If CoreWeave Splits, Will My Mother Notice?

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Every June, my mother texts me about tech stocks. It’s the same every year—”Should I buy this Nvidia thing? Your brother Gerald says it’s going to ‘the moon,’ whatever that means.” In my actual job—portfolio manager, not family tech therapist—I spend most of my time trying to explain to people, sometimes even related to me, that investing is less about “the moon” and more about not crashing into an asteroid made of bad decisions. This year, the conversation has a new protagonist: CoreWeave (CRWV), a company so new to the party it still has that IPO scent, sharp with hope and just a pinch of misplaced optimism.

CoreWeave’s pitch deck, which I read out of professional obligation and low-level masochism, is all about AI—data centers dense with GPUs humming away like anxious bees, rented out by companies with more ambition than infrastructure. They IPO’d in March, and already the stock’s up 200%, landing them at a $59 billion market cap. As a portfolio manager, I’m professionally delighted. As a human being who remembers Pets.com, I’m slightly nauseous.

Splits: A Family Drama

Now comes the inevitable chatter: Is CoreWeave going to split its stock? I try to approach the subject as I do any other family crisis: plenty of eye contact, even more coffee. Stock splits are the sort of financial event people get excited about the way others do royal weddings—lots of commotion, but ultimately, the guest list doesn’t change. You own ten shares at $200? Post-split, congratulations, you now own twenty at $100. You’re just as rich—or, more likely, exactly as not-rich—as before.

Still, stock splits do make a difference, at least psychologically. I once overheard my uncle at a reunion saying, “If a stock splits, it means you should buy more, right?” as if Apple was handing out slices of actual pie. No, uncle, you will not be invited to the next quarterly earnings call, and you don’t get a bigger slice—just more, smaller crumbs.

For companies, splits are a way to make the stock appear more democratic. If the share price climbs so high that only orthodontists can afford to buy in, a split brings it back down where the rest of us can feel included. It can also juice liquidity—a fancy way of saying there are more fish in the pond nibbling at your line. It’s a tactic I’ve seen used well, and spectacularly badly, depending on whether management actually understands where their own hype ends.

Of course, there’s the darker cousin—the reverse split. Picture a company tiptoeing down Wall Street in last season’s shoes, desperate to look expensive enough to stay at the party. Nasdaq and NYSE both want you to trade above $1 for a month at a stretch. If not, you risk being unceremoniously booted. Some companies, rather than improving their business, simply swap ten lousy shares for one shiny new share and hope nobody notices the smell.

So, Should We Brace for a Split?

Let’s glance at CoreWeave’s spot in this soap opera. AI mania means stocks with way too many syllables in their names are regularly blasting past $100, and I’m not ruling out a split if CoreWeave keeps climbing. But, from where I’m sitting—coffee-stained desk, general air of skepticism—there’s just no urgent need. These shares are already moving briskly and management has bigger things to worry about than making sure my cousin Lena feels like she can afford a few shares for her “AI trading club.”

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At least for now, the real drama is offstage. Over 74% of CoreWeave’s shares are locked up tighter than my father’s cable TV password—a post-IPO norm. All those insiders, eying their calendars, waiting for September to unleash a tidal wave of liquidity, or, as Gerald might say, “paper hands season.” If history is any guide, once those shares hit the market, things could get interesting—just not in the split-your-stock kind of way.

And let’s be plain: with a gleaming $120+ per share as of this morning and not a compliance issue in sight, any talk of a desperate reverse split is more wishful thinking than actual probability. Still, next family barbecue, I’ll be ready to explain it all again, maybe this time using apple pie instead of pie charts. 📈

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2025-07-29 04:28