Cathie Wood Doubles Down on CoreWeave Stock Despite Wall Street Caution

People listen when Cathie Wood, who made a name on making risky bets on new technologies, makes a purchase of a stock on dip. Friday, she picked up 120,229 shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) through ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), putting her confidence in a firm in the middle of the AI infrastructure.

However, when Wood goes long, Wall Street is watching cautiously the cloud computing new kid on the block, so investors have a dilemma: is CoreWeave a deep value investment or a pointless gamble?

CoreWeave Rise and Shock

CoreWeave had a hectic story this year. The GPU-accelerated cloud business with an increased focus on AI, machine learning, graphics, and blockchain has experienced enormous revenue growth because the company specializes in these fields.

By Q2 2025, revenue increased 207% year-over-year to $1.2 billion, a display of the hyperscale partner demand in Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. It has grown roughly 150% since its IPO at 40 a share, peaking at 187 in the last 12 months, but recent turbulence sank the price more than 3 % following the Q2 report. 

The decline was not only driven by typical earnings miss as CoreWeave lost -0.27 per share, compared to the -0.23E negotiated by analysts, but also by increased investor panic as the IPO lock-up evaporated, releasing untold millions of insider liquidity activity, including more than $1 billion insider stock transactions.

In 2020, CoreWeave established a business renting Nvidia’s graphics processing units in the cloud. Now the company is generating $2 billion in annual revenue and just raised $1.5 billion in the biggest U.S. venture backed tech IPO since 2021. The company managed to lower its cost of capital as it continued to scale, notably refinancing and extending debt facilities with leading groups such as Blackstone and Magnetar. The company’s access to cheaper capital during this period helped fuel its rapid growth and allowed for major investment into its AI data center infrastructure.

Relations with Big Tech were deepened further around 2020 and beyond, including key strategic alliances with NVIDIA and Microsoft as foundational customers and partners. These partnerships were instrumental for CoreWeave’s ability to scale and compete in the AI infrastructure market.

However, this aggressive expansion and capital raising strategy led to increased leverage and large capital expenditures (capex). As highlighted by industry analysts and investor commentary, CoreWeave’s growth came at the cost of higher debt loads, substantial upfront investments in hardware and facilities, and persistent questions around its long-term profitability and financial risk profile.

Contrary Play by Cathie Wood

The move by Cathie Wood to dip buy at the point when everyone was dashing to safety also characterizes her belief in disruptive innovation and long-term strategy. ARKW aggressively entered this busy gold rush to the middle of the AI sector with CoreWeave being based in the center.

Her acquisition is one of many efforts in a $27 million bet in the technology world as it needed GPU cloud infrastructure. The biggest vote of confidence came in the doubling down from key chip supplier Nvidia, which tripled its stake to $3.96 billion by June 30, 2025.

Wall Street Sentiment and Analyst

However, there is a divided opinion among Wall Street analysts irrespective of these headline investments. Currently, CoreWeave is rated at a ‘Hold’ by 16 analysts and 6 of them are a ‘Buy’ whereas 2 are a ‘Sell’ with an average price target of $115.29 being 15.32 % away in a positive direction.

After CoreWeave reported Q2, Bank of America Securities analyst Bradley Sills reduced his price target to $168, down from $185. Sills complained of unimpressive backlog growth (minus the OpenAI deal), and uncertainty regarding the upcoming but still-regulated acquisition of Core Scientific (CORZ) which is viewed as a potential stock overhang.

A Hold rating was also put in place by Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss with a price target of $91 and called CoreWeave a top-line scaling function due to large contracts with OpenAI and Microsoft but stated that there is high risk of customer concentration. The bearish technical bias is also found marginally more widely across the analyst pool: 5 bulls, 3 holders and 10 bears, with moving averages indicating caution.

Bulls and Bears

Bulls Say:

• CoreWeave is quickening its collaboration with Microsoft and Google- this is placing it in a long-term growth perspective.
• The revenue is skyrocketing, which shows staggering demand in the AI field.
• There has been an enhancement of financial flexibility as evidenced by recent, large debt finance at low costs.

Bears Say:

• The near-term uncertainty and risk are associated with CORZ acquisition and high debt.
• Interest expense is high and puts a strain on cash flows and profitability.
• Capex and backlog growth is delayed compared with revenue growth casting doubt on sustainable margins.

The IPO lock-up period ended, opening the gates to a deluge of stock onto the market and frightening investors, increasing volatility.

Looking Forward

The following critical test will go through CoreWeave when it releases its earnings on November 12, 2025. Until that time, there will be volatility as Wall Street deliberates between high leverage, regulatory concerns, and integration challenges against market momentum and adoption of AI.

What is clear is that CoreWeave is in an unusual place: In the middle of the infrastructure boom of AI and under review due to such rapid growth. What Cathie Wood wagered may turn out to have been prophetic should the AI wave not conclude and should CoreWeave be able to counter those short-term distractions. This represents an opportunity and a risk to nimble investors – sentiment is likely to be halved until there is more clarity surrounding profitability and strategic implementation.