Investors — and Elon Musk — crashed CoreWeave stock. But many analysts don't see the problem. Hamza Shaban · Senior Reporter Fri, October 16, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT 3 min read CRWV +5.94% NVDA -1.84% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
It's been a rough few days for CoreWeave (CRWV) investors. Shares of the neocloud provider plummeted 15% on Wednesday and are down around 25% in the past week and a half.
The sell-off was ostensibly fueled by a widely circulated chart that illustrated rising borrowing costs, which was amplified by Elon Musk on X with a one-word damning response: "yikes."
The reaction was so intense that CEO Mike Intrator sent an internal memo to staff saying that the market was acting "irrationally."
The metaphorical Fed chair of AI financing, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, also spoke up in CoreWeave's defense, highlighting his own entangled interests with a partner company and the urgency within the industry to keep sentiment bullish on the AI build-out.
Go deeper with AlphaSpace 69.69 +3.91 (+5.94%) At close: October 15 at 4:00:01 PM EDT 66.95 -2.74 (-3.93%) Pre-Market: 6:45:25 AM EDT But even as many investors are fleeing, multiple big-name Wall Street analysts don't see alarm bells — and agree with Intrator. Bank of America analysts — who, let's remember, are held to a high standard of objectivity — reiterated their Buy rating and a price target of $140 on Thursday, more than double the share price of current trading.
Analyst Tal Liani wrote in a note on Thursday that CoreWeave's track record gives confidence. "We believe CoreWeave's greatest competitive advantage is its ability to bring active power online at scale," he said, adding that the company's risks are controlled in multiple ways.
Rather than build data centers, CoreWeave primarily leases data center capacity "from a diversified set of third-party developers," Liani wrote. The company signs both sides of its deals between infrastructure providers and customers simultaneously and uses up-front cash and the reputations of blue-chip customers to reduce borrowing risk.
The structure of contracts also supports predictable financing and a clearer view of its bookings, Liani wrote. While other neocloud companies use shorter-term contracts for higher prices, CoreWeave primarily sells capacity through five-year contracts to large hyperscalers and AI labs. That locks in a lower cost of capital, Liani said, and provides a high degree of revenue visibility.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank are also clinging to an optimistic view of CoreWeave, expressing confusion and surprise at the investor panic. Brad Zelnick wrote in a note on Thursday that the sell-off presents a buying opportunity.
"We struggle to find company specific factors that justify the recent move, and the fundamental market backdrop for AI infrastructure remains quite supportive based on the signals we see," he said.
If the selling really is a collective unease over AI financing, a sentiment shift instead of a fundamental roadblock, Zelnick said CoreWeave is actually scaling rather responsibly.
"The inability of peers to execute and/or finance their growth ambitions would also arguably support our view of CoreWeave's differentiated track record and positioning," he wrote.
The commentary in support of CoreWeave echoes the message of its CEO, who, reacting to the company's bonds falling to levels that typically indicate distress, said that CoreWeave's deal backlog is large enough to more than support its debt obligations.
But the optimism isn't universally shared. Despite Huang's message of solidarity and arguments that CoreWave is better positioned than others, some analysts are embracing the strong, negative market signal.
"In our view, the company's long-term business model remains economically challenged; we maintain our Underperform," Bernstein analyst Madison Rezaei said in a note Thursday.
Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on X @hshaban.
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