CoreWeave shares plunge 32% since Nasdaq 100 inclusion

AI firm CoreWeave has seen its market value shrink by a third since it was added to the Nasdaq 100, even though it doubled second-quarter revenue and touted $100 billion in contracted revenue backlog.

While public shareholders have taken a hit, company insiders have been offloading shares steadily.

Ever since the Nasdaq 100 indexation took effect on June 22, 2026, forcing retirement savers to passively buy CoreWeave stock via numerous Nasdaq 100-linked funds worldwide, the firm's executives and board members have unloaded more than $600 million in shares.

• CEO Michael Intrator has cashed out over $320 million
• Co-founder Brannin McBee has disposed of $220 million in stock
• Kristen McVeety, general counsel and corporate secretary, has offloaded over $22 million
• The CSO, CFO, COO, and CAO together have sold $36 million

CoreWeave’s stock peaked at $187 on June 20, 2025, nearly a year before its Nasdaq 100 inclusion. However, it has been on a slide for 15 months, with double-digit percentage losses for retirees who awaited the Nasdaq committee’s implicit endorsement this summer.

Nasdaq announced its June 11, 2026 rebalance favoring CoreWeave, effective June 22. The stock opened that day above $119, yet now trades around $80.

Nasdaq 100 picked CoreWeave to erode retirement savings

The company met all the technical entry requirements and appeared a sound pick from a fundamentals standpoint.

It reported contracted revenue with a backlog of $104 billion, plus billions in new commitments since July.

With that seemingly enviable business, CoreWeave houses racks of Nvidia GPUs in leased data centers, selling computational capacity to Meta, OpenAI, and other AI labs.

There is a catch, though. Nvidia’s chips depreciate quickly under high heat and, more critically, with endless new model releases from fabricators. CoreWeave must book depreciation, which severely pressures its profitability.

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Earnings before depreciation

In Q2 alone, depreciation and amortization of its AI equipment exceeded $1.3 billion, a hefty 54% of revenue. Worse, the debt-heavy company paid $640 million in interest on its borrowings, up from $267 million a year earlier.

Those two accounting items consumed over three-quarters of every dollar the firm brought in.

The company is also burning cash far beyond its earnings. Full-year capital expenditure guidance is set at $35-39 billion — well above CoreWeave’s revenue projection of $12.4-13.2 billion.

Put simply, the fast-expanding, cutting-edge firm plans to spend roughly $3 for every $1 it expects to generate.

Free cash flow in Q2 came in at negative $5.7 billion.

CoreWeave’s buildout has largely been funded with borrowed money. Total debt grew from $7.9 billion to $21.4 billion by end-2025, and now tops $35.6 billion.

The firm isn’t short of demand for its services. It seems short of a model that turns that demand into profit faster than Nvidia’s chips depreciate and its lenders accrue interest.

As the stock has slid for over 15 months, those at the helm have kept selling.