CoreWeave headed into its earnings report on Thursday with its stock up 78% in 2026 and 218% since it went public in March 2025, but the market still treated the company’s numbers like a test. Shares fell as much as 9.1% in intraday trading Thursday after rising 7.9% on Wednesday, a sharp move for a company that has become one of the most closely watched names in the AI trade.
The company, which rents access to AI infrastructure built around the latest chips from Nvidia Corp., was scheduled to report after the bell with Wall Street expecting nearly $2 billion in first-quarter revenue, or about twice what it posted a year earlier, and a loss of $1.20 per share. That would compare with a loss of $1.49 a share in the first quarter of 2025. CoreWeave’s revenue backlog stood at nearly $67 billion as of Dec. 31, a figure that helped fuel the stock’s rally even after earlier swings.
Investor optimism accelerated about a month ago, when CoreWeave announced deals with Meta, Anthropic PBC and Jane Street Group in quick succession. The company’s recent climb also came as investors regained faith in the AI trade, while results from Alphabet and Meta showed that demand for computing power remains strong even as capital expenditures rise.
That support has not erased the concerns that have followed CoreWeave before. In February, the company said its capital expenditures would be higher than expected, and the stock tumbled 19% in its worst session in six months. CoreWeave has seen its shares fall after every report since its IPO, though the stock has recovered quickly from those downturns, leaving traders to wonder whether the pattern will hold again after Thursday’s numbers.
Analysts remain largely constructive. Of the 36 analysts tracked by who follow CoreWeave, 23 had buy ratings and two had sell ratings, with an average 12-month price target of $131. Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana said on May 4 that CoreWeave’s first-quarter results would likely echo strength at Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google amid rising AI-compute demand, and that management may raise both its 2026 sales and capital expenditure targets. Tejas Dessai said there is an insane amount of demand for AI compute and that the backdrop is extremely positive for CoreWeave, but he also warned that if the company posts a capex figure far above what investors have grown used to, the market will scrutinize it closely. They have to back it up with commensurate revenue scale as well, he said.
That is the balancing act now facing CoreWeave. The company’s valuation has already forced investors to accept a lot of future growth, and the latest round of deals has only raised the stakes. If management lifts its 2026 targets again, the question will not be whether the market likes the message. It will be whether it believes the spending can still outrun the price.
