CoreWeave CEO Downplays Higher-Than-Expected Q1 Loss — Urges Investors To ‘Look At What We’re Building’

• Intrator stated that CoreWeave remains confident in its revenue and operating margin forecasts for 2026.
• He added that investors will see an inflection point in the company’s business in the third and fourth quarters of this year.
• Intrator also stated that CoreWeave’s customers are returning for additional resources, with the neocloud provider facing a wall of demand.

CoreWeave Inc. (CRWV) CEO Michael Intrator on Friday downplayed concerns around the company’s higher-than-expected loss in the first quarter.

During an interview with CNBC, Intrator highlighted that the higher first-quarter (Q1) loss was largely due to the company's growth rate.

“I think it’s important when you’re looking at our financial statements to kinda make sure that you’re not over-indexing to any one particular number and you’re looking at what we’re building,” he said.

Intrator added that the loss was largely driven by a Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) tax impact, not by weakness in the core business, which continues to grow and scale.

“It is not a function of the unit-level economics that you’re seeing as we continue to build and scale the business, and the leverage that you’re going to see that you didn’t see this quarter has a lot to do with the rate at which we’re growing,” he said.

CoreWeave shares were down nearly 11% in Friday morning’s trade.

Intrator Says CRWV Business Continues To Grow

Intrator added that the Q1 loss was largely driven by a Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) tax impact, not by weakness in the core business, which continues to grow and scale.

“It is not a function of the unit-level economics that you’re seeing as we continue to build and scale the business, and the leverage that you’re going to see that you didn’t see this quarter has a lot to do with the rate at which we’re growing,” he said.

Intrator stated that CoreWeave remains confident in its revenue and operating margin forecasts for 2026.

“There is no part of this that surprised us. We understand the physical ramp associated with bringing compute to the market,” he said, while adding that investors will see an inflection point in the company’s business in the third and fourth quarters of this year.

CRWV Customers Coming Back For More, Says Intrator

Intrator added that CoreWeave’s customers are returning for additional resources, with the neocloud provider facing a wall of demand.

“They’re talking about this incredible demand that we’re seeing… we’re getting hit by this wall of demand from our existing customers that are coming back to us and saying, ‘You got the best product, we need more.’ That’s incredibly powerful,” he said.

Intrator also stated that new silos of demand are emerging from firms in the financial services industry and from high-frequency trading firms.

CRWV’s Q1 Loss More Than Doubles Year-On-Year

CoreWeave reported a loss of $1.4 per share in Q1 on revenue of $2.08 billion, compared to Wall Street estimates of a loss of $0.91 per share on revenue of $1.98 billion, according to Fiscal.ai data.

The company’s net loss during the quarter was $740 million, more than doubling from $315 million in the year-ago period.

CoreWeave signed a new $21 billion commitment with Meta Platforms Inc. (META) in March this year, along with a multi-year agreement with Anthropic to support the development and deployment of the Claude family of AI models.

How Did Retail Traders React To CRWV?

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits around CoreWeave trended in the ‘extremely bullish’ territory with message volumes at ‘extremely high’ levels.

One user believes the sell-off in CoreWeave is due to the market misreading the company’s results.

CRWV stock is up 68% year-to-date and 118% over the past 12 months. The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (VTI) is up 30% over the past 12 months, while the Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund ETF (VO) is up 18%.

Also See: FLNC Stock Jumps Again As Hyperscaler Agreements Fuel Bullish Calls — Why Analysts Think The Rally Isn’t Over

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.