New York, May 4, 2026, 12:01 EDT
CoreWeave climbed 5.8% to $125.89 late Monday morning, drawing the AI cloud name back into focus for investors betting on artificial intelligence infrastructure. The latest jump brings its market cap to roughly $62.7 billion.
Timing is key here. CoreWeave will release its first-quarter numbers after the bell on Thursday, May 7. For investors, this will be the first real sign of whether the company is actually converting its surge of AI cloud deals into tangible capacity and top-line growth.
The question only intensified after last week’s OpenAI jitters rattled suppliers. Oracle, CoreWeave and other stocks tied to AI slid, Reuters reported, after the Wall Street Journal flagged that OpenAI had missed both recent user and revenue goals. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, according to Reuters, had voiced internal worries about meeting future compute costs if revenue didn’t pick up. CrossCheck Management’s Todd Schoenberger described the selling as a “ripple effect across the board.” Reuters
Forbes put it plainly: OpenAI is among CoreWeave’s biggest contracted clients. According to Wells Fargo, roughly a third of CoreWeave’s contracted revenue is tied to OpenAI. So for CoreWeave investors, the stakes around OpenAI’s payments are concrete—even as the company inks new agreements with others.
Last year, OpenAI locked in a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with CoreWeave—part of that arrangement included a $350 million private placement that handed OpenAI a stake in the company, connected to CoreWeave’s IPO. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, described CoreWeave as an “important addition” to its infrastructure lineup, listing it alongside Microsoft, Oracle, and Stargate, which is backed by SoftBank. Reuters
CoreWeave posted $5.13 billion in revenue for 2025, but also booked a net loss of $1.17 billion. The figure that jumps out: a $66.8 billion revenue backlog at the end of the year, tied to signed contracts—assuming the company delivers as promised. CFO Nitin Agrawal told investors the backlog had more than quadrupled since the beginning of 2025.
Tyler Radke at Citi leaned in on the bullish calls, bumping his CoreWeave price target to $155 from $126 while holding his Buy rating, according to TipRanks. The analyst is looking for backlog growth of 35% to 40% quarter-over-quarter in Q1, fueled by aggressive outlays from hyperscalers—those tech giants pouring capital into AI infrastructure.
On Monday, Seeking Alpha analysts sketched out the scale: hyperscaler AI capex is now running between $700 billion and $725 billion. The note also flagged CoreWeave’s Q1 revenue, projected to hit about $1.96 billion, but cautioned the story for the stock turns on its ability to convert backlog, build annual recurring revenue, and push margins higher—which, they said, might not really happen for a while.
Trading among peers showed no clear direction, yet activity stayed brisk. Nebius, yet another name in AI infrastructure, jumped 10.2%. Oracle picked up 5.7%. Nvidia, on the other hand, dipped 1.0%. This kind of divergence stands out—investors seem to be favoring certain AI infrastructure bets, but not all areas of the chip-and-cloud sector are catching a bid.
CoreWeave has been working to ease concerns over its reliance on a handful of big customers. Last month, Reuters said Jane Street lined up a $6 billion commitment for CoreWeave’s cloud infrastructure and also put in $1 billion in equity. The company has added new deals, too—most notably with Anthropic and Meta, the latter expanding to $21 billion. Unlike AWS or Microsoft Azure, CoreWeave and rivals like Nebius focus on renting out high-powered AI compute, not broad, general-purpose cloud services.
There’s a catch: scaling up this much infrastructure isn’t cheap, and it’s anything but quick. For 2026, CoreWeave is looking at capital spending between $30 billion and $35 billion, which would more than double what it plans for 2025. According to Reuters, the company’s backlog hinges on hitting delivery deadlines and getting data centers running when promised. CEO Michael Intrator told Reuters the focus is to “build faster.” D.A. Davidson’s Alexander Platt put it bluntly—CoreWeave gets hit no matter what: spend too little, it’s a problem; spend too much, same story. Reuters
CoreWeave claims it’s made headway here. In its April shareholder letter, the company reported that no single customer now accounts for over 35% of its revenue backlog—a steep drop from 85% at the start of 2025. Nine out of the top 10 model providers are using CoreWeave’s cloud, the company noted. Its current reach: more than 850 megawatts of active power spread across 43 data centers, with an ambition to top 8 gigawatts by 2030.
Thursday’s hurdle is clear. CoreWeave has to prove it’s more than just OpenAI contracts, that those deals are turning into real, billable capacity, and that its debt-fueled expansion doesn’t erase the benefits. Another headline deal wouldn’t hurt, but what matters most is sharp execution.
