CoreWeave shares and bonds slide as investors question AI debt load

Shares of CoreWeave, the Nasdaq-listed cloud-computing company that rents out Nvidia graphics processors to artificial-intelligence developers, fell as much as 16 percent on October 14 and kept sliding through the week, closing October 16 at $61.39, down nearly 12 percent on the day and roughly a quarter below the previous Friday's level. The stock touched a 52-week low near $59.51 on October 15, according to trading data compiled by stockanalysis.com.

The selloff in CoreWeave's equity was matched by stress in its debt. Yields on the company's unsecured notes due 2032 climbed toward 15 percent, a level investors generally associate with distressed credit, and the cost of insuring CoreWeave's bonds against default, measured by credit-default-swap spreads, pushed above 1,000 basis points, a record for the company, before easing slightly. The bonds had been issued with a coupon of 9.625 percent.

Chief executive Michael Intrator told employees in an internal memo, confirmed as authentic by a company spokeswoman and reported by Crypto Briefing and other outlets, that the market was "acting irrationally." He argued investors were misjudging a new kind of technology company and pointed to a revenue backlog of $104.2 billion as of June 30, which he said far exceeded CoreWeave's debt obligations.

That backlog figure comes from CoreWeave's own second-quarter results, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 11 and repeated in the company's investor-relations announcement the same day. The filing also showed a net loss of $626 million for the quarter, up from $290 million a year earlier, on capital expenditures of $6.42 billion as CoreWeave builds out data centers. Total liabilities stood near $72 billion, and the company has kept raising debt since then: a separate filing from September 17 disclosed a new convertible-notes offering and associated capped-call agreements, part of the financing CoreWeave is using to keep pace with customer demand for AI computing capacity.

The selloff followed disclosures that Intrator had sold more than $33 million worth of CoreWeave stock in late September, including shares sold outside a pre-set trading plan, according to 24/7 Wall St.'s review of regulatory filings. CNBC's Jim Cramer said on air that "people are terrified" about the gap between CoreWeave's spending and its cash generation; the company's operating cash flow has lagged far behind its capital spending.

Wider jitters

The decline was not confined to CoreWeave. Oracle, which has also borrowed heavily to expand AI-related cloud capacity, and smaller rivals Nebius and Iren each fell more than 8 percent in the same stretch, suggesting investors are reassessing how the broader AI data-center buildout is being financed rather than reacting only to CoreWeave-specific news. CoreWeave went public in March 2025 at $40 a share; even after the latest slide, the stock remains above that level.

CoreWeave's business model has long drawn scrutiny. Nvidia, the dominant maker of AI chips, holds an equity stake in CoreWeave and is also one of its principal suppliers and customers, an arrangement critics have likened to circular financing. Microsoft and OpenAI are among CoreWeave's largest customers for the computing capacity it rents out to train and run AI models.

CoreWeave's next scheduled earnings report, covering the third quarter, is due November 9, which investors are likely to treat as the next test of whether the company's order backlog can convert into cash fast enough to cover its rising interest costs.