CoreWeave’s surge lifted AI shares, but futures slid on reports Nvidia may oust its CEO
US stocks closed higher Wednesday as a jump in CoreWeave and a rebound in Nvidia lifted AI-linked shares. Futures slid overnight after reports that Nvidia’s board may remove CEO Jensen Huang.
The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.6% to 25,466.19, the S&P 500 gained 1.31% to 7,619.38, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 254.60 points, or 0.49%, to 52,486.49, according to CNBC.
After the close, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust Huang. Nvidia shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading, and a source told Reuters the board was meeting to decide his future. Nasdaq 100 futures later fell more than 1%, and S&P 500 contracts lost 0.5%, Bloomberg reported. No board decision had been reported at the time of writing.
Rate-hike expectations build
Inflation data renewed expectations of another Federal Reserve rate increase. The consumer price index rose 0.4% in October, above the 0.3% economists expected, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The agency did not publish an annual rate because of data disruption from last year’s government shutdown, Morningstar reported.
Chicago Federal Reserve president Austan Goolsbee spoke to PBS NewsHour on Tuesday. “It’s another distressing report – borderline disturbing,” Goolsbee said. “We’ve got a real inflation issue on our hands that has been developing,” he said. “We’re going to have to deal with that.”
Expectations for a quarter-point increase in December rose to about 90%, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool. “Despite some technical uncertainty, higher than desired levels of inflation should keep the Fed in a stance of dissatisfaction with the degree of progress on inflation remaining lackluster, so hiking the Fed Funds policy rate in December is our and the market’s base case,” wrote BlackRock’s Rick Rieder. “The question now is more of one of the extent of the hike.”
Goldman Sachs’ David Mericle expects another quarter-point increase in March, and UBS’s Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi has a base case of 25-basis-point increases in December and March. The forecasts give advisors reviewing US holdings for Canadian clients two named outlooks to weigh.
AI trade faces fresh tests
CoreWeave jumped 24.71%, its best day since April 2025, after reporting third-quarter revenue that beat estimates. Revenue rose 168% to US$3.7 billion. The company raised its 2026 revenue outlook to US$13 billion to US$13.3 billion; analysts polled by LSEG had expected US$12.86 billion.
CEO Michael Intrator told CNBC on Wednesday: “I think I said that we are 10x oversubscribed to the existing capacity that we have left in 2027, and we are multiples ... oversubscribed on the capacity we have out in 2028.”
“The sentiment bump coming from CoreWeave results and Anthropic IPO demand is helping the broader ecosystem,” Ross Mayfield, an investment strategist at Baird Private Wealth Management, told CNBC. “Markets are continuing to unwind last week’s overshoot to the downside with cleaner positioning now a tailwind and an attractive near-term valuation/earnings story in a lot of the AI stocks.”
Anthropic said in an updated SEC filing Tuesday that it will offer 825 million shares at US$70 to US$78 each in an IPO planned for next week, a range that could value the company at up to US$1.4 trillion, CNBC reported.
Nvidia rose 2.9% Wednesday after dropping nearly 10% to start the week, when Huang confirmed an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, CNBC reported. The company hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate whether secrets or national security were compromised. Nvidia reports quarterly earnings Nov. 17.
