CoreWeave reported $3.66 billion in third-quarter revenue on 10 November, above the $3.55 billion estimate compiled by LSEG, and raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion, CNBC reported. The earnings announcement gave investors a new measure of demand for the AI cloud provider’s computing capacity after its shares lost more than 40 per cent of their value in the preceding month.
Key points
- Third-quarter revenue rose 168 per cent, while CoreWeave recorded a $709 million net loss.
- The company raised its 2026 adjusted operating income forecast to $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion.
- CoreWeave put its revenue backlog at $132.5 billion, up from $104 billion as of June.
- The company is targeting $37 billion to $39 billion in capital expenditure for 2026.
CoreWeave lifts its 2026 forecasts
Revenue increased 168 per cent from $1.36 billion a year earlier, according to the statement described by CNBC. Reuters put the year-earlier figure at $1.37 billion. CoreWeave recorded a net loss of $709 million, or $1.27 per share, against a $110 million net loss a year earlier. Its latest loss came alongside a substantial increase in sales, but the company remains dependent on delivering further growth as it expands capacity.
The new revenue forecast replaces a range of $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion that CoreWeave gave in August, CNBC reported. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $12.86 billion in 2026 revenue. For adjusted operating income, CoreWeave now expects $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion, compared with its earlier projection of $960 million to $1.15 billion. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha were looking for $1.07 billion.
Yahoo Finance put the prior revenue target at $12 billion to $13 billion and the Bloomberg-based third-quarter revenue estimate at $3.56 billion. It reported that Wall Street had expected a loss of $1.46 per share, against CoreWeave’s reported $1.27. The company expects $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the three months following its earnings announcement, Yahoo Finance reported.
Capital spending targets $37 billion to $39 billion
CoreWeave is targeting $37 billion to $39 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, against the $37.69 billion expected by analysts polled by Visible Alpha. Management still anticipates 1.85 gigawatts of active power by year-end. Those plans place the cost of adding computing capacity on CoreWeave before all of that capacity can generate revenue from customers.
CoreWeave’s statement put its debt at almost $47 billion as the third quarter ended. Reuters reported debt of more than $50 billion as of June. It put the yield on CoreWeave’s 2030 bonds at about 15.2 per cent and said the company’s shares rose more than 7 per cent in extended trading after the results. Reuters also reported that CoreWeave operates about 52 data centres with more than 1.7 gigawatts of active capacity.
CoreWeave chief executive Mike Intrator said customer contracts precede the company’s investment in capacity and that customers typically contribute to construction costs through prepayments, according to Reuters. The company’s funding requirements have drawn scrutiny as interest rates have risen. Its shares had fallen more than 40 per cent in the month before the earnings release, while some of its bond yields had recently exceeded 16 per cent.
CoreWeave backlog reaches $132.5 billion
CoreWeave put its revenue backlog at $132.5 billion, up from $104 billion as of June. Its customers include Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic, while Nvidia supplies chips and capital to providers in this part of the cloud market. The backlog represents contracted future revenue rather than sales recognised in the quarter, leaving CoreWeave to bring capacity into service as it meets those commitments.
Microsoft’s approach to other AI cloud providers offers a point of comparison. AI Affairs reported that Microsoft tightened its oversight of neocloud projects and declined an Nscale expansion in Texas. CoreWeave also announced Forge, a service for running and evaluating AI models, during the third quarter.
Nebius, another cloud-based GPU provider whose shares had fallen by a similar amount to CoreWeave’s, is scheduled to report earnings on 12 November.
