This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) is entering Thursday’s earnings report with a powerful AI demand story behind it, but investors now want proof that the company can turn that demand into execution. The Livingston, New Jersey-based neo-cloud provider rents access to AI infrastructure built around the latest Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) chips, putting it directly in the path of rising compute needs from major AI spenders. Recent results from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Meta (NASDAQ:META) reinforced the idea that demand for computing power remains strong as capital expenditures continue to rise. Tejas Dessai, director of thematic research at Global X ETFs, said there is an insane amount of demand for AI compute and described the backdrop for CoreWeave as extremely positive. Investors will be watching revenue acceleration, the company’s outlook for the rest of the year and its backlog heading into 2027.
The rally has already been dramatic. CoreWeave shares are up 84% this year and 229% since the company went public in March 2025, with the latest move fueled by renewed confidence in the AI trade and a quick series of deals with Meta, Anthropic and Jane Street Group. The shares fell 3.7% in early Thursday trading after rising 7.9% on Wednesday, underscoring how much pressure is sitting on this report. Bloomberg tracks 36 analysts covering CoreWeave, with 23 buy ratings and only two sell ratings, although the average 12-month price target of $131 is below where the shares closed Wednesday. Wall Street expects first-quarter revenue of nearly $2 billion, roughly double the year-earlier figure, and a loss of $1.20 per share, improving from a loss of $1.49 per share in the first quarter of 2025. CoreWeave’s revenue backlog was nearly $67 billion as of Dec. 31, and recent deals could lift its remaining performance obligations significantly.
The risk is that investors may punish any sign that spending is running too far ahead of revenue scale. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana wrote that CoreWeave’s first-quarter results will likely echo strength at Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google as AI-compute demand rises, while seeing a high likelihood that management raises both 2026 sales and capital expenditure targets after recent financing deals. That could support the growth case, but it also keeps attention on margins, debt and how much active computing capacity CoreWeave brought online during the quarter. The company is expected to post a first-quarter gross margin of about 67%, and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) analysts led by Tal Liani raised their price target to $140 from $120 while saying sustained margin expansion remains necessary for further upside. The shares have sold off after every report since CoreWeave’s IPO, including a 19% drop in February after the company said capital expenditures would be higher than expected, though they have recovered quickly from those downturns. Paul Meeks, head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets, remains bullish and generally encouraged by the spending plans, but said the key question is how many megawatts CoreWeave had on Dec. 31, 2025, versus how many active megawatts it had on March 31, 2026.
