CoreWeave posted third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion, up 168% year over year, and raised its 2026 guidance, easing investor concerns about a slowdown in AI infrastructure demand even as the company navigates rising debt costs and a broader market pullback.
CoreWeave reported third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion on Tuesday, beating analyst expectations of $3.55 billion and lifting its full-year outlook, offering a measure of reassurance to investors who have grown anxious about the durability of AI infrastructure spending.
Revenue surged 168% from roughly $1.36 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. The results arrive as CoreWeave's stock has shed more than 40% of its value over the past month, pulled down by rising interest rates, tightening capital markets, and a broader investor retreat from AI-linked equities.
The company recorded a net loss of $709 million, or $1.27 per share, compared with a net loss of $110 million in the same period a year ago. On an adjusted basis, which excludes stock-based compensation, the loss came in at 95 cents per share, well below the $1.16 analysts had expected.
Management raised its 2026 guidance to $13 billion to $13.3 billion in revenue and $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion in adjusted operating income. That compares with the prior forecast, issued in August, of $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion in revenue and $960 million to $1.15 billion in adjusted operating income. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had been looking for $12.86 billion in revenue, while those polled by Visible Alpha had projected $1.07 billion in adjusted operating income.
CoreWeave's revenue backlog stood at $132.5 billion at the end of the quarter, up from $104 billion as of June, underscoring that forward demand from enterprise AI clients has not materially softened.
The earnings announcement lands at a particularly fraught moment for CoreWeave and its neocloud peers. Rising interest rates have pushed some lenders out of the market, and certain CoreWeave bond yields recently topped 16%. "The business can execute well and still face a tougher financing environment," wrote Joe Tigay, portfolio manager at Equity Armor Investments. "Strong demand is encouraging; the cost and availability of capital remain critical."
CEO Mike Intrator addressed the capital question directly on a call with analysts, saying CoreWeave plans to cover most of its 2027 financing needs through client prepayments and hardware partner financing, with only a "limited amount" of additional fundraising. Finance chief Nitin Agrawal said the company projects under $5 billion in parent-level debt financing through 2027 and does not intend to issue additional parent-level unsecured debt at current yields. "By contrast, the asset-level secured debt market has remained stable, with our loans continuing to trade around par value," Agrawal said.
The results also land as Nvidia — CoreWeave's primary GPU supplier and a central figure in the global AI buildout — faces an escalating scandal. Nvidia shares dropped nearly 10% to start the week after reports surfaced that CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Nvidia's board said Tuesday it hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate Huang and determine whether national security or company secrets were compromised.
CoreWeave is targeting 1.85 gigawatts in active power by year-end and projecting $37 billion to $39 billion in full-year capital expenditures — implying growth of roughly 155% at the midpoint. The company also announced plans to establish its first data centers in Asia and launched a new service called Forge for running and evaluating AI models.
On the regulatory front, Intrator said CoreWeave does not anticipate impact from last week's U.S. election results, in which voters rejected dozens of data center development initiatives. Almost all of CoreWeave's power, he said, is already online or permitted and under construction.
Fellow neocloud Nebius, whose stock has declined by a similar amount, is scheduled to report earnings Thursday. CoreWeave's beat gave Nebius shares a modest lift in after-hours trading. With key customer Anthropic set to debut on the Nasdaq as early as Nov. 19 — at a potential valuation of around $1.4 trillion — the neocloud sector's recovery will hinge on whether the AI spending cycle can sustain itself through tightening financial conditions.
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