CoreWeave Stock Slides After Huang’s Cheaper-Money Claim

CoreWeave stock closed at $61.39 on Friday, Oct. 16, down 11.91%, after Jensen Huang said its cost of capital was falling. Default insurance still printed a record 1,194.5 basis points on Thursday, a level that prices more than a 60% chance CoreWeave defaults within five years.

The Nvidia chief’s Thursday rebound lasted one session. From the Oct. 9 close of $82.08, the shares were down 25.21% for the week ended Oct. 16.

Huang Told Markets the Money Was Getting Cheaper

Huang spoke to Bloomberg at an event in Stockholm on Thursday, Oct. 15, after CoreWeave had just suffered its sharpest drop since February. He was asked about the selloff in a company that is both a large Nvidia chip customer and, at about 10%, Nvidia’s second-largest CoreWeave holder.

CoreWeave’s strength is improving every day. I’m optimistic. Their cost of capital is actually decreasing.

Jensen Huang, chief executive, Nvidia, Bloomberg event in Stockholm

He added that he did not see a need for Nvidia to backstop CoreWeave. Shares that had traded as low as $59.51 on Thursday, the 52-week low, closed at $69.69, up 5.94%.

Huang is not a referee. Nvidia owned about 47.2 million CoreWeave shares as of June 30, bought another $2 billion of stock in January at $87.20 a share, and already has a residual-capacity purchase that runs through April 13, 2032. The Stockholm comments were a supplier-shareholder talking about a customer it needs to keep buying chips.

Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner, who said his firm no longer holds the stock, still called Mike Intrator’s team one of the best in the business and said “90% of the stuff that I read out there is misinformation with respect to CoreWeave.” Friday’s tape did not take that briefing.

Credit’s 60% Default Odds

ICE Data Services put CoreWeave’s five-year credit default swaps at an all-time intraday high of 1,194.5 basis points on Thursday, up as much as 74.5 basis points. At that spread, standard pricing implies more than a 60% chance of default within five years. Gavan Nolan, executive director of fixed income pricing at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said a spread of 1,000 basis points or more is generally a sign of credit distress.

The 9.75% notes due 2031 yielded 15.78% to maturity on Thursday. Unsecured notes due 2032, issued with a 9.625% coupon, traded below 80 cents on the dollar, a zone credit desks treat as distressed. CoreWeave is not suddenly writing 15% checks on that whole book. Those coupons are still 9.75% and 9.625%. The 15.78% is what a buyer demanded in the secondary market, which is the rate that greets the next unsecured issue.

The Evercore ISI trading desk put the message in one line: the market is “basically saying ‘no mas’ to AI debt without operating cash flow support.” Nolan said demand is not the dispute, because CoreWeave has contracts with the large cloud buyers. “It’s obviously heavily negative free cash flow at the moment, and it needs that cash flow to arrive really to justify all the capex that it’s spending,” he said.

THE WEEK ENDED OCT. 16

Friday’s range was $59.90 to $66.69. After hours the stock last printed $60.97. The 52-week high remains $141.79, set on Oct. 28, 2025, which puts Friday’s close 56.7% below that peak.

Why the Backlog Does Not Pay This Year’s Interest

Chief executive Mike Intrator tried to freeze the narrative on Wednesday, Oct. 14, in a staff memo written as the stock fell 15.46% to $65.78 and the 2032 bonds slid through 80 cents.

When you are building a new type of technology company there will be periods of time when the market misunderstands and acts irrationally. We are confident in our backlog which more than supports all of our debt obligations.

Mike Intrator, chief executive, CoreWeave, staff memo

He also said delays and messy financings at rival AI infrastructure firms were “bleeding into the narrative around CoreWeave.” The contracted pile is large. As of June 30 the company reported a revenue backlog of $104.2 billion, up from $99.4 billion in the first quarter, and it later said it added more than $25 billion of net new customer commitments early in the third quarter. A Deutsche Bank note said about two-thirds of the backlog sits with investment-grade names, including Microsoft, Meta, IBM, and Caterpillar.

Backlog is not cash. The second-quarter 10-Q for the period ended June 30 shows how much of the build is already on the books. Recourse and non-recourse debt totaled $35.1 billion. Operating-lease liabilities added $16.3 billion. Together that is about $51.4 billion of claims, against $5.5 billion of cash and $46.7 billion of property and equipment.

Q2 2026, THREE MONTHS ENDED JUNE 30

• Revenue: $2.575 billion, up 112% from $1.212 billion a year earlier.
• Net loss: $626 million, or $1.14 a share, versus $290 million, or $0.60.
• Interest bill: net interest expense of $640 million, up from $267 million, more than double.
• Cash flow split: $3.66 billion provided by operations in the first half, $14.87 billion used in investing, $16.75 billion of new debt proceeds.

Adjusted EBITDA was $1.51 billion, a 59% margin, while adjusted operating income was $128 million, a 5% margin, down from 16% a year earlier. The GAAP operating line flipped to a $49 million loss from $19 million of income. Capital spending in the quarter was $6.422 billion. Full-year 2026 capex is guided at $35 billion to $39 billion, against full-year revenue of $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion and third-quarter revenue of $3.4 billion to $3.6 billion.

Active power reached 1.5 gigawatts at quarter end after nearly 500 megawatts were added. Contracted power was about 3.7 gigawatts on June 30 and about 4.2 gigawatts of contracted power as of the Aug. 11 earnings call, with a long-range target of at least 8 gigawatts by 2030. The India plan announced Oct. 7, a 240-megawatt campus in Navi Mumbai with AdaniConneX, is more of that same spend-first model.

Nvidia Already Stands in Three Places at Once

The Stockholm line that Nvidia does not need to backstop CoreWeave sits next to a backstop Nvidia already signed. In September 2025 the two companies filed an order with an initial value of $6.3 billion under which, if CoreWeave’s own customers do not fill qualifying capacity, Nvidia is obligated to buy the residual unsold capacity through April 13, 2032, subject to delivery and termination terms.

NVIDIA’S THREE TIES TO COREWEAVE

• Shareholder: About 47.2 million shares, roughly a 10% stake, plus the January 2026 purchase of $2 billion of Class A stock at $87.20.
• Supplier: CoreWeave fills halls with Nvidia GPUs and rents that compute to labs and enterprises, so chip orders and CoreWeave’s funding capacity move together.
• Residual buyer: The $6.3 billion order form covers unsold qualifying capacity through April 13, 2032, which is a utilization floor, not a guarantee of CoreWeave’s unsecured bonds.

That last distinction is the one the swap market is making. A chipmaker that will take leftover cloud hours is not the same as a guarantor of $35.1 billion of debt. Huang can say no new backstop is required because one already exists for unsold compute, and the CDS market can still ask who pays if the cash never arrives to service the notes.

Cantor Fitzgerald’s $176 Case

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brett Knoblauch kept an Overweight rating and a $176 price target on Friday and told clients to buy the dip. Against the $61.39 close, that target is 2.9 times the last print. He argued the 15% yield scare is about funding the build, not about demand, and that nearly all 2027 capacity is already sold, with Nvidia covering what is not.

Knoblauch’s unit-economics math is the bull case in one paragraph. He put revenue per megawatt at about $20 million, up from $10 million to $11 million around the March 2025 listing, and deal contribution margins at 25% to 30%, up from about 15%. On that path, he said, chip payback shortens to 2 to 2.5 years from four, and asset-backed loans can be repaid from the boxes they buy. He called a lot of the week’s criticism “a lot of fearmongering” and “one of the most attractive times to add to or enter.”

CoreWeave’s own September update sits in the same direction. After June 30 the company said it had signed short contracts near $40 million per megawatt for three- to six-month deals, calculated as annualized revenue divided by the power those clusters need. That figure is a different product and tenor than Knoblauch’s $20 million run-rate, so it is not a replacement print, but it is the company saying new capacity is still clearing at higher prices.

WHERE THE $176 CAMP MEETS THE BOND DESK

• Cantor Fitzgerald: Brett Knoblauch holds Overweight and $176, pointing to sold 2027 capacity, Nvidia’s residual order, and faster chip payback.
• Mizuho: Gregg Moskowitz cut his target on Oct. 15 to $88 from $115 and kept Neutral, leaving a much thinner cushion over $61.39.
• S&P’s Nolan / Evercore ISI: Demand is not the hole; cash flow and the next dollar of AI debt are, and a 1,000-basis-point CDS print is distress.

Deutsche Bank reiterated a buy during the slide and treated the dislocation as an opening. JPMorgan’s Samik Chatterjee called the selloff overdone. Those equity notes and the 15.78% bond are describing the same firm with different clocks. Equity is underwriting the $104.2 billion. Credit is underwriting the years of negative free cash flow required to earn it.

New Borrowing Is Where 15% Yields Bite

The coupon on the 2031s does not reset when the notes trade at 15.78%. The pain shows up when CoreWeave has to raise the next slice of the $35 billion to $39 billion 2026 capex plan, refinance paper, or roll private-credit GPU facilities in a market that has just labeled the unsecured curve distressed. First-half 2026 already brought $16.75 billion of debt proceeds and $5.22 billion of repayments. That treadmill does not pause because Huang is optimistic.

Interest is already the swing line. Net interest of $640 million in a $2.575 billion revenue quarter is a 25% haircut before tax, depreciation, and the next hall of chips. If even part of the next raise prices near the distressed unsecured curve, the interest line grows faster than the adjusted operating-income guide of $960 million to $1.15 billion for the full year.

That is the bind the buy-the-dip note has to beat. Sold-out 2027 capacity and $40 million-a-megawatt short deals support the claim that the product still clears. They do not, by themselves, fund a $14.87 billion first-half investing outflow. Intrator’s $104.2 billion backlog can cover the debts only if customers take the power, pay on time, and the company can still borrow at a spread that leaves something for equity after $640 million quarters of interest.

Friday chose the credit print over the Stockholm quote. CoreWeave goes into the next earnings date, expected in mid-November, with the stock 25.21% lower for the week ended Oct. 16, default insurance at a record, and a $176 target that now needs the backlog to turn into cash before the bond market sets the terms for the next GPU hall.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of CoreWeave’s share price, bonds, and credit default swaps, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell CRWV or any related security, or a forecast of default, recovery, or future returns. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or investment professional who can review their own holdings, time horizon, and risk limits before acting. Figures for prices, yields, swap spreads, backlog, and debt are taken from the cited company filings, exchange data, and market prints as of the dates named above and can change with the next session or the next report.