CoreWeave shares sink 13% as Musk’s ‘Yikes’ highlights AI debt concerns
Investing.com -- CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) shares tumbled 13% on Wednesday as investors focused on mounting financing risks across the AI infrastructure sector, after Elon Musk responded “Yikes” to a warning about the company’s soaring bond yields. Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) shares fell 8%, extending pressure on companies building out expensive computing infrastructure for artificial intelligence.
The selloff followed a post by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who shared a chart showing the yield on $1.25 billion of CoreWeave’s unsecured bonds maturing in 2032 reaching nearly 15% on Tuesday before closing at a record 14.5%. Musk replied to the post with the single word “Yikes.”
The bond-market move has intensified concerns about the cost of financing CoreWeave’s aggressive expansion and the sustainability of the broader AI infrastructure boom. While demand for computing capacity remains strong, investors are increasingly scrutinizing the debt required to build data centers and acquire expensive Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) chips.
CoreWeave has raised more than $35 billion this year through a combination of chip-backed loans, high-yield bonds, convertible bonds and share sales. Its debt and lease obligations totaled about $52 billion at the end of June, according to the Financial Times.
The company’s financing needs are particularly significant given its capital-intensive growth strategy. CoreWeave is expanding capacity to serve AI developers and major corporate customers, but the economics depend on sustained demand, access to funding and the ability to generate sufficient returns from its infrastructure investments.
Rising bond yields are a warning sign because they indicate that investors demand greater compensation for lending to the company. Higher borrowing costs could make future expansion more expensive and put additional pressure on cash flow, particularly if demand or customer commitments fail to keep pace with spending.
The weakness extended to Nebius, another AI cloud infrastructure provider, whose shares dropped 8% on Wednesday. The move reflects broader investor sensitivity to the financing requirements and valuations of companies competing to supply computing capacity for AI workloads.
The pressure comes amid wider questions about the scale of AI-related borrowing. Investors have grown more cautious about whether the expected returns from massive infrastructure investments will justify the associated costs, even as technology companies continue to commit billions of dollars to AI development.
Musk’s brief reaction does not amount to an explicit call to sell CoreWeave shares, but the exchange has drawn attention to a key risk for the sector: the gap between enthusiasm for AI demand and the increasingly expensive financing needed to meet it.

