Normally it’s terrible for stock traders when giant tech companies’ shares fall dramatically. Everyone knows that the S&P 500 is dominated by tech stocks—the Magnificent Seven in particular—and their valuations have disproportionate influence over the market as a whole.
So the news that Oracle declined 2.66% yesterday and is now down 44% from its high in September, and that CoreWeave was down 8% yesterday and is down a staggering 60% since its all-time high in July should have rocked markets to their core. Both companies are AI “hyperscalers” engaged in the business of building out AI data centers and both—according to traders, at least—have taken on too much debt to fund those facilities.
CoreWeave, for instance, offered a $2.25 billion convertible bond last week that will dilute existing shareholders, according to the Wall Street Journal. Previously, in Q3, CoreWeave reported $3.7 billion in current debt, $10.3 billion in non-current debt, and $39.1 billion in future lease agreements for data centers. The company expects to make only $5 billion in revenue this year but says it has $56 billion in “revenue backlog” coming in the future.
The collapse in market caps of Oracle and CoreWeave is on the scale of the declines we saw in 2000 or 2008. Surely that’s evidence of the AI bubble bursting?
