Nvidia's protégé CoreWeave(CRWV.US) plunges 12% after hours! Holding a "heavy sword" with a $67 billion order, but facing a "hidden arrow" in Q1 guidance

During after-hours trading on Thursday, CoreWeave (CRWV.US) stock price plummeted by 12%. The cloud infrastructure provider focused on artificial intelligence announced Q4 revenue that exceeded Wall Street expectations but failed to boost the stock price. According to the announcement, CoreWeave’s Q4 revenue increased 110% year-over-year to $1.57 billion, slightly above the market consensus of $1.55 billion. The company reported a loss of 89 cents per share, below the market expectation. As of press time, the stock dropped 9.56% after hours.

In terms of guidance, the company expects full-year 2026 revenue to be between $12 billion and $13 billion, compared to analysts’ previous forecast of $12.09 billion; it projects an adjusted operating profit of $900 million to $1.1 billion for 2026. However, the Q1 revenue guidance is $1.9 billion to $2 billion, below the market consensus of $2.29 billion.

CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator stated during an analyst call that demand for its core NVIDIA graphics chips remains strong. He noted that in Q4, the average price of NVIDIA H100 processors fluctuated within 10% of the beginning of the year, while the older A100 chips saw price increases in 2025.

The company plans to set its 2026 capital expenditure target at $30 billion to $35 billion, far exceeding the $10.31 billion spent in 2025. As of the end of last year, the company’s active power capacity was 850 MW, with contracted power reaching 3.1 GW (market expectation was about 827 MW). CoreWeave expects active power at the end of 2026 to exceed 1.7 GW (above the market expectation of 1.59 GW), and plans to add over 5 GW of capacity by 2030 based on existing contracted scale.

Intrator said, “Demand is shifting from initial focus on hyperscale cloud and foundational models to the broader economy. Enterprise demand is exploding, sovereignty sectors are emerging, and new players are entering the market to lock in the necessary infrastructure.” The company’s backlog of orders surged from $55.6 billion at the end of Q3 to $66.8 billion.

Adjusted EBITDA was $898 million, below the market expectation of $929 million. Since going public in March last year, the company’s debt reached $21.37 billion as of December 31.

Recent developments in the AI industry have raised concerns among software investors, with companies like Anthropic announcing news that led to sell-offs in related stocks. CoreWeave supports AI model developers such as Google and OpenAI, and its stock has risen 36% year-to-date as of Thursday’s close, while the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has fallen nearly 22%.

In this quarter, CoreWeave partnered with model developer Poolside and launched object storage services, increasing credit limits from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion. Although storage business will help it compete with giants like Amazon AWS, the company remains focused on specialized cloud infrastructure. Intrator wrote in a blog, “In 2025, CoreWeave became the fastest cloud platform in history to surpass $5 billion in annual revenue.”