CoreWeave Earnings Beat and Raised Guidance Trigger a $1.2 Trillion AI Stock Rally

CoreWeave reported third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion, up 168% year over year and above Wall Street estimates of roughly $3.55 billion, then raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to $13.3 billion. The results, delivered days after an AI selloff had pushed CoreWeave shares to a 52-week low, sent the stock surging as much as 25% on the day and triggered the broadest rally in AI-related equities in months, adding approximately $1.2 trillion to the US stock market.

The earnings relief spread quickly across the semiconductor and cloud sectors. Micron climbed 13%, Seagate rose 12%, Sandisk gained 17%, Nebius jumped 17%, and Marvell added 8.5%, while Nvidia recovered roughly 4% after a bruising two-day slide tied to CEO Jensen Huang's affair with a woman described by US intelligence as a suspected Chinese spy. The Nasdaq opened up more than 1.5% and extended gains to nearly 2%, with S&P 500 futures up 0.76% before the open. TSMC reinforced the demand picture at the Nikkei Forum, with CEO C.C. Wei saying demand for leading-node chips was "insatiable" and that AI accelerator revenue growth through 2029 would likely exceed the firm's earlier mid-to-high-50s annualized estimate.

The rally carried a note of caution on two fronts. CoreWeave's net interest costs surged to $846 million from $310 million a year earlier, with Q4 interest expense projected to exceed $1 billion, and the company said it expects to reach adjusted profitability only in the first half of 2028. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Samsung executives that there had been "some double counting of demand" in the neocloud sector and warned that only OpenAI and Anthropic were driving substantial growth, leaving room for supply shocks and turbulence in the near term.

Anthropoc's IPO roadshow added momentum to the AI revival. The Claude maker kicked off bookbuilding targeting 825 million shares at $70 to $78, implying a fully diluted valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion, with bankers subsequently weighing $1.5 trillion or more as the offering was reported to be multiple times oversubscribed. Total proceeds including a $26 billion private placement from Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft, and TSMC could reach $90.4 billion, which would make it the largest public listing in history. An amended S-1 also disclosed more than $10 billion in new compute commitments to Microsoft and Google through 2033. Anthropic reported nearly $17 billion in Q3 revenue, up from $1.4 billion a year earlier, though it swung to a $567 million operating loss amid soaring compute costs.

Nvidia remained under pressure from multiple directions even as its share price recovered. Baird downgraded the stock to Neutral and slashed its price target to $200 from $500, citing possible delays to 2027 data-center forecasts, US restrictions on chip sales to China, and uncertainty over Huang's tenure. Morgan Stanley removed Nvidia as its top pick on the same day. Microsoft briefly overtook Nvidia to reclaim the second-largest market capitalization globally at $4.035 trillion versus Nvidia's $4.032 trillion. CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator said Nvidia would remain a great partner and that the company's US data-center build plans were not being delayed.