Buy, Sell Or Hold CoreWeave Stock At $49?
Follow the whole story: every piece in this series is on our AI storyline page.
CoreWeave is the purest public bet on the AI build-out: it owns warehouses full of Nvidia chips and rents them out by the hour. A year and a half after its IPO, the stock is not far above where it started. Thursday’s close of $43.66 was 76.2% below its June 2025 record, the deepest fall in its short public life. So what happened, and is Tuesday’s report the moment to jump in? We’ll answer both. But there’s a question underneath that matters more than one quarter: if you own a stock that has already fallen 76% once, how much of it can you hold through the next fall? We’ll come back to that at the end.
Where Is CoreWeave Now?
Here’s its short history in five closes, Trefis price history:
| Date | Close | vs IPO $40 |
|---|---|---|
| First close, Mar 28 2025 | $40.00 | 0% |
| Low, Apr 21 2025 | $35.42 | −11% |
| Record, Jun 20 2025 | $183.58 | +359% |
| 52-week high, May 6 2026 | $137.98 | +245% |
| Mon, Nov 9 2026 | $48.98 | +22% |
It went up more than four times in three months, and has given almost all of it back.
The past month did a lot of the damage: CoreWeave fell 40%, even after bounces of 6% on Friday and 6% on Monday. That’s the AI trade unwinding, led by the chip makers and the companies that borrowed to buy their chips; we’ve been following what’s happening with AI stocks all week. The Nasdaq fell 5.5% on Nov 5 alone.
Is It Just CoreWeave?
No. Every company renting out AI computing power, the so-called neoclouds, has been hit about as hard. Monday’s close, Trefis data:
| Stock | Mon close | Below 52-wk high | 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| CoreWeave | $48.98 | −64.5% | −53.6% |
| Oracle | $119.79 | −51.4% | −49.6% |
| Applied Digital | $16.72 | −66.3% | −46.8% |
| Cipher Mining | $6.81 | −76.7% | −65.3% |
| Nebius | $141.45 | −50.7% | +28.6% |
Five companies, one trade: all between 51% and 77% below their highs.
Now look at the two ends of CoreWeave’s business. It buys its chips from Nvidia, and its biggest customer has been Microsoft, about 67% of 2025 revenue according to CoreWeave’s annual report. This year’s quarterly filings no longer name the customers in their revenue breakdown; the largest unnamed one was about 40% of first-half revenue.
| Stock | Role | Below 52-wk high | 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nvidia | Supplier | −25.3% | −10.0% |
| Microsoft | Customer | −1.9% | +8.6% |
| CoreWeave | In the middle | −64.5% | −53.6% |
The seller of the chips is down 25%, the renter of them 1.9%. The company in the middle is down 65%.
Why Did The Middle Fall Hardest?
Because it’s the one holding the debt. Microsoft pays for its AI build-out mostly out of its own cash flow. CoreWeave pays for its build-out with borrowed money. In the second quarter it paid $640 million in net interest, five times its $128 million of adjusted operating income, and posted a $626 million net loss. Its debt, not counting leases, was about $35.1 billion at the end of June, per its quarterly filing. It guided to $35 billion to $39 billion of capital spending this year.
That’s where the second big story of the week comes in. A strong October jobs report has pushed futures traders toward a Federal Reserve rate hike in December, with odds above 75% by CME FedWatch. For a company that had about $35 billion of debt in June, each extra percentage point on that debt, as it is refinanced, costs roughly $350 million a year, about two-thirds of its annualized second-quarter adjusted operating income. Microsoft barely notices a rate hike. CoreWeave feels it in every new loan. That’s why the AI selloff and the rate story land hardest on the same few stocks.
We’ve seen a version of this before. The Nasdaq was lower a year after the Fed’s March and May 2022 rate hikes (−12.8% and −7.7%), and Nvidia fell 66.3% from its November 2021 peak to its October 2022 low. The difference this time is that CoreWeave’s chips are already bought and mostly rented out under contract, so the risk is the cost of the money, not a lack of customers.
What Happens On Tuesday?
Two events, one day. October’s consumer price report comes out at 8:30 am ET. CoreWeave holds its results call at 5:00 pm ET, after the market closes, per its investor relations site. A hot inflation number in the morning would push rate-hike odds up before CoreWeave’s numbers even come out; a cool one would ease the pressure on every borrower in the table above.
What CoreWeave itself has promised for the quarter: revenue of $3.45 billion to $3.6 billion. Analysts expect about $3.54 billion and a loss of about $1.27 a share. Last time, in August, the stock jumped 19% the next day on a beat. It’s 65% below its May high now. A good night is no promise of a good month.
What’s The Bigger Number?
CoreWeave ended June with a $104.2 billion backlog of signed contracts, and added more than $25 billion of new commitments early in the third quarter. Its revenue guide for all of 2026 is $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion. So the backlog is about eight years of this year’s revenue. That’s the part that will still matter in 2027 and 2030: whether those contracts, mostly with a handful of giant buyers, turn into cash faster than the interest bill grows. The share price tells you how the market feels about that this month. The backlog and the financing cost tell you what the business is.
The same giants are paying the bill for all of this. Big Tech spent about $1.15 on capital projects last quarter for every dollar of cash its businesses brought in; we showed why Big Tech spends $1.15 per $1 of cash, and why none of them wants to blink first.
So Buy, Sell Or Hold CoreWeave Stock At $49?
Here’s the plain answer: the AI trade sold off, and CoreWeave, as one of the most borrowed-against stocks in it, fell hard. A December rate hike, which futures now lean toward, would raise its costs more than its customers’. Tuesday stacks the inflation report and its earnings into one day. Nothing in the price tells you which way the print goes.
Which brings us back to the question we promised: how much of a stock that has fallen 76% once can you hold through the next fall? To get back to its record from Monday’s close, CoreWeave would have to gain 275%.
“Lose 50% and you need 100% to get back to even. The best way to win is not to lose too much.” – Anonymous
What Can You Do This Week?
Hold a position that works whatever Tuesday brings. Four steps:
1. Size it from the worst drawdown, not the best month. CoreWeave fell 76% in 17 months. Assume it can do that again. If you’d accept losing 1% to 2% of your portfolio on one speculative stock, a 76% fall means the position should be no more than about 1.3% to 2.6% of the portfolio. Call that the band.
2. Commit at a price instead of buying the print. If you want in, pick the price now. One marker: $35, just below the all-time low close of $35.42 in April 2025, about 29% below Monday’s close. A limit order there commits you. A cash-secured $35 put expiring April 16, 2027 would pay about $5.13 a share at Monday’s close (midpoint of the bid and ask), or about $513 per contract against $3,500 of cash set aside. That’s the same commitment, at an effective price near $29.88 if the shares are put to you, 39% below Monday’s close. (Educational, not a recommendation: if it falls below $35 you own it, and it could keep falling.)
3. Rebalance by rule. If it doubles and the position grows past the top of the band, trim back to the band. If it falls, add only at your commitment price, never just because it’s lower.
4. Harvest if you’re under water. If you bought higher in a taxable account, selling to book the loss and waiting out the 30-day wash-sale window is a way to get something from the fall. It doesn’t work in an IRA or 401(k), and a tax adviser can tell you if it fits your case.
What it replaces: buying before the print in hope of another 19% jump, or selling Wednesday morning after a bad one.
What to watch Tuesday night: the backlog (does it grow from $104.2 billion, and how much of it is one customer); the capex guide (does $35 billion to $39 billion go up, and how is it funded); the financing cost (interest expense against operating income, and the rate on any new debt). And in the morning, whether inflation runs hot enough to firm up a December hike.
CoreWeave is down 65% from its 52-week high because it’s one of the most borrowed-against companies in the AI trade, and rates are rising against it. Its supplier, Nvidia, is down 25% and its biggest 2025 customer, Microsoft, 1.9%. Tuesday brings inflation at 8:30 am and earnings after the close. Size it to survive another 76% fall, commit at a price you choose, and watch the backlog, the capex guide and the cost of its debt.
What Should You Ask Next?
- Sitting on a CoreWeave loss? Why Sell Your AI Losers Before December 31?
- How much CoreWeave and Nvidia do you already own through your index funds? See How Much AI Do You Really Own?
- Is this correction a 2000 or a 2018? Is The Nasdaq Selloff 2000 Or 2018?
Follow this story with us: we’ll update the tables after Tuesday’s numbers and show what the print changed.
Is Your Plan Ready For A 76% Fall?
Corrections test concentration, not conviction. If you have $1 million or more invested, see how exposed your portfolio is to the AI trade in a free 15-minute call with a Trefis partner firm.
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