CoreWeave Revenue Jumps 168% as AI Cloud Firm Raises 2026 Outlook
CoreWeave posted $3.66 billion in third-quarter revenue and lifted its full-year forecast, sending shares and other neocloud stocks higher.
CoreWeave, the cloud company that rents out graphics processors for artificial intelligence work, reported third-quarter revenue of about $3.66 billion on Tuesday, up 168% from a year earlier, and raised its forecast for 2026. Its shares rose about 11% in premarket trading on Wednesday, CNBC reported, easing for now some of the worry that has weighed on AI infrastructure stocks this month.
The results, for the quarter that ended Sept. 30, came in above Wall Street expectations. Brave New Coin, citing Reuters figures, said analysts had expected about $3.55 billion in revenue. Michael Intrator, CoreWeave’s chief executive, called it “a breakout quarter” in the company’s results release.
What happened
CoreWeave now expects 2026 revenue of $13 billion to $13.3 billion. CNBC said analysts polled by LSEG had expected $12.86 billion. The company also raised its forecast for adjusted operating income, a profit measure that leaves out some costs, to $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion. Analysts tracked by Visible Alpha had expected $1.07 billion, according to CNBC.
Other key figures from the report:
- Revenue backlog, meaning contracted work not yet delivered, reached about $132.5 billion as of Sept. 30. That was up from $104 billion at the end of June, Finviz reported after the prior quarter’s results.
- Operating income was $207 million, but net interest expense was $846 million, and the company posted a net loss of $709 million, Brave New Coin reported.
- Capital spending was $14.5 billion in the quarter, according to an Investing.com account of the earnings call. CoreWeave now expects full-year spending of $37 billion to $39 billion, up from $35 billion at the low end.
- The company expects annualized revenue of $20 billion to $21 billion as it exits 2026.
Reports on the per-share loss differ. Investing.com said the loss was $1.27 a share against a forecast loss of $1.55, while other outlets reported a smaller adjusted figure. All of them said the result beat expectations.
Why it matters
CoreWeave is one of the best-known “neoclouds,” a group of newer companies that build data centers packed with AI chips and rent the computing power to AI developers and big tech firms. Investors have looked closely at these companies this month, questioning whether spending on AI can keep growing at this pace and whether the heavy borrowing behind it can last.
That worry showed up in the credit market. CNBC reported that the price of insurance against a CoreWeave default, measured by credit default swap spreads, had risen above 11%, a level usually seen as a sign of distress. Brave New Coin noted that interest costs still dwarf the company’s operating profit. CoreWeave expects fourth-quarter interest expense of $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion.
On the earnings call, Intrator spoke to the debt concerns directly. “We will not use the unsecured debt market to fund our business at current yields, nor do we need to,” he said, according to Investing.com. CNBC reported that the company has leaned on other funding, including financing backed by customer contracts, and expects about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits.
Nitin Agrawal, CoreWeave’s chief financial officer, said the quarter showed the business “is delivering the operating leverage we said it would as we scale,” meaning profits growing faster than costs, Investing.com reported. Intrator also said demand remains strong for older chip generations, with prices for them up 30% to 50% from the prior quarter.
Market reaction and what comes next
The report lifted other neocloud stocks before Wednesday’s opening bell. CNBC said Nebius was up about 10%, while Applied Digital and Iren each gained around 6% in premarket trading. CoreWeave shares had closed Tuesday’s regular session at $48.73, according to Investing.com.
Not everyone is convinced the risks have passed. John Blank, chief equity strategist at Zacks Investment Research, told CNBC that CoreWeave had eased financing fears by moving away from unsecured bonds and that “it might be the bottom” for the stock, though he framed that as a view, not a certainty. Earlier skeptics, including Bernstein analysts who kept a negative rating after last quarter’s results, have pointed to how fast capital spending is rising.
CoreWeave expects to have more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power by the end of the year, up from more than 1.7 gigawatts at the end of September. Whether it can bring that capacity online on schedule, and pay for it, will likely shape how investors treat the company and its peers in the months ahead.
