CoreWeave, the AI cloud company backed by Nvidia, said Tuesday that third quarter revenue jumped 168 percent from a year earlier to $3.66 billion, topping what analysts expected. The company also raised its full year outlook. But the same report showed how expensive the AI building boom has become: CoreWeave lost $709 million in the quarter, mostly because of the interest it pays on the debt it has taken on to build data centers.
The loss works out to $1.27 a share, wider than the roughly $1.21 a share that analysts had penciled in, according to stockanalysis.com. Revenue came in ahead of the $3.54 billion consensus figure reported by Barron’s, and it also cleared the top of the company’s own guidance range of $3.45 billion to $3.6 billion. Investors focused on the growth. The stock rose more than 7 percent in after hours trading, according to Stocktwits, after closing regular trading down 0.5 percent at $48.74.
Demand is outstripping capacity
CoreWeave’s revenue backlog, the value of contracts customers have signed but not yet paid for, reached about $132.5 billion. That is up 138 percent from $55.6 billion a year earlier, and up from $104.2 billion at the end of June. Chief executive Michael Intrator told analysts on the earnings call that demand is outstripping the company’s capacity to deliver it, and the earnings presentation credited strong execution, favorable pricing and growing orders from AI labs, big cloud companies and enterprises.
The company ended the quarter with more than 1.7 gigawatts of active power after adding over 200 megawatts in three months, and it has more than 4.6 gigawatts under contract. On the back of that demand, CoreWeave raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion, up from $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion, and lifted its adjusted operating income forecast to $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion. It also raised its spending plan, saying capital expenditures will reach $37 billion to $39 billion this year, and it expects to end 2026 at an annualized run rate of $20 billion to $21 billion in revenue.
The bill for building the AI boom
The loss is not a demand problem. Operating income rose to $207 million, from $52 million a year earlier, and adjusted operating income hit $379 million, a 10 percent margin that reached double digits a quarter earlier than planned. What overwhelmed those profits sat below the operating line: net interest expense of $846 million, nearly triple the $310 million a year earlier, plus $1.89 billion in depreciation as new data centers came online.
CoreWeave carries about $47 billion of debt against roughly $4.1 billion in cash. Intrator said the company is moving away from unsecured bonds, which trade at yields near 15 percent, and toward loans backed by customer contracts. Finance chief Nitin Agrawal said the next such loan should price at a yield of 7 percent to 7.5 percent. The company also expects about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the next three months, money that helps fund the buildout.
What CoreWeave does, and what comes next
CoreWeave, based in Livingston, New Jersey, rents out computing power from data centers packed with Nvidia graphics chips, the hardware used to train and run AI systems. Its customers include AI labs, big cloud companies and enterprises. Nvidia is its most important supplier, a customer and a 9 percent shareholder, according to Barron’s. Even after Tuesday’s after hours jump, the stock remains far below its highs from earlier this year.
The next test arrives quickly. CoreWeave guided fourth quarter interest expense to $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion, a bill that will again dwarf its operating profit. Whether the story stays a growth story depends on turning that $132.5 billion backlog into running data centers before the financing costs catch up. Follow the wider AI infrastructure race in our Technology coverage.