UBS bucked the trend and bullish on CoreWeave (CRWV.US): First to give a “buy” rating, betting on the rotational return of AI transactions

The Zhitong Finance App learned that UBS covered the emerging cloud vendor CoreWeave (CRWV.US) for the first time, gave it a “buy” rating, and set a target price of $120.

UBS analyst Karl Keirstead wrote in his report to clients: “Despite strong AI demand signals and sufficient evidence that CoreWeave's per-GW revenue metrics will continue to rise, Wall Street sentiment is still very cautious (this is reflected in its valuation being only 3 times the expected revenue in 2027).” He said, “We understand these concerns (mainly leverage and credit risk), but we think these concerns are peaking, so we made a bullish judgment that is different from what the market generally expected and gave it a 'buy' rating.”

Keirstead further analyzed that investors may continue to adopt a “defensive” strategy against AI-related stocks, but CoreWeave has established a good reputation for reliability and excellent performance, which should set it apart from its peers. Keirstead added, “The bullish rating on CoreWeave stock is actually a bet that investors will soon rotate back to long AI trades. “Given the current low mood, strong demand signals, and reports that cutting-edge labs are growing, this scenario seems increasingly likely.”

In contrast, Bernstein gave CoreWeave a “outperforming market” rating, with a target price of $74. Bernstein positions CoreWeave as a “transition capacity provider”: it benefits from scarce power and GPUs, but is concentrated on customers, buyers tend to build their own, and the return structure is limited. Once data center capacity is reduced, it will be the first and most affected. According to the data, CoreWeave 2Q26 generated $2.58 billion (+112% YoY), backlog orders of about US$104 billion (+246% YoY), and an overall price increase of about 25% in July.