CRWV
The AI party is still going — just not cheaply
CoreWeave is doing the thing investors love to hear and hate to fund: it’s riding surging AI demand, but it also needs even more money to build the infrastructure behind it. Shares slipped about 6% in premarket trading Friday after the company served up weaker-than-expected revenue guidance and a bigger capital spending bill for 2026.
The bill just got larger
The company raised the low end of its 2026 capex forecast to $31 billion from $30 billion, while keeping the top end at $35 billion. Translation: the data center arms race is still on, and CoreWeave wants to keep its foot on the gas.
For investors, that’s the squeeze. More spending can support growth, sure — but it also means the market has to wait longer for the kind of clean, efficient profits it likes to brag about in earnings season.
Why the stock is twitchy
This is the old Silicon Valley paradox in a shiny AI wrapper:
- Growth is strong, because everyone wants more compute.
- Costs are also strong, because more compute is absurdly expensive.
- And when guidance disappoints, the market doesn't care how cool the story sounds.
So even if CoreWeave’s revenue machine is humming, the stock is trading like investors just realized the AI buffet has a cover charge.
Big picture: CoreWeave is still in the middle of the AI infrastructure gold rush, but every new dollar of growth seems to come with a bigger check attached.