services as a Consultant will not count for purposes of the limitations set forth in this Section 12.2.
12.3. Vesting, Exercisability and Settlement. Except as set forth in Section 21, Awards will vest, become exercisable and be settled as determined by the Board. With respect to Options and SARs, the exercise price granted to Non-Employee Directors will not be less than the Fair Market Value of the Shares at the time that such Option or SAR is granted.
12.4. Election to Receive Awards in Lieu of Cash. A Non-Employee Director may elect to receive his or her annual retainer payments and/or meeting fees from the Company in the form of cash or Awards or a combination thereof, if permitted, and as determined, by the Committee. Such Awards will be issued under the Plan. An election under this Section 12.4 will be filed with the Company on the form prescribed by the Company.
13. WITHHOLDING TAXES.
13.1. Withholding Generally. Whenever Shares are to be issued in satisfaction of Awards granted under this Plan or a tax withholding event occurs in relation to an Award, the Company may require the Participant to remit to the Company, or to the Third Party Administrator or to the Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, employing or retaining the Participant, an amount sufficient to satisfy applicable U.S. federal, state, local and international income tax, social insurance, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account or other tax-related items (the Tax-Related Items) required to be withheld from the Participant prior to the delivery of Shares pursuant to exercise or settlement of any Award. Whenever payments in satisfaction of Awards granted under this Plan are to be made in cash, such payment will be net of an amount sufficient to satisfy applicable withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items. Unless otherwise determined by the Committee or required by applicable laws, the Fair Market Value of the Shares will be determined as of the date that the Tax-Related Items are required to be withheld and such Shares will be valued based on the value of the actual trade or, if there is none, the Fair Market Value of the Shares as of the previous trading day.
13.2. Withholding Methods. The Committee, or its delegate(s), as permitted by applicable law, in its sole discretion and pursuant to such procedures as it may specify from time to time and to limitations of local law, may require or permit a Participant to satisfy such Tax Related Items legally due from the Participant, in whole or in part by (without limitation): (a) paying cash; (b) having the Company withhold otherwise deliverable cash or Shares having a Fair Market Value equal to the Tax-Related Items to be withheld; (c) delivering to the Company already-owned shares having a Fair Market Value equal to the Tax-Related Items to be withheld or (d) withholding from the proceeds of the sale of otherwise deliverable Shares acquired pursuant to an Award either through a voluntary sale or through a mandatory sale arranged by the Company. The Company may withhold or account for these Tax-Related Items by considering applicable statutory withholding rates or other applicable withholding rates, including up to (but not in excess of) the maximum permissible statutory tax rate for the applicable tax jurisdiction, to the extent consistent with applicable laws.
14. TRANSFERABILITY. Unless determined otherwise by the Committee, an Award may not be sold, pledged, assigned, hypothecated, transferred, or disposed of in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent or distribution. If the Committee makes an Award transferable, including, without limitation, by instrument to an inter vivos or testamentary trust in which the Awards are to be passed to beneficiaries upon the death of the trustor (settlor) or by gift or by domestic relations order to a Permitted Transferee, such Award will contain such additional terms and conditions as the Committee deems appropriate. All Awards will be exercisable: (a) during the Participants lifetime only by the Participant, or the Participants guardian or legal representative; (b) after the Participants death, by the legal representative of the Participants heirs or legatees; and (c) in the case of all awards except ISOs, by a Permitted Transferee.
15. PRIVILEGES OF STOCK OWNERSHIP; RESTRICTIONS ON SHARES.
15.1. Voting and Dividends. No Participant will have any of the rights of a stockholder with respect to any Shares until the Shares are issued to the Participant, except for any Dividend Equivalent Rights permitted by an applicable Award Agreement. Any Dividend Equivalent Rights will be subject to the same vesting or performance conditions as the underlying Award. In addition, the Committee may provide that any Dividend Equivalent Rights permitted by an applicable Award Agreement will be deemed to have been reinvested in additional Shares or otherwise reinvested. After Shares are issued to the Participant, the Participant will be a stockholder and have all the rights of a stockholder with respect to such Shares, including the right to vote and receive all dividends or other distributions made or paid with respect to such Shares; provided, that if such Shares are Restricted Stock, then any new, additional or different securities, the Participant may become entitled to receive with respect to such Shares by virtue of a stock dividend, stock split or any other change in the corporate or capital structure of the Company will be subject to the same restrictions as the Restricted Stock; provided, further, that the Participant will have no right to such stock dividends, or stock distributions with respect to Unvested Shares, and any such dividends or stock distributions will be accrued and paid only at such time, if any, as such Unvested Shares become vested Shares. The Committee, in its discretion, may provide in the Award Agreement evidencing any Award that the Participant will be entitled to Dividend Equivalent Rights with respect to the payment of cash dividends on Shares underlying an Award during the period beginning on the date the Award is granted and ending, with respect to each Share subject to the Award, on the earlier of the date on which the Award is exercised or settled or the date on which it is forfeited provided, that no Dividend Equivalent Right will be paid with respect to the Unvested Shares, and such dividends or stock distributions will be accrued and paid only at such time, if any, as such Unvested Shares become vested Shares. Such Dividend Equivalent Rights, if any, will be credited to the Participant in the form of additional whole Shares as of the date of payment of such cash dividends on Shares.
15.2. Restrictions on Shares. At the discretion of the Committee, the Company may reserve to itself and/or its assignee(s) a right to repurchase (a Right of Repurchase) a portion of any or all Unvested Shares held by a Participant following such Participants termination of Service at any time within ninety (90) days (or such longer or shorter time determined by the Committee) after the later of the date Participants Service terminates and the date the Participant purchases Shares under this Plan, for cash and/or cancellation of purchase money indebtedness, at the Participants Purchase Price or Exercise Price, as the case may be.
16. CERTIFICATES. All Shares or other securities whether or not certificated, delivered under this Plan will be subject to such stock transfer orders, legends and other restrictions as the Committee may deem necessary or advisable, including restrictions under any applicable U.S. federal, state or foreign securities law, or any rules, regulations and other requirements of the SEC or any stock exchange or automated quotation system upon which the Shares may be listed or quoted and any non-U.S. exchange controls or securities law restrictions to which the Shares are subject.
17. ESCROW; PLEDGE OF SHARES. To enforce any restrictions on a Participants Shares, the Committee may require the Participant to deposit all certificates representing Shares, together with stock powers or other instruments of transfer approved by the Committee, appropriately endorsed in blank, with the Company or an agent designated by the Company to hold in escrow until such restrictions have lapsed or terminated. The Committee may cause a legend or legends referencing such restrictions to be placed on the certificates. Any Participant who is permitted to execute a promissory note as partial or full consideration for the purchase of Shares under this Plan will be required to pledge and deposit with the Company all or part of the Shares so purchased as collateral to secure the payment of the Participants obligation to the Company under the promissory note; provided, however, that the Committee may require or accept other or additional forms of collateral to secure the payment of such obligation and, in any event, the Company will have full recourse against the Participant under the promissory note notwithstanding any pledge of the Participants Shares or other collateral. In connection with any pledge of the Shares, the Participant will be required to execute and deliver a written pledge agreement in such form as the Committee will from time to time approve. The Shares purchased with the promissory note may be released from the pledge on a pro rata basis as the promissory note is paid.
18. REPRICING; EXCHANGE AND BUYOUT OF AWARDS. Without prior stockholder approval, the Committee may (a) reprice Options or SARs (and where such repricing is a reduction in the Exercise Price of outstanding Options or SARs, the consent of the affected Participants is not required provided written notice is provided to them, notwithstanding any adverse tax consequences to them arising from the repricing), and (b) with the consent of the respective Participants (unless not required pursuant to Section 5.9), pay cash or issue new Awards in exchange for the surrender and cancellation of any, or all, outstanding Awards.
19. SECURITIES LAW AND OTHER REGULATORY COMPLIANCE. An Award will not be effective unless such Award is in compliance with all applicable U.S. and foreign federal and state securities and exchange control and other laws, rules and regulations of any governmental body, and with the requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system upon which the Shares may then be listed or quoted, as they are in effect on the date of grant of the Award and also on the date of exercise or other issuance. Notwithstanding any other provision in this Plan, the Company will have no obligation to issue or deliver certificates for Shares under this Plan prior to: (a) obtaining any approvals from governmental agencies that the Company determines are necessary or advisable; and/or (b) completion of any registration or other qualification of such Shares under any state, federal or foreign law or ruling of any governmental body that the Company determines to be necessary or advisable. The Company will be under no obligation to register the Shares with the SEC or to effect compliance with the registration, qualification or listing requirements of any foreign or state securities laws, exchange control laws, stock exchange or automated quotation system, and the Company will have no liability for any inability or failure to do so.
20. NO OBLIGATION TO EMPLOY. Nothing in this Plan or any Award granted under this Plan will confer or be deemed to confer on any Participant any right to continue in the employ of, or to continue any other relationship with, the Company or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate or limit in any way the right of the Company or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate to terminate Participants employment or other relationship at any time.
21. CORPORATE TRANSACTIONS.
21.1. Assumption or Replacement of Awards by Successor. In the event of a Corporate Transaction, outstanding Awards will be subject to the agreement evidencing the Corporate Transaction, which need not treat all outstanding Awards in an identical manner. Such agreement, without Participants consent, may provide for one or more of the following with respect to outstanding Awards as of the effective date of such Corporate Transaction: (a) such Awards may be continued by the Company (if the Company is the successor entity); (b) such Awards may be assumed or substituted by the successor corporation, or a parent or subsidiary of the successor corporation, for substantially equivalent
Awards (including, but not limited to, an award to acquire the same consideration paid to the stockholders of the Company pursuant to the Corporate Transaction), in each case after taking into account appropriate adjustments for the number and kind of shares and exercise prices pursuant to Section 424(a) of the Code and/or Section 409A of the Code, as applicable; (c) immediately vested (and exercisable, as applicable) and settled (as applicable), in whole or in part, followed by the cancellation of such Awards upon or immediately prior to the effectiveness of such transaction or (d) settled for their intrinsic value (whether or not vested or exercisable) in cash or cash equivalents or equity (including cash or equity subject to deferred vesting and delivery consistent with vesting restrictions applicable to such Awards or the underlying Shares) followed by the cancellation of such Awards and, for the avoidance of doubt, if as of the date of the occurrence of the Corporate Transaction, the Committee determines in good faith that no amount would have been attained upon the exercise of such Award or realization of the Participants rights, then such Award may be terminated by the Company without payment, in each case without the Participants consent. The successor corporation may also issue, as replacement of outstanding Shares of the Company held by the Participant, substantially similar shares or other property subject to repurchase restrictions no less favorable to the Participant. In the event such successor corporation refuses to assume, substitute or replace any Award in accordance with this Section 21, then notwithstanding any other provision in this Plan to the contrary, each such Award will become fully vested and, as applicable, exercisable and any rights of repurchase or forfeiture restrictions thereon will lapse, immediately prior to the consummation of the Corporate Transaction. Performance Awards not assumed pursuant to the foregoing shall be deemed earned and vested at 100% of target level, unless otherwise indicated pursuant to the terms and conditions of the applicable Award Agreement.
If an Award vests in lieu of assumption or substitution in connection with a Corporate Transaction as provided above, the Committee will notify the holder of such Award in writing or electronically that such Award will be exercisable for a period of time determined by the Committee in its sole discretion, and such Award will terminate upon the expiration of such period without consideration. Any determinations by the Committee need not treat all outstanding Awards in an identical manner, and will be final and binding on each applicable Participant. The Board shall have full power and authority to assign the Companys right to repurchase, right to re-acquire and/or forfeiture rights to such successor or acquiring corporation.
21.2. Assumption of Awards by the Company. The Company, from time to time, also may substitute or assume outstanding awards granted by another company, whether in connection with an acquisition of such other company or otherwise, by either; (a) granting an Award under this Plan in substitution of such other companys award; or (b) assuming such award as if it had been granted under this Plan if the terms of such assumed award could be applied to an Award granted under this Plan. Such substitution or assumption will be permissible if the holder of the substituted or assumed award would have been eligible to be granted an Award under this Plan if the other company had applied the rules of this Plan to such grant. In the event the Company assumes an award granted by another company, the terms and conditions of such award will remain unchanged (except that the Purchase Price or the Exercise Price, as the case may be, and the number and nature of Shares issuable upon exercise or settlement of any such Award will be adjusted appropriately pursuant to Section 424(a) of the Code). In the event the Company elects to grant a new Option in substitution rather than assuming an existing option, such new Option may be granted with a similarly adjusted Exercise Price. Substitute Awards will not reduce the number of Shares authorized for grant under the Plan or authorized for grant to a Participant in a calendar year.
21.3. Non-Employee Directors Awards. Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary herein, in the event of a Corporate Transaction, the vesting of all Awards granted to Non-Employee Directors will accelerate and such Awards will become exercisable (as applicable) in full prior to the consummation of such event at such times and on such conditions as the Committee determines.
22. ADOPTION AND STOCKHOLDER APPROVAL. This Plan will be submitted for the approval of the Companys stockholders, consistent with applicable laws, within twelve (12) months before or after the date this Plan is adopted by the Board.
23. TERM OF PLAN/GOVERNING LAW. Unless earlier terminated as provided herein, this Plan will become effective on the Effective Date and will terminate ten (10) years from the date this Plan is adopted by the Board. After this Plan is terminated or expires, no Awards may be granted but Awards previously granted shall remain outstanding in accordance with their applicable terms and conditions and this Plans terms and conditions. This Plan and all Awards granted hereunder will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware (excluding its conflict of laws rules).
24. AMENDMENT OR TERMINATION OF PLAN. The Board may at any time terminate or amend this Plan in any respect, including, without limitation, amendment of any form of Award Agreement or instrument to be executed pursuant to this Plan; provided, however, that the Board will not, without the approval of the stockholders of the Company, amend this Plan in any manner that requires such stockholder approval; provided further, that a Participants Award will be governed by the version of this Plan then in effect at the time such Award was granted. No termination or amendment of the Plan or any outstanding Award may adversely affect any then outstanding Award without the consent of the Participant, unless such termination or amendment is necessary to comply with applicable law, regulation or rule.
25. NONEXCLUSIVITY OF THE PLAN. Neither the adoption of this Plan by the Board, the submission of this Plan to the stockholders of the Company for approval, nor any provision of this Plan will be construed as creating any limitations on the power of the Board to adopt such additional compensation arrangements as it may deem desirable, including, without limitation, the granting of stock awards and bonuses otherwise than under this Plan, and such arrangements may be either generally applicable or applicable only in specific cases.
26. INSIDER TRADING POLICY. Each Participant who receives an Award will comply with any policy adopted by the Company from time to time covering transactions in the Companys securities by Employees, officers and/or Directors of the Company, as applicable, as well as with any insider trading or market abuse laws to which the Participant may be subject.
27. ALL AWARDS SUBJECT TO COMPANY CLAWBACK OR RECOUPMENT POLICY. All Awards, subject to applicable law, shall be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by the Board or required by law during the term of Participants employment or other service with the Company that is applicable to officers, Employees, Directors or other service providers of the Company, and in addition to any other remedies available under such policy and applicable law, may require the cancellation of outstanding Awards and the recoupment of any gains realized with respect to Awards.
28. DEFINITIONS. As used in this Plan, and except as elsewhere defined herein, the following terms will have the following meanings:
28.1. Affiliate means any person or entity that directly or indirectly through one or more intermediaries controls, or is controlled by, or is under common control with, the Company, including any general partner, managing member, officer or director of the Company, in each case as of the date on which, or at any time during the period for which, the determination of affiliation is being made. For purposes of this definition, the term control (including the correlative meanings of the terms controlled by and under common control with), as used with respect to any person or entity, means the possession, directly or indirectly, of the power to direct or cause the direction of the management policies of such person or entity, whether through the ownership of voting securities or by contract or otherwise.
28.2. Award means any award under the Plan, including any Option, Restricted Stock, Stock Bonus, Stock Appreciation Right, Restricted Stock Unit or Performance Award.
28.3. Award Agreement means, with respect to each Award, the written or electronic agreement between the Company and the Participant setting forth the terms and conditions of the Award, and any country-specific appendix thereto for grants to non-U.S. Participants, which will be in substantially a form (that need not be the same for each Participant) that the Committee (or in the case of Award Agreements that are not used for Insiders, the Committees delegate(s)) has from time to time approved, and will comply with and be subject to the terms and conditions of this Plan.
28.4. Board means the Board of Directors of the Company.
28.5. Cause means a determination by the Company (and in the case of Participant who is subject to Section 16 of the Exchange Act, the Committee) that the Participant has committed an act or acts constituting any of the following: (a) Participants unauthorized misuse of the Company or a Parent or Subsidiary of the Companys trade secrets or proprietary information, (b) Participants conviction of or plea of nolo contendere to a felony or a crime involving moral turpitude, (c) Participants committing an act of fraud against, or misappropriation of any funds or property of, the Company or a Parent or Subsidiary (d) Participants gross negligence or willful misconduct in connection with Participants duties, (e) Participants material breach of any provision of any employment, non-disclosure, non-competition, non-solicitation or other similar agreement executed by Participant for the benefit of the Company, (f) Participants material failure to comply with the Companys written policies or rules, including, but not limited to the Companys code of conduct or ethics, provided the Company shall give Participant written notice of the alleged failure and thirty (30) days to cure if cure is possible, as determined by the Company in its sole discretion, (g) Participants failure to cooperate in good faith with a governmental or internal investigation of the Company or its directors, officers or employees, if the Company has requested Participants cooperation or (h) other conduct by such Participant that could be expected to be materially harmful to the business, interests or reputation of the Company.
The determination as to whether Cause for a Participants termination exists will be made in good faith by the Company and will be final and binding on the Participant. This definition does not in any way limit the Companys or any Parents or Subsidiarys ability to terminate a Participants employment or services at any time as provided in Section 20 above. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the foregoing definition of Cause may, in part or in whole, be modified or replaced in each individual employment agreement, Award Agreement, or other applicable agreement with any Participant provided that such document specifically supersedes this definition.
28.6. Code means the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
28.7. Committee means the Compensation Committee of the Board or those persons to whom administration of the Plan, or part of the Plan, has been delegated as permitted by law.
28.8. Company means CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation, or any successor corporation.
28.9. Consultant means any natural person, including an advisor or independent contractor, engaged by the Company or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate to render services to such entity.
28.10. Corporate Transaction means the occurrence of any of the following events: (a) any Person (as such term is used in Sections 13(d) and 14(d) of the Exchange Act) becomes the beneficial owner (as defined in Rule 13d-3 of the Exchange Act), directly or indirectly, of securities of the Company representing more than fifty percent (50%) of the total voting power represented by the Companys then-outstanding voting securities; provided, however, that for purposes of this subclause (a)
the acquisition of additional securities by any one Person who is considered to own fifty percent (50%) or more of the total voting power of the securities of the Company will not be considered a Corporate Transaction; (b) the consummation of the sale or disposition by the Company of all or substantially all of the Companys assets; (c) the consummation of a merger or consolidation of the Company with any other corporation, other than a merger or consolidation which would result in the voting securities of the Company outstanding immediately prior thereto continuing to represent (either by remaining outstanding or by being converted into voting securities of the surviving entity or its parent) at least fifty percent (50%) of the total voting power represented by the voting securities of the Company or such surviving entity or its parent outstanding immediately after such merger or consolidation; (d) any other transaction which qualifies as a corporate transaction under Section 424(a) of the Code wherein the stockholders of the Company give up all of their equity interest in the Company (except for the acquisition, sale or transfer of all or substantially all of the outstanding shares of the Company) or (e) a change in the effective control of the Company that occurs on the date that a majority of members of the Board is replaced during any twelve (12) month period by members of the Board whose appointment or election is not endorsed by a majority of the members of the Board prior to the date of the appointment or election. For purpose of this subclause (e), if any Person is considered to be in effective control of the Company, the acquisition of additional control of the Company by the same Person will not be considered a Corporate Transaction. For purposes of this definition, Persons will be considered to be acting as a group if they are owners of a corporation that enters into a merger, consolidation, purchase or acquisition of stock, or similar business transaction with the Company. Notwithstanding the foregoing, to the extent that any amount constituting deferred compensation (as defined in Section 409A of the Code) would become payable under this Plan by reason of a Corporate Transaction, such amount will become payable only if the event constituting a Corporate Transaction would also qualify as a change in ownership or effective control of the Company or a change in the ownership of a substantial portion of the assets of the Company, each as defined within the meaning of Code Section 409A, as it has been and may be amended from time to time, and any proposed or final Treasury Regulations and IRS guidance that has been promulgated or may be promulgated thereunder from time to time.
28.11. Director means a member of the Board.
28.12. Disability means in the case of incentive stock options, total and permanent disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code and in the case of other Awards, that the Participant is unable to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment that can be expected to result in death or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months.
28.13. Dividend Equivalent Right means the right of a Participant, granted at the discretion of the Committee or as otherwise provided by the Plan, to receive a credit for the account of such Participant in an amount equal to the cash, stock or other property dividends in amounts equivalent to cash, stock or other property dividends for each Share represented by an Award held by such Participant.
28.14. Effective Date means the day immediately prior to the Companys IPO Registration Date, subject to approval of the Plan by the Companys stockholders.
28.15. Employee means any person, including officers and Directors, providing services as an employee to the Company or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate. Neither service as a Director nor payment of a directors fee by the Company will be sufficient to constitute employment by the Company.
28.16. Exchange Act means the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
28.17. Exchange Program means a program pursuant to which (a) outstanding Awards are surrendered, cancelled or exchanged for cash, the same type of Award or a different Award (or combination thereof) or (b) the exercise price of an outstanding Award is increased or reduced, each as described in Section 18.
28.18. Exercise Price means, with respect to an Option, the price at which a holder may purchase the Shares issuable upon exercise of an Option and with respect to a SAR, the price at which the SAR is granted to the holder thereof.
28.19. Fair Market Value means, as of any date, the value of a share of common stock determined as follows:
(a) if such common stock is publicly traded and is then listed on a national securities exchange, its closing price on the date of determination on the principal national securities exchange on which the common stock is listed or admitted to trading as reported in The Wall Street Journal or such other source as the Committee deems reliable;
(b) if such common stock is publicly traded but is neither listed nor admitted to trading on a national securities exchange, the average of the closing bid and asked prices on the date of determination as reported in The Wall Street Journal or such other source as the Committee deems reliable;
(c) in the case of an Option or SAR grant made on the IPO Registration Date, the price per share at which Shares are initially offered for sale to the public by the Companys underwriters in the initial public offering of Shares as set forth in the Companys final prospectus included within the registration statement on Form S-1 filed with the SEC under the Securities Act; or
(d) by the Board or the Committee in good faith.
28.20. Insider means an officer or Director of the Company or any other person whose transactions in common stock are subject to Section 16 of the Exchange Act.
28.21. IPO Registration Date means the date on which the Companys registration statement on Form S-1 in connection with its initial public offering of common stock is declared effective by the SEC under the Securities Act.
28.22. IRS means the United States Internal Revenue Service.
28.23. Non-Employee Director means a Director who is not an Employee of the Company or any Affiliate, Parent or Subsidiary.
28.24. Option means an Award as defined in Section 5 and granted under the Plan.
28.25. Parent means any corporation (other than the Company) in an unbroken chain of corporations ending with the Company if each of such corporations other than the Company owns stock possessing fifty percent (50%) or more of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock in one of the other corporations in such chain.
28.26. Participant means a person who holds an Award under this Plan.
28.27. Performance Award means an Award as defined in Section 10 and granted under the Plan.
28.28. Performance Factors means any of the factors selected by the Committee and specified in an Award Agreement, from among the following objective or subjective measures, either individually, alternatively or in any combination applied to the Participant, the Company, any business unit or Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, either individually, alternatively, or in any combination, on a GAAP or non-GAAP basis, and measured, to the extent applicable on an absolute basis or relative to a pre-established target, to determine whether the performance goals established by the Committee with respect to applicable Awards have been satisfied:
(a) Profit Before Tax;
(b) Sales;
(c) Expenses;
(d) Billings;
(e) Revenue;
(f) Net revenue;
(g) Earnings (which may include earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), and Adjusted EBITDA);
(h) Operating income;
(i) Operating margin;
(j) Operating profit;
(k) Controllable operating profit, or net operating profit;
(l) Net Profit;
(m) Gross margin;
(n) Operating expenses or operating expenses as a percentage of revenue;
(o) Net income;
(p) Earnings per share;
(q) Total stockholder return or relative stockholder return;
(r) Market share;
(s) Return on assets or net assets;
(t) The Companys stock price;
(u) Growth in stockholder value relative to a pre-determined index;
(v) Return on equity;
(w) Return on invested capital;
(x) Cash Flow (including free cash flow or operating cash flows) or cash flow margins;
(y) Balance of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities;
(z) Cash conversion cycle;
(aa) Economic value added;
(bb) Individual confidential business objectives;
(cc) Contract awards or backlog;
(dd) Overhead or other expense reduction;
(ee) Credit rating;
(ff) Completion of an identified special project;
(gg) Completion of a joint venture or other corporate transaction;
(hh) Strategic plan development and implementation;
(ii) Succession plan development and implementation;
(jj) Improvement in workforce diversity;
(kk) Employee satisfaction;
(ll) Employee retention;
(mm) Customer indicators and/or satisfaction;
(nn) New product invention or innovation;
(oo) Research and development expenses;
(pp) Attainment of research and development milestones;
(qq) Improvements in productivity;
(rr) Bookings;
(ss) Working-capital targets and changes in working capital;
(tt) Attainment of operating goals and employee metrics;
(uu) Net new annual contract value;
(vv) Net expansion or growth rate; and
(ww) Any other metric as determined by the Committee.
The Committee may provide for one or more equitable adjustments to the Performance Factors, including, but not limited to, to preserve the Committees original intent regarding the Performance Factors at the time of the initial award grant, such as but not limited to, adjustments in recognition of unusual or non-recurring items such as acquisition related activities or changes in applicable accounting rules. It is within the sole discretion of the Committee to make or not make any such equitable adjustments.
28.29. Performance Period means one or more periods of time, which may be of varying and overlapping durations, as the Committee may select, over which the attainment of one or more Performance Factors will be measured for the purpose of determining a Participants right to, and the payment of, a Performance Award.
28.30. Performance Share means an Award as defined in Section 10 and granted under the Plan.
28.31. Permitted Transferee means any child, stepchild, grandchild, parent, stepparent, grandparent, spouse, former spouse, sibling, niece, nephew, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law (including adoptive relationships) of the Employee, any person sharing the Employees household (other than a tenant or employee), a trust in which these persons (or the Employee) have more than 50% of the beneficial interest, a foundation in which these persons (or the Employee) control the management of assets, and any other entity in which these persons (or the Employee) own more than 50% of the voting interests.
28.32. Performance Unit means an Award as defined in Section 10 and granted under the Plan.
28.33. Plan means this CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan.
28.34. Purchase Price means the price to be paid for Shares acquired under the Plan, other than Shares acquired upon exercise of an Option or SAR.
28.35. Restricted Stock Award means an Award as defined in Section 7 and granted under the Plan (or issued pursuant to the early exercise of an Option).
28.36. Restricted Stock Unit means an Award as defined in Section 6 and granted under the Plan.
28.37. SEC means the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
28.38. Securities Act means the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
28.39. Service means service as an Employee, Consultant, Director or Non-Employee Director, to the Company or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, subject to such further limitations as may be set forth in the Plan or the applicable Award Agreement. An Employee will not be deemed to have ceased to provide Service in the case of (a) sick leave, (b) military leave, or (c) any other leave of absence approved by the Company; provided, that such leave is for a period of not more than 90 days unless reemployment upon the expiration of such leave is guaranteed by contract or statute. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, an Employee will not be deemed to have ceased to provide Service if a formal policy adopted from time to time by the Company and issued and promulgated to employees in writing provides otherwise. In the case of any Employee on an approved leave of absence or a reduction in hours worked (for illustrative purposes only, a change in schedule from that of full-time to part-time), the Committee may make such provisions respecting suspension or modification of vesting of the Award while on leave from the employ of the Company or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate or during such
change in working hours as it may deem appropriate, except that in no event may an Award be exercised after the expiration of the term set forth in the applicable Award Agreement. In the event of military or other protected leave, if required by applicable laws, vesting will continue for the longest period that vesting continues under any other statutory or Company approved leave of absence and, upon a Participants returning from military leave (under conditions that would entitle him or her to protection upon such return under the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act), he or she will be given vesting credit with respect to Awards to the same extent as would have applied had the Participant continued to provide Service to the Company throughout the leave on the same terms as he or she was providing Service immediately prior to such leave. An Employee will have terminated employment as of the date he or she ceases to provide Service (regardless of whether the termination is in breach of local employment laws or is later found to be invalid) and employment will not be extended by any notice period or garden leave mandated by local law, provided however, a change in status from an Employee to a Consultant or a Non-Employee Director (or vice versa) will not terminate a Participants Service provided that there is no lapse in time between such change in statuses, unless otherwise determined by the Committee, in its discretion or to the extent set forth in the applicable Award Agreement. The Committee will have sole discretion to determine whether a Participant has ceased to provide Service and the effective date on which the Participant ceased to provide Service.
28.40. Shares means shares of the Class A common stock of the Company or any successor entity.
28.41. Stock Appreciation Right means an Award as defined in Section 9 and granted under the Plan.
28.42. Stock Bonus means an Award as defined in Section 8 and granted pursuant to Section 7 of the Plan.
28.43. Subsidiary means any corporation (other than the Company) in an unbroken chain of corporations beginning with the Company if each of the corporations other than the last corporation in the unbroken chain owns stock possessing fifty percent (50%) or more of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock in one of the other corporations in such chain.
28.44. Treasury Regulations means regulations promulgated by the United States Treasury Department.
28.45. Unvested Shares means Shares that have not yet vested or are subject to a right of repurchase in favor of the Company (or any successor thereto).
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL NOTICE OF PERFORMANCE STOCK UNIT AWARD
Unless otherwise defined herein, the terms defined in the CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan) will have the same meanings in this Global Notice of Performance Stock Unit Award and the electronic representation of this Global Notice of Performance Stock Unit Award and the performance and vesting terms set forth in Appendix A attached hereto (the Vesting Appendix) established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company (the Global Notice Performance Stock Unit Award and the Vesting Appendix are collectively referred to as the Notice).
Name:
Address:
You (Participant) have been granted an award of Performance Stock Units (PSUs) under the Plan subject to the terms and conditions of the Plan, this Notice and the attached Global Performance Stock Unit Award Agreement, including any applicable global and country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of the Agreement (the Global Performance Stock Unit Award Agreement and the Appendix are collectively referred to as the Agreement).
Grant Number: | ||||
Number of PSUs: | ||||
Date of Grant: | ||||
Vesting Commencement Date: | ||||
Expiration Date: | The earlier to occur of: (a) the date on which settlement of all PSUs granted hereunder occurs and (b) the tenth anniversary of the Date of Grant. This PSU expires earlier if Participants Service terminates earlier, as described in the Agreement. | |||
Vesting Schedule: | Subject to the limitations set forth in this Notice, the Plan and the Agreement, the PSUs will vest as set forth on the Vesting Appendix. |
By accepting (whether in writing, electronically or otherwise) the PSUs, Participant acknowledges and agrees to the following:
1) | Participant understands that Participants Service is for an unspecified duration, can be terminated at any time (i.e., is at-will), except where otherwise prohibited by applicable law, and that nothing in this Notice, the Agreement or the Plan changes the nature of that relationship. Participant acknowledges that the vesting of the PSUs pursuant to this Notice is earned only by both achievement of the performance metrics set forth in the Vesting Appendix and Participants continuing Service as an Employee, Director or Consultant. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Participant agrees and acknowledges that the Vesting Schedule may change prospectively in the event that Participants Service status changes between full- and part-time and/or in the event Participant is on a leave of absence, in accordance with Company policies relating to work schedules and vesting of the PSUs or as determined by the Committee. |
2) | This grant is made under and governed by the Plan, the Agreement and this Notice, and this Notice is subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement and the Plan, both of which are incorporated herein by reference. Participant has read the Notice, the Agreement and the Plan. |
3) | Participant has read the Companys policy covering transactions in the Companys securities by Employees and/or Directors of the Company (the Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy), and agrees to comply with any such policy, as it may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities. |
4) | By accepting the PSUs, Participant consents to electronic delivery and participation as set forth in the Agreement. |
VESTING APPENDIX
[Company to insert applicable performance metrics and vesting schedule.]
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL PERFORMANCE STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
Unless otherwise defined in this Global Performance Stock Unit Award Agreement (this Agreement), any capitalized terms used herein will have the same meaning ascribed to them in the CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan).
Participant has been granted Performance Stock Units (PSUs) subject to the terms, restrictions and conditions of the Plan, the Global Notice of Performance Stock Unit Award and this Agreement, including the Vesting Appendix attached thereto (the Notice) any applicable country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of this Agreement. In the event of a conflict between the terms and conditions of the Plan and the terms and conditions of the Notice or this Agreement, the terms and conditions of the Plan will prevail.
1. Settlement. The PSUs will be settled on or as soon as administratively practicable following each vest date under the vesting schedule set forth in the Notice (and in no event later than 2 1/2 months following the end of the year in which such vest date occurs). Settlement of PSUs will be in Shares. No fractional PSUs or rights for fractional Shares will be created pursuant to this Agreement.
2. No Stockholder Rights. Unless and until such time as Shares are issued in settlement of vested PSUs, Participant will have no ownership of the Shares allocated to the PSUs and will have no rights to dividends or to vote such Shares.
3. Dividend Equivalents. Dividends Equivalents, if any (whether in cash or Shares), will not be credited to Participant, except as permitted by the Committee.
4. Non-Transferability of PSUs. The PSUs and any interest therein will not be sold, assigned, transferred, pledged, hypothecated, or otherwise disposed of in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent or distribution or court order or unless otherwise permitted by the Committee on a case-by-case basis.
5. Termination. If Participants Service terminates for any reason, all unvested PSUs will be forfeited to the Company immediately, and all rights of Participant to such PSUs will automatically terminate without payment of any consideration to Participant. Participants Service will be considered terminated (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) as of the date Participant is no longer providing services and Participants Service will not be extended by any notice period (e.g., Participants Service would not include a period of garden leave or similar period mandated under employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any). Participant acknowledges and agrees that the Vesting Schedule may change prospectively in the event Participants service status changes between full- and part-time and/or in the event Participant is on a leave of absence, in accordance with Company policies relating to work schedules and vesting of the PSUs or as determined by the Committee. In case of any dispute as to whether and when a termination of Service has occurred, the Committee will have sole discretion to determine whether such termination of Service has occurred and the effective date of such termination (including whether Participant may still be considered to be providing Services while on a leave of absence).
6. Taxes.
(a) Responsibility for Taxes. Participant acknowledges that, to the extent permitted by applicable law, regardless of any action taken by the Company, a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate of the Company, or a third-party employer of record (or professional employer organization) employing or retaining Participant (the Service Recipient), the ultimate liability for all U.S., federal, state, local and international income tax, social insurance, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account or other tax-related items (Tax-Related Items) related to Participants participation in the Plan and legally applicable to Participant is and remains Participants responsibility and may exceed the amount actually withheld by the Company or the Service Recipient, if any. Participant further acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (i) make no representations or undertakings regarding the treatment of any Tax-Related Items in connection with any aspect of the PSUs, including, but not limited to, the grant, vesting or settlement of the PSUs and the subsequent sale of Shares acquired pursuant to such settlement and the receipt of any dividends, and (ii) do not commit to and are under no obligation to structure the terms of the grant or any aspect of the PSUs to reduce or eliminate Participants liability for Tax-Related Items or achieve any particular tax result. Further, if Participant is subject to Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction, Participant acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (or former Service Recipient, as applicable) may be required to withhold or account for Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED IN EACH OF THE JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE COUNTRY OR COUNTRIES IN WHICH PARTICIPANT RESIDES OR IS SUBJECT TO TAXATION.
(b) Withholding. Prior to any relevant taxable or tax withholding event, as applicable, to the extent permitted by applicable law, Participant agrees to make arrangements satisfactory to the Company and/or the Service Recipient to fulfill all Tax-Related Items. In this regard, Participant authorizes the Company and/or the Service Recipient, or their respective agents, at their discretion, to satisfy any withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items by one or a combination of the following all under such rules as may be established by the Committee and in compliance with the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, if applicable:
(i) | withholding from Participants wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate; or |
(ii) | withholding from proceeds of the sale of Shares acquired upon settlement of the PSUs either through a voluntary sale or through a mandatory sale arranged by the Company (on Participants behalf pursuant to this authorization and without further consent); or |
(iii) | withholding Shares to be issued upon settlement of the PSUs, provided the Company only withholds the number of Shares necessary to satisfy no more than the maximum statutory withholding amounts; or |
(iv) | Participants payment of a cash amount (including by check representing readily available funds or a wire transfer) (in any case, denominated in U.S. dollars); or |
(v) | any other arrangement approved by the Committee and permitted under applicable law; |
provided, however, that if Participant is a Section 16 officer of the Company under the Exchange Act, then the Committee (as constituted in accordance with Rule 16b-3 under the Exchange Act) will establish the method of withholding from alternatives (i) (v) above, and the Committee will establish such method prior to the Tax-Related Items withholding event, and unless determined otherwise by the Committee in advance of a Tax-Related Items withholding event, the method of withholding for this PSU will be (ii) above.
1
Depending on the withholding method, the Company may withhold or account for Tax-Related Items by considering applicable statutory withholding rates or other applicable withholding rates, including up to the maximum permissible statutory rate for Participants tax jurisdiction(s) in which case Participant will have no entitlement to the equivalent amount in Shares and may receive a refund of any over-withheld amount in cash in accordance with applicable law. If the obligation for Tax-Related Items is satisfied by withholding in Shares, then for tax purposes, Participant is deemed to have been issued the full number of Shares subject to the vested PSUs, notwithstanding that a number of the Shares are held back solely for the purpose of satisfying the withholding obligation for Tax-Related Items.
Finally, Participant agrees to pay to the Company or the Service Recipient any amount of Tax-Related Items that the Company or the Service Recipient may be required to withhold or account for as a result of Participants participation in the Plan that cannot be satisfied by the means previously described. The Company may refuse to issue or deliver the Shares or the proceeds of the sale of Shares, if Participant fails to comply with Participants obligations in connection with the Tax-Related Items.
7. Nature of Grant. By accepting the PSUs, Participant acknowledges, understands, and agrees that:
(a) the Plan is established voluntarily by the Company, it is discretionary in nature and it may be modified, amended, suspended or terminated by the Company at any time, to the extent permitted by the Plan;
(b) the grant of the PSUs is exceptional, voluntary and occasional and does not create any contractual or other right to receive future grants of PSUs or other equity awards, or benefits in lieu thereof, even if PSUs or other equity awards have been granted in the past;
(c) all decisions with respect to future PSUs or other grants, if any, will be at the sole discretion of the Company;
(d) Participant is voluntarily participating in the Plan;
(e) the PSUs and Participants participation in the Plan will not create a right to employment or be interpreted as forming or amending an employment or service contract with the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate and will not interfere with the ability of the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, to terminate Participants employment or service relationship (if any);
(f) the PSUs and the Shares subject to the PSUs, and the income from and value of same, are not intended to replace any pension rights or compensation;
(g) the PSUs and the Shares subject to the PSUs, and the income from and value of same, are not part of normal or expected compensation for any purpose, including, but not limited to, calculating any severance, resignation, termination, redundancy, dismissal, end-of-service payments, bonuses, long-service awards, pension or retirement or welfare benefits or similar payments;
(h) unless otherwise agreed with the Company, the PSUs and the Shares subject to the PSUs, and the income from and value of same, are not granted as consideration for, or in connection with, the service Participant may provide as a director of a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate;
2
(i) the future value of the underlying Shares is unknown, indeterminable and cannot be predicted with certainty;
(j) no claim or entitlement to compensation or damages will arise from forfeiture of the PSUs resulting from Participants termination of Service (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or the terms of Participants employment agreement, if any); and
(k) neither the Company, the Service Recipient nor any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate will be liable for any foreign exchange rate fluctuation between Participants local currency and the United States Dollar that may affect the value of the PSUs or of any amounts due to Participant pursuant to the settlement of the PSUs or the subsequent sale of any Shares acquired upon settlement.
8. No Advice Regarding Grant. The Company is not providing any tax, legal or financial advice, nor is the Company making any recommendations regarding Participants participation in the Plan, or Participants acquisition or sale of the underlying Shares. Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that he or she should consult with his or her own personal tax, legal and financial advisors regarding his or her participation in the Plan before taking any action related to the Plan.
9. Data Privacy. Participant hereby explicitly and unambiguously consents to the collection, use and transfer, in electronic or other form, of Participants personal data as described in this Agreement and any other PSU grant materials by and among, as applicable, the Service Recipient, the Company and any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing Participants participation in the Plan.
Participant understands that the Company and the Service Recipient may hold certain personal information about Participant, including, but not limited to, Participants name, home address, email address and telephone number, date of birth, social insurance number, passport number or other identification number (e.g., resident registration number), salary, nationality, job title, any shares of stock or directorships held in the Company, details of all PSUs or any other entitlement to shares of stock awarded, canceled, exercised, vested, unvested or outstanding in Participants favor (Data), for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing the Plan.
Participant understands that Data will be transferred to Morgan Stanley, or other third party (Online Administrator) and its affiliated companies or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time that is assisting the Company with the implementation, administration and management of the Plan. Participant understands that the recipients of Data may be located in the United States or elsewhere, and that the recipients country may have different data privacy laws and protections than Participants country. Participant understands that if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may request a list with the names and addresses of any potential recipients of Data by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Participant authorizes the Company, Morgan Stanley , or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time, and any other possible recipients that may assist the Company (presently or in the future) with implementing, administering and managing the Plan to receive, possess, use, retain and transfer Data, in electronic or other form, for the sole purpose of implementing, administering and managing his or her participation in the Plan. Participant understands that Data will be held only as long as is necessary to implement, administer and manage Participants participation in the Plan. Participant understands if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may, at any time, view Data, request information about the storage and processing of Data, require any necessary amendments to Data or refuse or withdraw the consents herein, in any case without cost, by contacting his or her local human resources representative.
3
Further, Participant understands that he or she is providing the consents herein on a purely voluntary basis. If Participant does not consent, or if Participant later seeks to revoke his or her consent, his or her employment status or service with the Service Recipient will not be affected; the only consequence of refusing or withdrawing Participants consent is that the Company would not be able to grant PSUs or other equity awards to Participant or administer or maintain such awards. Therefore, Participant understands that refusing or withdrawing his or her consent may affect Participants ability to participate in the Plan. For more information on the consequences of Participants refusal to consent or withdrawal of consent, Participant understands that he or she may contact his or her local human resources representative.
Finally, upon request of the Company or the Service Recipient, Participant agrees to provide an executed data privacy consent form (or any other agreements or consents) that the Company or the Service Recipient may deem necessary to obtain from Participant for the purpose of administering Participants participation in the Plan in compliance with the data privacy laws in Participants country, either now or in the future. Participant understands and agrees that Participant will not be able to participate in the Plan if Participant fails to provide any such consent or agreement requested by the Company and/or the Service Recipient.
10. Language. Participant acknowledges that he or she is sufficiently proficient in English to understand the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Furthermore, if Participant has received this Agreement or any other document related to the PSU and/or the Plan translated into a language other than English and if the meaning of the translated version is different than the English version, the English version will control.
11. Appendix. Notwithstanding any provisions in this Agreement, the PSUs will be subject to any special terms and conditions set forth in any appendix to this Agreement for Participants country. Moreover, if Participant relocates to one of the countries included in the Appendix, the special terms and conditions for such country will apply to Participant, to the extent the Company determines that the application of such terms and conditions is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons. The Appendix constitutes part of this Agreement.
12. Imposition of Other Requirements. The Company reserves the right to impose other requirements on Participants participation in the Plan, on the PSUs and on any Shares acquired under the Plan, to the extent the Company determines it is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons, and to require Participant to sign any additional agreements or undertakings that may be necessary to accomplish the foregoing.
13. Acknowledgement. The Company and Participant agree that the PSUs are granted under and governed by the Notice, this Agreement and the provisions of the Plan (incorporated herein by reference). Participant: (a) acknowledges receipt of a copy of the Plan and the Plan prospectus, (b) represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions, and (c) hereby accepts the PSUs subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth herein and those set forth in the Plan and the Notice.
14. Entire Agreement; Enforcement of Rights. This Agreement, the Plan and the Notice constitute the entire agreement and understanding of the parties relating to the subject matter herein and supersede all prior discussions between them. Any prior agreements, commitments or negotiations concerning the purchase of the Shares hereunder are superseded. No adverse modification of or adverse amendment to this Agreement, nor any waiver of any rights under this Agreement, will be effective unless in writing and signed by the parties to this Agreement (which writing and signing may be electronic). The failure by either party to enforce any rights under this Agreement will not be construed as a waiver of any rights of such party.
4
15. Compliance with Laws and Regulations. The issuance of Shares will be subject to and conditioned upon compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable state, federal and foreign laws and regulations and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system on which the Companys Shares may be listed or quoted at the time of such issuance or transfer. Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with any state, federal or foreign securities commission or to seek approval or clearance from any governmental authority for the issuance or sale of the Shares. Further, Participant agrees that the Company will have unilateral authority to amend the Plan and this PSU Agreement without Participants consent to the extent necessary to comply with securities or other laws applicable to issuance of Shares. Finally, the Shares issued pursuant to this PSU Agreement will be endorsed with appropriate legends, if any, determined by the Company.
16. Severability. If one or more provisions of this Agreement are held to be unenforceable under applicable law, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, then (a) such provision will be excluded from this Agreement, (b) the balance of this Agreement will be interpreted as if such provision were so excluded and (c) the balance of this Agreement will be enforceable in accordance with its terms.
17. Governing Law and Venue. This Agreement and all acts and transactions pursuant hereto and the rights and obligations of the parties hereto will be governed, construed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without giving effect to such states conflict of laws rules.
Any and all disputes relating to, concerning or arising from this Agreement, or relating to, concerning or arising from the relationship between the parties evidenced by the Plan or this Agreement, will be brought and heard exclusively in the courts of New York County, New York, or the federal courts for the United States for the Southern District of New York. Each of the parties hereby represents and agrees that such party is subject to the personal jurisdiction of said courts; hereby irrevocably consents to the jurisdiction of such courts in any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute, and waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any objection which such party may now or hereafter have that the laying of the venue of any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute which is brought in such courts is improper or that such proceedings have been brought in an inconvenient forum.
18. No Rights as Employee, Director or Consultant. Nothing in this Agreement will affect in any manner whatsoever any right or power of the Company, or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, to terminate Participants Service, for any reason, with or without Cause.
19. Consent to Electronic Delivery of All Plan Documents and Disclosures. By Participants acceptance of the Notice (whether in writing or electronically), Participant and the Company agree that the PSUs are granted under and governed by the terms and conditions of the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement. Participant has reviewed the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement in their entirety, has had an opportunity to obtain the advice of counsel prior to executing this Notice and Agreement, and fully understands all provisions of the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement. Participant hereby agrees to accept as binding, conclusive and final all decisions or interpretations of the Committee upon any questions relating to the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement. Participant further agrees to notify the Company upon any change in Participants residence address. By acceptance of the PSUs, Participant agrees to participate in the Plan through an on-line or electronic system established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company and consents to the electronic delivery of the Notice, this Agreement, the Plan, account statements, Plan prospectuses required by the SEC, U.S. financial reports of the Company, and all other documents that the Company is required to deliver to its security holders (including, without limitation, annual reports and proxy statements) or other
5
communications or information related to the PSUs and current or future participation in the Plan. Electronic delivery may include the delivery of a link to the Company intranet or the internet site of a third party involved in administering the Plan, the delivery of the document via e-mail or such other delivery determined at the Companys discretion. Participant acknowledges that Participant may receive from the Company a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically at no cost if Participant contacts the Company by telephone, through a postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration. Participant further acknowledges that Participant will be provided with a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails; similarly, Participant understands that Participant must provide on request to the Company or any designated third party a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails. Also, Participant understands that Participants consent may be revoked or changed, including any change in the electronic mail address to which documents are delivered (if Participant has provided an electronic mail address), at any time by notifying the Company of such revised or revoked consent by telephone, postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration.
20. Insider Trading Restrictions/Market Abuse Laws. Participant acknowledges that, depending on Participants country of residence, the brokers country, or the country in which the Shares are listed, Participant may be subject to insider trading restrictions and/or market abuse laws in applicable jurisdictions that may affect Participants ability to directly or indirectly, accept, acquire, sell or attempt to sell or otherwise dispose of Shares, or rights to Shares (e.g., PSUs), or rights linked to the value of Shares, during such times as Participant is considered to have inside information regarding the Company (as defined by the laws or regulations in the applicable jurisdiction). Local insider trading laws and regulations may prohibit the cancellation or amendment of orders Participant placed before possessing the inside information. Furthermore, Participant may be prohibited from (i) disclosing the inside information to any third party, including fellow employees (other than on a need to know basis) and (ii) tipping third parties or causing them to otherwise buy or sell securities. Any restrictions under these laws or regulations are separate from and in addition to any restrictions that may be imposed under any applicable Company insider trading policy. Participant acknowledges that it is Participants responsibility to comply with any applicable restrictions and understands that Participant should consult his or her personal legal advisor on such matters. In addition, Participant acknowledges that he or she read the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, and agrees to comply with such policies, as they may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities.
21. Foreign Asset/Account, Exchange Control and Tax Reporting. Participant may be subject to foreign asset/account, exchange control and/or tax reporting requirements as a result of the acquisition, holding and/or transfer of Shares or cash resulting from his or her participation in the Plan. Participant may be required to report such accounts, assets, the balances therein, the value thereof and/or the transactions related thereto to the applicable authorities in Participants country and/or repatriate funds received in connection with the Plan within certain time limits or according to specified procedures. Participant acknowledges that he or she is responsible for ensuring compliance with any applicable foreign asset/account, exchange control and tax reporting requirements and should consult his or her personal legal and tax advisors on such matters
22. Code Section 409A. For purposes of this Agreement, a termination of employment of a U.S. taxpayer Participant will be determined consistent with the rules relating to a separation from service as defined in Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code and the regulations thereunder (Section 409A). Notwithstanding anything else provided herein, to the extent any payments provided under this PSU Agreement in connection with Participants termination of employment constitute deferred compensation subject to Section 409A, and Participant is deemed at the time of such termination of employment to be a specified employee under Section 409A, then such payment will not be made or commence until the earlier of (i) the expiration of the six-month period measured from Participants separation from service
6
from the Company or (ii) the date of Participants death following such a separation from service; provided, however, that such deferral will only be effected to the extent required to avoid adverse tax treatment to Participant including, without limitation, the additional tax for which Participant would otherwise be liable under Section 409A(a)(1)(B) in the absence of such a deferral. To the extent any payment under this PSU Agreement may be classified as a short-term deferral within the meaning of Section 409A, such payment will be deemed a short-term deferral, even if it may also qualify for an exemption from Section 409A under another provision of Section 409A. Payments pursuant to this section are intended to constitute separate payments for purposes of Section 1.409A-2(b)(2) of the Treasury Regulations.
23. Award Subject to Company Clawback or Recoupment. The PSUs will be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by the Board or required by law during the term of Participants employment or other Service that is applicable to Participant. In addition to any other remedies available under such policy, applicable law may require the cancellation of Participants PSUs (whether vested or unvested) and the recoupment of any gains realized with respect to Participants PSUs.
BY ACCEPTING THIS GRANT OF PSUS, PARTICIPANT AGREES TO ALL OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DESCRIBED ABOVE AND IN THE PLAN.
7
APPENDIX
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
Terms and Conditions
At such time as the Committee or Board issue an PSU under the Plan to a Participant who resides and/or works outside of the United States, the Committee may adopt and include in this Appendix additional terms and conditions that govern such PSU. This Appendix forms part of this Agreement. Any capitalized term used in this Appendix without definition will have the meaning ascribed to it in the Notice, this Agreement or the Plan, as applicable.
If Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working, transfers employment and/or residency between countries after the Date of Grant, or is a consultant and changes employment status to a consultant position, the Company will, in its sole discretion, determine to what extent the additional terms and conditions included herein will apply to Participant under these circumstances.
Notifications
This Appendix also includes information relating to exchange control, securities laws, foreign asset/account reporting and other issues of which Participant should be aware with respect to Participants participation in the Plan. The information is based on the securities, exchange control, foreign asset/account reporting and other laws in effect in the respective countries as of []. Such laws are complex and change frequently. As a result, Participant should not rely on the information herein as the only source of information relating to the consequences of Participants participation in the Plan because the information may be out of date at the time that Participant vests in the PSUs, sells Shares acquired under the Plan or takes any other action in connection with the Plan.
In addition, the information is general in nature and may not apply to Participants particular situation, and the Company is not in a position to assure Participant of any particular result. Accordingly, Participant should seek appropriate professional advice as to how the relevant laws in Participants country may apply to Participants situation.
Finally, if Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working and/or residing, or Participant transfers employment and/or residency after the Date of Grant, the information contained herein may not apply to Participant in the same manner.
Country-Specific Terms
[____________]
8
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL NOTICE OF STOCK OPTION GRANT
Unless otherwise defined herein, the terms defined in the CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan) will have the same meanings in this Global Notice of Stock Option Grant and the electronic representation of this Global Notice of Stock Option Grant established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company (this Notice).
Name: |
Address: |
You (Participant) have been granted an option to purchase Shares of the Company (the Option) under the Plan subject to the terms and conditions of the Plan, this Notice and the attached Global Stock Option Award Agreement (the Option Agreement), including any applicable global and country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of the Option Agreement.
Grant Number: |
||
Date of Grant: |
||
Vesting Commencement Date: |
||
Exercise Price per Share: |
||
Total Number of Shares: |
||
Type of Option: |
Non-Qualified Stock Option | |
Incentive Stock Option | ||
Expiration Date: |
________ __, 20__; This Option expires earlier if Participants Service terminates earlier, as described in the Option Agreement. | |
Vesting Schedule: |
Subject to the limitations set forth in this Notice, the Plan and the Option Agreement, the Option will vest in accordance with the following schedule: [insert applicable vesting schedule, which may be time-based, performance-based or a combination of both] |
By accepting (whether in writing, electronically or otherwise) the Option, Participant acknowledges and agrees to the following:
1) | Participant understands that Participants Service is for an unspecified duration, can be terminated at any time (i.e., is at-will), except where otherwise prohibited by applicable law, and that nothing in this Notice, the Option Agreement or the Plan changes the nature of that relationship. Participant acknowledges that the vesting of the Option pursuant to this Notice is subject to Participants continuing Service as an Employee, Director or Consultant. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Participant agrees and acknowledges that the Vesting Schedule may change prospectively in the event that Participants Service status changes between full- and part-time and/or in the event Participant is on a leave of absence, in accordance with Company policies relating to work schedules and vesting of Options or as determined by the Committee to the extent permitted by applicable law. Furthermore, the period during which Participant may exercise the Option after termination of Service, if any, will commence on the Termination Date (as defined in the Option Agreement). |
2) | This grant is made under and governed by the Plan, the Option Agreement and this Notice, and this Notice is subject to the terms and conditions of the Option Agreement and the Plan, both of which are incorporated herein by reference. Participant has read the Notice, the Option Agreement and the Plan. |
3) | Participant has read the Companys policy covering transactions in the Companys securities by Employees and/or Directors of the Company (the Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy), and agrees to comply with any such policy, as it may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities. |
4) | By accepting the Option, Participant consents to electronic delivery and participation as set forth in the Option Agreement. |
2
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL STOCK OPTION AWARD AGREEMENT
Unless otherwise defined in this Global Stock Option Award Agreement (this Option Agreement), any capitalized terms used herein will have the meaning ascribed to them in the CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan).
Participant has been granted an option to purchase Shares (the Option) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company), subject to the terms, restrictions and conditions of the Plan, the Global Notice of Stock Option Grant (the Notice) and this Option Agreement, including any applicable country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of this Option Agreement. In the event of a conflict between the terms and condition of the Plan and the terms and conditions of the Notice or this Option Agreement, the terms and conditions of the Plan will prevail.
1. Vesting Rights. Subject to the applicable provisions of the Plan and this Option Agreement, this Option may be exercised, in whole or in part, in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice. Participant acknowledges that the vesting of the Option pursuant to this Notice and Agreement is subject to Participants continuing Service as an Employee, Director or Consultant.
2. Grant of Option. Participant has been granted an Option for the number of Shares set forth in the Notice at the exercise price per Share in U.S. Dollars set forth in the Notice (the Exercise Price). If designated in the Notice as an Incentive Stock Option (ISO), this Option is intended to qualify as an Incentive Stock Option under Section 422 of the Code. However, if this Option is intended to be an ISO, to the extent that it exceeds the U.S. $100,000 rule of Code Section 422(d) it will be treated as a Nonqualified Stock Option (NSO).
3. Termination Period.
(a) General Rule. If Participants Service terminates for any reason except death or Disability, and other than for Cause, then this Option will expire at the close of business at Company headquarters on the date three (3) months after Participants Termination Date (as defined below) (or such shorter time period or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, with any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participants Service terminates deemed to be the exercise of an NSO). The Company determines when Participants Service terminates for all purposes under this Option Agreement.
(b) Death; Disability. If Participant dies before Participants Service terminates (or Participant dies within three (3) months of Participants termination of Service other than for Cause or because of Participants Disability), then this Option will expire at the close of business at Company headquarters on the date twelve (12) months after the date of death (or such shorter time period or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, subject to the expiration details in Section 7). If Participants Service terminates because of Participants Disability, then this Option will expire at the close of business at Company headquarters on the date twelve (12) months after Participants Termination Date (or such shorter time period or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, subject to the expiration details in Section 7), with (i) any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participants employment terminates when the termination of Service is for a Disability that is not a permanent and total disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, or (ii) any exercise beyond twelve (12) months after the date Participants employment terminates when the termination of Service is for a Disability that is a permanent and total disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, deemed to be exercise of an NSO.
1
(c) Cause. Unless otherwise determined by the Committee, if the Participants Service terminates for Cause, or if the Committee has reasonably determined in good faith that such cessation of Services has resulted in connection with an act or failure to act constituting Cause (or the Participants Services could have been terminated for Cause (without regard to the lapsing of any required notice or cure periods in connection therewith) at the time the Participant terminated Services), then Participants Options (whether or not vested) shall expire effective as of such Participants date of termination of Service, or at such later time and on such conditions as are determined by the Committee, but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options.
(d) No Notification of Exercise Periods. Participant is responsible for keeping track of these exercise periods following Participants termination of Service for any reason. The Company will not provide further notice of such periods. In no event will this Option be exercised later than the Expiration Date set forth in the Notice.
(e) Termination. For purposes of this Option, Participants Service will be considered terminated (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) as of the date Participant is no longer providing Service to the Company, its Parent or one of its Subsidiaries or Affiliates (i.e., Participants period of Service would not include any contractual notice period or any period of garden leave or similar period mandated under employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) (the Termination Date). Unless otherwise provided in this Option Agreement or determined by the Committee, Participants right to vest in the Option under the Plan, if any, will terminate as of the Termination Date and Participants right to exercise the Option after termination of Service, if any, will be measured from the Termination Date.
In case of any dispute as to whether and when a termination of Service has occurred, the Committee will have sole discretion to determine whether such termination of Service has occurred and the effective date of such termination (including whether Participant may still be considered to be providing Services while on a leave of absence).
Unless otherwise provided by the Committee, this Option may be exercised following termination of Participants Service only to the extent that such Option would have been exercisable by the Participant on the date Participants Service terminates. If Participant does not exercise this Option within the termination period set forth in the Notice or the termination periods set forth above, the Option will terminate in its entirety. In no event, may any Option be exercised after the Expiration Date of the Option as set forth in the Notice.
4. Exercise of Option.
(a) Right to Exercise. This Option is exercisable during its term in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice and the applicable provisions of the Plan and this Option Agreement. In the event of Participants death, Disability, termination for Cause or other cessation of Service, the exercisability of the Option is governed by the applicable provisions of the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. This Option may not be exercised for a fraction of a Share.
(b) Method of Exercise. This Option is exercisable by delivery of an exercise notice in a form specified by the Company (the Exercise Notice), which will state the election to exercise the Option, the number of Shares in respect of which the Option is being exercised (the Exercised Shares), and such other representations and agreements as may be required by the Company pursuant to the provisions of the Plan. The Exercise Notice will be delivered in person, by mail, via electronic mail or facsimile or by other authorized method to the Secretary of the Company or other person designated by the Company. The Exercise Notice will be accompanied by payment of the aggregate Exercise Price as to all Exercised Shares together with any
2
applicable Tax-Related Items (as defined below). This Option will be deemed to be exercised upon receipt by the Company of such fully executed Exercise Notice accompanied by such aggregate Exercise Price and payment of any applicable Tax-Related Items. No Shares will be issued pursuant to the exercise of this Option unless such issuance and exercise complies with all relevant provisions of law and the requirements of any stock exchange or quotation service upon which the Shares are then listed and any exchange control requirements. Assuming such compliance, for United States income tax purposes the Exercised Shares will be considered transferred to Participant on the date the Option is exercised with respect to such Exercised Shares.
(c) Exercise by Another. If another person wants to exercise this Option after it has been transferred to him or her in compliance with this Option Agreement, that person must prove to the Companys satisfaction that he or she is entitled to exercise this Option. That person must also complete the proper Exercise Notice form (as described above) and pay the Exercise Price (as described below) and any applicable Tax-Related Items (as described below).
5. Method of Payment. Payment of the aggregate Exercise Price will be by any of the following, or a combination thereof, at the election of Participant:
(a) Participants personal check (representing readily available funds), wire transfer, or a cashiers check;
(b) if permitted by the Committee, certificates for shares of Company stock that Participant owns, along with any forms needed to effect a transfer of those shares to the Company; the value of the shares, determined as of the effective date of the Option exercise, will be applied to the Exercise Price. Instead of surrendering shares of Company stock, Participant may attest to the ownership of those shares on a form provided by the Company and have the same number of shares subtracted from the Option shares issued to Participant. However, Participant may not surrender, or attest to the ownership of, shares of Company stock in payment of the Exercise Price of Participants Option if Participants action would cause the Company to recognize compensation expense (or additional compensation expense) with respect to this Option for financial reporting purposes;
(c) cashless exercise through irrevocable directions to a securities broker approved by the Company to sell all or part of the Shares covered by this Option and to deliver to the Company from the sale proceeds an amount sufficient to pay the Exercise Price and any applicable Tax-Related Items. The balance of the sale proceeds, if any, will be delivered to Participant unless otherwise provided in this Option Agreement. The directions must be given by signing a special notice of exercise form provided by the Company; or
(d) other method authorized by the Company;
provided, however, that the Company may restrict the available methods of payment due to facilitate compliance with applicable law or administration of the Plan. In particular, if Participant is located outside the United States, Participant should review the applicable provisions of the Appendix for any such restrictions that may currently apply.
6. Non-Transferability of Option. This Option may not be sold, assigned, transferred, pledged, hypothecated, or otherwise disposed of other than by will or by the laws of descent or distribution or by court order and may be exercised during the lifetime of Participant only by Participant or unless otherwise permitted by the Committee on a case-by-case basis. The terms of the Plan and this Option Agreement will be binding upon the executors, administrators, heirs, successors and assigns of Participant.
3
7. Term of Option. This Option will in any event expire on the expiration date set forth in the Notice, which date is ten (10) years after the Date of Grant (five (5) years after the Date of Grant if this option is designated as an ISO in the Notice of Stock Option Grant and Section 5.3 of the Plan applies).
8. Taxes.
(a) Responsibility for Taxes. Participant acknowledges that, to the extent permitted by applicable law, regardless of any action taken by the Company, a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate of the Company, or a third party-employer of record (or professional employer organization) employing or retaining Participant (the Service Recipient), the ultimate liability for all applicable U.S., federal, state, local and international income tax, social insurance, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account or other tax related items (Tax-Related Items) related to Participants participation in the Plan and legally applicable to Participant is and remains Participants responsibility and may exceed the amount actually withheld by the Company or the Service Recipient, if any. Participant further acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (i) make no representations or undertakings regarding the treatment of any Tax-Related Items in connection with any aspect of this Option, including, but not limited to, the grant, vesting or exercise of this Option, the subsequent sale of Shares acquired pursuant to such exercise and the receipt of any dividends, and (ii) do not commit to and are under no obligation to structure the terms of the grant or any aspect of this Option to reduce or eliminate Participants liability for Tax-Related Items or achieve any particular tax result. Further, if Participant is subject to Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction, Participant acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (or former Service Recipient, as applicable) may be required to withhold or account for Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED IN EACH OF THE JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE COUNTRY OR COUNTRIES IN WHICH PARTICIPANT RESIDES OR IS SUBJECT TO TAXATION BEFORE EXERCISING THE OPTION OR DISPOSING OF THE SHARES.
(b) Withholding. Prior to any relevant taxable or tax withholding event, as applicable, to the extent permitted by applicable law Participant agrees to make arrangements satisfactory to the Company and/or the Service Recipient to fulfill all Tax-Related Items. In this regard, Participant authorizes the Company and/or the Service Recipient, or their respective agents, at their discretion, to satisfy any withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items by one or a combination of the following, all under such rules as may be established by the Committee and in compliance with the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, if applicable:
(i) | withholding from Participants wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or the Service Recipient; or |
(ii) | withholding from proceeds of the sale of Shares acquired at exercise of this Option either through a voluntary sale or through a mandatory sale arranged by the Company (on Participants behalf pursuant to this authorization and without further consent); or |
(iii) | withholding Shares to be issued upon exercise of the Option, provided the Company only withholds the number of Shares necessary to satisfy no more than the maximum statutory withholding amounts; or |
(iv) | Participants payment of a cash amount (including by check representing readily available funds or a wire transfer) (in any case, denominated in U.S. dollars); or |
(v) | any other arrangement approved by the Committee and permitted under applicable law; |
4
provided, however, that if Participant is a Section 16 officer of the Company under the Exchange Act, then the Committee (as constituted in accordance with Rule 16b-3 under the Exchange Act) will establish the method of withholding from alternatives (i)-(v) above, and the Committee will establish the method prior to the Tax-Related Items withholding event.
Depending on the withholding method, the Company may withhold or account for Tax-Related Items by considering applicable statutory withholding rates or other applicable withholding rates, including up to the maximum permissible statutory rate for Participants tax jurisdiction(s) in which case Participant will have no entitlement to the equivalent amount in Shares and may receive a refund of any over-withheld amount in cash in accordance with applicable law. If the obligation for Tax-Related Items is satisfied by withholding in Shares, then for tax purposes, Participant is deemed to have been issued the full number of Exercised Shares; notwithstanding that a number of the Shares are held back solely for the purpose of satisfying the withholding obligation for Tax-Related Items.
Finally, Participant agrees to pay to the Company or the Service Recipient any amount of Tax-Related Items that the Company or the Service Recipient may be required to withhold or account for as a result of Participants participation in the Plan that cannot be satisfied by the means previously described. The Company may refuse to issue or deliver the Shares or the proceeds of the sale of Shares, if Participant fails to comply with Participants obligations in connection with the Tax-Related Items.
(c) Notice of Disqualifying Disposition of ISO Shares. If Participant is subject to Tax-Related Items in the United States and sells or otherwise disposes of any of the Shares acquired pursuant to an ISO on or before the later of (i) two years after the grant date, or (ii) one year after the exercise date, Participant will immediately notify the Company in writing of such disposition. Participant agrees that he or she may be subject to income tax withholding by the Company on the compensation income recognized from such early disposition of ISO Shares by payment in cash or out any wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or the Service Recipient.
9. Nature of Grant. By accepting the Option, Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that:
(a) the Plan is established voluntarily by the Company, it is discretionary in nature and it may be modified, amended, suspended or terminated by the Company at any time, to the extent permitted by the Plan;
(b) the grant of the Option is exceptional, voluntary and occasional and does not create any contractual or other right to receive future grants of options or other equity awards, or benefits in lieu thereof, even if options or other equity awards have been granted in the past;
(c) all decisions with respect to future options or other grants, if any, will be at the sole discretion of the Company;
(d) Participant is voluntarily participating in the Plan;
(e) the Option and Participants participation in the Plan will not create a right to employment or be interpreted as forming or amending an employment or service contract with the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, and will not interfere with the ability of the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, to terminate Participants employment or service relationship (if any);
5
(f) the Option and the Shares subject to the Option, and the income from and value of same, are not intended to replace any pension rights or compensation;
(g) the Option and the Shares subject to the Option, and the income from and value of same, are not part of normal or expected compensation for any purpose, including, but not limited to, calculating any severance, resignation, termination, redundancy, dismissal, end-of-service payments, bonuses, long-service awards, pension or retirement or welfare benefits or similar payments;
(h) unless otherwise agreed with the Company, the Option and the Shares subject to the Option, and the income from and value of same, are not granted as consideration for, or in connection with, the service Participant may provide as a director of a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate;
(i) the future value of the Shares underlying the Option is unknown, indeterminable and cannot be predicted with certainty; if the underlying Shares do not increase in value, the Option will have no value; if Participant exercises the Option and acquires Shares, the value of such Shares may increase or decrease, even below the Exercise Price;
(j) no claim or entitlement to compensation or damages will arise from forfeiture of the Option resulting from Participants termination of Service (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or the terms of Participants employment agreement, if any); and
(k) neither the Company, the Service Recipient nor any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate will be liable for any foreign exchange rate fluctuation between Participants local currency and the United States Dollar that may affect the value of the Option or of any amounts due to Participant pursuant to the exercise of the Option or the subsequent sale of any Shares acquired upon exercise.
10. No Advice Regarding Grant. The Company is not providing any tax, legal or financial advice, nor is the Company making any recommendations regarding Participants participation in the Plan, or Participants acquisition or sale of the underlying Shares. Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that he or she should consult with his or her own personal tax, legal and financial advisors regarding his or her participation in the Plan before taking any action related to the Plan.
11. Data Privacy. Participant hereby explicitly and unambiguously consents to the collection, use and transfer, in electronic or other form, of Participants personal data as described in this Option Agreement and any other Option grant materials by and among, as applicable, the Service Recipient, the Company and any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing Participants participation in the Plan.
Participant understands that the Company and the Service Recipient may hold certain personal information about Participant, including, but not limited to, Participants name, home address, email address and telephone number, date of birth, social insurance number, passport number or other identification number (e.g., resident registration number), salary, nationality, job title, any shares of stock or directorships held in the Company, details of all Options or any other entitlement to shares of stock awarded, canceled, exercised, vested, unvested or outstanding in Participants favor (Data), for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing the Plan.
Participant understands that Data will be transferred to Morgan Stanley or other third party (Online Administrator) and its affiliated companies or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time that is assisting the Company with the implementation, administration and management of the Plan. Participant understands that the recipients of Data may be located in the United
6
States or elsewhere, and that the recipients country may have different data privacy laws and protections than Participants country. Participant understands that if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may request a list with the names and addresses of any potential recipients of Data by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Participant authorizes the Company, Morgan Stanley, or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time, and any other possible recipients that may assist the Company (presently or in the future) with implementing, administering and managing the Plan to receive, possess, use, retain and transfer Data, in electronic or other form, for the sole purpose of implementing, administering and managing his or her participation in the Plan. Participant understands that Data will be held only as long as is necessary to implement, administer and manage Participants participation in the Plan. Participant understands if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may, at any time, view Data, request information about the storage and processing of Data, require any necessary amendments to Data or refuse or withdraw the consents herein, in any case without cost, by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Further, Participant understands that he or she is providing the consents herein on a purely voluntary basis. If Participant does not consent, or if Participant later seeks to revoke his or her consent, his or her employment status or service with the Service Recipient will not be affected; the only consequence of refusing or withdrawing Participants consent is that the Company would not be able to grant Options or other equity awards to Participant or administer or maintain such awards. Therefore, Participant understands that refusing or withdrawing his or her consent may affect Participants ability to participate in the Plan. For more information on the consequences of Participants refusal to consent or withdrawal of consent, Participant understands that he or she may contact his or her local human resources representative.
Finally, upon request of the Company or the Service Recipient, Participant agrees to provide an executed data privacy consent form (or any other agreements or consents) that the Company or the Service Recipient may deem necessary to obtain from Participant for the purpose of administering Participants participation in the Plan in compliance with the data privacy laws in Participants country, either now or in the future. Participant understands and agrees that Participant will not be able to participate in the Plan if Participant fails to provide any such consent or agreement requested by the Company and/or the Service Recipient.
12. Language. Participant acknowledges that he or she is sufficiently proficient in English to understand the terms and conditions of this Option Agreement. Furthermore, if Participant has received this Option Agreement, or any other document related to the Option and/or the Plan translated into a language other than English and if the meaning of the translated version is different than the English version, the English version will control.
13. Appendix. Notwithstanding any provisions in this Option Agreement, if Participants country of residence and/or Service is other than the United States, the Option will be subject to any special terms and conditions set forth in the Appendix to this Option Agreement. Moreover, if Participant relocates to one of the countries included in the Appendix, the special terms and conditions set forth in the Appendix will apply to Participant, to the extent the Company determines that the application of such terms and conditions is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons. The Appendix constitutes an integral part of this Option Agreement.
14. Imposition of Other Requirements. The Company reserves the right to impose other requirements on Participants participation in the Plan, on the Option and on any Shares purchased upon exercise of the Option, to the extent the Company determines it is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons, and to require Participant to sign any additional agreements or undertakings that may be necessary to accomplish the foregoing.
7
15. Acknowledgement. The Company and Participant agree that the Option is granted under and governed by the Notice, this Option Agreement and the provisions of the Plan (incorporated herein by reference). Participant: (a) acknowledges receipt of a copy of the Plan and the Plan prospectus, (b) represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions, and (c) hereby accepts the Option subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth herein and those set forth in the Plan and the Notice.
16. Entire Agreement; Enforcement of Rights. This Option Agreement, the Plan and the Notice constitute the entire agreement and understanding of the parties relating to the subject matter herein and supersede all prior discussions between them. Any prior agreements, commitments or negotiations concerning the purchase of the Shares hereunder are superseded. No adverse modification of, or adverse amendment to, this Option Agreement, nor any waiver of any rights under this Option Agreement, will be effective unless in writing and signed by the parties to this Option Agreement (which writing and signing may be electronic). The failure by either party to enforce any rights under this Option Agreement will not be construed as a waiver of any rights of such party.
17. Compliance with Laws and Regulations. The issuance of Shares will be subject to and conditioned upon compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable state, federal and foreign laws and regulations and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system on which the Companys Shares may be listed or quoted at the time of such issuance or transfer. Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with any state, federal or foreign securities commission or to seek approval or clearance from any governmental authority for the issuance or sale of the Shares. Further, Participant agrees that the Company will have unilateral authority to amend the Plan and this Option Agreement without Participants consent to the extent necessary to comply with securities or other laws applicable to issuance of Shares. Finally, the Shares issued pursuant to this Option Agreement will be endorsed with appropriate legends, if any, determined by the Company.
18. Severability. If one or more provisions of this Option Agreement are held to be unenforceable under applicable law, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, then (a) such provision will be excluded from this Option Agreement, (b) the balance of this Option Agreement will be interpreted as if such provision were so excluded and (c) the balance of this Option Agreement will be enforceable in accordance with its terms.
19. Governing Law and Venue. This Option Agreement and all acts and transactions pursuant hereto and the rights and obligations of the parties hereto will be governed, construed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without giving effect to such states conflict of laws rules.
Any and all disputes relating to, concerning or arising from this Option Agreement, or relating to, concerning or arising from the relationship between the parties evidenced by the Plan or this Option Agreement, will be brought and heard exclusively in the courts of New York County, New York, or the federal courts for the United States for the Southern District of New York. Each of the parties hereby represents and agrees that such party is subject to the personal jurisdiction of said courts; hereby irrevocably consents to the jurisdiction of such courts in any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute, and waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any objection which such party may now or hereafter have that the laying of the venue of any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute which is brought in such courts is improper or that such proceedings have been brought in an inconvenient forum.
20. No Rights as Employee, Director or Consultant. Nothing in this Option Agreement will affect in any manner whatsoever any right or power of the Company, or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, to terminate Participants Service, for any reason, with or without Cause.
8
21. Consent to Electronic Delivery of All Plan Documents and Disclosures. By Participants acceptance of the Notice (whether in writing or electronically), Participant and the Company agree that this Option is granted under and governed by the terms and conditions of the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. Participant has reviewed the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement in their entirety, has had an opportunity to obtain the advice of counsel prior to executing the Notice and Agreement, and fully understands all provisions of the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. Participant hereby agrees to accept as binding, conclusive and final all decisions or interpretations of the Committee upon any questions relating to the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. Participant further agrees to notify the Company upon any change in the residence address. By acceptance of this Option, Participant agrees to participate in the Plan through an on-line or electronic system established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company and consents to the electronic delivery of the Notice, this Option Agreement, the Plan, account statements, Plan prospectuses required by the SEC, U.S. financial reports of the Company, and all other documents that the Company is required to deliver to its security holders (including, without limitation, annual reports and proxy statements) or other communications or information related to the Option and current or future participation in the Plan. Electronic delivery may include the delivery of a link to the Company intranet or the internet site of a third party involved in administering the Plan, the delivery of the document via e-mail or such other delivery determined at the Companys discretion. Participant acknowledges that Participant may receive from the Company a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically at no cost if Participant contacts the Company by telephone, through a postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration. Participant further acknowledges that Participant will be provided with a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails; similarly, Participant understands that Participant must provide on request to the Company or any designated third party a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails. Also, Participant understands that Participants consent may be revoked or changed, including any change in the electronic mail address to which documents are delivered (if Participant has provided an electronic mail address), at any time by notifying the Company of such revised or revoked consent by telephone, postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration.
22. Insider Trading Restrictions/Market Abuse Laws. Participant acknowledges that, depending on Participants country of residence, the brokers country, or the country in which the Shares are listed, Participant may be subject to insider trading restrictions and/or market abuse laws in applicable jurisdictions that may affect Participants ability to directly or indirectly, accept, acquire, sell or attempt to sell or otherwise dispose of Shares, or rights to Shares (e.g., Options), or rights linked to the value of Shares, during such times as Participant is considered to have inside information regarding the Company (as defined by the laws or regulations in the applicable jurisdiction). Local insider trading laws and regulations may prohibit the cancellation or amendment of orders Participant placed before possessing the inside information. Furthermore, Participant may be prohibited from (i) disclosing the inside information to any third party, including fellow employees (other than on a need to know basis) and (ii) tipping third parties or causing them to otherwise buy or sell securities. Any restrictions under these laws or regulations are separate from and in addition to any restrictions that may be imposed under any applicable Company insider trading policy. Participant acknowledges that it is Participants responsibility to comply with any applicable restrictions and understands that Participant should consult his or her personal legal advisor on such matters. In addition, Participant acknowledges that he or she read the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, and agrees to comply with such policies, as they may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities.
23. Foreign Asset/Account, Exchange Control and Tax Reporting. Participant may be subject to foreign asset/account, exchange control and/or tax reporting requirements as a result of the acquisition, holding and/or transfer of Shares or cash resulting from his or her participation in the Plan. Participant may be required to report such accounts, assets, the balances therein, the value thereof and/or the transactions related thereto to the applicable authorities in Participants country and/or repatriate funds received in connection with the Plan within certain time limits or according to specified procedures. Participant acknowledges that he or she is responsible for ensuring compliance with any applicable foreign asset/account, exchange control and tax reporting requirements and should consult his or her personal legal and tax advisors on such matters.
9
24. Award Subject to Company Clawback or Recoupment. The Option will be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by the Board or required by law during the term of Participants employment or other Service that is applicable to Participant. In addition to any other remedies available under such policy, applicable law may require the cancellation of Participants Option (whether vested or unvested) and the recoupment of any gains realized with respect to Participants Option.
BY ACCEPTING THIS GRANT, PARTICIPANT AGREES TO ALL OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DESCRIBED ABOVE AND IN THE PLAN.
10
APPENDIX
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL STOCK OPTION AWARD AGREEMENT
Terms and Conditions
At such time as the Committee or Board issue an Option under the Plan to a Participant who resides and/or works outside of the United States, the Committee may adopt and include in this Appendix additional terms and conditions that govern such Option. This Appendix forms part of the Option Agreement. Any capitalized term used in this Appendix without definition will have the meaning ascribed to it in the Notice, the Option Agreement or the Plan, as applicable.
If Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working, transfers employment and/or residency between countries after the Date of Grant, or is a consultant and changes employment status to a consultant position, the Company will, in its sole discretion, determine to what extent the additional terms and conditions included herein will apply to Participant under these circumstances.
Notifications
This Appendix also includes information relating to exchange control, securities laws, foreign asset/account reporting and other issues of which Participant should be aware with respect to Participants participation in the Plan. The information is based on the securities, exchange control, foreign asset/account reporting and other laws in effect in the respective countries as of []. Such laws are complex and change frequently. As a result, Participant should not rely on the information herein as the only source of information relating to the consequences of Participants participation in the Plan because the information may be out of date at the time that Participant exercises the Option, sells Shares acquired under the Plan or takes any other action in connection with the Plan.
In addition, the information is general in nature and may not apply to Participants particular situation, and the Company is not in a position to assure Participant of any particular result. Accordingly, Participant should seek appropriate professional advice as to how the relevant laws in Participants country may apply to Participants situation.
Finally, if Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working and/or residing, or Participant transfers employment and/or residency after the Date of Grant, the information contained herein may not apply to Participant in the same manner.
Country-Specific Terms
[____________]
11
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL NOTICE OF RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD
Unless otherwise defined herein, the terms defined in the CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan) will have the same meanings in this Global Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award and the electronic representation of this Global Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company (this Notice).
Name: |
Address: |
You (Participant) have been granted an award of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) under the Plan subject to the terms and conditions of the Plan, this Notice and the attached Global Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement (the Agreement), including any applicable global and country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of the Agreement.
Grant Number: |
||
Number of RSUs: |
||
Date of Grant: |
||
Vesting Commencement Date: |
||
Expiration Date: |
The earlier to occur of: (a) the date on which settlement of all RSUs granted hereunder occurs and (b) the tenth anniversary of the Date of Grant. This RSU expires earlier if Participants Service terminates earlier, as described in the Agreement. | |
Vesting Schedule: |
Subject to the limitations set forth in this Notice, the Plan and the Agreement, the RSUs will vest in accordance with the following schedule: [insert applicable vesting schedule, which may be time-based, performance-based or a combination of both]. |
By accepting (whether in writing, electronically or otherwise) the RSUs, Participant acknowledges and agrees to the following:
1) | Participant understands that Participants Service is for an unspecified duration, can be terminated at any time (i.e., is at-will), except where otherwise prohibited by applicable law, and that nothing in this Notice, the Agreement or the Plan changes the nature of that relationship. Participant acknowledges that the vesting of the RSUs pursuant to this Notice is subject to Participants continuing Service as an Employee, Director or Consultant. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Participant agrees and acknowledges that the Vesting Schedule may change prospectively in the event that Participants Service status changes between full- and part-time and/or in the event Participant is on a leave of absence, in accordance with Company policies relating to work schedules and vesting of the RSUs or as determined by the Committee. |
2) | This grant is made under and governed by the Plan, the Agreement and this Notice, and this Notice is subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement and the Plan, both of which are incorporated herein by reference. Participant has read the Notice, the Agreement and the Plan. |
3) | Participant has read the Companys policy covering transactions in the Companys securities by Employees and/or Directors of the Company (the Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy), and agrees to comply with any such policy, as it may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities. |
4) | By accepting the RSUs, Participant consents to electronic delivery and participation as set forth in the Agreement. |
1
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
Unless otherwise defined in this Global Restricted Stock Unit Award Agreement (this Agreement), any capitalized terms used herein will have the same meaning ascribed to them in the CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan).
Participant has been granted Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) subject to the terms, restrictions and conditions of the Plan, the Global Notice of Restricted Stock Unit Award (the Notice) and this Agreement, including any applicable country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of this Agreement. In the event of a conflict between the terms and conditions of the Plan and the terms and conditions of the Notice or this Agreement, the terms and conditions of the Plan will prevail.
1. Settlement. The RSUs will be settled on or as soon as administratively practicable following each vest date under the vesting schedule set forth in the Notice (and in no event later than 2 1/2 months following the end of the year in which such vest date occurs). Settlement of RSUs will be in Shares. No fractional RSUs or rights for fractional Shares will be created pursuant to this Agreement.
2. No Stockholder Rights. Unless and until such time as Shares are issued in settlement of vested RSUs, Participant will have no ownership of the Shares allocated to the RSUs and will have no rights to dividends or to vote such Shares.
3. Dividend Equivalents. Dividends Equivalents, if any (whether in cash or Shares), will not be credited to Participant, except as permitted by the Committee.
4. Non-Transferability of RSUs. The RSUs and any interest therein will not be sold, assigned, transferred, pledged, hypothecated, or otherwise disposed of in any manner other than by will or by the laws of descent or distribution or court order or unless otherwise permitted by the Committee on a case-by-case basis.
5. Termination. If Participants Service terminates for any reason, all unvested RSUs will be forfeited to the Company immediately, and all rights of Participant to such RSUs will automatically terminate without payment of any consideration to Participant. Participants Service will be considered terminated (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) as of the date Participant is no longer providing services and Participants Service will not be extended by any notice period (e.g., Participants Service would not include a period of garden leave or similar period mandated under employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any). Participant acknowledges and agrees that the Vesting Schedule may change prospectively in the event Participants service status changes between full- and part-time and/or in the event Participant is on a leave of absence, in accordance with Company policies relating to work schedules and vesting of the RSUs or as determined by the Committee. In case of any dispute as to whether and when a termination of Service has occurred, the Committee will have sole discretion to determine whether such termination of Service has occurred and the effective date of such termination (including whether Participant may still be considered to be providing Services while on a leave of absence).
6. Taxes.
(a) Responsibility for Taxes. Participant acknowledges that, to the extent permitted by applicable law, regardless of any action taken by the Company, a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate of the Company, or a third-party employer of record (or professional employer organization) employing or retaining Participant (the Service Recipient), the ultimate liability for all U.S., federal, state, local and international income tax, social insurance, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account or other tax-related items (Tax-Related Items) related to Participants participation in the Plan and legally applicable to Participant is and remains Participants responsibility and may exceed the amount actually withheld by the Company or the Service Recipient, if any. Participant further acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (i) make no representations or undertakings regarding the treatment of any Tax-Related Items in connection with any aspect of the RSUs, including, but not limited to, the grant, vesting or settlement of the RSUs and the subsequent sale of Shares acquired pursuant to such settlement and the receipt of any dividends, and (ii) do not commit to and are under no obligation to structure the terms of the grant or any aspect of the RSUs to reduce or eliminate Participants liability for Tax-Related Items or achieve any particular tax result. Further, if Participant is subject to Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction, Participant acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (or former Service Recipient, as applicable) may be required to withhold or account for Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED IN EACH OF THE JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE COUNTRY OR COUNTRIES IN WHICH PARTICIPANT RESIDES OR IS SUBJECT TO TAXATION.
(b) Withholding. Prior to any relevant taxable or tax withholding event, as applicable, to the extent permitted by applicable law, Participant agrees to make arrangements satisfactory to the Company and/or the Service Recipient to fulfill all Tax-Related Items. In this regard, Participant authorizes the Company and/or the Service Recipient, or their respective agents, at their discretion, to satisfy any withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items by one or a combination of the following, all under such rules as may be established by the Committee and in compliance with the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, if applicable:
(i) | withholding from Participants wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate; or |
(ii) | withholding from proceeds of the sale of Shares acquired upon settlement of the RSUs either through a voluntary sale or through a mandatory sale arranged by the Company (on Participants behalf pursuant to this authorization and without further consent); or |
(iii) | withholding Shares to be issued upon settlement of the RSUs, provided the Company only withholds the number of Shares necessary to satisfy no more than the maximum statutory withholding amounts; or |
(iv) | Participants payment of a cash amount (including by check representing readily available funds or a wire transfer) (in any case, denominated in U.S. dollars); or |
(v) | any other arrangement approved by the Committee and permitted under applicable law; |
provided, however, that if Participant is a Section 16 officer of the Company under the Exchange Act, then the Committee (as constituted in accordance with Rule 16b-3 under the Exchange Act) will establish the method of withholding from alternatives (i) (v) above, and the Committee will establish such method prior to the Tax-Related Items withholding event, and unless determined otherwise by the Committee in advance of a Tax-Related Items withholding event, the method of withholding for this PSU will be (ii) above.
1
Depending on the withholding method, the Company may withhold or account for Tax-Related Items by considering applicable statutory withholding rates or other applicable withholding rates, including up to the maximum permissible statutory rate for Participants tax jurisdiction(s) in which case Participant will have no entitlement to the equivalent amount in Shares and may receive a refund of any over-withheld amount in cash in accordance with applicable law. If the obligation for Tax-Related Items is satisfied by withholding in Shares, then for tax purposes, Participant is deemed to have been issued the full number of Shares subject to the vested RSUs, notwithstanding that a number of the Shares are held back solely for the purpose of satisfying the withholding obligation for Tax-Related Items.
Finally, Participant agrees to pay to the Company or the Service Recipient any amount of Tax-Related Items that the Company or the Service Recipient may be required to withhold or account for as a result of Participants participation in the Plan that cannot be satisfied by the means previously described. The Company may refuse to issue or deliver the Shares or the proceeds of the sale of Shares, if Participant fails to comply with Participants obligations in connection with the Tax-Related Items.
7. Nature of Grant. By accepting the RSUs, Participant acknowledges, understands, and agrees that:
(a) the Plan is established voluntarily by the Company, it is discretionary in nature and it may be modified, amended, suspended or terminated by the Company at any time, to the extent permitted by the Plan;
(b) the grant of the RSUs is exceptional, voluntary and occasional and does not create any contractual or other right to receive future grants of RSUs or other equity awards, or benefits in lieu thereof, even if RSUs or other equity awards have been granted in the past;
(c) all decisions with respect to future RSUs or other grants, if any, will be at the sole discretion of the Company;
(d) Participant is voluntarily participating in the Plan;
(e) the RSUs and Participants participation in the Plan will not create a right to employment or be interpreted as forming or amending an employment or service contract with the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate and will not interfere with the ability of the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, to terminate Participants employment or service relationship (if any);
(f) the RSUs and the Shares subject to the RSUs, and the income from and value of same, are not intended to replace any pension rights or compensation;
(g) the RSUs and the Shares subject to the RSUs, and the income from and value of same, are not part of normal or expected compensation for any purpose, including, but not limited to, calculating any severance, resignation, termination, redundancy, dismissal, end-of-service payments, bonuses, long-service awards, pension or retirement or welfare benefits or similar payments;
(h) unless otherwise agreed with the Company, the RSUs and the Shares subject to the RSUs, and the income from and value of same, are not granted as consideration for, or in connection with, the service Participant may provide as a director of a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate;
2
(i) the future value of the underlying Shares is unknown, indeterminable and cannot be predicted with certainty; and
(j) no claim or entitlement to compensation or damages will arise from forfeiture of the RSUs resulting from Participants termination of Service (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or the terms of Participants employment agreement, if any).
8. No Advice Regarding Grant. The Company is not providing any tax, legal or financial advice, nor is the Company making any recommendations regarding Participants participation in the Plan, or Participants acquisition or sale of the underlying Shares. Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that he or she should consult with his or her own personal tax, legal and financial advisors regarding his or her participation in the Plan before taking any action related to the Plan.
9. Data Privacy. Participant hereby explicitly and unambiguously consents to the collection, use and transfer, in electronic or other form, of Participants personal data as described in this Agreement and any other RSU grant materials by and among, as applicable, the Service Recipient, the Company and any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing Participants participation in the Plan.
Participant understands that the Company and the Service Recipient may hold certain personal information about Participant, including, but not limited to, Participants name, home address, email address and telephone number, date of birth, social insurance number, passport number or other identification number (e.g., resident registration number), salary, nationality, job title, any shares of stock or directorships held in the Company, details of all RSUs or any other entitlement to shares of stock awarded, canceled, exercised, vested, unvested or outstanding in Participants favor (Data), for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing the Plan.
Participant understands that Data will be transferred to Morgan Stanley, or other third party (Online Administrator) and its affiliated companies or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time that is assisting the Company with the implementation, administration and management of the Plan. Participant understands that the recipients of Data may be located in the United States or elsewhere, and that the recipients country may have different data privacy laws and protections than Participants country. Participant understands that if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may request a list with the names and addresses of any potential recipients of Data by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Participant authorizes the Company, Morgan Stanley, or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time, and any other possible recipients that may assist the Company (presently or in the future) with implementing, administering and managing the Plan to receive, possess, use, retain and transfer Data, in electronic or other form, for the sole purpose of implementing, administering and managing his or her participation in the Plan. Participant understands that Data will be held only as long as is necessary to implement, administer and manage Participants participation in the Plan. Participant understands if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may, at any time, view Data, request information about the storage and processing of Data, require any necessary amendments to Data or refuse or withdraw the consents herein, in any case without cost, by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Further, Participant understands that he or she is providing the consents herein on a purely voluntary basis. If Participant does not consent, or if Participant later seeks to revoke his or her consent, his or her employment status or service with the Service Recipient will not be affected; the only consequence of refusing or withdrawing Participants consent is that the Company would not be able to grant RSUs or other equity awards to Participant or administer or maintain such awards. Therefore, Participant understands that refusing or withdrawing his or her consent may affect Participants ability to participate in the Plan. For more information on the consequences of Participants refusal to consent or withdrawal of consent, Participant understands that he or she may contact his or her local human resources representative.
3
Finally, upon request of the Company or the Service Recipient, Participant agrees to provide an executed data privacy consent form (or any other agreements or consents) that the Company or the Service Recipient may deem necessary to obtain from Participant for the purpose of administering Participants participation in the Plan in compliance with the data privacy laws in Participants country, either now or in the future. Participant understands and agrees that Participant will not be able to participate in the Plan if Participant fails to provide any such consent or agreement requested by the Company and/or the Service Recipient.
10. Language. Participant acknowledges that he or she is sufficiently proficient in English to understand the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Furthermore, if Participant has received this Agreement or any other document related to the RSU and/or the Plan translated into a language other than English and if the meaning of the translated version is different than the English version, the English version will control.
11. Appendix. Notwithstanding any provisions in this Agreement, if Participants country of residence and/or Service is other than the United States, the RSUs will be subject to any special terms and conditions set forth in the Appendix to this Agreement. Moreover, if Participant relocates to one of the countries included in the Appendix, the special terms and conditions set forth in the Appendix will apply to Participant, to the extent the Company determines that the application of such terms and conditions is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons. The Appendix constitutes an integral part of this Agreement.
12. Imposition of Other Requirements. The Company reserves the right to impose other requirements on Participants participation in the Plan, on the RSUs and on any Shares acquired under the Plan, to the extent the Company determines it is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons, and to require Participant to sign any additional agreements or undertakings that may be necessary to accomplish the foregoing.
13. Acknowledgement. The Company and Participant agree that the RSUs are granted under and governed by the Notice, this Agreement and the provisions of the Plan (incorporated herein by reference). Participant: (a) acknowledges receipt of a copy of the Plan and the Plan prospectus, (b) represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions, and (c) hereby accepts the RSUs subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth herein and those set forth in the Plan and the Notice.
14. Entire Agreement; Enforcement of Rights. This Agreement, the Plan and the Notice constitute the entire agreement and understanding of the parties relating to the subject matter herein and supersede all prior discussions between them. Any prior agreements, commitments or negotiations concerning the purchase of the Shares hereunder are superseded. No adverse modification of or adverse amendment to this Agreement, nor any waiver of any rights under this Agreement, will be effective unless in writing and signed by the parties to this Agreement (which writing and signing may be electronic). The failure by either party to enforce any rights under this Agreement will not be construed as a waiver of any rights of such party.
15. Compliance with Laws and Regulations. The issuance of Shares will be subject to and conditioned upon compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable state, federal and foreign laws and regulations and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system on which the Companys Shares may be listed or quoted at the time of such issuance or transfer.
4
Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with any state, federal or foreign securities commission or to seek approval or clearance from any governmental authority for the issuance or sale of the Shares. Further, Participant agrees that the Company will have unilateral authority to amend the Plan and this RSU Agreement without Participants consent to the extent necessary to comply with securities or other laws applicable to issuance of Shares. Finally, the Shares issued pursuant to this RSU Agreement will be endorsed with appropriate legends, if any, determined by the Company.
16. Severability. If one or more provisions of this Agreement are held to be unenforceable under applicable law, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, then (a) such provision will be excluded from this Agreement, (b) the balance of this Agreement will be interpreted as if such provision were so excluded and (c) the balance of this Agreement will be enforceable in accordance with its terms.
17. Governing Law and Venue. This Agreement and all acts and transactions pursuant hereto and the rights and obligations of the parties hereto will be governed, construed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without giving effect to such states conflict of laws rules.
Any and all disputes relating to, concerning or arising from this Agreement, or relating to, concerning or arising from the relationship between the parties evidenced by the Plan or this Agreement, will be brought and heard exclusively in the courts of New York County, New York, or the federal courts for the United States for the Southern District of New York. Each of the parties hereby represents and agrees that such party is subject to the personal jurisdiction of said courts; hereby irrevocably consents to the jurisdiction of such courts in any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute, and waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any objection which such party may now or hereafter have that the laying of the venue of any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute which is brought in such courts is improper or that such proceedings have been brought in an inconvenient forum.
18. No Rights as Employee, Director or Consultant. Nothing in this Agreement will affect in any manner whatsoever any right or power of the Company, or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, to terminate Participants Service, for any reason, with or without Cause.
19. Consent to Electronic Delivery of All Plan Documents and Disclosures. By Participants acceptance of the Notice (whether in writing or electronically), Participant and the Company agree that the RSUs are granted under and governed by the terms and conditions of the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement. Participant has reviewed the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement in their entirety, has had an opportunity to obtain the advice of counsel prior to executing this Notice and Agreement, and fully understands all provisions of the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement. Participant hereby agrees to accept as binding, conclusive and final all decisions or interpretations of the Committee upon any questions relating to the Plan, the Notice and this Agreement. Participant further agrees to notify the Company upon any change in Participants residence address. By acceptance of the RSUs, Participant agrees to participate in the Plan through an on-line or electronic system established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company and consents to the electronic delivery of the Notice, this Agreement, the Plan, account statements, Plan prospectuses required by the SEC, U.S. financial reports of the Company, and all other documents that the Company is required to deliver to its security holders (including, without limitation, annual reports and proxy statements) or other communications or information related to the RSUs and current or future participation in the Plan. Electronic delivery may include the delivery of a link to the Company intranet or the internet site of a third party involved in administering the Plan, the delivery of the document via e-mail or such other delivery determined at the Companys discretion. Participant acknowledges that Participant may receive from the Company a paper copy of any documents delivered
5
electronically at no cost if Participant contacts the Company by telephone, through a postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration. Participant further acknowledges that Participant will be provided with a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails; similarly, Participant understands that Participant must provide on request to the Company or any designated third party a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails. Also, Participant understands that Participants consent may be revoked or changed, including any change in the electronic mail address to which documents are delivered (if Participant has provided an electronic mail address), at any time by notifying the Company of such revised or revoked consent by telephone, postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration.
20. Insider Trading Restrictions/Market Abuse Laws. Participant acknowledges that, depending on Participants country of residence, the brokers country, or the country in which the Shares are listed, Participant may be subject to insider trading restrictions and/or market abuse laws in applicable jurisdictions that may affect Participants ability to directly or indirectly, accept, acquire, sell or attempt to sell or otherwise dispose of Shares, or rights to Shares (e.g., RSUs), or rights linked to the value of Shares, during such times as Participant is considered to have inside information regarding the Company (as defined by the laws or regulations in the applicable jurisdiction). Local insider trading laws and regulations may prohibit the cancellation or amendment of orders Participant placed before possessing the inside information. Furthermore, Participant may be prohibited from (i) disclosing the inside information to any third party, including fellow employees (other than on a need to know basis) and (ii) tipping third parties or causing them to otherwise buy or sell securities. Any restrictions under these laws or regulations are separate from and in addition to any restrictions that may be imposed under any applicable Company insider trading policy. Participant acknowledges that it is Participants responsibility to comply with any applicable restrictions and understands that Participant should consult his or her personal legal advisor on such matters. In addition, Participant acknowledges that he or she read the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, and agrees to comply with such policies, as they may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities.
21. Code Section 409A. For purposes of this Agreement, a termination of employment of a U.S. taxpayer Participant will be determined consistent with the rules relating to a separation from service as defined in Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code and the regulations thereunder (Section 409A). Notwithstanding anything else provided herein, to the extent any payments provided under this RSU Agreement in connection with Participants termination of employment constitute deferred compensation subject to Section 409A, and Participant is deemed at the time of such termination of employment to be a specified employee under Section 409A, then such payment will not be made or commence until the earlier of (i) the expiration of the six-month period measured from Participants separation from service from the Company or (ii) the date of Participants death following such a separation from service; provided, however, that such deferral will only be effected to the extent required to avoid adverse tax treatment to Participant including, without limitation, the additional tax for which Participant would otherwise be liable under Section 409A(a)(1)(B) in the absence of such a deferral. To the extent any payment under this RSU Agreement may be classified as a short-term deferral within the meaning of Section 409A, such payment will be deemed a short-term deferral, even if it may also qualify for an exemption from Section 409A under another provision of Section 409A. Payments pursuant to this section are intended to constitute separate payments for purposes of Section 1.409A-2(b)(2) of the Treasury Regulations.
22. Award Subject to Company Clawback or Recoupment. The RSUs will be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by the Board or required by law during the term of Participants employment or other Service that is applicable to Participant. In addition to any other remedies available under such policy, applicable law may require the cancellation of Participants RSUs (whether vested or unvested) and the recoupment of any gains realized with respect to Participants RSUs.
6
BY ACCEPTING THIS GRANT OF RSUS, PARTICIPANT AGREES TO ALL OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DESCRIBED ABOVE AND IN THE PLAN.
7
APPENDIX
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL RESTRICTED STOCK UNIT AWARD AGREEMENT
Terms and Conditions
At such time as the Committee or Board issue an RSU under the Plan to a Participant who resides and/or works outside of the United States, the Committee may adopt and include in this Appendix additional terms and conditions that govern such RSU. This Appendix forms part of this Agreement. Any capitalized term used in this Appendix without definition will have the meaning ascribed to it in the Notice, this Agreement or the Plan, as applicable.
If Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working, transfers employment and/or residency between countries after the Date of Grant, or is a consultant and changes employment status to a consultant position, the Company will, in its sole discretion, determine to what extent the additional terms and conditions included herein will apply to Participant under these circumstances.
Notifications
This Appendix also includes information relating to exchange control, securities laws, foreign asset/account reporting and other issues of which Participant should be aware with respect to Participants participation in the Plan. The information is based on the securities, exchange control, foreign asset/account reporting and other laws in effect in the respective countries as of March 2025. Such laws are complex and change frequently. As a result, Participant should not rely on the information herein as the only source of information relating to the consequences of Participants participation in the Plan because the information may be out of date at the time that Participant vests in the RSUs, sells Shares acquired under the Plan or takes any other action in connection with the Plan.
In addition, the information is general in nature and may not apply to Participants particular situation, and the Company is not in a position to assure Participant of any particular result. Accordingly, Participant should seek appropriate professional advice as to how the relevant laws in Participants country may apply to Participants situation.
Finally, if Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working and/or residing, or Participant transfers employment and/or residency after the Date of Grant, the information contained herein may not apply to Participant in the same manner.
GLOBAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLICABLE TO PARTICIPANTS OUTSIDE THE U.S.
1. Nature of Grant; Additional Acknowledgments and Agreements. The following provisions supplement Section 7 of this Agreement:
(a) no claim or entitlement to compensation or damages shall arise from forfeiture of the RSUs resulting from the termination of Participants Service (for any reason whatsoever, whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is rendering services or the terms of Participants employment or other service agreement, if any), and in consideration of the grant of the RSUs to which Participant is otherwise not entitled, Participant irrevocably agrees never to institute any claim against the Company, and any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, waives his or her ability, if any, to bring any such claim, and releases the Company, and or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, from any such claim; if, notwithstanding the foregoing, any such claim is allowed by a court of competent jurisdiction, then, by participating in the Plan, Participant shall be deemed irrevocably to have agreed not to pursue such claim and agree to execute any and all documents necessary to request dismissal or withdrawal of such claim; and
(b) unless otherwise provided in the Plan or by the Company in its discretion, the RSUs and the benefits evidenced by this Agreement do not create any entitlement to have the RSUs or any such benefits transferred to, or assumed by, another company nor to be exchanged, cashed-out or substituted for, in connection with any corporate transaction affecting the shares of the Company.
2. Data Privacy. The following provisions supplement Section 9 of this Agreement if Participant resides and/or works in a member country of the European Union and/or the European Economic Area, including the United Kingdom:
(a) To the satisfaction and on the direction of the Committee, all operations of the Plan and the RSUs (at the time of grant and as necessary thereafter) shall include or be supported by appropriate agreements, notifications and arrangements in respect of Data and its use and processing under the Plan, in order to secure (a) the reasonable freedom of the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, and/or the or the Online Administrator, as appropriate, to operate the Plan and for connected purposes, and (b) compliance with the data-protection requirements applicable from time to time, including, if applicable, and without limitation, Regulation EU 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016. Participant has certain rights under data protection legislation as summarized below:
(i) Right of Access. Participant has the right to obtain from the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator, as applicable, confirmation as to whether or not Data concerning Participant is being processed, and, where that is the case, to request access to the Data, as well as certain information on how the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator, as applicable, is processing such data.
(ii) Right to Rectification. Participant has the right to obtain from the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator, as applicable, the rectification of inaccurate Data concerning Participant. Considering the purpose of the processing, Participant may also, in some cases, be entitled to supplemental information regarding incomplete Data.
(iii) Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten). Participant may, in certain circumstances, have his or her Data deleted, for example if Participants Data is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was collected, if Participant has objected to the processing of Data and the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator, as applicable, does not have a legitimate interest which outweighs Participants interest, if the Data has been processed unlawfully, or if the Data must be deleted to comply with a legal obligation.
9
(iv) Right to Restriction of Processing. Participant may require that the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator restrict the processing of Participants Data in certain cases, for example where the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator no longer needs Participants Data but Participant needs it to determine, enforce or defend legal claims or Participant has objected to processing based on the Companys, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator legitimate interest in order to enable the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator to check if its interest overrides Participant interest.
(v) Right to Data Portability. In some circumstances, Participant may be entitled to receive the Data concerning Participant which Participant provided to the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and Participant has the right to transmit those Data to another controller.
(vi) Right to Object. Participant has the right to object to the processing of Participants Data in certain circumstances, for example where the processing is based on the Companys or any Parents or Subsidiaries legitimate interest. If so, in order to continue processing, the Company, any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, or the Online Administrator must be able to show compelling legitimate grounds that override Participants interests, rights and freedoms.
(vii) Participants rights will in each case be subject to the restrictions set out in applicable data protection laws. Further information on these rights, and the circumstances in which they may arise in connection with the Companys or any Parents or Subsidiaries processing of Participants Data, can be obtained by contacting Participants local human resources representative. If Participant wants to review, verify, correct or request erasure of Participants Data, object to the processing of Participants Data, or request that the Company transfer a copy of Participants Data to another party, please contact Participants local human resources representative.
(b) The Company agrees to ensure that Data transferred outside the European Economic Area will be done pursuant to a lawful transfer mechanism (for example, European Commission approved model contract clauses).
(c) The Company will separately provide Participant with information in a data privacy notice on the collection, processing and transfer of their Data, including the grounds for processing.
(d) If Participant has any grievance, issue or problem in respect of the handling or processing of Participants Data in any way, Participant has the right to lodge a complaint to the competent data protection authority. The list of national data protection authorities for each country in the European Union and their contact details are available at: https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm.
3. Foreign Asset/Account, Exchange Control and Tax Reporting. Participant may be subject to foreign asset/account, exchange control and/or tax reporting requirements as a result of the acquisition, holding and/or transfer of Shares or cash resulting from his or her participation in the Plan. Participant may be required to report such accounts, assets, the balances therein, the value thereof and/or the transactions related thereto to the applicable authorities in Participants country and/or repatriate funds received in connection with the Plan within certain time limits or according to specified procedures. Participant acknowledges that he or she is responsible for ensuring compliance with any applicable foreign asset/account, exchange control and tax reporting requirements and should consult his or her personal legal and tax advisors on such matters.
4. Foreign Exchange Considerations. Participant understands and agrees that neither the Company nor any Parent, Subsidiary of the Company shall be liable for any foreign exchange rate fluctuation between Participants local currency and the U.S. dollar that may affect the value of the RSU, or of any amounts due to Participant under the Plan or as a result of vesting in the RSUs and/or the subsequent sale of any Shares acquired under the Plan. Participant agrees and acknowledges that he or she
10
will bear any and all risk associated with the exchange or fluctuation of currency associated with his or her participation in the Plan. Participant acknowledges and agrees that he or she may be responsible for reporting inbound transactions or fund transfers that exceed a certain amount. Participant is advised to seek appropriate professional advice as to how the exchange control regulations apply to the RSUs and Participants specific situation and understands that the relevant laws and regulations can change frequently and occasionally on a retroactive basis.
11
COUNTRY-SPECIFIC PROVISIONS APPLICABLE TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE COUNTRIES INCLUDED BELOW
CANADA
Terms and Conditions
Restricted Stock Units Payable Only in Shares. The grant of the RSUs does not give Participant any right to receive a cash payment, and the RSUs are payable in Shares only.
Termination of Active Status. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary provided in this Agreement, Participants active service status shall be considered terminated (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not the termination is later found to be invalid, unlawful or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or providing services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) as of the date that is the earliest of (a) the date Participant receives notice of termination of his or her Service; (b) the date Participant terminates Service; or (c) the date Participant is no longer actively providing Services to the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary of the Company, regardless of any notice period or period of pay in lieu of such notice required under local law (including, but not limited to statutory law, regulatory law and/or common law); in the event that Participants termination date cannot be reasonably determined under the terms of this Agreement and/or the Plan, the Committee shall have the exclusive discretion to determine when Participants Service status shall be considered terminated for purposes of the RSUs (including when Participant may still be considered to be providing Services while on a leave of absence). If, notwithstanding the foregoing, applicable employment legislation explicitly requires continued vesting during a statutory notice period, Participants right to vest in the RSUs will terminate effective as of the last date of the minimum statutory notice period, but Participant will not earn or be entitled to prorated vesting if the vesting date falls after the end of Participants statutory notice period, nor will Participant be entitled to any compensation for lost vesting.
French Language Provisions. The following provisions apply if Participant is a resident of Quebec:
The parties acknowledge that it is their express wish that this Agreement, as well as all documents, notices and legal proceedings entered into, given or instituted pursuant hereto or relating directly or indirectly hereto, be drawn up in English.
Les parties reconnaissent avoir exigé la redaction en anglais de cette convention (Agreement), ainsi que de tous documents exécutés, avis donnés et procedures judiciaries intentées, directement ou indirectement, relativement à la présente convention.
Notifications
Tax Reporting. Foreign property (including the RSUs granted under the Plan and the underlying Shares) held by Canadian residents must be reported annually on Form T1135 (Foreign Income Verification Statement) if the total value of such foreign property exceeds CAD 100,000 at any time during the year. The form must be filed by April 30 of the following year.
FRANCE
Notifications
Foreign Asset/Account Reporting. French residents must declare all foreign bank and brokerage accounts in which they hold cash or securities (including Shares acquired under the Plan), including accounts that were opened and/or closed during the tax year, on an annual basis on a special form N° 3916, together with their income tax return. Participant should consult with a personal tax advisor to ensure compliance with applicable reporting obligations.
12
IRELAND
Notifications
Director Reporting Obligation. Participant understands that if he or she is a director, shadow director, or secretary of the Company or Subsidiary in Ireland, Participant must notify the Company or Irish Subsidiary in writing within five business days of receiving or disposing of an interest in the Company (e.g., RSUs, Shares), or within five business days of becoming aware of the event giving rise to the notification requirement, or within five days of becoming a director or secretary if such an interest exists at the time. This notification requirement also applies with respect to the interests of Participants spouse or children under the age of 18 (whose interests will be attributed to Participant if he or she is a director, shadow director, or secretary).
NORWAY
No country-specific provisions.
SPAIN
Notifications
Foreign Assets Reporting. Participant may be subject to certain tax reporting requirements with respect to assets, rights, or foreign currency that Participant holds outside of Spain, including bank accounts, securities and real estate if the aggregate value for particular category of assets exceeds 50,000 as of December 31 each year. Vested RSUs are subject to this reporting requirement. Participant also must report his or her foreign assets on Form 720 by no later than March 31 following the end of the relevant year. After the rights and/or assets are initially reported, the reporting obligation will only apply if the value of previously reported rights or assets increases by more than 20,000 as of each subsequent December 31; additional reporting requirements may apply if Participants assets or asset increases exceed these amounts.
In addition, Participant must notify the Registry of Investments at the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of investments in securities of companies not listed in Spain, which are deposited in a non-resident account. Participant must file form D-6 by January 31 each year stating the value of their investments in non-Spanish listed shares as of December 31 of the previous calendar year.
Share Reporting Requirement. The acquisition of Shares must be declared for statistical purposes to the Direccion General de Comercio e Inversiones, the Bureau for Commerce and Investments, which is a department of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Generally, the declaration must be filed in January for shares owned as of December 31 of each year; however, if the value of the shares acquired or the amount of the sale proceeds exceeds a designated amount the declaration must be filed within one month of the acquisition or sale, as applicable.
Foreign Currency Payments. When receiving foreign currency payments exceeding 50,000 derived from the ownership of shares (i.e., dividends or proceeds from the sale of the shares), Participant must inform the financial institution receiving the payment of the basis upon which such payment is made. Participant will need to provide the following information: (i) Participants name, address, and fiscal identification number; (ii) the name and corporate domicile of the Company; (iii) the amount of the payment and the currency used; (iv) the country of origin; (v) the reasons for the payment; and (vi) further information that may be required.
SWEDEN
Notifications
Exchange Controls. Participant understands that foreign and local banks or financial institutions (including brokers) engaged in cross-border transactions generally may be required to report any payments to or from a foreign country exceeding a certain amount to The National Tax Board, which receives the information on behalf of the Swedish Central Bank (Sw.Riksbanken). This requirement may apply even if Participant has a brokerage account with a foreign broker.
13
UNITED KINGDOM
Terms and Conditions
Tax-Related Obligations. The following provisions supplement Section 6 of this Agreement:
Tax-Related Items include primary and to the extent legally possible secondary class 1 National Insurance Contributions (NIC(s)). Participant agrees that the Company or the employer may calculate the Tax-Related Items to be withheld and accounted for by reference to the maximum applicable rates, without prejudice to any right Participant may have to recover any overpayment from relevant U.K. tax authorities. Participant understands and agrees that if payment or withholding of any income tax liability arising in connection with Participants participation in the Plan is not made by Participant to Participants employer within 90 days of the event giving rise to such income tax liability or such other period specified in Section 222(1)I of the U.K. Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (the Due Date), that the amount of any uncollected income tax will constitute a loan owed by Participant to Participants employer, effective on the Due Date. Participant understands and agrees that the loan will bear interest at the then-current official rate of His Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC), it will be immediately due and repayable by Participant, and the Company and/or Participants employer may recover it at any time thereafter by any of the means referred to in the Plan and/or this Agreement.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, Participant understands and agrees that if Participant is a director or an executive officer of the Company (within the meaning of such terms for purposes of Section 13(k) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended), Participant will not be eligible for such a loan to cover the income tax liability. Participant further understands that, in the event that he or she is such a director or executive officer and the income tax is not collected from or paid by Participant by the Due Date, the amount of any uncollected income tax will constitute an additional benefit to Participant on which additional income tax and NICs will be payable. Participant understands and agrees that he or she is responsible for reporting and paying any income tax due on this additional benefit directly to HMRC under the self-assessment regime and for reimbursing the Company or Participants employer (as appropriate) for the value of any primary and (to the extent legally possible) secondary class 1 NICs due on this additional benefit which the Company or Participants employer may recover from Participant by any of the means referred to in the Plan and/or this Agreement.
At the discretion of the Company, the RSUs cannot be settled until Participant has entered into an election with the Company (or Participants employer) (as appropriate) in a form approved by the Company and HMRC:
(a) | to treat any liability of the Company and/or Participants employer for employers NICs arising in respect of the granting, vesting, settlement of or other dealing in the RSUs, or the acquisition of Shares on the settlement of the RSUs, as transferred to and met by Participant pursuant to Paragraph 3B(1) of Schedule 1 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (Joint Election to Transfer U.K. Employers National Insurance Contributions) attached hereto as Exhibit A; and/or |
(b) | to treat the Shares settled at RSU vesting and their market value as if they were not restricted securities for the relevant income tax and NIC purposes pursuant section 431(1) of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions Act) 2003 (a Joint Election under Section 431). |
As a condition of Participants participation in the Plan, Participant unconditionally and irrevocably agrees:
14
(a) | to indemnify the Company in respect of all applicable liability to U.K. income tax and NICs and, if so required by the Company all liability to NICs for which the Company is liable which arises as a consequence of or in connection with Participants participation in the Plan; |
(b) | to permit the Company to sell such number of Shares settled to Participant following RSU vesting as will provide the Company with an amount equal to Participants U.K. tax liability; and to permit the Company to withhold an amount from any amount paid or payable to Participant; |
(c) | if so required by the Company, and, to the extent permitted by law, to enter into a joint election or other arrangements under which the liability for all or part of such employers NICs liability is transferred to Participant; |
(d) | if so required by the Company, to enter into a joint election within Section 431 of (U.K.) Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 in respect of computing any tax charge on the acquisition of restricted securities; and |
(e) | to sign all documents required by the Company to effect the terms of this provision. |
As a condition of Participants participation in the Plan, Participant unconditionally and irrevocably agrees to indemnify the Company in respect of all applicable liability to U.K. income tax and employee NICs.
15
EXHIBIT A
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
Joint Election for the Transfer of UK Employers National Insurance Contributions
1. Between
The Company, [the UK Employer] (the Secondary Contributor who is the employer), whose Registered Office is [include local Affiliate address] (Company Registration no. [include], and [insert name of employee], the Employee, whose National Insurance number is [insert NI no.].
2. Purpose and scope of election
(a) | This election covers the grant of employment related securities options and/or the award of employment related restricted securities under the CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan on or after [DD/MM/202Y]. |
(b) | This joint election is made in accordance with Paragraph 3B(1) of Schedule 1 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (SSCBA 1992). |
(c) | The Company requests the Employee to enter into this joint election to transfer the liability for the secondary contributors National Insurance contributions (NICs) that arise on any relevant employment income covered by this election from the secondary contributor to the Employee. |
(d) | The employers National Insurance liability that shall transfer from the employer to the Employee under this joint election is the whole of the secondary liability. |
Relevant employment income from securities and options specified in 2(a) on which employers NICs becomes due is defined as:
(i) | an amount that counts as employment income of the earner under section 426 of ITEPA 2003 (restricted securities: charge on certain post-acquisition events), |
(ii) | an amount that counts as employment income of the earner under section 438 of that Act (convertible securities: charge on certain post-acquisition events), or |
(iii) | any gain that is treated as remuneration derived from the earners employment by virtue of section 4(4)(a) SSCBA 1992. |
(e) | This joint election will not apply to the extent that it relates to relevant employment income which is employment income of the earner by virtue of Chapter 3A of Part 7 of ITEPA 2003 (employment income: securities with artificially depressed market value). |
(f) | This election does not apply in relation to any liability, or any part of any liability, arising as a result of regulations being given retrospective effect by virtue of section 4B(2) of either the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 or the Social Security Contributions and Benefits (Northern Ireland) Act 1992. |
3. Arrangements for payment of secondary NICs
16
(a) | In signing this joint-election the Employee authorises the Company, or other body (if applicable), to recover an amount sufficient to cover the liability for the employers NICs transferred under this election in accordance with the arrangements summarised below: |
| A deduction from salary or other payments due. |
| The delivery in cleared funds from the Employee in sufficient time to enable the Company to make payment to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). |
| The sale of sufficient shares acquired from the Employees securities option or restricted securities, as authorized by the Employee in the relevant award agreement, the proceeds of which must be delivered to the Company in sufficient time for payment to be made to HMRC by the due date. |
| A deduction from any cash payment, treated as Relevant Employment Income, given to the Employee. |
| Where the proceeds of the gain are to be made through a third party, the Employee will authorise that party to withhold an amount from the payment or to sell shares sufficient to cover the secondary NICs transferred. Such amount will be paid in sufficient time to enable the Company to make payment to HMRC by the due date. |
(b) | The Company and the Employee will ensure that payment of the liability for the secondary NICs will be made to HMRC within 14 days following the end of the Income Tax month in which the relevant employment income arises the due date. |
The Employee understands that in making this election they will be personally liable for the secondary NICs covered by this election.
4. Duration of this election
(a) | This joint election shall continue in force from the time it is made until whichever of the following first takes place: |
| the Company gives notice to the Employee terminating the joint election |
| it is cancelled jointly by the Company and the Employee |
| it ceases to have effect in accordance with the terms of the joint election |
| HMRC serves notice on the Company that the approval of the joint election has been withdrawn |
(b) | The terms of this joint election will continue in full force regardless of whether the Employee ceases to be an employee of the Company. |
By signing below, the Employee and the Company agree to be bound by the provisions of this joint election.
|
Employee |
Company | ||
[Name] | [Name and Title] | |||
Date | Date |
17
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL NOTICE OF PERFORMANCE STOCK OPTION GRANT
Unless otherwise defined herein, the terms defined in the CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company) 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan) will have the same meanings in this Global Notice of Performance Stock Option Grant and the electronic representation of this Global Notice of Performance Stock Option Grant, and the performance and vesting terms set forth in Appendix A attached hereto (the Vesting Appendix) established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company (the Global Notice of Performance Stock Option Grant and the Vesting Appendix are collectively referred to as the Notice).
Name: |
Address: |
You (Participant) have been granted a performance-based option to purchase Shares of the Company (the Option) under the Plan subject to the terms and conditions of the Plan, this Notice and the attached Global Performance Stock Option Award Agreement, including any applicable global and country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of the Option Agreement (the Global Performance Stock Option Award Agreement and the Appendix are collectively referred to as the Agreement).
Grant Number: |
||
Date of Grant: |
||
Vesting Commencement Date: |
||
Exercise Price per Share: |
||
Maximum Number of Shares: |
||
Type of Option: | Non-Qualified Stock Option | |
Incentive Stock Option | ||
Expiration Date: | , 20 ; This Option expires earlier if Participants Service terminates earlier, as described in the Option Agreement. | |
Vesting Schedule: | Subject to the limitations set forth in this Notice, the Plan and the Option Agreement, the Option will vest as set forth on the Vesting Appendix. |
By accepting (whether in writing, electronically or otherwise) the Option, Participant acknowledges and agrees to the following:
1) | Participant understands that Participants Service is for an unspecified duration, can be terminated at any time (i.e., is at-will), except where otherwise prohibited by applicable law, and that nothing in this Notice, the Option Agreement or the Plan changes the nature of that relationship. Participant acknowledges that the vesting of the Option pursuant to this Notice is earned only by both achievement of the performance metrics set forth in the Vesting Appendix and Participants continuing Service as an Employee, Director or Consultant. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Participant agrees and acknowledges that the Vesting Schedule may change prospectively in the event that Participants Service status changes between full- and part-time and/or in the event Participant is on a leave of absence, in accordance with Company policies relating to work schedules and vesting of Options or as determined by the Committee to the extent permitted by applicable law. Furthermore, the period during which Participant may exercise the Option after termination of Service, if any, will commence on the Termination Date (as defined in the Option Agreement). |
2) | This grant is made under and governed by the Plan, the Option Agreement and this Notice, and this Notice is subject to the terms and conditions of the Option Agreement and the Plan, both of which are incorporated herein by reference. Participant has read the Notice, the Option Agreement and the Plan. |
3) | Participant has read the Companys policy covering transactions in the Companys securities by Employees and/or Directors of the Company (the Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy), and agrees to comply with any such policy, as it may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities. |
4) | By accepting the Option, Participant consents to electronic delivery and participation as set forth in the Option Agreement. |
2
VESTING APPENDIX
[Company to insert applicable performance metrics and vesting schedule.]
3
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL PERFORMANCE STOCK OPTION AWARD AGREEMENT
Unless otherwise defined in this Global Performance Stock Option Award Agreement (this Option Agreement), any capitalized terms used herein will have the meaning ascribed to them in the CoreWeave, Inc. 2025 Equity Incentive Plan (the Plan).
Participant has been granted a performance-based option to purchase Shares (the Option) of CoreWeave, Inc. (the Company), subject to the terms, restrictions and conditions of the Plan, the Global Notice of Performance Stock Option Grant and this Option Agreement, including the Vesting Appendix attached thereto (the Notice) any applicable country-specific provisions in the appendix attached hereto (the Appendix), which constitutes part of this Option Agreement. In the event of a conflict between the terms and condition of the Plan and the terms and conditions of the Notice or this Option Agreement, the terms and conditions of the Plan will prevail.
1. Vesting Rights. Subject to the applicable provisions of the Plan and this Option Agreement, this Option may be exercised, in whole or in part, in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice. Participant acknowledges that the vesting of the Option pursuant to this Notice and Agreement is subject to Participants continuing Service as an Employee, Director or Consultant.
2. Grant of Option. Participant has been granted an Option for the number of Shares set forth in the Notice at the exercise price per Share in U.S. Dollars set forth in the Notice (the Exercise Price). If designated in the Notice as an Incentive Stock Option (ISO), this Option is intended to qualify as an Incentive Stock Option under Section 422 of the Code. However, if this Option is intended to be an ISO, to the extent that it exceeds the U.S. $100,000 rule of Code Section 422(d) it will be treated as a Nonqualified Stock Option (NSO).
3. Termination Period.
(a) General Rule. If Participants Service terminates for any reason except death or Disability, and other than for Cause, then this Option will expire at the close of business at Company headquarters on the date three (3) months after Participants Termination Date (as defined below) (or such shorter time period or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, with any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participants Service terminates deemed to be the exercise of an NSO). The Company determines when Participants Service terminates for all purposes under this Option Agreement.
(b) Death; Disability. If Participant dies before Participants Service terminates (or Participant dies within three (3) months of Participants termination of Service other than for Cause or because of Participants Disability), then this Option will expire at the close of business at Company headquarters on the date twelve (12) months after the date of death (or such shorter time period or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, subject to the expiration details in Section 7). If Participants Service terminates because of Participants Disability, then this Option will expire at the close of business at Company headquarters on the date twelve (12) months after Participants Termination Date (or such shorter time period or longer time period as may be determined by the Committee, subject to the expiration details in Section 7), with (i) any exercise beyond three (3) months after the date Participants employment terminates when the termination of Service is for a Disability that is not a permanent and total disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, or (ii) any exercise beyond twelve (12) months after the date Participants employment terminates when the termination of Service is for a Disability that is a permanent and total disability as defined in Section 22(e)(3) of the Code, deemed to be exercise of an NSO.
1
(c) Cause. Unless otherwise determined by the Committee, if the Participants Service terminates for Cause, or if the Committee has reasonably determined in good faith that such cessation of Services has resulted in connection with an act or failure to act constituting Cause (or the Participants Services could have been terminated for Cause (without regard to the lapsing of any required notice or cure periods in connection therewith) at the time the Participant terminated Services), then Participants Options (whether or not vested) shall expire effective as of such Participants date of termination of Service, or at such later time and on such conditions as are determined by the Committee, but in any event no later than the expiration date of the Options.
(d) No Notification of Exercise Periods. Participant is responsible for keeping track of these exercise periods following Participants termination of Service for any reason. The Company will not provide further notice of such periods. In no event will this Option be exercised later than the Expiration Date set forth in the Notice.
(e) Termination. For purposes of this Option, Participants Service will be considered terminated (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) as of the date Participant is no longer providing Service to the Company, its Parent or one of its Subsidiaries or Affiliates (i.e., Participants period of Service would not include any contractual notice period or any period of garden leave or similar period mandated under employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or provides services or the terms of Participants employment or service agreement, if any) (the Termination Date). Unless otherwise provided in this Option Agreement or determined by the Committee, Participants right to vest in the Option under the Plan, if any, will terminate as of the Termination Date and Participants right to exercise the Option after termination of Service, if any, will be measured from the Termination Date.
In case of any dispute as to whether and when a termination of Service has occurred, the Committee will have sole discretion to determine whether such termination of Service has occurred and the effective date of such termination (including whether Participant may still be considered to be providing Services while on a leave of absence).
Unless otherwise provided by the Committee, this Option may be exercised following termination of Participants Service only to the extent that such Option would have been exercisable by the Participant on the date Participants Service terminates. If Participant does not exercise this Option within the termination period set forth in the Notice or the termination periods set forth above, the Option will terminate in its entirety. In no event, may any Option be exercised after the Expiration Date of the Option as set forth in the Notice.
4. Exercise of Option.
(a) Right to Exercise. This Option is exercisable during its term in accordance with the Vesting Schedule set forth in the Notice and the applicable provisions of the Plan and this Option Agreement. In the event of Participants death, Disability, termination for Cause or other cessation of Service, the exercisability of the Option is governed by the applicable provisions of the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. This Option may not be exercised for a fraction of a Share.
(b) Method of Exercise. This Option is exercisable by delivery of an exercise notice in a form specified by the Company (the Exercise Notice), which will state the election to exercise the Option, the number of Shares in respect of which the Option is being exercised (the Exercised Shares), and such other representations and agreements as may be required by the Company pursuant to the provisions of the Plan. The
2
Exercise Notice will be delivered in person, by mail, via electronic mail or facsimile or by other authorized method to the Secretary of the Company or other person designated by the Company. The Exercise Notice will be accompanied by payment of the aggregate Exercise Price as to all Exercised Shares together with any applicable Tax-Related Items (as defined below). This Option will be deemed to be exercised upon receipt by the Company of such fully executed Exercise Notice accompanied by such aggregate Exercise Price and payment of any applicable Tax-Related Items. No Shares will be issued pursuant to the exercise of this Option unless such issuance and exercise complies with all relevant provisions of law and the requirements of any stock exchange or quotation service upon which the Shares are then listed and any exchange control requirements. Assuming such compliance, for United States income tax purposes the Exercised Shares will be considered transferred to Participant on the date the Option is exercised with respect to such Exercised Shares.
(c) Exercise by Another. If another person wants to exercise this Option after it has been transferred to him or her in compliance with this Option Agreement, that person must prove to the Companys satisfaction that he or she is entitled to exercise this Option. That person must also complete the proper Exercise Notice form (as described above) and pay the Exercise Price (as described below) and any applicable Tax-Related Items (as described below).
5. Method of Payment. Payment of the aggregate Exercise Price will be by any of the following, or a combination thereof, at the election of Participant:
(a) Participants personal check (representing readily available funds), wire transfer, or a cashiers check;
(b) if permitted by the Committee, certificates for shares of Company stock that Participant owns, along with any forms needed to effect a transfer of those shares to the Company; the value of the shares, determined as of the effective date of the Option exercise, will be applied to the Exercise Price. Instead of surrendering shares of Company stock, Participant may attest to the ownership of those shares on a form provided by the Company and have the same number of shares subtracted from the Option shares issued to Participant. However, Participant may not surrender, or attest to the ownership of, shares of Company stock in payment of the Exercise Price of Participants Option if Participants action would cause the Company to recognize compensation expense (or additional compensation expense) with respect to this Option for financial reporting purposes;
(c) cashless exercise through irrevocable directions to a securities broker approved by the Company to sell all or part of the Shares covered by this Option and to deliver to the Company from the sale proceeds an amount sufficient to pay the Exercise Price and any applicable Tax-Related Items. The balance of the sale proceeds, if any, will be delivered to Participant unless otherwise provided in this Option Agreement. The directions must be given by signing a special notice of exercise form provided by the Company; or
(d) other method authorized by the Company;
provided, however, that the Company may restrict the available methods of payment due to facilitate compliance with applicable law or administration of the Plan. In particular, if Participant is located outside the United States, Participant should review the applicable provisions of the Appendix for any such restrictions that may currently apply.
6. Non-Transferability of Option. This Option may not be sold, assigned, transferred, pledged, hypothecated, or otherwise disposed of other than by will or by the laws of descent or distribution or by court order and may be exercised during the lifetime of Participant only by Participant or unless otherwise permitted by the Committee on a case-by-case basis. The terms of the Plan and this Option Agreement will be binding upon the executors, administrators, heirs, successors and assigns of Participant.
3
7. Term of Option. This Option will in any event expire on the expiration date set forth in the Notice, which date is ten (10) years after the Date of Grant (five (5) years after the Date of Grant if this option is designated as an ISO in the Notice of Stock Option Grant and Section 5.3 of the Plan applies).
8. Taxes.
(a) Responsibility for Taxes. Participant acknowledges that, to the extent permitted by applicable law, regardless of any action taken by the Company, a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate of the Company, or a third party-employer of record (or professional employer organization) employing or retaining Participant (the Service Recipient), the ultimate liability for all applicable U.S., federal, state, local and international income tax, social insurance, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, payment on account or other tax related items (Tax-Related Items) related to Participants participation in the Plan and legally applicable to Participant is and remains Participants responsibility and may exceed the amount actually withheld by the Company or the Service Recipient, if any. Participant further acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (i) make no representations or undertakings regarding the treatment of any Tax-Related Items in connection with any aspect of this Option, including, but not limited to, the grant, vesting or exercise of this Option, the subsequent sale of Shares acquired pursuant to such exercise and the receipt of any dividends, and (ii) do not commit to and are under no obligation to structure the terms of the grant or any aspect of this Option to reduce or eliminate Participants liability for Tax-Related Items or achieve any particular tax result. Further, if Participant is subject to Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction, Participant acknowledges that the Company and/or the Service Recipient (or former Service Recipient, as applicable) may be required to withhold or account for Tax-Related Items in more than one jurisdiction. PARTICIPANT SHOULD CONSULT A TAX ADVISER APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED IN EACH OF THE JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE COUNTRY OR COUNTRIES IN WHICH PARTICIPANT RESIDES OR IS SUBJECT TO TAXATION BEFORE EXERCISING THE OPTION OR DISPOSING OF THE SHARES.
(b) Withholding. Prior to any relevant taxable or tax withholding event, as applicable, to the extent permitted by applicable law Participant agrees to make arrangements satisfactory to the Company and/or the Service Recipient to fulfill all Tax-Related Items. In this regard, Participant authorizes the Company and/or the Service Recipient, or their respective agents, at their discretion, to satisfy any withholding obligations for Tax-Related Items by one or a combination of the following, all under such rules as may be established by the Committee and in compliance with the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, if applicable:
(i) | withholding from Participants wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or the Service Recipient; or |
(ii) | withholding from proceeds of the sale of Shares acquired at exercise of this Option either through a voluntary sale or through a mandatory sale arranged by the Company (on Participants behalf pursuant to this authorization and without further consent); or |
(iii) | withholding Shares to be issued upon exercise of the Option, provided the Company only withholds the number of Shares necessary to satisfy no more than the maximum statutory withholding amounts; or |
(iv) | Participants payment of a cash amount (including by check representing readily available funds or a wire transfer) (in any case, denominated in U.S. dollars); or |
(v) | any other arrangement approved by the Committee and permitted under applicable law; |
4
provided, however, that if Participant is a Section 16 officer of the Company under the Exchange Act, then the Committee (as constituted in accordance with Rule 16b-3 under the Exchange Act) will establish the method of withholding from alternatives (i)-(v) above, and the Committee will establish the method prior to the Tax-Related Items withholding event.
Depending on the withholding method, the Company may withhold or account for Tax-Related Items by considering applicable statutory withholding rates or other applicable withholding rates, including up to the maximum permissible statutory rate for Participants tax jurisdiction(s) in which case Participant will have no entitlement to the equivalent amount in Shares and may receive a refund of any over-withheld amount in cash in accordance with applicable law. If the obligation for Tax-Related Items is satisfied by withholding in Shares, then for tax purposes, Participant is deemed to have been issued the full number of Exercised Shares; notwithstanding that a number of the Shares are held back solely for the purpose of satisfying the withholding obligation for Tax-Related Items.
Finally, Participant agrees to pay to the Company or the Service Recipient any amount of Tax-Related Items that the Company or the Service Recipient may be required to withhold or account for as a result of Participants participation in the Plan that cannot be satisfied by the means previously described. The Company may refuse to issue or deliver the Shares or the proceeds of the sale of Shares, if Participant fails to comply with Participants obligations in connection with the Tax-Related Items.
(c) Notice of Disqualifying Disposition of ISO Shares. If Participant is subject to Tax-Related Items in the United States and sells or otherwise disposes of any of the Shares acquired pursuant to an ISO on or before the later of (i) two years after the grant date, or (ii) one year after the exercise date, Participant will immediately notify the Company in writing of such disposition. Participant agrees that he or she may be subject to income tax withholding by the Company on the compensation income recognized from such early disposition of ISO Shares by payment in cash or out any wages or other cash compensation paid to Participant by the Company and/or the Service Recipient.
9. Nature of Grant. By accepting the Option, Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that:
(a) the Plan is established voluntarily by the Company, it is discretionary in nature and it may be modified, amended, suspended or terminated by the Company at any time, to the extent permitted by the Plan;
(b) the grant of the Option is exceptional, voluntary and occasional and does not create any contractual or other right to receive future grants of options or other equity awards, or benefits in lieu thereof, even if options or other equity awards have been granted in the past;
(c) all decisions with respect to future options or other grants, if any, will be at the sole discretion of the Company;
(d) Participant is voluntarily participating in the Plan;
(e) the Option and Participants participation in the Plan will not create a right to employment or be interpreted as forming or amending an employment or service contract with the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, and will not interfere with the ability of the Company, the Service Recipient or any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, to terminate Participants employment or service relationship (if any);
5
(f) the Option and the Shares subject to the Option, and the income from and value of same, are not intended to replace any pension rights or compensation;
(g) the Option and the Shares subject to the Option, and the income from and value of same, are not part of normal or expected compensation for any purpose, including, but not limited to, calculating any severance, resignation, termination, redundancy, dismissal, end-of-service payments, bonuses, long-service awards, pension or retirement or welfare benefits or similar payments;
(h) unless otherwise agreed with the Company, the Option and the Shares subject to the Option, and the income from and value of same, are not granted as consideration for, or in connection with, the service Participant may provide as a director of a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate;
(i) the future value of the Shares underlying the Option is unknown, indeterminable and cannot be predicted with certainty; if the underlying Shares do not increase in value, the Option will have no value; if Participant exercises the Option and acquires Shares, the value of such Shares may increase or decrease, even below the Exercise Price;
(j) no claim or entitlement to compensation or damages will arise from forfeiture of the Option resulting from Participants termination of Service (regardless of the reason for such termination and whether or not later found to be invalid or in breach of employment laws in the jurisdiction where Participant is employed or the terms of Participants employment agreement, if any); and
(k) neither the Company, the Service Recipient nor any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate will be liable for any foreign exchange rate fluctuation between Participants local currency and the United States Dollar that may affect the value of the Option or of any amounts due to Participant pursuant to the exercise of the Option or the subsequent sale of any Shares acquired upon exercise.
10. No Advice Regarding Grant. The Company is not providing any tax, legal or financial advice, nor is the Company making any recommendations regarding Participants participation in the Plan, or Participants acquisition or sale of the underlying Shares. Participant acknowledges, understands and agrees that he or she should consult with his or her own personal tax, legal and financial advisors regarding his or her participation in the Plan before taking any action related to the Plan.
11. Data Privacy. Participant hereby explicitly and unambiguously consents to the collection, use and transfer, in electronic or other form, of Participants personal data as described in this Option Agreement and any other Option grant materials by and among, as applicable, the Service Recipient, the Company and any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing Participants participation in the Plan.
Participant understands that the Company and the Service Recipient may hold certain personal information about Participant, including, but not limited to, Participants name, home address, email address and telephone number, date of birth, social insurance number, passport number or other identification number (e.g., resident registration number), salary, nationality, job title, any shares of stock or directorships held in the Company, details of all Options or any other entitlement to shares of stock awarded, canceled, exercised, vested, unvested or outstanding in Participants favor (Data), for the exclusive purpose of implementing, administering and managing the Plan.
Participant understands that Data will be transferred to Morgan Stanley or other third party (Online Administrator) and its affiliated companies or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time that is assisting the Company with the implementation, administration and management of the Plan. Participant understands that the recipients of Data may be located in the United
6
States or elsewhere, and that the recipients country may have different data privacy laws and protections than Participants country. Participant understands that if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may request a list with the names and addresses of any potential recipients of Data by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Participant authorizes the Company, Morgan Stanley, or such other stock plan service provider as may be designated by the Company from time to time, and any other possible recipients that may assist the Company (presently or in the future) with implementing, administering and managing the Plan to receive, possess, use, retain and transfer Data, in electronic or other form, for the sole purpose of implementing, administering and managing his or her participation in the Plan. Participant understands that Data will be held only as long as is necessary to implement, administer and manage Participants participation in the Plan. Participant understands if he or she resides outside the United States, he or she may, at any time, view Data, request information about the storage and processing of Data, require any necessary amendments to Data or refuse or withdraw the consents herein, in any case without cost, by contacting his or her local human resources representative. Further, Participant understands that he or she is providing the consents herein on a purely voluntary basis. If Participant does not consent, or if Participant later seeks to revoke his or her consent, his or her employment status or service with the Service Recipient will not be affected; the only consequence of refusing or withdrawing Participants consent is that the Company would not be able to grant Options or other equity awards to Participant or administer or maintain such awards. Therefore, Participant understands that refusing or withdrawing his or her consent may affect Participants ability to participate in the Plan. For more information on the consequences of Participants refusal to consent or withdrawal of consent, Participant understands that he or she may contact his or her local human resources representative.
Finally, upon request of the Company or the Service Recipient, Participant agrees to provide an executed data privacy consent form (or any other agreements or consents) that the Company or the Service Recipient may deem necessary to obtain from Participant for the purpose of administering Participants participation in the Plan in compliance with the data privacy laws in Participants country, either now or in the future. Participant understands and agrees that Participant will not be able to participate in the Plan if Participant fails to provide any such consent or agreement requested by the Company and/or the Service Recipient.
12. Language. Participant acknowledges that he or she is sufficiently proficient in English to understand the terms and conditions of this Option Agreement. Furthermore, if Participant has received this Option Agreement, or any other document related to the Option and/or the Plan translated into a language other than English and if the meaning of the translated version is different than the English version, the English version will control.
13. Appendix. Notwithstanding any provisions in this Option Agreement, if Participants country of residence and/or Service is other than the United States, the Option will be subject to any special terms and conditions set forth in the Appendix to this Option Agreement. Moreover, if Participant relocates to one of the countries included in the Appendix, the special terms and conditions set forth in the Appendix will apply to Participant, to the extent the Company determines that the application of such terms and conditions is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons. The Appendix constitutes an integral part of this Option Agreement.
14. Imposition of Other Requirements. The Company reserves the right to impose other requirements on Participants participation in the Plan, on the Option and on any Shares purchased upon exercise of the Option, to the extent the Company determines it is necessary or advisable for legal or administrative reasons, and to require Participant to sign any additional agreements or undertakings that may be necessary to accomplish the foregoing.
7
15. Acknowledgement. The Company and Participant agree that the Option is granted under and governed by the Notice, this Option Agreement and the provisions of the Plan (incorporated herein by reference). Participant: (a) acknowledges receipt of a copy of the Plan and the Plan prospectus, (b) represents that Participant has carefully read and is familiar with their provisions, and (c) hereby accepts the Option subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth herein and those set forth in the Plan and the Notice.
16. Entire Agreement; Enforcement of Rights. This Option Agreement, the Plan and the Notice constitute the entire agreement and understanding of the parties relating to the subject matter herein and supersede all prior discussions between them. Any prior agreements, commitments or negotiations concerning the purchase of the Shares hereunder are superseded. No adverse modification of, or adverse amendment to, this Option Agreement, nor any waiver of any rights under this Option Agreement, will be effective unless in writing and signed by the parties to this Option Agreement (which writing and signing may be electronic). The failure by either party to enforce any rights under this Option Agreement will not be construed as a waiver of any rights of such party.
17. Compliance with Laws and Regulations. The issuance of Shares will be subject to and conditioned upon compliance by the Company and Participant with all applicable state, federal and foreign laws and regulations and with all applicable requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system on which the Companys Shares may be listed or quoted at the time of such issuance or transfer. Participant understands that the Company is under no obligation to register or qualify the Shares with any state, federal or foreign securities commission or to seek approval or clearance from any governmental authority for the issuance or sale of the Shares. Further, Participant agrees that the Company will have unilateral authority to amend the Plan and this Option Agreement without Participants consent to the extent necessary to comply with securities or other laws applicable to issuance of Shares. Finally, the Shares issued pursuant to this Option Agreement will be endorsed with appropriate legends, if any, determined by the Company.
18. Severability. If one or more provisions of this Option Agreement are held to be unenforceable under applicable law, then such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent possible given the intent of the parties hereto. If such clause or provision cannot be so enforced, then (a) such provision will be excluded from this Option Agreement, (b) the balance of this Option Agreement will be interpreted as if such provision were so excluded and (c) the balance of this Option Agreement will be enforceable in accordance with its terms.
19. Governing Law and Venue. This Option Agreement and all acts and transactions pursuant hereto and the rights and obligations of the parties hereto will be governed, construed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, without giving effect to such states conflict of laws rules.
Any and all disputes relating to, concerning or arising from this Option Agreement, or relating to, concerning or arising from the relationship between the parties evidenced by the Plan or this Option Agreement, will be brought and heard exclusively in the courts of New York County, New York, or the federal courts for the United States for the Southern District of New York. Each of the parties hereby represents and agrees that such party is subject to the personal jurisdiction of said courts; hereby irrevocably consents to the jurisdiction of such courts in any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute, and waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any objection which such party may now or hereafter have that the laying of the venue of any legal or equitable proceedings related to, concerning or arising from such dispute which is brought in such courts is improper or that such proceedings have been brought in an inconvenient forum.
20. No Rights as Employee, Director or Consultant. Nothing in this Option Agreement will affect in any manner whatsoever any right or power of the Company, or a Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate, to terminate Participants Service, for any reason, with or without Cause.
8
21. Consent to Electronic Delivery of All Plan Documents and Disclosures. By Participants acceptance of the Notice (whether in writing or electronically), Participant and the Company agree that this Option is granted under and governed by the terms and conditions of the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. Participant has reviewed the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement in their entirety, has had an opportunity to obtain the advice of counsel prior to executing the Notice and Agreement, and fully understands all provisions of the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. Participant hereby agrees to accept as binding, conclusive and final all decisions or interpretations of the Committee upon any questions relating to the Plan, the Notice and this Option Agreement. Participant further agrees to notify the Company upon any change in the residence address. By acceptance of this Option, Participant agrees to participate in the Plan through an on-line or electronic system established and maintained by the Company or a third party designated by the Company and consents to the electronic delivery of the Notice, this Option Agreement, the Plan, account statements, Plan prospectuses required by the SEC, U.S. financial reports of the Company, and all other documents that the Company is required to deliver to its security holders (including, without limitation, annual reports and proxy statements) or other communications or information related to the Option and current or future participation in the Plan. Electronic delivery may include the delivery of a link to the Company intranet or the internet site of a third party involved in administering the Plan, the delivery of the document via e-mail or such other delivery determined at the Companys discretion. Participant acknowledges that Participant may receive from the Company a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically at no cost if Participant contacts the Company by telephone, through a postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration. Participant further acknowledges that Participant will be provided with a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails; similarly, Participant understands that Participant must provide on request to the Company or any designated third party a paper copy of any documents delivered electronically if electronic delivery fails. Also, Participant understands that Participants consent may be revoked or changed, including any change in the electronic mail address to which documents are delivered (if Participant has provided an electronic mail address), at any time by notifying the Company of such revised or revoked consent by telephone, postal service or electronic mail to Stock Administration.
22. Insider Trading Restrictions/Market Abuse Laws. Participant acknowledges that, depending on Participants country of residence, the brokers country, or the country in which the Shares are listed, Participant may be subject to insider trading restrictions and/or market abuse laws in applicable jurisdictions that may affect Participants ability to directly or indirectly, accept, acquire, sell or attempt to sell or otherwise dispose of Shares, or rights to Shares (e.g., Options), or rights linked to the value of Shares, during such times as Participant is considered to have inside information regarding the Company (as defined by the laws or regulations in the applicable jurisdiction). Local insider trading laws and regulations may prohibit the cancellation or amendment of orders Participant placed before possessing the inside information. Furthermore, Participant may be prohibited from (i) disclosing the inside information to any third party, including fellow employees (other than on a need to know basis) and (ii) tipping third parties or causing them to otherwise buy or sell securities. Any restrictions under these laws or regulations are separate from and in addition to any restrictions that may be imposed under any applicable Company insider trading policy. Participant acknowledges that it is Participants responsibility to comply with any applicable restrictions and understands that Participant should consult his or her personal legal advisor on such matters. In addition, Participant acknowledges that he or she read the Companys Insider Trading Policy and 10b5-1 Trading Plan Policy, and agrees to comply with such policies, as they may be amended from time to time, whenever Participant acquires or disposes of the Companys securities.
23. Foreign Asset/Account, Exchange Control and Tax Reporting. Participant may be subject to foreign asset/account, exchange control and/or tax reporting requirements as a result of the acquisition, holding and/or transfer of Shares or cash resulting from his or her participation in the Plan. Participant may be required to report such accounts, assets, the balances therein, the value thereof and/or the transactions related thereto to the applicable authorities in Participants country and/or repatriate funds received in connection with the Plan within certain time limits or according to specified procedures. Participant acknowledges that he or she is responsible for ensuring compliance with any applicable foreign asset/account, exchange control and tax reporting requirements and should consult his or her personal legal and tax advisors on such matters.
9
24. Award Subject to Company Clawback or Recoupment. The Option will be subject to clawback or recoupment pursuant to any compensation clawback or recoupment policy adopted by the Board or required by law during the term of Participants employment or other Service that is applicable to Participant. In addition to any other remedies available under such policy, applicable law may require the cancellation of Participants Option (whether vested or unvested) and the recoupment of any gains realized with respect to Participants Option.
BY ACCEPTING THIS GRANT, PARTICIPANT AGREES TO ALL OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DESCRIBED ABOVE AND IN THE PLAN.
10
APPENDIX
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EQUITY INCENTIVE PLAN
GLOBAL STOCK OPTION AWARD AGREEMENT
Terms and Conditions
At such time as the Committee or Board issue an Option under the Plan to a Participant who resides and/or works outside of the United States, the Committee may adopt and include in this Appendix additional terms and conditions that govern such Option. This Appendix forms part of the Option Agreement. Any capitalized term used in this Appendix without definition will have the meaning ascribed to it in the Notice, the Option Agreement or the Plan, as applicable.
If Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working, transfers employment and/or residency between countries after the Date of Grant, or is a consultant and changes employment status to a consultant position, the Company will, in its sole discretion, determine to what extent the additional terms and conditions included herein will apply to Participant under these circumstances.
Notifications
This Appendix also includes information relating to exchange control, securities laws, foreign asset/account reporting and other issues of which Participant should be aware with respect to Participants participation in the Plan. The information is based on the securities, exchange control, foreign asset/account reporting and other laws in effect in the respective countries as of [●]. Such laws are complex and change frequently. As a result, Participant should not rely on the information herein as the only source of information relating to the consequences of Participants participation in the Plan because the information may be out of date at the time that Participant exercises the Option, sells Shares acquired under the Plan or takes any other action in connection with the Plan.
In addition, the information is general in nature and may not apply to Participants particular situation, and the Company is not in a position to assure Participant of any particular result. Accordingly, Participant should seek appropriate professional advice as to how the relevant laws in Participants country may apply to Participants situation.
Finally, if Participant is a citizen or resident of a country, or is considered resident of a country, other than the one in which Participant is currently working and/or residing, or Participant transfers employment and/or residency after the Date of Grant, the information contained herein may not apply to Participant in the same manner.
Country-Specific Terms
[ ]
11
Exhibit 10.4
COREWEAVE, INC.
2025 EMPLOYEE STOCK PURCHASE PLAN
1. PURPOSE. CoreWeave, Inc. adopted this Plan effective as of the Effective Date. The purpose of this Plan is to provide eligible employees of the Company and the Participating Corporations with a means of acquiring an equity interest in the Company, to enhance such employees sense of participation in the affairs of the Company. Capitalized terms not defined elsewhere in the text are defined in Section 28.
2. ESTABLISHMENT OF PLAN. The Company proposes to grant rights to purchase shares of Common Stock to eligible employees of the Company and its Participating Corporations pursuant to this Plan. The Company intends this Plan to qualify as an employee stock purchase plan under Section 423 of the Code (including any amendments to or replacements of such Section), and this Plan shall be so construed, although the Company makes no undertaking or representation to maintain such qualification. Any term not expressly defined in this Plan but defined for purposes of Section 423 of the Code shall have the same definition herein. In addition, with regard to offers of options to purchase shares of Common Stock under the Plan to employees working for a Subsidiary or an Affiliate outside the United States, this Plan authorizes the grant of options under a Non-Section 423 Component that is not intended to meet Section 423 requirements, provided, to the extent necessary under Section 423 of the Code, the other terms and conditions of the Plan are met.
Subject to Section 14, a total of Ten Million (10,000,000) shares of Common Stock is reserved for issuance under this Plan. The aggregate number of shares of Common Stock reserved for issuance under the Plan will be increased automatically on January 1 of 2026 through 2035 by the lesser of (a) the number of shares equal to one percent (1%) of the sum of the total number of shares of all classes of common stock the total number of shares of the Companys common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock (if any), in each case outstanding on the immediately preceding December 31st (rounded down to the nearest whole share) and (b) such number of Shares determined by the Board or Committee. Subject to Section 14, no more than One Hundred Million (100,000,000) shares of Common Stock may be issued over the term of this Plan. The number of shares initially reserved for issuance under this Plan and the maximum number of shares that may be issued under this Plan shall be subject to adjustments effected in accordance with Section 14. Any or all such shares may be granted under the Section 423 Component.
3. ADMINISTRATION. The Plan will be administered by the Committee. The Committee may delegate administrative tasks under the Plan to a subcommittee or to one or more officers to assist with the administration of the Plan pursuant to specific delegation as permitted by applicable law. Subject to the provisions of this Plan and the limitations of Section 423 of the Code or any successor provision in the Code, all questions of interpretation or application of this Plan shall be determined by the Committee and its decisions shall be final and binding upon all eligible employees and Participants. The Committee will have full and exclusive discretionary authority to construe, interpret and apply the terms of the Plan, to determine eligibility, to designate the Participating Corporations, to determine whether Participating Corporations shall participate in the Section 423 Component or Non-Section 423 Component and to decide upon any and all claims filed under the Plan. Every finding, decision and determination made by the Committee will, to the full extent permitted by law, be final and binding upon all parties. Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in this Plan, the Committee may adopt rules, sub-plans, and/or procedures relating to the operation and administration of the Plan designed to comply with local laws, regulations or customs or to achieve tax, securities law or other objectives for eligible employees outside of the United States; provided, however, that no such sub-plan will increase the number of shares reserved for issuance under the Plan pursuant to Section 2. The Committee will have the authority to determine the Fair Market Value of the Common Stock (which determination shall be final, binding and conclusive for all purposes)
in accordance with Section 8 below and to interpret Section 8 of the Plan in connection with circumstances that impact the Fair Market Value. Members of the Committee shall receive no compensation for their services in connection with the administration of this Plan, other than standard fees as established from time to time by the Board for services rendered by Board members serving on Board committees. All expenses incurred in connection with the administration of this Plan shall be paid by the Company. For purposes of this Plan, the Committee may designate separate offerings under the Plan (the terms of which need not be identical) in which eligible employees of one or more Participating Corporations will participate, and the provisions of the Plan will separately apply to each such separate offering even if the dates of the applicable Offering Periods of each such offering are identical. To the extent permitted by Section 423 of the Code, the terms of each separate offering under the Plan need not be identical, provided that the rights and privileges established with respect to a particular offering are applied in an identical manner to all employees of every Participating Corporation whose employees are granted options under that particular offering. The Committee may establish rules to govern the terms of the Plan and the offering that will apply to Participants who transfer employment between the Company and Participating Corporations or between Participating Corporations, in accordance with requirements under Section 423 of the Code to the extent applicable.
4. ELIGIBILITY.
(a) Any employee of the Company or the Participating Corporations is eligible to participate in an Offering Period under this Plan, except that one or more of the following categories of employees may be excluded from coverage under the Plan if determined by the Committee (other than where such exclusion is prohibited by applicable law):
(i) employees who do not meet eligibility requirements that the Committee may choose to impose (within the limits permitted by the Code);
(ii) employees who are not employed by the Company or a Participating Corporation prior to the beginning of such Offering Period or prior to such other time period as specified by the Committee;
(iii) employees who have been employed less than two (2) years;
(iv) employees who are customarily employed for twenty (20) or less hours per week;
(v) employees who are customarily employed for five (5) months or less in a calendar year;
(vi) (a) employees who are highly compensated employees of the Company or any Participating Corporation (within the meaning of Section 414(q) of the Code), or (b) any employees who are highly compensated employees with compensation above a specified level, who is an officer and/or is subject to the disclosure requirements of Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act;
(vii) employees who are citizens or residents of a foreign jurisdiction (without regard to whether they are also a citizen of the United States or a resident alien (within the meaning of Section 7701(b)(1)(A) of the Code)) if either (i) such employees participation is prohibited under the laws of the jurisdiction governing such employee, or (ii) compliance with the laws of the foreign jurisdiction would violate the requirements of Section 423 of the Code; and
(viii) individuals who provide services to the Company or any of its Participating Corporations who are reclassified as common law employees for any reason except for federal income and employment tax purposes.
The foregoing notwithstanding, an individual shall not be eligible if his or her participation in the Plan is prohibited by the law of any country that has jurisdiction over him or her, if complying with the laws of the applicable country would cause the Plan to violate Section 423 of the Code, or if he or she is subject to a collective bargaining agreement that does not provide for participation in the Plan.
(b) No employee who, together with any other person whose stock would be attributed to such employee pursuant to Section 424(d) of the Code, owns stock or holds options to purchase stock possessing five percent (5%) or more of the total combined voting power or value of all classes of stock of the Company or its Parent or Subsidiary or who, as a result of being granted an option under this Plan with respect to such Offering Period, would own stock or hold options to purchase stock possessing five percent (5%) or more of the total combined voting power or value of all classes of stock of the Company or its Parent or Subsidiary shall be granted an option to purchase Common Stock under the Plan. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the rules of Section 424(d) of the Code shall apply in determining share ownership and the extent to which shares held under outstanding equity awards are to be treated as owned by the employee.
5. OFFERING DATES.
(a) Each Offering Period of this Plan may be of up to twenty-seven (27) months duration, except as otherwise provided by an applicable sub-plan, and shall commence and end at the times designated by the Committee. Each Offering Period shall consist of one or more Purchase Periods during which Contributions made by Participants are accumulated under this Plan. The Committee shall have the authority to change these terms as provided in Section 25 below.
(b) Unless determined otherwise by the Committee, the initial Offering Period shall commence on the Effective Date and shall end with the Purchase Date that occurs on November 15, 2025 (the Initial Offering Period). The Initial Offering Period shall consist of one Purchase Period. Immediately following the initial Purchase Date, a new six-month Offering Period (each consisting of a single six (6) month Purchase Period) shall commence on each November 16th and May 16th, with Purchase Dates occurring on May 15th and November 15th, respectively, except as otherwise provided by an applicable sub-plan, or on such other date(s) as determined by the Committee. The Committee may at any time establish a different duration for an Offering Period or Purchase Period to be effective after the next scheduled Purchase Date, up to a maximum duration of twenty-seven (27) months.
6. PARTICIPATION IN THIS PLAN.
(a) Any individual who is an eligible employee determined in accordance with Section 4 immediately prior to the Initial Offering Period will be automatically enrolled in the Initial Offering Period at a contribution level equal to fifteen percent (15%) of Compensation (as defined in Section 9). With respect to subsequent Offering Periods, any eligible employee determined in accordance with Section 4 will be eligible to participate in this Plan, subject to the requirement of Section 6(b) hereof and the other terms and provisions of this Plan.
(b) With respect to Offering Periods after the Initial Offering Period, a Participant may elect to participate in this Plan by submitting an enrollment agreement prior to the commencement of the Offering Period (or such earlier date as the Committee may determine) to which such agreement relates, subject to the other terms and provisions of this Plan.
(c) Once an employee becomes a Participant in an Offering Period, then such Participant will automatically participate in each subsequent Offering Period commencing immediately following the last day of the prior Offering Period unless the Participant withdraws or is deemed to withdraw from this Plan or terminates further participation in an Offering Period as set forth in Section 11 below. A Participant who is continuing participation pursuant to the preceding sentence is not required to file any additional enrollment agreement in order to continue participation in this Plan and participation in any subsequent Offering Period will be governed by the Plan and enrollment agreement and other terms in effect on the Offering Date for such relevant Offering Period. Any eligible employee who is not currently a Participant or who has withdrawn or terminated participation in an Offering Period is required to file an enrollment agreement prior to the commencement of the Offering Period (or such earlier date as the Committee may determine).
7. GRANT OF OPTION ON ENROLLMENT. Becoming a Participant with respect to an Offering Period will constitute the grant (as of the Offering Date) by the Company to such Participant of an option to purchase on the Purchase Date up to that number of shares of Common Stock that could be purchased using Participants accumulated Contributions for the Purchase Period, based on the per share Purchase Price as set forth in Section 8 on the Purchase Date; provided, however, that for the Purchase Period within the Initial Offering Period the deemed accumulated Contributions shall be calculated using the initial contribution level, or such lower percentage as determined by the Committee prior to the start of the Offering Period, and provided, further, that the number of shares of Common Stock subject to any option granted pursuant to this Plan shall not exceed the lesser of (x) the maximum number of shares set by the Committee pursuant to Section 10(b) below with respect to the applicable Purchase Date, or (y) the maximum number of shares which may be purchased pursuant to Section 10(a) below with respect to the applicable Purchase Date.
8. PURCHASE PRICE. The Purchase Price per share at which a share of Common Stock will be sold in any Offering Period shall be eighty-five percent (85%) of the lesser of:
(a) The Fair Market Value on the Offering Date; or
(b) The Fair Market Value on the Purchase Date.
9. PAYMENT OF PURCHASE PRICE; CONTRIBUTION CHANGES; SHARE ISSUANCES.
(a) The Purchase Price shall be accumulated by regular payroll deductions made during each Offering Period, unless the Committee determines that contributions may be made in another form (including but not limited to with respect to categories of Participants outside the United States that Contributions may be made in another form due to local legal requirements). The Contributions are made as a percentage of the Participants Compensation in one percent (1%) increments not less than one percent (1%), nor greater than fifteen percent (15%) or such lower limit set by the Committee. Compensation shall mean base salary or regular hourly wages; however, the Committee shall have discretion to adopt a definition of Compensation from time to time of all cash compensation reported on the employees Form W-2 or corresponding local country tax return, including without limitation base salary or regular hourly wages, bonuses, incentive compensation, commissions, overtime, shift premiums, pay during leaves of absence, and draws against commissions (or in foreign jurisdictions, equivalent cash compensation). For purposes of determining a Participants Compensation, any election by such Participant to reduce his or her regular cash remuneration under Sections 125 or 401(k) of the Code (or in foreign jurisdictions, equivalent deductions) shall be treated as if the Participant did not make such election. Contributions shall commence on the first payday during the applicable Offering Period (with respect to the Initial Offering Period, as soon as practicable following the effective date of filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission a securities registration statement for the Plan) and shall continue to the end of the Offering Period unless sooner altered or terminated as provided in this Plan. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the terms of any sub-plan may permit matching shares without the payment of any purchase price.
(b) A Participant may decrease the rate of Contributions during an Offering Period by filing with the Company or a third party designated by the Company a new authorization for Contributions, with the new rate to become effective as soon as practicable after the Companys receipt of the authorization and continuing for the remainder of the Offering Period unless changed as described below. A decrease in the rate of Contributions may be made once during any Offering Period, or more frequently under rules determined by the Committee. An increase in the rate of payroll deductions may not be made with respect to an on-going Offering Period unless otherwise determined by the Committee. A Participant may increase or decrease the rate of Contributions for any subsequent Offering Period by filing with the Company or a third party designated by the Company a new authorization for Contributions prior to the beginning of such Offering Period, or such other time period as specified by the Committee.
(c) A Participant may reduce his or her Contribution percentage to zero during an Offering Period by filing with the Company or a third party designated by the Company a request for cessation of Contributions. Such reduction shall be effective beginning as soon as practicable after the Companys receipt of the request and no further Contributions will be made for the duration of the Offering Period. Contributions credited to the Participants account prior to the effective date of the request shall be used to purchase shares of Common Stock in accordance with Subsection (e) below. A reduction of the Contribution percentage to zero shall be treated as such Participants withdrawal from such Offering Period and the Plan, effective as of the day after the next Purchase Date following the filing date of such request with the Company.
(d) All Contributions made for a Participant are credited to his or her book account under this Plan and are deposited with the general funds of the Company, except to the extent local legal restrictions outside the United States require segregation of such Contributions. No interest accrues on the Contributions, except to the extent required due to local legal requirements. All Contributions received or held by the Company may be used by the Company for any corporate purpose, and the Company shall not be obligated to segregate such Contributions, except to the extent necessary to comply with local legal requirements outside the United States.
(e) On each Purchase Date, so long as this Plan remains in effect and provided that the Participant has not submitted a signed and completed withdrawal form before that date which notifies the Company that the Participant wishes to withdraw from that Offering Period under this Plan and have all Contributions accumulated in the account maintained on behalf of the Participant as of that date returned to the Participant, the Company shall apply the funds then in the Participants account to the purchase of whole shares of Common Stock reserved under the option granted to such Participant with respect to the Offering Period to the extent that such option is exercisable on the Purchase Date. The Purchase Price per share shall be as specified in Section 8 of this Plan. Any fractional share, as calculated under this Subsection (e), shall be rounded down to the next lower whole share, unless the Committee determines with respect to all Participants that any fractional share shall be credited as a fractional share. Any amount remaining in a Participants account on a Purchase Date which is less than the amount necessary to purchase a full share of the Common Stock shall be carried forward without interest (except to the extent necessary to comply with local legal requirements outside the United States) into the next Purchase Period or Offering Period, as the case may be; however, the Committee may determine that such amounts should be refunded without interest. In the event that this Plan has been oversubscribed, all funds not used to purchase shares on the Purchase Date shall be returned to the Participant, without interest (except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States). No Common Stock shall be purchased on a Purchase Date on behalf of any employee whose participation in this Plan has terminated prior to such Purchase Date, except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States.
(f) As promptly as practicable after the Purchase Date, the Company shall issue shares for the Participants benefit representing the shares purchased upon exercise of his or her option.
(g) Unless determined otherwise by the Committee, the shares issued pursuant to Section 9(f) above shall be deposited into an account established in the Participants name at the ESPP Broker. A Participant shall be free to undertake a disposition (as that term is defined in Section 424(c) of the Code) of the shares in his or her ESPP Broker account at any time, whether by sale, exchange, gift, or other transfer of legal title, but in the absence of such a disposition of the shares, the shares must remain in the Participants ESPP Broker account until the holding period set forth in Section 423(a) of the Code has been satisfied. With respect to shares for which the Section 423(a) holding period has been satisfied, the Participant may move those shares to another brokerage account of Participants choosing. Notwithstanding the above, a Participant who is not subject to income taxation under the Code may move his or her shares to another brokerage account of his or her choosing at any time, without regard to the satisfaction of the Section 423(a) holding period.
(h) During a Participants lifetime, his or her option to purchase shares hereunder is exercisable only by him or her. The Participant will have no interest or voting right in shares covered by his or her option until such option has been exercised.
(i) To the extent required by applicable federal, state, local or foreign law, a Participant shall make arrangements satisfactory to the Company and the Participating Corporation employing the Participant for the satisfaction of any withholding tax obligations that arise in connection with the Plan. The Company or any Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, may withhold, by any method permissible under the applicable law, the amount necessary for the Company or Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, to meet applicable withholding obligations, including any withholding required to make available to the Company or Subsidiary or Affiliate, as applicable, any tax deductions or benefits attributable to the sale or early disposition of shares of Common Stock by a Participant. The Company shall not be required to issue any shares of Common Stock under the Plan until such obligations are satisfied.
10. LIMITATIONS ON SHARES TO BE PURCHASED.
(a) Any other provision of the Plan notwithstanding, no Participant shall purchase Common Stock with a Fair Market Value in excess of the following limit:
(i) In the case of Common Stock purchased during an Offering Period that commenced in the current calendar year, the limit shall be equal to (A) $25,000 minus (B) the Fair Market Value of the Common Stock that the Participant previously purchased in the current calendar year (under this Plan and all other employee stock purchase plans of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary).
(ii) In the case of Common Stock purchased during an Offering Period that commenced in the immediately preceding calendar year, the limit shall be equal to (A) $50,000 minus (B) the Fair Market Value of the Common Stock that the Participant previously purchased (under this Plan and all other employee stock purchase plans of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary) in the current calendar year and in the immediately preceding calendar year.
(iii) In the case of Common Stock purchased during an Offering Period that commenced two calendar years prior, the limit shall be equal to (A) $75,000 minus (B) the Fair Market Value of the Common Stock that the Participant previously purchased (under this Plan and all other employee stock purchase plans of the Company or any Parent or Subsidiary) in the current calendar year and in the two immediately preceding calendar years.
For purposes of this Subsection (a), the Fair Market Value of Common Stock shall be determined in each case as of the beginning of the Offering Period in which such Common Stock is purchased. Employee stock purchase plans not described in Section 423 of the Code shall be disregarded. If a Participant is precluded by this Subsection (a) from purchasing additional Common Stock under the Plan, then his or her Contributions shall automatically be discontinued and shall automatically resume at the beginning of the earliest Purchase Period that will end in the next calendar year (if he or she then is an eligible employee), provided that when the Company automatically resumes such Contributions, the Company must apply the rate in effect immediately prior to such suspension.
(b) In no event shall a Participant be permitted to purchase more than Five Thousand (5,000) shares on any one Purchase Date or such lesser number as the Committee shall determine. If a lower limit is set under this Subsection (b), then all Participants will be notified of such limit prior to the commencement of the next Offering Period for which it is to be effective.
(c) If the number of shares to be purchased on a Purchase Date by all Participants exceeds the number of shares then available for issuance under this Plan, then the Company will make a pro rata allocation of the remaining shares in as uniform a manner as shall be reasonably practicable and as the Committee shall determine to be equitable. In such event, the Company will give notice of such reduction of the number of shares to be purchased under a Participants option to each Participant affected.
(d) Any Contributions accumulated in a Participants account which are not used to purchase stock due to the limitations in this Section 10, and not covered by Section 9(e), shall be returned to the Participant as soon as practicable after the end of the applicable Purchase Period, without interest (except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States).
11. WITHDRAWAL.
(a) Each Participant may withdraw from an Offering Period under this Plan pursuant to a method specified for such purpose by the Company. Such withdrawal may be elected at any time prior to the end of an Offering Period, or such other time period as specified by the Committee. The Committee may set forth a deadline of when a withdrawal must occur to be effective prior to a given Purchase Date in accordance with policies it may approve from time to time.
(b) Upon withdrawal from this Plan, the accumulated Contributions shall be returned to the withdrawn Participant, without interest (except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States), and his or her interest in this Plan shall terminate. In the event a Participant voluntarily elects to withdraw from this Plan, he or she may not resume his or her participation in this Plan during the same Offering Period, but he or she may participate in any Offering Period under this Plan which commences on a date subsequent to such withdrawal by filing a new authorization for Contributions in the same manner as set forth in Section 6 above for initial participation in this Plan.
(c) To the extent applicable, if the Fair Market Value on the first day of the current Offering Period in which a Participant is enrolled is higher than the Fair Market Value on the last day of any applicable Purchase Period, (1) after completion of the purchase on the Purchase Date of such Purchase Period as set forth in Subsection (2) below, the Company will automatically withdraw the Participant from the current Offering Period and the Participant will be automatically enrolled the Company will in the subsequent Offering Period and (2) any funds accumulated in a Participants account prior to the first day of such subsequent Offering Period will be applied to the purchase of shares on the Purchase Date immediately prior to the first day of such subsequent Offering Period, if any.
12. TERMINATION OF EMPLOYMENT. Termination of a Participants employment for any reason, including (but not limited to) retirement, death, disability, or the failure of a Participant to remain an eligible employee of the Company or of a Participating Corporation, immediately terminates his or her participation in this Plan (except as required due to local legal requirements outside the United States). In such event, accumulated Contributions credited to the Participants account will be returned to him or her or, in the case of his or her death, to his or her legal representative, without interest (except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States). For purposes of this Section 12, an employee will not be deemed to have terminated employment or failed to remain in the continuous employ of the Company or of a Participating Corporation in the case of sick leave, military leave, or any other leave of absence approved by the Company; provided that such leave is for a period of not more than ninety (90) days or reemployment upon the expiration of such leave is guaranteed by contract or statute. The Company will have sole discretion to determine whether a Participant has terminated employment and the effective date on which the Participant terminated employment, regardless of any notice period or garden leave required under local law.
13. RETURN OF CONTRIBUTIONS. In the event a Participants interest in this Plan is terminated by withdrawal, termination of employment or otherwise, or in the event this Plan is terminated by the Board, the Company shall deliver to the Participant all accumulated Contributions credited to such Participants account. No interest shall accrue on the Contributions of a Participant in this Plan (except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States).
14. CAPITAL CHANGES. If the number and/or class of outstanding shares is changed by a stock dividend, recapitalization, stock split, reverse stock split, subdivision, combination, reclassification or similar change in the capital structure of the Company, without consideration, then the Committee shall adjust the number and class of Common Stock that may be delivered under the Plan, the Purchase Price per share and the number of shares of Common Stock covered by each option under the Plan which has not yet been exercised, and the numerical limits of Sections 2 and 10 shall be proportionately adjusted, subject to any required action by the Board or the stockholders of the Company and in compliance with the applicable securities laws; provided that fractions of a share will not be issued.
15. NONASSIGNABILITY. Neither Contributions credited to a Participants account nor any rights with regard to the exercise of an option or to receive shares under this Plan may be assigned, transferred, pledged or otherwise disposed of in any way (other than by will, the laws of descent and distribution or as provided in Section 22 below) by the Participant. Any such attempt at assignment, transfer, pledge or other disposition shall be void and without effect.
16. USE OF PARTICIPANT FUNDS AND REPORTS. The Company may use all Contributions received or held by it under the Plan for any corporate purpose, and the Company will not be required to segregate Participant Contributions (except to the extent required due to local legal requirements outside the United States). Until shares are issued, Participants will only have the rights of an unsecured creditor unless otherwise required under local law. Each Participant shall receive, or have access to, promptly after the end of each Purchase Period a report of his or her account setting forth the total Contributions accumulated, the number of shares purchased, the per share price thereof and the remaining cash balance, if any, carried forward to the next Purchase Period or Offering Period (or refunded without interest, if so determined by the Committee), as the case may be.
17. NOTICE OF DISPOSITION. If a Participant is subject to tax in the United States, such Participant shall notify the Company in writing if the Participant disposes of any of the shares purchased in any Offering Period pursuant to this Plan if such disposition occurs within two (2) years from the Offering Date or within one (1) year from the Purchase Date on which such shares were purchased (the Notice Period). The Company may, at any time during the Notice Period, place a legend or legends on any certificate representing shares acquired pursuant to this Plan requesting the Companys transfer agent to notify the Company of any transfer of the shares. The obligation of the Participant to provide such notice shall continue notwithstanding the placement of any such legend on the certificates.
18. NO RIGHTS TO CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT. Neither this Plan nor the grant of any option hereunder shall confer any right on any employee to remain in the employ of the Company or any Participating Corporation, or restrict the right of the Company or any Participating Corporation to terminate such employees employment.
19. EQUAL RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES. All eligible employees granted an option under the Section 423 Component of this Plan shall have equal rights and privileges with respect to this Plan or within any separate offering under the Plan so that this Plan qualifies as an employee stock purchase plan within the meaning of Section 423 or any successor provision of the Code and the related regulations. Any provision of this Plan which is inconsistent with Section 423 or any successor provision of the Code, without further act or amendment by the Company, the Committee or the Board, shall be reformed to comply with the requirements of Section 423 (unless such provision applies exclusively to options granted under the Plan that are not intended to comply with the Code Section 423 requirements). This Section 19 shall take precedence over all other provisions in this Plan.
20. NOTICES. All notices or other communications by a Participant to the Company under or in connection with this Plan shall be deemed to have been duly given when received in the form specified by the Company at the location, or by the person, designated by the Company for the receipt thereof.
21. TERM; STOCKHOLDER APPROVAL. This Plan will become effective on the Effective Date. This Plan shall be approved by the stockholders of the Company, in any manner permitted by applicable corporate law, within twelve (12) months before or after the date this Plan is adopted by the Board. No purchase of shares that are subject to such stockholder approval before becoming available under this Plan shall occur prior to stockholder approval of such shares and the Board or Committee may delay any Purchase Date and postpone the commencement of any Offering Period subsequent to such Purchase Date as deemed necessary or desirable to obtain such approval (provided that if a Purchase Date would occur more than twenty-four (24) months after commencement of the Offering Period to which it relates, then such Purchase Date shall not occur and instead such Offering Period shall terminate without the purchase of such shares and Participants in such Offering Period shall be refunded their Contributions without interest). This Plan shall continue until the earlier to occur of (a) termination of this Plan by the Board (which termination may be effected by the Board at any time pursuant to Section 25 below), (b) issuance of all of the shares of Common Stock reserved for issuance under this Plan, or (c) the tenth anniversary of the Effective Date.
22. DESIGNATION OF BENEFICIARY.
(a) If authorized by the Committee, a Participant may file a written designation of a beneficiary who is to receive any cash from the Participants account under this Plan in the event of such Participants death prior to a Purchase Date. Such form shall be valid only if it was filed with the Company at the prescribed location before the Participants death.
(b) If authorized by the Company, such designation of beneficiary may be changed by the Participant at any time by written notice filed with the Company at the prescribed location before the Participants death. In the event of the death of a Participant and in the absence of a beneficiary validly designated under this Plan who is living at the time of such Participants death, the Company shall deliver such cash to the executor or administrator of the estate of the Participant or to the legal heirs of the Participant.
23. CONDITIONS UPON ISSUANCE OF SHARES; LIMITATION ON SALE OF SHARES. Shares shall not be issued with respect to an option unless the exercise of such option and the issuance and delivery of such shares pursuant thereto shall comply with all applicable provisions of law, domestic or foreign, including, without limitation, the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, the Exchange Act, the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder, and the requirements of any stock exchange or automated quotation system upon which the shares may then be listed, exchange control restrictions and/or securities law restrictions outside the United States, and shall be further subject to the approval of counsel for the Company with respect to such compliance. Shares may be held in trust or subject to further restrictions as permitted by any subplan.
24. GOVERNING LAW. The Plan shall be governed by the substantive laws (excluding the conflict of laws rules) of the State of Delaware.
25. AMENDMENT OR TERMINATION. The Committee, in its sole discretion, may amend, suspend, or terminate the Plan, or any part thereof, at any time and for any reason. Unless otherwise required by applicable law, if the Plan is terminated, the Committee, in its discretion, may elect to terminate all outstanding Offering Periods either immediately or upon completion of the purchase of shares of Common Stock on the next Purchase Date (which may be sooner than originally scheduled, if determined by the Committee in its discretion), or may elect to permit Offering Periods to expire in accordance with their terms (and subject to any adjustment pursuant to Section 14). If an Offering Period is terminated prior to its previously-scheduled expiration, all amounts then credited to Participants accounts for such Offering Period, which have not been used to purchase shares of Common Stock, shall be returned to those Participants (without interest thereon, except as otherwise required under local laws) as soon as administratively practicable. Further, the Committee will be entitled to change the Purchase Periods and Offering Periods, limit the frequency and/or number of changes in the amount contributed during an Offering Period, establish the exchange ratio applicable to amounts contributed in a currency other than U.S. dollars, permit payroll withholding in excess of the amount designated by a Participant in order to adjust for delays or mistakes in the administration of the Plan, establish reasonable waiting and adjustment periods and/or accounting and crediting procedures to ensure that amounts applied toward the purchase of Common Stock for each Participant properly correspond with amounts contributed from the Participants base salary and other eligible compensation, and establish such other limitations or procedures as the Committee determines in its sole discretion advisable which are consistent with the Plan. Such actions will not require stockholder approval or the consent of any Participants. However, no amendment shall be made without approval of the stockholders of the Company (obtained in accordance with Section 21 above) within twelve (12) months of the adoption of such amendment (or earlier if required by Section 21) if such amendment would: (a) increase the number of shares that may be issued under this Plan; or (b) change the designation of the employees (or class of employees) eligible for participation in this Plan. In addition, in the event the Board or Committee determines that the ongoing operation of the Plan may result in unfavorable financial accounting consequences, the Board or Committee may, in its discretion and, to the extent necessary or desirable, modify, amend or terminate the Plan to reduce or eliminate such accounting consequences including, but not limited to: (i) amending the definition of compensation, including with respect to an Offering Period underway at the time; (ii) altering the Purchase Price for any Offering Period including an Offering Period underway at the time of the change in Purchase Price; (iii) shortening any Offering Period by setting a Purchase Date, including an Offering Period underway at the time of the Committees action; (iv) reducing the maximum percentage of Compensation a participant may elect to set aside as Contributions; and (v) reducing the maximum number of shares a Participant may purchase during any Offering Period. Such modifications or amendments will not require approval of the stockholders of the Company or the consent of any Participants.
26. CORPORATE TRANSACTIONS. In the event of a Corporate Transaction, the Offering Period for each outstanding right to purchase Common Stock for the Offering Period then in effect will be assumed or an equivalent option substituted by the successor corporation or a parent or a subsidiary of the successor corporation. In the event that the successor corporation refuses to assume or substitute for the purchase right, the Offering Period with respect to which such purchase right relates will be shortened by setting a new Purchase Date and will end on the new Purchase Date. The new Purchase Date shall occur on or prior to the consummation of the Corporate Transaction, as determined by the Board or Committee, and the Plan shall terminate on the consummation of the Corporate Transaction.
27. CODE SECTION 409A; TAX QUALIFICATION.
(a) Options granted under the Plan generally are exempt from the application of Section 409A of the Code. However, options granted to U.S. taxpayers which are not intended to meet the Code Section 423 requirements are intended to be exempt from the application of Section 409A of the Code under the short-term deferral exception and any ambiguities shall be construed and interpreted in accordance with such intent. Subject to Subsection (b), options granted to U.S. taxpayers outside of the Code Section 423 requirements shall be subject to such terms and conditions that will permit such options to satisfy the requirements of the short-term deferral exception available under Section 409A of the Code, including the requirement that the shares of Common Stock subject to an option be delivered within the short-term deferral period. Subject to Subsection (b), in the case of a Participant who would otherwise be subject to Section 409A of the Code, to the extent the Committee determines that an option or the exercise, payment, settlement or deferral thereof is subject to Section 409A of the Code, the option shall be granted, exercised, paid, settled or deferred in a manner that will comply with Section 409A of the Code, including Treasury regulations and other interpretive guidance issued thereunder, including without limitation any such regulations or other guidance that may be issued after the Effective Date. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Company shall have no liability to a Participant or any other party if the option that is intended to be exempt from or compliant with Section 409A of the Code is not so exempt or compliant or for any action taken by the Committee with respect thereto.
(b) Although the Company may endeavor to (i) qualify an option for favorable tax treatment under the laws of the United States or jurisdictions outside of the United States or (ii) avoid adverse tax treatment (e.g., under Section 409A of the Code), the Company makes no representation to that effect and expressly disavows any covenant to maintain favorable or avoid unfavorable tax treatment, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Plan, including Subsection (a). The Company shall be unconstrained in its corporate activities without regard to the potential negative tax impact on Participants under the Plan.
28. DEFINITIONS.
(a) Affiliate means any entity, other than a Subsidiary or Parent, (i) that, directly or indirectly, is controlled by, controls or is under common control with, the Company and (ii) in which the Company has a significant equity interest, in either case as determined by the Committee, whether now or hereafter existing.
(b) Board shall mean the Board of Directors of the Company.
(c) Code shall mean the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.
(d) Committee shall mean the Compensation Committee of the Board that consists exclusively of one or more members of the Board appointed by the Board.
(e) Common Stock shall mean the class A common stock of the Company.
(f) Company shall mean CoreWeave, Inc.
(g) Contributions means payroll deductions taken from a Participants Compensation and used to purchase shares of Common Stock under the Plan and, to the extent payroll deductions are not permitted by applicable laws (as determined by the Committee in its sole discretion) contributions by other means, provided, however, that allowing such other contributions does not jeopardize the qualification of the Plan as an employee stock purchase plan under Section 423 of the Plan.
(h) Corporate Transaction means the occurrence of any of the following events: (i) any person (as such term is used in Sections 13(d) and 14(d) of the Exchange Act) becomes the beneficial owner (as defined in Rule 13d-3 of the Exchange Act), directly or indirectly, of securities of the Company representing fifty percent (50%) or more of the total voting power represented by the Companys then outstanding voting securities; or (ii) the consummation of the sale or disposition by the Company of all or substantially all of the Companys assets; or (iii) the consummation of a merger or consolidation of the Company with any other corporation, other than a merger or consolidation which would result in the voting securities of the Company outstanding immediately prior thereto continuing to represent (either by remaining outstanding or by being converted into voting securities of the surviving entity or its parent) at least fifty percent (50%) of the total voting power represented by the voting securities of the Company or such surviving entity or its parent outstanding immediately after such merger or consolidation.
(i) Effective Date shall mean the date on which the Registration Statement covering the initial public offering of the shares of Common Stock is declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
(j) ESPP Broker means a stock brokerage or other entity designated by the Company to establish accounts for stock purchased under the Plan by Participants.
(k) Exchange Act means the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
(l) Fair Market Value shall mean, as of any date, the value of a share of Common Stock determined as follows:
(1) if such Common Stock is publicly traded and is then listed on a national securities exchange, its closing price on the date of determination on the principal national securities exchange on which the Common Stock is listed or admitted to trading as reported in The Wall Street Journal or such other source as the Board or the Committee deems reliable;
(2) if such Common Stock is publicly traded but is neither quoted on the Nasdaq Market nor listed or admitted to trading on a national securities exchange, the average of the closing bid and asked prices on the date of determination as reported in The Wall Street Journal or such other source as the Board or the Committee deems reliable;
(3) with respect to the Initial Offering Period, Fair Market Value on the Offering Date shall be the price at which shares of Common Stock are offered for sale to the public pursuant to the Registration Statement covering shares of Common Stock;
(4) any method permitted by Section 409A of the Code; or
(5) if none of the foregoing is applicable, by the Board or the Committee in good faith.
(m) Non-Section 423 Component means the part of the Plan which is not intended to meet the requirements set forth in Section 423 of the Code.
(n) Notice Period shall mean within two (2) years from the Offering Date or within one (1) year from the Purchase Date on which such shares were purchased.
(o) Offering Date shall mean the first Trading Day of each Offering Period. However, for the Initial Offering Period the Offering Date shall be the Effective Date.
(p) Offering Period shall mean a period with respect to which the right to purchase Common Stock may be granted under the Plan, as determined by the Committee pursuant to Section 5(a).
(q) Parent shall have the same meaning as parent corporation in Sections 424(e) and 424(f) of the Code.
(r) Participant shall mean an eligible employee who meets the eligibility requirements set forth in Section 4 and who is either automatically enrolled in the Initial Offering Period or who elects to participate in this Plan pursuant to Section 6(b).
(s) Participating Corporation shall mean any Parent, Subsidiary or Affiliate that the Committee designates from time to time as eligible to participate in this Plan. For purposes of the Section 423 Component, only the Parent and Subsidiaries may be Participating Corporations, provided, however, that at any given time a Parent or Subsidiary that is a Participating Corporation under the Section 423 Component shall not be a Participating Corporation under the Non-Section 423 Component. The Committee may provide that any Participating Corporation shall only be eligible to participate in the Non-Section 423 Component.
(t) Plan shall mean this 2025 CoreWeave, Inc. Employee Stock Purchase Plan, as may be amended from time to time.
(u)
(v) Purchase Date shall mean the last Trading Day of each Purchase Period.
(w) Purchase Period shall mean a period during which Contributions may be made toward the purchase of Common Stock under the Plan, as determined by the Committee pursuant to Section 5(b).
(x) Purchase Price shall mean the price at which Participants may purchase shares of Common Stock under the Plan, as determined pursuant to Section 8.
(y) Registration Statement means the registration statement on Form S-1 filed with the SEC under the Securities Act pursuant to which shares of Common Stock are initially offered for sale to the public.
(z) Section 423 Component means the part of the Plan, which excludes the Non-Section 423 Component, pursuant to which options to purchase shares of Common Stock under the Plan that satisfy the requirements for employee stock purchase plans set forth in Section 423 of the Code may be granted to eligible employees.
(aa) Subsidiary shall have the same meaning as subsidiary corporation in Sections 424(e) and 424(f) of the Code.
(bb) Trading Day means a day on which the principal national stock exchange upon which the Common Stock is listed is open for trading.
Exhibit 10.6
COREWEAVE, INC.
SENIOR EXECUTIVE CHANGE IN CONTROL AND SEVERANCE PLAN
CoreWeave, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company) has adopted this Senior Executive Change in Control and Severance Plan (this Plan), effective as of the closing of the Companys initial public offering of Class A Common Stock (the date on which such closing occurs, the Effective Date) to provide certain payments and benefits to eligible employees of the Company, subject to the terms and conditions herein.
1. Participation. Any Company employee designated by the Board of Directors (the Board) or the Compensation Committee of the Board (the Committee) is eligible to participate in this Plan (each, a Participant). The Committee will inform each such executive in writing that he or she is eligible to participate in this Plan (a Participation Notice). The Participants acceptance of the Participation Notice constitutes agreement to all of the terms and conditions of this Plan. If required by the Company, participation in this Plan will be contingent upon an Executive executing and delivering to the Company a participation agreement (a Participation Agreement) in a form provided by the Company, provided that if the Company does not expressly require it, no Participation Agreement will be necessary to participate in this Plan.
2. Termination of Employment.
(a) Payment Conditions. In order to be eligible to receive any of the payments and benefits pursuant to Section 2(b) or Section 2(c) below, as applicable, Participant must satisfy the following conditions (collectively, the Payment Conditions):
i. execute the Companys then-standard form of general release of all claims (the Release) and allow such Release to become non-revocable prior to the 60th day following Participants termination of employment, or such earlier deadline specified in the Release (as applicable, the Release Deadline);
ii. comply with Participants obligations under Participants proprietary information and invention assignment agreement, or comparable agreement relating to confidentiality and proprietary information (the Proprietary Information and Inventions Assignment Agreement)
iii. resign from all officer and director positions with the Company and/or any parent, subsidiary or affiliate (unless otherwise requested by the Company);
iv. return all Company property to the Company; and
v. comply with any agreements between Participant and the Company relating to confidentiality, non-competition, non-solicitation, non-interference and non-disparagement, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
(b) Non-CIC Qualifying Termination. In the event of Participants Non-CIC Qualifying Termination, Participant shall be entitled to the following:
i. Severance Payment. Twelve (12) months of Participants Base Salary, payable in a single lump-sum in the Companys first regular payroll following the Release Deadline.
ii. Health Care Benefit. If Participant participates in the Companys group health insurance plans on the date of Participants Non-CIC Qualifying Termination and Participant timely elects to continue Participants health insurance coverage under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) following the termination of Participants employment, then the Company shall pay the monthly premium under COBRA to continue such coverage (including for Participant and Participants eligible dependents who have elected and remain enrolled in such COBRA coverage) for the period beginning on the first day following the day that Participants active employee health coverage ends as the result of Participants Separation until the earliest of (A) twelve (12) months following Participants termination date, (B) the first month for which Participant is eligible for similar coverage with a new employer or (C) the expiration of Participants continuation coverage under COBRA (as applicable, the COBRA Payment Period). Alternatively, the Company may elect to pay Participant a taxable cash payment in lieu of the continued coverage, equal to the amount that the Company would have otherwise paid for the COBRA premiums (based on the premium for the first month of coverage), which payment will be made regardless of whether Participant or Participants eligible dependents elect COBRA continuation coverage and paid in monthly installments for the COBRA Payment Period, except that payments shall commence (with any make-up payments) in the Companys first regular payroll following the Release Deadline. Continued health coverage or payment of a taxable cash amount pursuant to the foregoing paragraph is referred to as the COBRA Benefit.
(c) CIC Qualifying Termination. In the event of Participants CIC Qualifying Termination, Participant shall be entitled to the following:
i. Severance Payment. Twelve (12) months of Participants Base Salary (ignoring any decrease in Participants Base Salary that forms the basis for Good Reason, as applicable), payable in a single lump-sum in the Companys first regular payroll following the Release Deadline.
ii. Health Care Benefit. Participant shall be entitled to the COBRA Benefit, provided that the COBRA Payment Period shall be twelve (12) months.
iii. Equity Acceleration. Each of Participants then-outstanding unvested Equity Awards, other than Performance Awards (as defined below), shall accelerate and become vested and exercisable or settled with respect to 100% of the unvested shares subject thereto. With respect to Equity Awards that would otherwise vest only upon satisfaction of performance criteria (Performance Awards, and the Equity Award Agreement relating thereto, the Performance Equity Award Agreement), the vesting will accelerate as set forth in the terms of the applicable Performance Equity Award Agreement. Subject to Participants satisfaction of the Payment Conditions, the accelerated vesting described above shall be effective as of the CIC Qualifying Termination; provided, that, if Participants CIC Qualified Termination occurs prior to the Change in Control, then any unvested portion of the Participants Equity Awards will remain outstanding for three (3) months following the CIC Qualifying Termination (provided that in no event will such Equity Awards remain outstanding beyond the expiration of the Equity Awards maximum term) to permit the foregoing acceleration, with settlement of any awards, as applicable, to be made no later than March 15 of the year following the year in which the closing of the Change in Control occurs. In the event that the proposed Change in Control is terminated without having been completed, any unvested portion of Participants Equity Awards automatically will be forfeited.
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Plan, if the successor or acquiring corporation (if any) of the Company refuses to assume, convert, replace or substitute Participants unvested Equity Awards in connection with a Change in Control, and such Equity Awards will be terminated without payment of any consideration, then notwithstanding any other provision in this Agreement, the Equity Plan or any Equity Award Agreement to the contrary, each of Participants then-outstanding and unvested Equity Awards, other than Performance Awards, that are not assumed, converted, replaced or substituted and are terminated without payment of any consideration, shall accelerate and become vested and exercisable or settled, as applicable, as to 100% of the then-unvested shares subject to the Equity Awards effective immediately prior to the Change in Control, and terminate to the extent not exercised (as applicable) upon the Change in Control. With respect to Performance Awards, the vesting for such Performance Awards will accelerate only as set forth in the terms of the applicable Performance Equity Award Agreement.
(d) No Duplication. Payments and benefits under Section 2(b) or Section 2(c) above are not intended, and will not be provided, in duplicate.
(e) Termination for Any Reason. In the event Participants employment is terminated by the Company or by Participant (including due to Participants death or disability), Participant will be paid: (i) any earned but unpaid Base Salary, (ii) other unpaid and then-vested amounts, including any amount payable to Participant under the specific terms of any insurance and health and benefit plans in which Participant participates, unless otherwise specifically provided in this Agreement and (iii) reimbursement for all reasonable and necessary expenses incurred by Participant in connection with Participants performance of services on behalf of the Company in accordance with applicable Company policies and guidelines, in each case as of the effective date of such termination of employment.
3. Definitions.
(a) Cause means (1) Participants material breach of any material agreement between Participant and the Company, including but not limited to, the Companys Proprietary Information and Inventions Assignment Agreement; (2) the unauthorized disclosure or use of Company trade secrets or confidential information; (3) any breach of fiduciary duties or the duty of loyalty owed to the Company; (4) gross negligence in the performance or non-performance of any of Participants material duties and responsibilities; (5) fraud, willful misconduct, or gross negligence on Participants part with respect to the business affairs of the Company; (6) a conviction of a felony or conviction of a misdemeanor involving theft, misappropriation, fraud, or an act of moral turpitude, or a plea of guilty, no contest, or nolo contendre by Participant to the same under the laws of the United States or any State or other relevant jurisdiction; (7) unlawful harassment of other employees, vendors or customers, or other conduct that is materially unprofessional, unethical or detrimental to the reputation, character and standing of the Company; (8) Participants material failure or refusal to comply with the written standards and policies of the Company; or (9) Participants failure to cooperate in good faith with a governmental or internal investigation of the Company or its directors, officers or employees, if the Company has requested Participants cooperation.
(b) Change in Control means Corporate Transaction, as defined in the Companys 2025 Equity Incentive Plan, provided that the applicable transaction or series of transactions also qualifies as a change in control event under U.S. Treasury Regulation 1.409A-3(i)(5).
(c) Change in Control Period means the period beginning three (3) months prior to, and ending twelve (12) months following, the effective date of a Change in Control.
(d) CIC Qualifying Termination means Participants Separation resulting from either (i) the termination of Participants employment by the Company other than for Cause or (ii) Participants resignation of Participants employment for Good Reason, in each case occurring within the Change in Control Period, provided that, if occurring during the 3-month period preceding the effective date of a Change in Control, Participants CIC Qualifying Termination follows a Potential Change in Control. For the avoidance of doubt, in no event will Participants Separation resulting from any of the following constitute a CIC Qualifying Termination: the termination of Participants employment by the Company for Cause, Participants death or disability, or Participants resignation of employment for any reason other than Good Reason.
(e) Code means the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.
(f) Equity Awards means all awards for shares of Company common stock granted under the Equity Plan, including but not limited to options, restricted stock, restricted stock units, stock bonus awards or stock appreciation rights.
(g) Equity Plan means the Companys 2025 Equity Incentive Plan, 2019 Stock Option Plan and any successor or additional equity plans of the Company as may be adopted from time to time.
(h) Good Reason means the occurrence of any of the following events without Participants prior written consent: (i) a material reduction of Participants Base Salary, except for across-the-board salary reductions similarly affecting all or substantially all similarly situated employees of the Company; (ii) a material diminution in Participants duties, authorities or responsibilities; provided, however, that a change in title will not, by itself, be sufficient to constitute a material diminution in Participants duties, authorities or responsibilities (except as provided in (iii)); (iii) for a Participant with the title of Chief Executive Officer or Chief Financial Officer during the Change in Control Period, an adverse change in job title; (iv) a change of more than fifty (50) miles in the geographic location at which Participant provides services to the Company; or (v) the failure of any successor to the Company to assume and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Plan with respect to the Participant.
A resignation for Good Reason will not be deemed to have occurred unless Participant gives the Company written notice of the condition within 60 days after the condition comes into existence, the Company fails to cure the condition within 30 days after receiving Participants written notice, and Participant terminates Participants employment within 10 days after the Companys failure to cure or the Companys notice to Participant that it will decline to cure.
(i) Non-CIC Qualifying Termination means Participants Separation resulting from either (i) the termination of Participants employment by the Company other than for Cause or (ii) Participants resignation of Participants employment for Good Reason, in each case occurring outside of the Change in Control Period. For the avoidance of doubt, in no event will Participants Separation resulting from any of the following constitute a Non-CIC Qualifying Termination: the termination of Participants employment by the Company for Cause, Participants death or disability, or Participants resignation of employment for any reason other than Good Reason.
(j) Potential Change in Control means the date of a definitive agreement providing for a Change in Control if such transaction if such transaction is consummated.
(k) Section 409A means Section 409A of the Code, and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
(l) Separation means a separation from service within the meaning of Section 409A.
4. Tax Matters.
(a) Withholding. All sums payable to Participant hereunder shall be reduced by all federal, state, local and other withholding and similar taxes and payments required by applicable law. Participant is encouraged to obtain Participants own tax advice regarding Participants compensation from the Company. The Company makes no representations or warranties with respect to the tax consequences (including, without limitation, under Section 409A) of any payment or any other consideration provided to Participant or made on Participants behalf under the terms of this Plan, and Participant shall be solely responsible for the same. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Plan, Participant acknowledges and agrees that the Company is under no express or implied duty or obligation to design or administer this Plan in a manner that minimizes Participants tax liabilities, and Participant will not make any claim against the Company or its Board related to tax liabilities arising from Participants compensation.
(b) Section 280GBest After-Tax Result. Notwithstanding anything in this Plan to the contrary, if any payment or distribution to Participant pursuant to this Plan or otherwise (Payment) would (i) constitute a parachute payment within the meaning of Section 280G of the Code and (ii) but for this sentence, be subject to the excise tax imposed by Section 4999 of the Code (the Excise Tax), then such Payment shall either be (A) delivered in full or (B) delivered as to such lesser extent as would result in no portion of such Payment being subject to the Excise Tax, whichever of the foregoing amounts, after taking into account the applicable federal, state and local income taxes and the Excise Tax, results in the receipt by Participant on an after-tax basis of the largest payment, notwithstanding that all or some portion of the Payment may be taxable under Section 4999 of the Code. The accounting firm engaged by the Company for general audit purposes as of the date prior to the effective date of the Change in Control, or such other person or entity as determined in good faith by the Company, shall perform the foregoing calculations and the Company shall bear all expenses with respect to the determinations by such accounting firm required to be made hereunder. Any good faith determinations of the accounting firm made pursuant to this section shall be final, binding and conclusive upon all parties. Any reduction in payments and/or benefits pursuant to the foregoing shall be made in accordance with Section 409A in the following order (1) Payments that do not constitute nonqualified compensation subject to Section 409A shall be reduced first; and (2) all other Payments shall then be reduced as follows: (a) reduction of cash payments; (b) cancellation of accelerated vesting of equity awards other than stock options, if any; (c) cancellation of accelerated vesting of stock options, and (d) reduction of other benefits payable to Participant.
(c) Section 409A. To the extent that any provision of this Plan is ambiguous as to its exemption or compliance with Section 409A, the provision will be read in such a manner so that all payments hereunder are exempt from Section 409A to the maximum permissible extent, and for any payments where such construction is not tenable, that those payments comply with Section 409A to the maximum permissible extent. To the extent any payment under this Plan may be classified as a short-term deferral within the meaning of Section 409A, such payment shall be deemed a short-term deferral, even if it may also qualify for an exemption from Section 409A under another provision of Section 409A. Payments pursuant to this Plan (or referenced in this Plan) are intended to constitute separate payments for purposes of Section 1.409A 2(b)(2) of the regulations under Section 409A. Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, payments under this Plan shall only be made upon a termination that constitutes a separation from service, as defined under Section 409A.
Except as otherwise expressly provided herein, to the extent any expense reimbursement or the provision of any in-kind benefit under this Plan (or otherwise referenced herein) is determined to be subject to (and not exempt from) Section 409A, the amount of any such expenses eligible for reimbursement, or the provision of any in-kind benefit, in one calendar year shall not affect the expenses eligible for reimbursement or in kind benefits to be provided in any other calendar year, in no event shall any expenses be reimbursed after the last day of the calendar year following the calendar year in which Participant incurred such expenses, and in no event shall any right to reimbursement or the provision of any in-kind benefit be subject to liquidation or exchange for another benefit.
To the extent (i) any payments to which Participant becomes entitled under this Plan, or any agreement or plan referenced herein, in connection with Participants termination of employment with the Company constitute deferred compensation subject to Section 409A and (ii) Participant is deemed at the time of such termination of employment to be a specified employee under Section 409A, then such payment or payments shall not be made or commence until the earlier of (i) the expiration of the six (6)-month period measured from the date of Participants separation from service (as such term is at the time defined in regulations under Section 409A) with the Company; or (ii) the date of Participants death following such separation from service; provided, however, that such deferral shall only be effected to the extent required to avoid adverse tax treatment to Participant, including (without limitation) the additional twenty percent (20%) tax for which Participant would otherwise be liable under Section 409A(a)(1)(B) of the Code in the absence of such deferral. Upon the expiration of the applicable deferral period, any payments which would have otherwise been made during that period (whether in a single sum or in installments) in the absence of this paragraph shall be paid to Participant or Participants beneficiary in one lump sum (without interest).
5. At-Will Employment. Nothing in this Plan alters the at-will nature of Participants employment. Participant and the Company remain free to terminate the employment relationship at any time, for any reason, with or without notice. Upon any termination of the employment relationship, Participant will resign from all officer and director positions with the Company and/or any parent, subsidiary or affiliate (unless otherwise requested by the Company).
6. Clawback/Recoupment. All amounts payable to Participant hereunder shall be subject to recoupment pursuant to the Companys current compensation clawback or recoupment policy, and any additional compensation clawback or recoupment policy or amendments to the current policy adopted by the Board or as required by law during the term of Participants employment with the Company that is applicable generally to executive officers of the Company. No recovery of compensation under such a clawback or recoupment policy will be an event giving rise to a right to resign for Good Reason or constitute a constructive termination without Cause under this Plan.
7. Term of Plan. This Plan has an initial term ending on the third (3rd) anniversary of the Effective Date (the Expiration Date). This Plan shall renew automatically and continue in effect for three (3) year periods measured from the initial Expiration Date, unless the Company provides Participants (defined below) with notice of non-renewal at least three (3) months prior to the date on which this Plan would otherwise renew. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if a definitive agreement relating to a Change in Control has been signed by the Company on or before an Expiration Date, then this Plan will remain in effect through the date the Company has met all of its obligations hereunder. For the avoidance of doubt, and notwithstanding anything to the contrary in Section 2 or Section 3 above, the Companys non-renewal of this Agreement shall not constitute a Non-CIC Qualifying Termination or CIC Qualifying Termination, as applicable. Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, in no event shall any non-renewal adversely affect the rights of any Participant who is then receiving or entitled to receive payments or benefits under the Plan, without the prior written consent of such Participant.
8. Miscellaneous Provisions.
(a) Prior Arrangements; Complete Agreement. A Participant shall be entitled to receive the greatest of (a) the total payments, equity acceleration and benefits provided for under this Plan, subject to the applicable terms and conditions of this Plan or (b) the total payments, equity acceleration and benefits provided in the event of a change of control and/or qualifying termination of employment provided under arrangements entered into by and between Participant and the Company prior to the Effective Date of this Plan (the Prior Arrangements), subject to the applicable terms and conditions of such Prior Arrangements. For the purposes of this section, the value of (a) and (b) shall be calculated and determined by the Company at its discretion. Except as provided above with respect to Prior Arrangements, this Plan supersedes any agreement (or portion thereof) between Participant and the Company concerning similar subject matter dated prior to the Effective Date, and constitutes the entire, final and exclusive agreement between Participant and the Company, concerning similar subject matter.
(b) Amendment. The Company may amend or terminate this Plan at any time or from time to time, but no such action shall adversely affect the rights of any Participant without the Participants written consent.
(c) Waiver. No provision of this Plan may be waived unless the waiver is agreed to in writing and signed by Participant and by an authorized officer of the Company. No waiver by either party of any breach of, or of compliance with, any condition or provision of this Plan shall be considered a waiver at another time.
(d) Severability. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision or provisions of this Plan shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision hereof, which shall remain in full force and effect.
(e) Successors and Assigns. The Company will require any successor (whether direct or indirect and whether by purchase, lease, merger, consolidation, liquidation or otherwise) to all or substantially all of the Companys business and/or assets to assume this Plan and to agree expressly to perform this Plan in the same manner and to the same extent as the Company would be required to perform it in the absence of a succession. For all purposes under this Plan, the term Company will include any successor to the Companys business and/or assets or which becomes bound by this Plan by operation of law. Participant may not assign any of Participants rights hereunder without the express prior written approval of the Board, in its sole discretion. This Plan and all rights of Participants rights hereunder will inure to the benefit of, and be enforceable by, the Participants personal or legal representatives, executors, administrators, successors, heirs, distributees, devisees and legatees.
(f) Unfunded Obligations. The obligations of the Company under this Plan are funded from the Companys general assets.
(g) Dispute Resolution. To ensure rapid and economical resolution of any and all disputes that might arise in connection with this Plan, any and all disputes, claims, and causes of action, in law or equity, arising from or relating to this Plan or its enforcement, performance, breach, or interpretation, will be resolved solely and exclusively by final, binding, and confidential arbitration, by a single arbitrator, in New York County, and conducted by Judicial Arbitration & Mediation Services, Inc. (JAMS) under its then-existing employment rules and procedures. Nothing in this section, however, is intended to prevent either party from obtaining injunctive relief in court to prevent irreparable harm pending the conclusion of any such arbitration. Each party to an arbitration or litigation hereunder shall be responsible for the payment of its own attorneys fees. The Company will pay the arbitration costs.
(h) Notice. Notices and all other communications contemplated by this Plan will be in writing and will be deemed to have been duly given when personally delivered or when mailed by U.S. registered or certified mail, return receipt requested and postage prepaid. Mailed notices to Participant shall be addressed to Participant at the home address which Participant most recently communicated to the Company in writing. In the case of the Company, mailed notices shall be addressed to its corporate headquarters, and all notices shall be directed to the attention of the Board.
(i) Counterparts. This Agreement may be executed in counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original, but all of which together will constitute one and the same instrument, and facsimile and electronic signatures shall be equivalent to original signatures.
Exhibit 23.1
CONSENT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM
We consent to the use in this Registration Statement No. 333-285512 on Form S-1 of our report dated March 3, 2025 (March 19, 2025 as to the effects of the stock split described in Note 1), relating to the financial statements of CoreWeave, Inc. We also consent to the reference to us under the heading Experts in such Registration Statement.
/s/ Deloitte & Touche LLP
San Jose, California
March 19, 2025
Exhibit 23.2
Consent of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
We consent to the use in this Amendment No. 2 to the Registration Statement (No. 333-285512) on Form S-1 of CoreWeave, Inc. of our report dated January 22, 2025, expect for the effects of the stock split described in Note 1 as to which the date is March 19, 2025, relating to the consolidated financial statements of CoreWeave, Inc., appearing in the Preliminary Prospectus, which is part of this Registration Statement.
We also consent to the reference to our firm under the heading Experts.
/s/ RSM US LLP
Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 19, 2025
Exhibit 107
Calculation of Filing Fee Table
Form S-1
CoreWeave, Inc.
Table 1 Newly Registered Securities
Security Type | Security Class Title |
Fee Calculation Rule |
Amount Registered(1) |
Proposed Maximum Offering Price Per Unit(2) |
Maximum Aggregate Offering Price(3) |
Fee Rate |
Amount of Fee(4) | |||||||
Equity | Class A common stock, par value $0.000005 per share | Rule 457(a) | 56,350,000 | $55.00 | $3,099,250,000 | $0.00015310 | $474,495.18 | |||||||
Total Offering Amounts | $3,099,250,000 | $474,495.18 | ||||||||||||
Total Fee Offsets | $15,310.00(5) | |||||||||||||
Net Fee Due | $459,185.18 |
(1) | Includes up to 7,350,000 additional shares that the underwriters have the option to purchase from the Registrant. |
(2) | Estimated solely for the purpose of calculating the amount of the registration fee pursuant to Rule 457(a) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act). |
(3) | Includes the aggregate offering price of additional shares that the underwriters have the option to purchase from the Registrant. |
(4) | Calculated pursuant to Rule 457(a) under the Securities Act. |
(5) | The Registrant previously paid a registration fee of $15,310.00 in connection with initial filing of the Registration Statement on Form S-1 on March 3, 2025. |