--- title: "Record October put volume prices CoreWeave at $35 in 2028, a third below the stock" description: "Record October volume in CoreWeave puts struck at $35 for 2028, hyperscaler credit-default swaps at their highest since 2021, and new desks selling protection against falling chip rents: the AI buildout finally has a price on the downside, and two smaller names report within days." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Data Center" published: 2026-11-01T17:22:03.745Z modified: 2026-11-01T17:22:03.745Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/record-october-put-volume-prices-coreweave-at-35-in-2028-a-third-below-the-stock language: en keywords: "CoreWeave, Neoclouds, Options, Credit Markets, AI Bubble" --- # Record October put volume prices CoreWeave at $35 in 2028, a third below the stock > Record October volume in CoreWeave puts struck at $35 for 2028, hyperscaler credit-default swaps at their highest since 2021, and new desks selling protection against falling chip rents: the AI buildout finally has a price on the downside, and two smaller names report within days. Trading in put options tied to [CoreWeave](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/coreweave) hit record levels in October, according to [Cboe Global Markets](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/cboe-global-markets) data. CoreWeave is the largest of the neocloud data-center firms, the companies leasing warehouses of [Nvidia](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/nvidia) chips to [OpenAI](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/openai), [Anthropic](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/anthropic) and [Meta](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/meta), and investors are paying for the right to sell its shares long before trouble arrives [1]. The contract of choice says plenty: [options expiring in 2028, struck at $35](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/options/articles/ai-investors-rush-hedge-against-030211499.html), against a share price near $55 [1]. That is the options market pricing a third off a company at the center of the AI buildout. ## The number being hedged is still going up Here is the complication. The rental price of an Nvidia B300 chip, the commodity underneath all of this, has risen about 56% this year to $7.56 an hour, per Silicon Data [1]. The hedging is not a verdict on today's rents. It is a verdict on what happens when every data center now being built comes online at once. *Chart: **CoreWeave's capex has outrun its revenue in every quarter it has reported** Column chart of CoreWeave quarterly revenue and capital spending from Q1 2024 through Q2 2026, with capex above revenue in every quarter* *Revenue and capital spending, in billions of dollars, from CoreWeave's SEC filings, quarters ended March 2024 through June 2026. Source: CoreWeave, quarterly figures from its SEC filings, retrieved 1 November 2026 [5]. [5]* Jump Trading has launched a desk selling derivatives that protect data-center operators against falling chip rental prices, and Susquehanna is fielding interest in contracts tracking computing-power indexes [1]. Until now there was no instrument to short the price of compute. There is one. ## The credit market joined in October Credit-default swaps on [Amazon](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/amazon), [Alphabet](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/alphabet), [Microsoft](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/microsoft), Meta and [Oracle](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/oracle), the cost of insuring their debt against default, recently climbed to their highest level since 2021, with Oracle's spreads widening by more than a percentage point [1]. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.9% on Friday, its worst month since March 2025 [1]. [CoreWeave has lost a quarter of its value in a month](https://theinference.org/article/coreweave-bonds-hit-a-record-14-5-yield-as-six-ai-cloud-stocks-sink-gartner-sees-80-gone-by-2030), and [Nebius](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/nebius), [IREN](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/iren) and [Applied Digital](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/applied-digital) have shed as much or more [2]. ## The bulls call the selling irrational CoreWeave's chief executive Mike Intrator calls the market's reaction "irrational" and points to a customer queue of the world's most consequential companies [2]. Analysts at Yorkville Ives say demand for computing power still exceeds supply, and that neoclouds fill a gap the hyperscalers cannot [2]. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the sector as "a small component of the overall ecosystem" [2]. Against them: [Gartner](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/gartner) expects [80% of neocloud firms to cease independent operations by 2030](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cje36degrgv5o), and [Elon Musk](https://theinference.org/markets/people/elon-musk) has predicted "guppy-level death and consolidation" among more than 200 of them [2]. ## Two earnings calls this week settle it Two smaller names on this beat report within days. [DigitalOcean](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/digitalocean) prints [third-quarter results on November 3](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/digitalocean-announces-date-third-quarter-130000171.html) [3]; [Core Scientific](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/core-scientific), a high-density colocation operator that repurposed bitcoin mining sites for AI workloads, [reports on November 5](https://www.marketscreener.com/news/core-scientific-inc-schedules-third-quarter-fiscal-year-2026-earnings-release-conference-call-and-ce785dd3dd89f124) [4]. Neoclouds [borrow against their contracts and their chips](https://theinference.org/article/ai-debt-now-has-two-prices-15-for-coreweave-6-25-for-iron-mountain), so if rents fall the collateral behind those loans would fall with them, and the B300 hourly rate is the number to watch when both companies report [1][2]. If that rate holds near $7.56, the hedgers are early [1][2]. If it rolls over, they were the only ones reading the tape. Deep dive in the links below to learn more. ## Takeaway Record CoreWeave put volume, 2028 strikes at $35 and five-year-high hyperscaler credit-default swaps put a priced downside under the AI buildout; the $7.56 B300 hourly rate at this week's neocloud earnings settles whether the hedgers are early or right. ## Sources 1. [Yahoo Finance / Wall Street Journal, AI investors rush to hedge against potential tech market downturn, 31 October 2026](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/options/articles/ai-investors-rush-hedge-against-030211499.html) 2. [BBC News, Lily Jamali, Neoclouds: These firms you've never heard of are feeding fears the AI bubble could burst, 31 October 2026](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cje36degrgv5o) 3. [Business Wire via Yahoo Finance, DigitalOcean Announces Date of Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call, 20 October 2026](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/digitalocean-announces-date-third-quarter-130000171.html) 4. [Business Wire via MarketScreener, Core Scientific Schedules Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Release, Conference Call and Webcast, 15 October 2026](https://www.marketscreener.com/news/core-scientific-inc-schedules-third-quarter-fiscal-year-2026-earnings-release-conference-call-and-ce785dd3dd89f124) 5. [CoreWeave, quarterly figures from its SEC filings, retrieved 1 November 2026](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001769628) --- Record October put volume prices CoreWeave at $35 in 2028, a third below the stock — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/record-october-put-volume-prices-coreweave-at-35-in-2028-a-third-below-the-stock