Barclays is moving to the sidelines on CoreWeave after the stock's massive rally since going public. The firm downgraded CoreWeave to equal weight from overweight on Monday. It did raise its price target to $100 per share from $70, but that implies upside of just 3%. CoreWeave has been on a tear since its initial public offering on March 28 . In that time, the stock has surged 156.9%. The company priced its IPO at $40 per share. In May alone, shares have soared 148%. Analyst Raimo Lenschow said he's optimistic on the stock long term, but added that the short-term upside is limited. CRWV YTD mountain CoreWeave stock in 2025. "At current levels, CoreWeave is trading at a 41x EV/EBIT CY26 multiple (assuming ~$31.4bn in gross debt in CY26), and while we expect growth to remain strong, we are not sure there are fundamental arguments to push this much higher, with the company trading at a healthy premium already to the rest of the space," Lenschow said. "We continue to like CRWV for its long-term opportunity and exposure to the GenAI theme, but given valuation and lacking a near-term catalyst, see limited upside in the near-term from here." The AI cloud computing company's IPO was the largest in the tech sector since 2021. The firm is backed by AI darling Nvidia and rents out access to the chipmaker's graphics processing units to peer technology companies. "It is important not to undersell CoreWeave as one of the first pure-play GenAI stories in software," Lenschow said. "The company addresses a large TAM across both training and inference workloads, and we continue to see a strong growth opportunity for the business in the near- and medium-term, with the 420% y/y revenue growth in Q1 evidence of healthy momentum." Several Wall Street shops last month issued bullish ratings on the stock last month , after a blackout period ended. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Barclays were among those who initiated coverage with a buy-equivalent rating. However, Barclays is now the first firm on the Street to downgrade the stock.
