Plummeted ~12%! CoreWeave—bought at the bottom by Duan Yongping—is turning into a battleground for bulls and bears.
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Plummeted ~12%! CoreWeave—bought at the bottom by Duan Yongping—is turning into a battleground for bulls and bears.
CoreWeave is one of the most polarizing AI assets in the U.S. stock market today.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow
On May 8, AI cloud computing infrastructure provider CoreWeave (CRWV) plunged 11.4% in a single day, closing at $114.15. This marks another “earnings-day decline” since the company’s IPO in March last year. Yet this time, the drop comes with a sharper irony: Duan Yongping—a figure widely known in Chinese-speaking circles as a protégé of Warren Buffett—initiated his first position in CoreWeave during Q4 2025, investing approximately $20 million. Based on the position size and the quarter’s average share price, his entry point likely coincided with CoreWeave’s annual low range in December 2025.
CoreWeave is currently one of the most polarizing AI assets listed on U.S. exchanges. On one side lies nearly $100 billion in order backlog and a “pick-and-shovel” narrative deeply intertwined with NVIDIA; on the other, a financial reality where scaling up has only widened losses—and ongoing insider selling. The Q1 earnings report acts like a prism, refracting this divergence with exceptional clarity.
Q1 Earnings: Revenue Doubles, but Losses Widen; Q2 Guidance Pierces Valuation
CoreWeave reported Q1 revenue of $2.08 billion, up 112% year-on-year and 32% quarter-on-quarter—exceeding LSEG’s consensus estimate of $1.97 billion. However, adjusted EPS loss came in at $1.12, worse than the expected loss of $0.90; net loss ballooned to $740 million, more than double the $315 million loss recorded in the same period last year.
What truly triggered the sell-off was forward guidance. The company projected Q2 revenue between $2.45 billion and $2.6 billion, with a midpoint of $2.53 billion—well below the market’s expectation of $2.69 billion. Meanwhile, its 2026 full-year capital expenditure (capex) floor was raised from $30 billion to $31 billion, with CFO Nitin Agrawal attributing the increase to rising component costs.
The fragility of its profit structure was laid bare. Adjusted EBITDA reached $1.16 billion (a 56% margin), appearing impressive on the surface; yet adjusted operating profit stood at just $21 million, squeezing operating margin down to 1%. The reason? Technology and infrastructure costs surged 127% year-on-year to $1.27 billion, while sales and marketing expenses skyrocketed over sixfold to $69 million. Revenue rose—but costs rose faster.
CEO Michael Intrator emphasized on the earnings call: “We have achieved hyperscale.” He disclosed that CoreWeave now counts 10 customers each committed to spending over $1 billion—significantly improving concentration risk compared to the 62% of 2024 revenue derived from Microsoft alone. Intrator also forecast that CoreWeave’s annualized revenue will exceed $30 billion by end-2027.
Bull Narrative: $100 Billion Order Backlog, Deep Ties with NVIDIA
The cornerstone of the bull case is order backlog. As of the end of Q1, CoreWeave’s remaining performance obligations (RPO) totaled $99.4 billion—up $33 billion sequentially and nearly quadrupling year-on-year. Intrator stated that new contracts signed in Q1 alone exceeded $40 billion.
The customer roster is likewise reshaping market perception. Anthropic joined as a new client in Q1, relying on CoreWeave for compute power supporting its Claude series models; Meta inked a $2.1 billion AI cloud agreement; trading firm Jane Street committed to roughly $6 billion in orders and separately completed a $1 billion equity investment. NVIDIA purchased an additional $2 billion in Class A common stock from CoreWeave this quarter—making the world’s largest GPU supplier simultaneously CoreWeave’s investor, key customer, and strategic partner, earning it the moniker “NVIDIA’s favorite son.”
In terms of financing structure, CoreWeave secured an $8.5 billion investment-grade HPC (high-performance computing) guaranteed delayed-draw term loan (DDTL) in Q1, priced below 6%, which management dubbed “industry-first.” Year-to-date, the company has raised over $20 billion in debt and equity financing, with its weighted-average cost of debt falling by approximately 80 basis points. S&P Global Ratings concurrently upgraded CoreWeave’s credit outlook from “Stable” to “Positive.”
Bear Logic: Bigger Scale, Lower Profitability; Debt Snowball Grows Larger
Yet another set of figures in the earnings report is fueling anxiety. Q1 capex totaled $6.8 billion, and the company expects Q2 capex to climb further to $7–9 billion. Its Q2 interest expense guidance ranges from $650 million to $730 million—reflecting rapidly expanding debt.
Total debt has already reached staggering levels. As of Q1-end, CoreWeave’s total debt stood at approximately $25 billion. Relative to its current annualized revenue scale, its leverage ratio significantly exceeds those of traditional cloud service providers. Morgan Stanley data shows CoreWeave raised about $11.8 billion in debt financing in 2025—far surpassing its ~$1.5 billion in equity financing during the same period. Its core expansion tool is DDTL—essentially a “sign contract first, finance later” model, using signed contracts as collateral to borrow from banks for GPU procurement.
The sharpest criticism targets profit quality. Though management repeatedly highlights the 56% EBITDA margin, adjusted operating margin stands at just 1%; gross margin—after deducting technology and infrastructure costs—stands at roughly 4%, contracting both sequentially and relative to market expectations. Intrator attributed this to the transitional effect of rapid scale-up: when the company expanded dramatically from a 1-gigawatt operational footprint, the dilutive impact of new capacity on margins was substantial. He pledged this represents the “low point” for margins, with gradual improvement expected in coming quarters.
But markets are currently unwilling to pay for that promise. While analysts from Morgan Stanley and Jefferies issued positive commentary, CoreWeave has experienced short-term pullbacks following each prior earnings release—and this time’s decline is the deepest yet.
Insiders Keep Selling—Mirroring Duan Yongping’s Contrarian Entry
Insider selling continued around the earnings release. CEO Mike Intrator sold 307,693 shares at the end of April; co-founders Brian Venturo and Chen Goldberg also executed sales; institutional shareholder Magnetar Financial had previously offloaded over $300 million. Most recently, a major shareholder sold approximately 1.2 million shares.
This stands in stark contrast to Duan Yongping’s Q4 2025 entry. According to H&H International Investment’s 13F filing disclosed in February 2026, Duan initiated a first position in CoreWeave—299,900 shares—in Q4 2025, when the stock had retreated over 65% from its peak and market concerns about its debt structure were at their zenith.
Notably, CoreWeave accounts for only 0.12% of Duan’s total H&H portfolio—a “light, exploratory” position. In the same period, Duan increased his stake in NVIDIA by over 1,110%, and newly established positions in Credo Technology (high-speed interconnect) and Tempus AI (AI-driven healthcare)—with these three AI-related positions collectively representing less than 0.3% of his portfolio. This suggests Duan’s primary bet remains squarely on NVIDIA itself, while CoreWeave serves more as a small, downstream extension into the AI compute value chain.
The Critical Question Today: Inflection Point—or Trap?
In the Q&A portion of the earnings call, Intrator posed an emotionally charged rhetorical question: “I’ve always felt everyone is fixated on the tree—the stock price—and missing the entire forest.”
This line perfectly encapsulates the current bull-bear standoff. Bulls see the forest: nearly $100 billion in contract backlog, diversified customer base, triple-layered alignment with NVIDIA, and an upgraded credit rating. Bears see the tree: a 1% operating margin, widening net losses, aggressive capex, and relentless insider selling.
CoreWeave’s stock remains up nearly 80% year-to-date and over 200% since its IPO. But when bulls base their thesis on long-term narratives while bears anchor theirs in current financials, every earnings report becomes a battlefield for competing stories. In a prior interview with Fang Sanwen, Duan observed: “AI is a massive revolution driven by a qualitative leap in computing power—its impact may surpass both the internet and industrial revolutions. Today’s AI bubble is evident; perhaps 90% of companies will perish, yet survivors will become the next generation of giants.” His 0.12% position itself acknowledges the uncertainty inherent in this wager.
The next test is already clear: the Q2 earnings report. If operating margin fails to rebound as management promised, the credibility of the “forest” narrative will face its true stress test.
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