New York, January 28, 2026, 18:53 EST — After-hours
- CoreWeave closed down 2.6% after a sharp intraday swing, with investors still parsing Nvidia’s new equity stake.
- A regulatory filing showed Nvidia’s ownership rising to 11.5% following the $2 billion purchase.
- HSBC trimmed its price target and pointed to higher borrowing costs and fresh funding needs.
CoreWeave (CRWV) shares fell 2.6% to close at $106.02 on Wednesday and were last near that level in after-hours trading, after ranging from $102.84 to $114.50.
The pullback comes two days after Nvidia disclosed a $2 billion investment in the AI cloud firm, a deal that pushed CoreWeave shares up about 9% in premarket trading on Monday. The tie-up matters because investors have turned unusually sensitive to who is funding the U.S. AI data-center buildout — and on what terms. 1
Nvidia’s stake also got clearer. A Schedule 13G/A filing showed Nvidia beneficially owned 47.2 million CoreWeave shares, representing 11.5% of the class. 2
CoreWeave disclosed in an 8-K that it issued 22,935,780 Class A shares to Nvidia in a private placement at $87.20 per share for $2 billion in cash. 3
The companies’ joint statement framed the partnership as an effort to speed construction of “AI factories” — specialized data centers packed with AI chips — targeting more than 5 gigawatts of capacity by 2030. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called it “the largest infrastructure buildout,” while CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said AI works best when “software, infrastructure, and operations are designed together.” 4
Intrator added more color this week in Davos, saying capacity decisions are tied to contracted demand and that the company watches “inference” — when an AI model is being used in production — as a demand signal. “I’m not buying GPUs until Microsoft or Meta or Nvidia … comes and signs a contract with me,” he said. 5
Still, the stock remains pinned to financing questions. HSBC analyst Abhishek Shukla lowered his price target to $41 from $44 and kept a Reduce rating, citing higher interest costs; “CoreWeave still faces a liquidity shortfall of USD9.8bn in 2026e,” he wrote. (A basis point is 0.01 percentage point; CDS are insurance-like contracts that traders use as a gauge of default risk.) 6
Nvidia shares rose 1.6% on Wednesday, underscoring that the market is still rewarding the chipmaker even as some investors stay cautious on the balance sheets of GPU-hungry infrastructure players.
But the downside case for CoreWeave is straightforward: if debt markets demand higher yields, the cost of funding new capacity rises quickly, and any gap between buildout timing and signed customer demand can show up in cash burn. HSBC’s note argued the company may need to borrow again at higher rates despite the Nvidia equity injection. 7
Next up, traders will be watching Nvidia’s results and commentary for clues on AI infrastructure demand and spending: Nvidia set a conference call for February 25 at 5 p.m. ET. 8
