Stock Drops After Mixed Earnings Metrics
CoreWeave shares fell as much as 10% in extended trading Thursday, even after the AI-focused cloud infrastructure company posted fourth-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations. Investors appeared cautious amid rising capital expenditure plans and profitability concerns.
The company reported a loss of 89 cents per share on revenue of $1.57 billion, narrowly beating the $1.55 billion forecast compiled by LSEG. Revenue jumped 110% year over year, underscoring sustained demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Heavy Spending and Profitability Pressure
Adjusted EBITDA reached $898 million, below StreetAccount’s consensus estimate of $929 million. Executives emphasized continued aggressive expansion, signaling 2026 capital expenditures could exceed 2025 levels by at least $30 billion. CoreWeave invested $10.31 billion in 2025 alone.
The company ended the year with $21.37 billion in debt, reflecting the high-cost nature of scaling AI data centers. While revenue backlog expanded sharply to $66.8 billion from $55.6 billion in the prior quarter, investors weighed that strength against significant leverage and infrastructure spending commitments.
Power Capacity and Expansion Plans
CoreWeave reported 850 megawatts of active power capacity, exceeding analyst projections of approximately 827 megawatts. Contracted power capacity stood at 3.1 gigawatts, and leadership aims to add more than five additional gigawatts beyond current commitments by 2030.
The company remains reliant on Nvidia GPUs to power its platform. CEO Mike Intrator noted that supply constraints persist, with pricing for H100 processors remaining stable within a 10% range during the quarter. Prices for older A100 chips rose in 2025, highlighting ongoing demand pressure in the AI chip ecosystem.
Competitive Position in AI Cloud Market
Since going public last March, CoreWeave has emerged as a specialized AI cloud provider serving major model developers including Google and OpenAI. Its stock had gained 36% in 2026 through Thursday’s close, significantly outperforming broader software benchmarks, which are down nearly 22% over the same period.
During the quarter, CoreWeave expanded its capabilities by launching an object storage service and increasing a key credit facility to $2.5 billion from $1.5 billion. The move positions the company to compete more directly with established players such as Amazon Web Services.
Despite short-term market volatility, Intrator highlighted that CoreWeave became “the fastest cloud platform in history to surpass $5 billion in annual revenue” in 2025. Investors will look to management’s guidance and conference call for greater clarity on how the company plans to balance rapid growth, infrastructure buildout and financial discipline.
