CoreWeave credit swaps hit record as Nvidia's Huang rules out a backstop
CoreWeave's five-year credit default swaps surged to a record 1,194.5 basis points and its 2031 bonds fell to 82.75 cents on the dollar
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Chart: CRWV, one-minute prices, three sessions
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said the company will not backstop CoreWeave, the cloud computing firm that depends on Nvidia chips to run its data centers. The statement strips away an assumption that had underpinned CoreWeave's September convertible bond sale: that Nvidia's balance sheet stood behind the debt of its largest customer.
CoreWeave shares fell 8.3% to $60.36, their lowest level since May 2025. That price sits below both the $97.85 conversion price on the September convertible notes and the $79.88 reference level set when they were sold, pushing the conversion further out of reach. Shares of other US chip-related companies also fell, with Nvidia down 3%, AMD off 5% and Intel down 5.9%.
The pressure builds on a selloff that began the day before, when CoreWeave's chief executive called the move in the stock irrational. It also comes as renewed expectations of another Federal Reserve rate hike, after a producer price report that Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee called discouraging and linked to risks of AI-driven overheating, threaten to make any refinancing by CoreWeave more expensive. The question for the company is no longer whether it can raise capital, which it has done repeatedly, but whether it can service the debt it already carries without help from Nvidia.