CoreWeave is not seeing any slowdown in AI demand. At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia event on Tuesday, co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator said the market is still growing faster than anyone can handle. “The depth of the demand, the scale of the demand, the breadth of the demand is overwhelming,” Michael said. “The industry’s capacity to deliver the compute that is required by OpenAI, by the hyperscalers, by the enterprise, by the sovereigns–it’s just layer after layer of overwhelming demand.” Michael said the company is scaling operations aggressively. “We’re building as fast as we can, we’re building as large as we can. We’re delivering as many GPUs as we can,” he said. “We’re driving through the middle to try and get this infrastructure into the hands of these incredible companies that really have the capacity to allow artificial intelligence to achieve its potential.” Despite this demand, CoreWeave’s stock has dropped 20% over the past month. This comes after one of the most hyped IPOs of 2025. The company posted a second-quarter net loss that was worse than expected. On top of that, capital expenditures shot up by $1 billion from the previous quarter. And those expenses are expected to rise another $500 million this quarter. That has raised concerns that the company’s debt could climb even higher. CoreWeave’s losses mount as spending grows With the IPO lockup expiring in mid-August, insiders began selling off shares. Investors are still questioning how much more debt CoreWeave can take on. Analysts project the company might raise billions more in debt before the year is over. Michael doesn’t seem worried. He believes borrowing is the best way to fund the company’s growth. But not everyone agrees. JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy said, “Net-net, there could be a wide range of outcomes for CoreWeave. For this reason, we expect the stock to provide a wild, lumpy, volatile ride, requiring a risk tolerance that may not exist for most investors.” Mark also warned that if the economy weakens, CoreWeave could be hit harder than most because of its debt exposure. He believes the market is only focusing on the negative side right now. UBS targets Alibaba and Tencent in China’s AI race While CoreWeave is racing to meet demand in the U.S., UBS is tracking where China’s AI growth is heading. In a report released earlier this month, Eva Lee and her team at UBS said Chinese companies that moved early on generative AI are starting to pull away from the pack. Eva wrote, “We favor AI-driven and alpha growth names with strong execution.” Based on second-quarter earnings, UBS is backing Alibaba and Tencent. Alibaba’s stock in the U.S. is up 83% so far in 2025. Tencent’s shares in Hong Kong have gained over 54%. That performance beats other Chinese tech players like Baidu, which is up 36%, JD.com, which is down 3%, and Meituan, which is down over 36% in Hong Kong this year. UBS called Alibaba the “largest AI enabler in China with full-stack AI cloud infrastructure.” For Tencent, the edge is in AI-powered gaming and advertising, with potential future profits coming from AI agents. Eva’s team said, “In the past quarter, we observed that China internet companies have reaped tangible AI benefits.” They highlighted that company earnings and leadership outlooks have both improved, especially in ads and games. The report also looked at U.S. chip restrictions and found they haven’t slowed down China’s top players. “Chip restrictions have not emerged as a major concern,” UBS said. The companies say they’ve got enough chips for AI training, and they’ve been improving software to get better performance out of what they already have. Eva and her analysts also said Alibaba and Tencent are reducing their reliance on imported chips by switching to other options for inference. And they’re spending more to stay ahead. In Q2, Tencent doubled its AI-related capital expenses year-over-year to 19.1 billion yuan. Alibaba increased its AI spending by over 50% compared to its average from the past four quarters. Still, both companies have other priorities outside AI. Alibaba has been throwing heavy subsidies into instant delivery to compete with JD.com and Meituan. Meanwhile, Tencent is still dealing with uncertainty from China’s gaming regulators, even though rules have eased slightly since the last crackdown. Your crypto news deserves attention - KEY Difference Wire puts you on 250+ top sites
