CoreWeave Surges As Microsoft, OpenAI Deals Fuel Revenue Spike, Wall Street Boost

Wall Street analysts raised their price targets on CoreWeave Inc CRWV.

JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy maintained CoreWeave with an Overweight and raised the price target from $43 to $66 on Thursday.

Needham analyst Mike Cikos reiterated CoreWeave with a Buy and raised the price target from $55 to $78 on Friday.

Also Read: CoreWeave Garners Praise Due To AI Growth, Nvidia Partnership

JPMorgan: CoreWeave debuted its first quarter as a public company with a beat-and-raise on total revenue, a rare pattern in the current earnings cycle.

On Wednesday, CoreWeave reported first-quarter revenue of $981.63 million, beating analyst estimates of $859.77 million. The company reported a first-quarter adjusted loss of $1.49 per share.

Murphy noted a lot to appreciate in the fiscal first-quarter earnings results, including a new hyperscaler customer — Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google — and another large $4 billion slug of business booked at some point during the second quarter with OpenAI, both of which might have been added in the second quarter. However, the timing of the former was not entirely precise in the earnings call, and the pattern of incremental CapEx outlays was not specified. The need for incremental debt financing is triggered by large deal wins.

The main curveball for this earnings report is the fact that the first OpenAI contract, worth up to $11.9 billion and announced back in March, did not yet meet the criteria for inclusion into CoreWeave’s RPO balance; this is a complicated topic that may add to the volatility of shares and could take some time to understand.

As of now, the analyst noted the odds lean mildly toward near-term inclusion in RPO. In this case, the topic would fade away. If not, it will sit in a “revenue backlog” adjusted construct, which he noted would be a similar practice to that of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud and Palantir (among others) and stems from ASC 842 (Lease) treatment rather than ASC 606 (Services) treatment.

Overall, Murphy expects the stock to provide a wild, lumpy, volatile ride, requiring a risk tolerance that may not exist for many investors.

Murphy highlighted CoreWeave’s deal with a new hyperscaler company, which Murphy assumed was Google, the addition of new enterprise customers, a $4 billion expansion with OpenAI

Murphy projected fiscal 2025 revenue of $5.01 billion and adjusted EPS of $(0.98).

Needham: CoreWeave’s customer concentration increased during the calendar first quarter, with Microsoft growing to 72% of total revenue ($707 million), more than 10x from $62 million in the year-ago quarter. Microsoft was responsible for 81% ($645 million) of the $793 million increase in incremental revenue dollars. The rest of CoreWeave grew revenue by 117% to $275 million from $126 million in the year-ago quarter and was responsible for the remaining 19% of incremental revenue dollars. Outside of Microsoft, no other customer exceeded 10% of revenue in the quarter.

Beyond the initial March 2025 Master Services Agreement for $11.9 billion, OpenAI entered an additional commitment to pay CoreWeave up to $4 billion through April 2029. The company signed the contract in May 2025, which will be reflected in the revenue backlog when CoreWeave reports June quarter results.

CoreWeave generated 98% of revenue from committed contracts, with the remaining 2% from on-demand. Cikos noted that the high 90% revenue contribution reflects management’s disciplined build cycles, where CoreWeave deploys capital upon signing committed contracts.

CoreWeave recognized $587 million (80%) of revenue from the deferred revenue balance during the quarter.

CoreWeave’s cRPO (to be recognized over the next 24 months) increased 4% sequentially to $8.5 billion. Long-term RPO (to be recognized over months 25-72) declined 11% to $6.2 billion sequentially. Cikos highlighted to investors that the OpenAI contract is not included in RPO as CoreWeave is still evaluating the agreement’s accounting treatment.

Cikos projected fiscal 2025 revenue of $5.05 billion and adjusted EPS of $(1.23).

CRW Price Action: CoreWeave stock is up 26.74% at $83.30 at publication on Friday.

Read Next:

• TeraWulf Price Forecast Cut As Analyst Cites Tough Bitcoin Economics, Doubts Over AI Growth Plans

Photo: PJ McDonnell via Shutterstock