Wall Street posts worst week in over a month amid bond sell-off, rising oil prices
By Akriti Shah
Aug 12 (Reuters) - Shares of CoreWeave and Super Micro Computer jumped to their highest since June on Wednesday after upbeat forecasts from the two AI infrastructure companies signaled booming demand for computing capacity.
Both companies have been beneficiaries of the insatiable demand for AI infrastructure, as data center operators build out the hardware needed for generative-AI workloads.
Shares of AI cloud provider CoreWeave rose more than 19%, with peer Nebius Group rising 23% as it beat quarterly revenue estimates. Server maker Super Micro’s shares climbed more than 13%.
Data center companies Applied Digital and IREN Ltd were also up 4% and 8%, respectively. Shares of Dell were 5% higher.
CoreWeave is on track to add around $8 billion to its market value, while Super Micro could add more than $2 billion, if gains persist. More than seven brokerages raised their price targets on both CoreWeave and Super Micro stocks.
CoreWeave raised its forecasts for annual revenue, adjusted operating profit and capital spending, as strong demand for its Nvidia-powered AI infrastructure enabled the company to secure better pricing on new contracts.
Near-term capacity is effectively sold out, enabling CoreWeave to strike compute agreements on increasingly favorable terms, CEO Michael Intrator said.
Its revenue backlog rose to $104.2 billion in the second quarter from $99.4 billion three months earlier, excluding over $25 billion in new commitments secured early this quarter.
"Some investors may be spooked by the increased capex guidance, but the pricing environment would suggest that project returns are strengthening, even if unit costs are going up too," MoffettNathanson analysts said in a note.
Tech companies have boosted their capital expenditure to feed the AI boom, piling on massive debt in the process, and in turn prompting a surge in hedging against the default risk of these heavily indebted ’hyperscalers’.
Major U.S. financial institutions are also seeking to capitalize on the data center buildout. Bank of America pledged $250 billion for U.S. infrastructure financing by July 2027, days after a similar announcement from Morgan Stanley.
Super Micro forecast 2027 revenue above Wall Street estimates, underscoring resilient customer investment in AI servers.
The company’s fourth-quarter gross margin of 17.5% exceeded both its preliminary estimate of 15%-17% and its initial forecast of 8.2%-8.4%.
