CoreWeave revenue nearly triples as AI cloud company raises full-year outlook

CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed cloud computing company that rents out banks of graphics processors for artificial intelligence work, reported third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion on Tuesday, more than double the year-earlier figure and above the top of the company's own guidance range. The results, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission after markets closed, also showed a widening net loss and a revenue backlog that has grown to roughly $132.5 billion.

Shares of CoreWeave, which trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker CRWV, rose in after-hours trading following the report, a reversal from a stock that had fallen sharply over the prior two weeks amid broader investor unease about the pace of artificial-intelligence spending. The stock had closed the regular session at $48.73, down slightly on the day, before climbing as the earnings numbers circulated.

What the numbers show

Revenue for the three months ended September 30 rose 168 percent from $1.365 billion a year earlier, and increased by more than $1 billion from the second quarter, according to the company's investor relations materials and the earnings release itself. The company had told investors in August to expect third-quarter revenue of $3.45 billion to $3.60 billion, so the actual figure came in above that range and ahead of the roughly $3.54 billion that Wall Street analysts had penciled in, according to earnings coverage from Investing.com.

Net loss widened to $709 million, compared with a $110 million loss in the same quarter last year, for a loss of $1.27 per share. That was narrower than the $1.55-per-share loss analysts had expected. The gap between operating performance and the bottom line was driven largely by $846 million in net interest expense, reflecting the debt CoreWeave has taken on to finance data-center construction.

Adjusted operating income, a non-GAAP measure that strips out certain costs, came to $379 million, a 10 percent margin that the company said arrived "a quarter ahead of plan." Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization totaled $2.26 billion, a 62 percent margin. Capital expenditures for the quarter, mostly spending on servers and data-center buildouts, reached $9.44 billion, bringing the nine-month total to roughly $23.6 billion.

A fast-growing backlog

The revenue backlog — contracted future revenue CoreWeave has not yet recognized — rose to approximately $132.5 billion at quarter's end, up from about $104.2 billion three months earlier. The company said new customers in the quarter included Canva, Serve Robotics, Substack and the autonomous-driving firm Wayve, while existing customers including OpenAI, Cohere, Jane Street and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative expanded their commitments. CoreWeave also pointed to work with the government-technology contractor Leidos and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Chief executive Michael Intrator, who co-founded the company, said in the earnings release that the quarter's growth was supported by "multiple sources of funding, including financing backed by customer contracts, operating cash flow, and approximately $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits expected in the next three months alone."

"This was a breakout quarter for CoreWeave, with revenue increasing by more than $1 billion sequentially and adjusted operating margins reaching double digits a quarter ahead of plan," Intrator said.

CoreWeave disclosed that it closed a $2.6 billion credit facility to support shorter-duration customer contracts, part of a broader pattern of debt-financed expansion that has drawn scrutiny from some analysts. The company's active data-center power capacity now exceeds 1.7 gigawatts, with contracted power above 4.6 gigawatts, including more than 1.3 gigawatts tied to international sites in India, Indonesia and Spain.

Raised guidance for the rest of the year

CoreWeave raised its full-year 2026 outlook. The company now expects annual revenue of $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion, up from its prior range, with adjusted operating income of $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion — a 26 percent increase at the midpoint from earlier guidance. Capital spending guidance for the year rose to a range of $37 billion to $39 billion, and the company said it expects to exit 2026 with an annualized revenue run rate of $20 billion to $21 billion.

The results landed at a sensitive moment for AI-infrastructure stocks. CoreWeave shares had lost roughly a third of their value over the two weeks before the report as investors grew more skeptical of the enormous capital spending by cloud and AI companies, part of a broader technology selloff tied to concerns about whether that spending will be matched by revenue. The company's results, and the market's initial reaction, were read by some investors as a sign that demand for AI computing capacity remains intact even as the debate over valuations continues.

Market reaction and what comes next

CoreWeave shares climbed as much as 8 percent in after-hours trading following the release, according to a report carried on Yahoo Finance, with other outlets citing moves in a similar range. Shares of Nebius, a rival AI-cloud provider that is due to report its own quarterly results on Thursday, rose about 3 percent in sympathy, while Bitcoin-miner-turned-AI-infrastructure company IREN also ticked higher.

CoreWeave, which went public on the Nasdaq in March 2025 and counts Nvidia as both an investor and key supplier, has built its business renting out graphics-processing clusters to AI developers on long-term contracts, financing the buildout with a mix of equity, debt and vendor arrangements. The widening net loss and heavy interest costs reported Tuesday underscore the extent to which that growth remains funded by borrowing rather than by operating profit. The company's next scheduled test comes when fourth-quarter results are reported early next year, by which point it expects to have more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power capacity in service and a full-year revenue figure to measure against Tuesday's raised targets.