CoreWeave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) stock should have been under pressure following news that NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is reportedly hiking prices for its GPUs by roughly 17%. With GPUs at the heart of CRWV’s infrastructure, expensive chips should have automatically compressed the company’s margins.
Truist says this doesn’t have to be true. On August 24, Truist Securities analyst Arvind Ramnani raised the price target on the stock to $165 from $155. The firm noted how CRWV already increased pricing across its product lineup by 25% in July.
“Pricing power [is] more than offsetting rising GPU costs. We expect CRWV’s higher pricing to largely flow through to margins in 2H26 as NVIDIA’s increases are expected to affect systems shipped early next year.”
-Analyst Arvind Ramnani
Pricing Power with a Head Start
According to Truist, CoreWeave’s price hikes hit the books before Nvidia’s cost increases. The pricier GPUs mainly ship on systems delivered in early 2027. This timing creates an attractive near-term setup for CRWV who gets the benefit of higher customer pricing before fully absorbing Nvidia’s price hikes. Truist estimates the pricing dynamic could lift contribution margins on future longer-duration contracts from roughly 24% to 33%.
CoreWeave also appears to have enough room to push pricing backed by tight demand. Near-term AI compute capacity remains supply constrained, with backlog exceeding $104 billion as of Q2. The company also managed to secure more than $25 billion of additional net new customer commitments in Q3.
Upside for the stock is also expected on the back of shorter-duration deals and re-contracting of prior-generation GPUs. Only Blackwell and Vera Rubin GPUs would be impacted by the price increases.
Nvidia Still Makes Expansion Expensive
Its worth noting here that Nvidia isn’t pushing prices simply because it can. Rather, the hikes are driven by soaring HBM and DRAM costs. The names gaining the most leverage out of these memory shortages are Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.
Nevertheless, Truist expects these GPU price hikes to add roughly $8 billion of capital expenditures for every gigawatt of capacity CRWV builds. CoreWeave is already a capital-intensive trade, with the company having lifted its full-year 2026 capex guidance to $35-$39 billion. Therefore, even if contribution margins increase, the price tag for every future gigawatt CoreWeave builds also increases.
Hedge Funds Are Increasing Their Exposure
Hedge funds are willing to take the bet. According to Insider Monkey’s database, 70 hedge funds held CoreWeave at the end of the second quarter of 2026, up from 64 in the prior quarter. Names such as Alyeska Investment Group increased their stake by 56%, while Value Aligned Research Advisors boosted its position by 32%.
Overall, while it is true that Nvidia’s price hikes are raising CRWV’s infrastructure bill, the stock may have enough pricing power to raise customer prices faster than its own costs. While this could support stronger contribution margins, the company’s massive capital requirements and financing costs remain key risks.
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