Key Takeaways
- CoreWeave fell 7% today, and Nebius and IREN fell too, after Wedbush’s Dan Ives estimated that 10% of planned US data centers won’t be built now that Democrats have swept Congress.
- Neoclouds like CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN need new US sites to come online to grow into their debt, so a slower buildout hits them before the hyperscalers.
- CoreWeave guided to $860 million to $940 million of third-quarter interest expense against $200 million to $260 million of adjusted operating income.
- Scarcer capacity could lift rents, mostly on new and renewed contracts, and for NVIDIA the open question is where its chips go instead.
CoreWeave (CRWV) fell 7% today and Nebius (NBIS) 5% after Democrats took both houses of Congress, and Wedbush’s Dan Ives put a number on what that means for the AI buildout.
IREN (IREN) fell [9%] too, and the selloff reaches NVIDIA (NVDA), whose GPUs fill CoreWeave’s fleet.
Ives wrote on X that the “blue tidal wave” will slow “the planned 800 to 1,000 datacenters across the US fueling the AI Revolution.” Then came his estimate:
> “We estimate 10% of datacenters will not happen now.”
That’s 80 to 100 sites, and the neoclouds need new sites more than anyone.
Voters already said no
Aleph’s Michael Eisenberg noted on X that of about 41 local data center measures on Tuesday’s ballots across 10 states, “every one with results so far except one went against them, usually 70 to 80% against, in red and blue towns alike.”
And the cancellations started before anyone voted. Schwab’s Liz Ann Sonders shared Baird Strategas data on X on Tuesday showing that “data center project cancellations in 3Q alone were almost larger than entirety of 2025 and 2024 combined.”
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CoreWeave needs every site
That matters most for the companies that still have to build the capacity their growth depends on. Analysts expect CoreWeave’s revenue to climb from $5.13 billion in 2025 to $43.6 billion in 2028:
To get there, CoreWeave has to turn contracted power into live power. It had 1.5 gigawatts active at June 30, against 4.2 gigawatts contracted as of Aug. 11, and US customers made up 93.6% of its 2025 revenue. It already knows what a delay costs, too: delays at one developer led it to cut its 2025 revenue guidance last November.
CoreWeave has also borrowed heavily to build. Its total debt, leases included, went from $2 billion at the end of 2023 to $29.8 billion at the end of 2025:
For the third quarter, management guided to $860 million to $940 million of interest expense against just $200 million to $260 million of adjusted operating income. Analysts don’t expect its operating profit to top its interest bill until 2028.
Hyperscalers can slow a build and fund the rest from their own cash flow. Analysts expect CoreWeave’s free cash flow to stay negative every year through 2030, so a slower buildout means more years of borrowing before its contracts pay the bills.
As of Monday’s close, CoreWeave traded at 1.4x forward sales, its lowest in the past year and well under its 3.6x average:
At today’s price, it’s right around that low.
The higher rents are on the next contract
Ives himself allowed that “some investors will like the ‘slower pace.'” Fewer new sites make existing capacity scarcer, and GPU rents were already rising: Atreides Management’s Gavin Baker said on TBPN that rental prices for essentially every type of GPU rose every day in October.
But committed contracts made up 98% of CoreWeave’s 2025 revenue, and Baker said it had locked a vast amount of compute into long-term contracts now “way, way under market.” So CoreWeave collects higher rents mainly on new and renewed capacity, and the new capacity is what’s at risk.
Nebius and IREN are still building too
Nebius is further from the finish line. In August it guided to $20 billion to $25 billion of capex in 2026, up from $5 billion in 2025, and to 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt of connected power by year-end against 5 gigawatts contracted. It has some cover in Europe, but its new sites in New Jersey, Missouri and Oklahoma are part of the same US buildout.
IREN is betting on Texas, which Ives called “the key as that represents 25%-30% of AI datacenter capacity.” Its Sweetwater campus in West Texas is planned at 2 gigawatts and its Childress site at 750 megawatts, so a Texas slowdown would reach both.
For NVIDIA, which invested $2 billion in CoreWeave in January, the question is where the chips go. Eisenberg argued the slowdown “creates opportunity for countries who are US allies (like Israel and UAE) who can scale compute and AI.” If 80 to 100 US sites never get built, do those GPUs ship abroad, or does some of that demand go away?
The neoclouds take the hit first
Frankly, today’s selloff looks right to me. A slower US buildout costs the hyperscalers time, but it costs CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN the new capacity their growth and their debt were built around.
CoreWeave reports its third quarter on Nov. 10. Management has guided to more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power by year-end, and I’ll be watching whether it holds that target after the vote.
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