This AI Stock Soared 92% Last Year. Is It Still a Buy for 2026?

By Justin Pope – Feb 23, 2026 at 8:51AM ESTKey PointsAI companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers and AI.This company builds AI factories, allowing hyperscalers to bring compute capacity online faster.Its revenue could multiply over the next 24 months, but there are considerable risks.These 10 Stocks Could Mint the Next Wave of Millionaires ›NASDAQ: CRWVCoreWeaveMarket Cap$47BToday's Changeangle-down(2.13%) $1.90Current Price$91.15Price as of February 23, 2026 at 10:33 AM ETThis new company is riding the AI data center spending spree better than anyone.CoreWeave (CRWV +2.13%) was arguably Wall Street's hottest IPO stock last year. It's been a bumpy ride at times, but CoreWeave stock did return over 92% in 2025. That's an epic success by most standards, and the stock has started this year on a strong note. Shares have already gained 22% since January. That seems like a pretty juicy pitch. CoreWeave designs and builds turnkey data centers that provide GPU cloud services for artificial intelligence (AI) companies. One might think of the company as something of an arms dealer in the AI wars. Hyperscalers can expand their cloud capacity more quickly by purchasing GPU compute from CoreWeave. And as much money as AI companies poured into data centers in 2025, those figures will increase dramatically this year. Here is whether CoreWeave stock is still a buy in 2026. Image source: Getty Images. Explosive growth on the horizon It seems the stakes in the AI race keep rising. AI is entering a crucial pivot, where computing for training AI models is giving way to inference, the computing used when AI models perform in real-world applications. Inference-heavy use cases, such as reasoning models, autonomous agents, and AI-powered robotics, represent crucial opportunities to monetize the infrastructure that AI companies have spent the past few years building. Soaring data center investments have flowed through to CoreWeave. The company's backlog was $55.6 billion as of the third quarter of 2025, up from just $15 billion the year before. Investors can probably bet that backlog will go up when CoreWeave reports fourth-quarter earnings in the coming days. CoreWeave has guided to full-2025 revenue of just over $5 billion. However, analysts estimate that it will surge to $12 billion this year and $19.5 billion next year. That makes CoreWeave arguably the fastest-growing company on the market right now. ExpandNASDAQ: CRWVCoreWeaveToday's Change(2.13%) $1.90Current Price$91.15Key Data PointsMarket Cap$47BDay's Range$86.57 - $92.5452wk Range$33.52 - $187.00Volume7.6MAvg Vol28MGross Margin49.23% But CoreWeave sits on a razor's edge It's not a stretch to say that CoreWeave is a pure play in AI data centers. All that growth comes with some potentially serious risks. For instance, CoreWeave caters to AI hyperscalers and earned 86% of its revenue from just four customers in the third quarter. So, losing any one of them would be catastrophic. Remember, losing a customer doesn't have to mean competition. Hyperscalers pulling back on data center spending can have a similar impact. The second problem is that CoreWeave needs a ton of money up front to build the data centers to support all this growth. CoreWeave has burned through $8 billion over the past four quarters alone. Management is aggressively borrowing and issuing stock to raise money. The company has racked up nearly $18.5 billion in total long-term debt to date. CRWV Shares Outstanding data by YCharts Issuing stock dilutes existing shareholders. CoreWeave's revenue and profits are spread across more shares, which steadily depresses the stock price over time. The debt becomes a bigger concern the more CoreWeave borrows. Losing a core customer or seeing hyperscalers pull back would be a disaster, especially if it happened while CoreWeave has all this debt and is losing money. Is CoreWeave stock still a buy in 2026? As you can see, far more goes into a stock's story than revenue growth. While CoreWeave boasts explosive revenue growth that investors dream of, it comes with multiple caveats worth considering before buying the stock. Personally, it's tough to see the stock as a buy right now. CoreWeave trades at 8 to 9 times its trailing 12-month sales, on par with Microsoft and Meta Platforms, two of its customers. No, these companies aren't growing revenue like CoreWeave is, but they do have highly profitable core businesses and aren't facing potential extinction if data center spending drops off, either. The market is all about AI stocks right now, but CoreWeave represents some unique risks compared to most other AI companies. Investors may want to avoid CoreWeave until the stock's valuation comes way down and the business can fund its expansion without borrowing so much.Read NextFeb 23, 2026 •By James Brumley3 Top Tech Stocks to Buy in FebruaryFeb 23, 2026 •By Keithen Drury2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks That Could Double in 2026Feb 20, 2026 •By Billy DubersteinWhy CoreWeave Was Plunging To End the Week TodayFeb 20, 2026 •By Harsh ChauhanPrediction: These 2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Will Soar After Feb. 26 (Hint: Not Nvidia)Feb 20, 2026 •By Adria CiminoThis AI Stock Could Offer Life-Changing GainsFeb 17, 2026 •By Keithen DruryUp Over 30% This Year, This AI Infrastructure Play Is Just Getting StartedAbout the AuthorJustin Pope is a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst covering information technology, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, and industrials. Prior to The Motley Fool, Justin was a business manager for an industrial company.TMFbeardedFiStocks MentionedCoreWeaveNASDAQ: CRWV$91.15 (+2.13%) $+1.90*Average returns of all recommendations since inception. Cost basis and return based on previous market day close.