Markets

CoreWeave Lost 15.5% in a Day as the AI Debt Question Came Back

CoreWeave fell 15.46% to $65.78 on October 14, its worst day since February, on three times its usual volume. Nebius lost 10.08% and Oracle 8.83% as investors questioned how AI data centres are being financed.

Oct 15, 2026

The sharpest moves on Wall Street on October 14 were not in the companies that make AI chips but in the ones that borrow to rent them out. CoreWeave, which runs data centres full of Nvidia hardware for AI customers, opened 7.8% lower at $71.74 and kept falling. It closed at $65.78, down 15.46%, its biggest one-day drop since February 27 and its lowest close since July 29. About 108 million shares traded, more than three times the previous day.

The trigger, according to The Motley Fool, was a widely shared social media post showing that the yield on CoreWeave's bonds had climbed to around 15%. A bond yield that high means lenders are demanding a large premium to keep financing a company, and a business that depends on borrowing to build capacity is very sensitive to that cost. The same morning, the CPI report made it more likely that the Fed will raise rates again, which tends to push borrowing costs up across the market.

The selling spread to the rest of the group. Nebius Group, a direct competitor, fell 10.08% to $186.01. Oracle, which has taken on debt to expand its cloud capacity for AI customers, fell 8.83% to $130.55 — a day after rising 4.23%. Intel lost 4.56% and Sandisk 5.33%.

The common thread is leverage. Chipmakers such as Nvidia and AMD are paid up front for their products; the companies building and renting out the data centres carry the debt until AI customers pay them back over several years. When rates rise or lenders become cautious, the second group is hit first and hardest. That is why Wednesday's losses in CoreWeave and Nebius were three to five times larger than in Nvidia, which fell 3.16%.