CoreWeave’s rise looks like a case study in 21st-century risk-taking: load up on advanced Nvidia chips, borrow heavily to build massive GPU farms, and sell the future of AI to the biggest tech players. That strategy has generated staggering growth and headline-grabbing deals, but it relies on mountains of borrowed money and faith that demand won’t evaporate if a market wobble hits. Investors and everyday Americans deserve to know whether this is healthy capitalism or a high-stakes gamble propped up by cheap credit and aggressive underwriting.
At the center is Michael Intrator, the cofounder and CEO who parlayed a background in commodities trading into a dominant position in the AI datacenter market. Forbes and other outlets rightly note that Intrator and his cofounders have become multibillionaires as CoreWeave went public and locked up lucrative long-term contracts. That success is impressive, but it also concentrates enormous power in the hands of a few players who are now operating on borrowed time — and borrowed billions.
The scale of the financing is breathtaking: CoreWeave has repeatedly tapped the debt markets with multi-billion dollar facilities and bond offerings to buy GPUs and build capacity, telling investors the debt is the “fuel” for the company’s expansion. Lenders from Blackstone to major banks have underwritten deals that allow CoreWeave to outspend and out-accelerate older incumbents, and the company has signaled it will keep using debt to fund growth rather than letting cash flow catch up first. That financing model can work — until it doesn’t.
CoreWeave’s playbook has generated headline contracts with the biggest names in tech, from multi-year deals with OpenAI and Microsoft to a recent massive agreement with Meta, all of which have pushed CoreWeave into the national spotlight and sent its valuation soaring. Those customer wins provide real revenue, but they also create concentrated counterparty risk: if one or two giants pull back, the debt-backed infrastructure could look far less secure very quickly. Americans should cheer private enterprise, but they shouldn’t ignore the fragility that concentrated, debt-fueled growth can create.
Financial commentators and serious reporters have begun to ask the hard questions: have investors and banks created an asset-backed lending environment around GPUs and AI contracts that resembles a modern version of speculative excess? The Financial Times and others have flagged the circularity of financing — where loans are underpinned by the very assets they help to purchase — and warned that sophisticated lenders are betting on continual, uninterrupted demand. That’s not ideological criticism; it’s practical skepticism about how durable the current boom is.
Conservatives who believe in free markets also believe in accountability. There’s nothing wrong with aggressive entrepreneurship or taking smart risks, but when Wall Street packages debt to fund a single sector’s rapid expansion, oversight and discipline matter. Banks and private-equity players that cheerlead these deals should be held to the same prudential standards they apply to any systemically important lending, and investors need to price in the real possibility that technology cycles and chip lifecycles will change the math quickly.
Hardworking Americans fund this system indirectly through capital markets and through the stability of our financial system; they deserve sound judgment, not hype. Celebrate innovation and the jobs these new data centers bring, but demand transparency on leverage, concentration, and contingency plans for a downturn. If private capital has built a powerhouse in CoreWeave, let it survive or fail on the true test of a market — not on the backstop of continual refinancing and optimism.
