CoreWeave Stock Slides as AI Hype Meets Debt Fears

CoreWeave ( (CRWV) ) has fallen by -9.91%. Read on to learn why.

CoreWeave shares slid 9.91% over the past week as traders reassessed risk in one of the market’s most speculative AI infrastructure names. Options activity turned notably bearish, with puts slightly outnumbering calls and demand rising for downside protection, signaling growing concern that the stock’s recent rebound could be running out of steam. The shift came despite CoreWeave’s still‑hefty AI backlog and its positioning as a pure‑play provider of GPU‑driven data center capacity.

Under the surface, investors are wrestling with a sharp contrast between CoreWeave’s powerful growth story and its stretched balance sheet. The company has built more than 40 AI‑optimized data centers and amassed over $55 billion in contracted AI compute, supported by blue‑chip customers like OpenAI and Meta and inclusion in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission. Yet this expansion is funded by a highly leveraged capital structure and expensive, GPU‑backed borrowing, which left CoreWeave paying hundreds of millions in quarterly interest expense and reporting continued net losses and negative free cash flow.

That mix of big opportunity and big risk is driving the stock’s volatility and this week’s pullback. Many on Wall Street still see upside—CoreWeave carries a Moderate Buy consensus and an average price target near $133—but several analysts and market commentators now frame the stock as a late‑cycle, high‑beta trade rather than a long‑term core holding. With AI sentiment swinging rapidly and macro worries about an eventual cooldown in AI spending, the latest 9.91% drop underscores that CoreWeave remains a tactical, sentiment‑driven play where leverage can amplify losses as quickly as gains.