CoreWeave told investors on Tuesday that demand for its artificial intelligence computing capacity is still climbing. The harder part may be paying to build it.
The cloud provider reported third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion, up 168 percent from a year earlier and ahead of the $3.55 billion analysts had expected. It raised its 2026 revenue forecast to between $13.0 billion and $13.3 billion. Shares rose about 5 percent in after-hours trading, a welcome change for a stock that had lost more than 40 percent of its value over the previous month.
A backlog that keeps growing
The most closely watched figure was the company’s revenue backlog, which measures work customers have committed to buy. It reached $132.5 billion at the end of September, up from $104 billion at the end of June. The company calculates the number itself and counts only contracted revenue that depends on delivering capacity on schedule.
CoreWeave also lifted its adjusted operating income guidance to between $1.275 billion and $1.375 billion. It nudged up the low end of its capital spending plan to $37–39 billion because it expects to hand infrastructure to customers sooner than planned.
Growth that costs a great deal
The strength in sales came with a wider loss. CoreWeave posted a net loss of $709 million for the quarter, compared with $110 million a year earlier. It expects fourth-quarter interest expense of $1.05–1.15 billion. According to LSEG data, the company has never reported a profit, and executives said they expect to turn profitable on an adjusted basis in the first half of 2028.
The central issue is financing. CoreWeave carries almost $47 billion in debt, and rising interest rates have pushed some lenders away. Yields on some of its bonds have recently topped 16 percent.
How the company plans to pay
Chief executive Michael Intrator said he expects about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the next three months. He told analysts that most of the capital needed in 2027 should come from client prepayments and from hardware partners such as Nvidia, with only a limited amount raised externally.
Finance chief Nitin Agrawal said the company does not intend to issue more parent-level unsecured debt through 2027 at current yields. Instead, CoreWeave plans to raise new debt tied to specific contracts. It expects to raise under $5 billion in parent-level financing over that period.
One portfolio manager told reporters that a business can execute well and still face a tougher financing environment. The point is that strong demand does not remove the cost and availability of capital as a constraint.
Holding back capacity
Intrator also made a notable comment on supply. He said CoreWeave could sell all the capacity it has to customers waiting in line but is choosing not to, because bringing infrastructure to market when it is more complete should produce better returns.
His remarks came a week after voters in several US areas rejected data center development proposals. Intrator said almost all of CoreWeave’s power is already online or permitted and under construction. If construction slows across the industry, he argued, installed computing becomes scarcer and GPU prices could stay higher for longer.
Why it matters beyond one company
CoreWeave rents access to powerful chips, mainly from Nvidia, to AI developers and large technology firms. That makes it a useful indicator of whether the AI buildout is still funded and still in demand.
The results arrive after a turbulent week for AI-linked stocks, driven by worries that election outcomes could slow data center construction. They also come just ahead of the planned Nasdaq debut of Anthropic, which Intrator described as a key customer. He said CoreWeave expects long-term relationships with the major AI labs.
What to watch next
Investors will be looking for three things in the months ahead:
- Whether the $9 billion in prepayments arrives on schedule.
- Whether contract-backed debt can be raised at tolerable rates.
- Whether CoreWeave can deliver capacity fast enough to turn its backlog into revenue.
Tuesday’s report showed that the order book is large and still growing. The unresolved question is whether the company can finance its way through the next two years.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.
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