CoreWeave Shares Drop 10% After Soft Q2 Guidance and Higher Capex Forecast

CNBC reported Thursday that CoreWeave shares dropped as much as 10% in after-hours trading. The sell-off followed a second-quarter revenue outlook that fell short of Wall Street expectations. The AI infrastructure company also raised its full-year capital expenditure forecast, unsettling investors already focused on its mounting debt load.

Q1 Beat Could Not Offset a Disappointing Outlook

CoreWeave posted first-quarter revenue of $2.08 billion, ahead of the $1.97 billion analysts had penciled in. Revenue more than doubled year-over-year from roughly $982 million. Despite that beat, the company’s Q2 revenue guidance of $2.45 billion to $2.6 billion landed well below the $2.69 billion consensus. The midpoint of that range trailed expectations by roughly $160 million.

Losses also deepened sharply. The company reported a net loss of $740 million in the quarter, compared with $315 million in the same period a year earlier. Operating costs are accelerating faster than sales. Technology and infrastructure expenses surged 127% to $1.27 billion, while sales and marketing costs jumped more than sixfold to $69 million.

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A Debt-Fueled Race to Build AI Infrastructure

CoreWeave has been borrowing aggressively to construct data centers packed with Nvidia graphics processing units. The facilities serve major AI developers including OpenAI and Anthropic. The company disclosed it raised $8.5 billion in fresh debt during the quarter alone. Total debt at quarter-end stood at nearly $25 billion, with more than $20 billion in combined debt and equity secured this year.

Co-founder and CEO Mike Intrator framed the spending as unavoidable given the scale of the AI buildout. He told analysts the company has reached what he called hyperscale, with ten clients now each committed to spending at least $1 billion. In 2024, Microsoft alone accounted for 62% of CoreWeave’s revenue. That concentration has since narrowed.

Key backer Nvidia purchased an additional $2 billion in CoreWeave shares during the quarter, deepening its ties to the company.

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Credit Rating Rises Even as Spending Forecasts Climb

Despite the investor concern, CoreWeave’s financial standing improved on at least one measure. CFO Nitin Agrawal said S&P upgraded the company’s credit outlook to positive from stable. The company also nudged its 2026 capital expenditure forecast higher, revising the low end of the range to $31 billion from $30 billion. Agrawal attributed the change to component pricing pressures. CoreWeave reiterated full-year revenue guidance of $12 billion to $13 billion and said annualised revenue should exceed $30 billion by end of 2027. Even after Thursday’s after-hours drop, shares had gained close to 80% in 2026 before the results.

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