Shares of CoreWeave dropped 8% in after-hours trading on Thursday after the AI-focused cloud infrastructure company issued revenue guidance for the current quarter that fell short of Wall Street expectations, despite delivering strong year-over-year growth.

For the fourth quarter, CoreWeave reported a loss of 89 cents per share, wider than the 49-cent loss analysts surveyed by LSEG had projected. Revenue came in at $1.57 billion, slightly above the $1.55 billion consensus estimate. On a year-over-year basis, quarterly revenue surged 110%, underscoring continued demand for AI infrastructure services even as profitability remains under pressure.

Looking ahead, the company forecast first-quarter revenue between $1.9 billion and $2 billion. That range trails the $2.29 billion analysts had been expecting, which appeared to weigh heavily on investor sentiment. For the full year 2026, however, CoreWeave projected revenue of $12 billion to $13 billion, roughly in line with expectations of $12.09 billion.

A key constraint remains supply. CoreWeave’s infrastructure is built around advanced graphics processing units from Nvidia, and CEO Mike Intrator noted during the earnings call that chip availability continues to be tight. He said average prices for Nvidia’s H100 processors in the fourth quarter were within 10% of their levels at the start of the year, while older A100 chips actually saw price increases in 2025. Persistent supply limitations have complicated expansion efforts across the AI infrastructure sector.

By year-end, CoreWeave had 850 megawatts of active power capacity, exceeding the roughly 827 megawatts analysts had forecast. Contracted power capacity reached 3.1 gigawatts. The company now aims to exit 2026 with more than 1.7 gigawatts of active power capacity, surpassing the 1.59 gigawatts projected by Visible Alpha. Beyond that, management plans to add more than five additional gigawatts above its currently contracted footprint by 2030.

To support this aggressive expansion, CoreWeave expects capital expenditures of $30 billion to $35 billion in 2026, a dramatic increase from $10.31 billion in 2025. Intrator acknowledged that accelerating buildouts will pressure margins in the near term but emphasized that customer demand justifies the pace of investment. According to him, clients are eager to secure infrastructure as quickly as possible, even if it means the company accepts lower short-term profitability.

Intrator also highlighted a broadening demand base. While early AI infrastructure growth was largely concentrated among hyperscale cloud providers and foundation model developers, demand is now spreading across enterprise customers and sovereign entities. Governments and traditional corporations are increasingly seeking dedicated AI capacity, reflecting how artificial intelligence is becoming embedded across sectors of the global economy.

Operationally, the company said it resolved previously disclosed data center delays from November by reallocating technicians across its portfolio and leveraging third-party vendors to accelerate construction timelines. These measures allowed CoreWeave to resume building at full speed.

The company’s backlog expanded significantly, rising to $66.8 billion from $55.6 billion at the end of the third quarter. In addition, the weighted average contract duration increased to five years from four years at the end of 2024, providing greater long-term revenue visibility.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization totaled $898 million, below the $929 million consensus estimate tracked by StreetAccount. Still, management reiterated its willingness to prioritize speed and scale over short-term margin optimization.

CoreWeave went public in March of last year and reported $21.37 billion in debt as of December 31. The capital-intensive nature of AI infrastructure, particularly data centers powered by high-performance GPUs, has driven significant borrowing across the sector.

Investor sentiment around AI stocks has grown more volatile in recent weeks, particularly following announcements from Anthropic that triggered broader software-sector selling. Despite that turbulence, CoreWeave’s shares had climbed 36% year to date through Thursday’s close. By comparison, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has fallen nearly 22% over the same period, highlighting the market’s continued preference for infrastructure providers directly tied to AI compute demand.

CoreWeave counts leading AI developers such as Google and OpenAI among its customers. During the quarter, the company announced a partnership with model builder Poolside and launched a new object storage service aimed at expanding its product portfolio. It also increased its credit facility to $2.5 billion from $1.5 billion, further strengthening liquidity to fund ongoing expansion.

Although CoreWeave remains primarily a specialized cloud infrastructure provider focused on AI workloads, the introduction of storage services positions it to compete more directly with major cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services. As AI adoption continues to accelerate, the company is betting that scale, speed, and long-term contracts will outweigh short-term profitability pressures in the race to build the backbone of the AI economy.