CoreWeave secures multi-year SSD supply deal with Solidigm to fuel AI cloud expansion

CoreWeave signed a multi-year agreement with Solidigm, the Intel-spun-off flash storage maker, guaranteeing priority access to solid-state drives as CoreWeave races to build out data centers fast enough to keep up with demand. What the partnership actually looks like This isn’t a fresh relationship. CoreWeave and Solidigm have been working together for years, deploying QLC (quad-level cell) SSDs across CoreWeave’s GPU infrastructure. Jacob Yundt, a CoreWeave executive, has previously described the partnership as “incredible” for data center effectiveness. The two companies are now co-engineering drives specifically optimized for AI workloads. That includes native direct-to-chip liquid cooling for SSDs, a technology that addresses the heat density that increases when cramming 122-terabyte drives into GPU clusters. For context, 122TB in a single drive is enormous. Most consumer SSDs top out around 4TB. Enterprise drives typically max out at 30TB or so. Why storage is the quiet bottleneck in AI infrastructure QLC SSDs offer a compelling balance for AI workloads. They’re denser and cheaper per terabyte than other NAND flash architectures, which makes them well-suited for the read-heavy...