Shares of CoreWeave, Inc. (CRWV.US) plummeted as much as 12% in Thursday's after-hours trading. The artificial intelligence-focused cloud infrastructure provider reported fourth-quarter revenue that surpassed Wall Street expectations, but this failed to support the stock price. According to the announcement, CoreWeave's Q4 revenue grew 110% year-over-year to $1.57 billion, slightly exceeding the average market estimate of $1.55 billion. However, the company reported a loss per share of $0.89, which was worse than market expectations. At the time of writing, the stock was down 9.56% in extended trading.
Regarding financial guidance, the company projected full-year 2026 revenue to be between $12 billion and $13 billion, compared to a prior analyst consensus of $12.09 billion. It expects adjusted operating profit for 2026 to be in the range of $900 million to $1.1 billion. However, the first-quarter revenue guidance of $1.9 billion to $2.0 billion fell short of the market consensus estimate of $2.29 billion.
CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator stated on an analyst call that its core service, NVIDIA graphics chips, remains in short supply. He noted that the average price for NVIDIA's H100 processors in the fourth quarter fluctuated within 10% compared to the beginning of the year, while prices for the older A100 chips increased in 2025. The company plans to set its 2026 capital expenditure target between $30 billion and $35 billion, significantly higher than the $10.31 billion in 2025.
As of the end of last year, the company's active power capacity was 850 megawatts, with contracted power reaching 3.1 gigawatts, compared to market expectations of approximately 827 megawatts of active capacity. CoreWeave anticipates active power capacity will exceed 1.7 gigawatts by the end of 2026, higher than the market expectation of 1.59 gigawatts, and plans to add more than 5 gigawatts beyond its current contracted capacity by 2030.
Intrator stated, "Demand is expanding from its initial concentration in hyperscale cloud and foundational model sectors to the entire economy. We are now seeing explosive growth in enterprise-level demand, the emergence of sovereign demand, and new entrants securing the necessary infrastructure." The company's revenue backlog surged to $66.8 billion from $55.6 billion at the end of the third quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA was $898 million, below the market expectation of $929 million. The company's debt reached $21.37 billion as of December 31, following its initial public offering last March. Recent developments in the AI industry have raised concerns among software investors, with announcements from companies like Anthropic leading to sell-offs in related stocks.
CoreWeave provides support for AI model developers such as Google and OpenAI. Its stock had gained 36% year-to-date as of Thursday's close, while the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF had fallen nearly 22% over the same period. This quarter, CoreWeave partnered with model developer Poolside and launched an object storage service, increasing its credit facility from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion. Although the storage business will help it compete with giants like Amazon AWS, the company remains focused on the specialized cloud infrastructure sector. Intrator wrote in a blog post, "In 2025, CoreWeave became the fastest cloud platform in history to exceed $5 billion in annual revenue."
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