Oracle Leads Data Center Stocks as Applied Digital and CoreWeave Sink

Last week offered a clear split in the data center and AI infrastructure trade. Oracle held its ground and then some, rising on AI cloud momentum and an analyst upgrade. Meanwhile, CoreWeave and Applied Digital got hit hard, dragged down by post-earnings fallout, legal overhang, and growing questions about the AI buildout.

Let’s look at what happened in the neocloud space last week. Another sell-off might be coming tomorrow as oil is up 30% overnight and Dow and Nasdaq futures are off more than 2%. If that sell-off comes, it’s likely neocloud stocks will face another strong test at market open on Monday.

Stock Week Start (Feb 27) Week End (Mar 6) Weekly Return Oracle (ORCL) $145.40 $152.96 +5.20% Applied Digital (APLD) $27.27 $25.14 -7.81% CoreWeave (CRWV) $79.56 $72.99 -8.26% Oracle: A Good Week With a Cautionary Finish

Oracle gained 5.20% last week, climbing from $145.40 to $152.96 as investors warmed up to its AI infrastructure narrative ahead of a key earnings print.

Oppenheimer upgraded the stock to Outperform with a $185 price target, citing “favorable risk/reward and immunity from AI disruption.” The company also picked up an enterprise software win, with Thermo Fisher adopting Oracle Cloud EPM for enterprise-wide planning, adding to a string of cloud customer announcements that have helped rebuild confidence after Oracle’s rough December earnings.

The week ended on a sour note. Bloomberg reported Friday that Oracle and OpenAI scrapped plans to expand their flagship data center in Abilene, Texas. The Abilene campus was central to the Stargate AI infrastructure initiative, and the pullback raised immediate questions about the pace of Oracle’s hyperscale ambitions, weighing on the stock into the close.

Other clouds lingered. Morningstar downgraded its economic moat rating from Wide to Narrow and cut its fair value estimate from $277 to $215 per share, citing AI’s potential disruption to Oracle’s core database business. Melius Research also downgraded the stock to Hold with a $160 target, arguing Oracle should be valued as an infrastructure company rather than a software one.

And on Friday, reports surfaced that Oracle plans to cut thousands of jobs to fund AI data center expansion. The big catalyst ahead: Q3 FY2026 earnings are scheduled for March 10, after market close, with investors focused on cloud revenue trajectory and capex guidance.

CoreWeave and Applied Digital: Pure-Play Pain

CoreWeave’s week was defined by the aftermath of its Q4 2025 earnings which 24/7 Wall St. live blogged on February 26. The headline numbers were mixed. Revenue came in at $1.57 billion, up 110% year over year, which beat estimates. But the loss picture was ugly. Net loss widened to $452 million from $51 million in Q4 2024, driven largely by $388 million in interest expense. The company is borrowing heavily to build GPU infrastructure at a pace outrunning its ability to generate profits. Q4 capital expenditures alone hit $4.06 billion, and the company guided for $30 to $35 billion in CapEx for 2026.

CEO Michael Intrator tried to frame the story positively, pointing to the $66.8 billion revenue backlog and declaring CoreWeave “the fastest cloud in history to reach $5 billion in annual revenue.” The market focused elsewhere. The stock dropped 18.51% on earnings day alone, falling from $97.63 to $79.56 to close at $72.99.

Then came the legal wave. More than ten law firms filed securities fraud class action lawsuits against CoreWeave following earnings, alleging the company concealed data center construction delays, particularly at its Denton, Texas facility, and misrepresented its ability to meet customer demand. The lead plaintiff deadline is March 13.

Reddit sentiment on the stock subreddit dropped sharply into bearish territory by Friday evening, February 27, as the losses and interest expense narrative spread across communities.

Applied Digital Drops Last Week As Well

Applied Digital got caught in the crossfire. The company’s 400 MW capacity at its North Ellen facility is fully contracted to CoreWeave, making it directly exposed to any deterioration in CoreWeave’s business or creditworthiness. Applied Digital fell 7.81% on the week, closing at $25.14. The company announced a $2.15 billion senior secured notes offering at 6.750% to fund its Polaris Forge 2 campus, which analysts viewed as a constructive step, but the CoreWeave overhang proved too heavy to shake off. Citizens Bank maintained a Market Outperform rating with a $40 price target, suggesting the selloff may be creating an entry point for investors willing to underwrite the tenant concentration risk.

The week crystallized a tension that will define data center investing in 2026: vertically integrated players like Oracle, with diversified revenue streams and enterprise software cushions, are holding up better than pure-play infrastructure names burning cash to build capacity. With Oracle earnings on deck March 10 and CoreWeave’s legal calendar heating up through mid-month, the next few weeks will reveal whether that divergence is a temporary dislocation or the start of a longer repricing.