Investing.com -- Wall Street analysts have initiated coverage on CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) shares with bullish views from both Jefferies and Stifel, highlighting the company’s strong positioning in the burgeoning AI infrastructure market.
Jefferies launched CRWV with a Buy rating and a $51 price target, citing its ability “to scale & host AI compute reliably,” a capability that has already attracted major clients like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Meta (NASDAQ:META), and OpenAI.
“We believe we’re still in the very early innings of this buildout for AI, and CRWV being one of the few who has been able to scale & host AI compute reliably, is positioned well to capture this opportunity,” Jefferies analysts wrote.
Despite customer concentration risks, capital-intensive business model, and potential tariff-related costs, the brokerage sees an “attractive risk reward” with CRWV trading at a discount to AI infrastructure peers.
Stifel echoed the positive sentiment, initiating CoreWeave coverage with a Buy rating and a $55 price target.
“CoreWeave is a leading GPU-as-a-service provider with compute infrastructure purpose-built for AI,” analysts said in a note.
Stifel expects revenue to grow more than eightfold by fiscal year 2027 (FY27), driven by contracted demand with an average duration of 4–4.5 years.
Analysts pointed to several differentiators, including proprietary middleware, bare metal Kubernetes capabilities, and preferred access to Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) GPUs.
At the same time, the analysts also acknowledged key risks around CoreWeave’s capital intensity and accounting assumptions.
The company is expected to ramp up net debt significantly—from less than $8 billion at the end of 2024 to more than $30 billion by FY27—to fund infrastructure expansion.
Furthermore, changes in the useful life of GPUs could materially impact free cash flow. Still, the analysts believe the buildout of infrastructure and power capacity will become long-term moats in a sector with rising barriers to entry.
“While we view these two factors as meaningful overhangs to CRWV’s story, we expect benefits from economies of scale and scope, once global infrastructure is more significantly built out and operating,” analysts said.
Overall, Stifel sees strong long-term potential for CoreWeave but cautions that near-term challenges around debt financing and accounting issues could lead to stock volatility.