CoreWeave's Q3 shows revenue surge, CEO aims to allay debt worries

CoreWeave reported better-than-expected third quarter results and CEO Michael Intrator moved to allay concerns about funding its AI infrastructure buildout.

The company's earnings report landed as interest rates on CoreWeave debt has surged. Concerns about CoreWeave's debt load have whacked shares, which are down 32% year to date.

Intrator said it was a breakout quarter and revenue increased more than $1 billion sequentially. "Our growth is 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," said Intrator.

The big question for enterprise customers is whether CoreWeave's access to capital continues. The issue is more pressing for shareholders since the company can continue to deliver its AI infrastructure and software to customers. The regulatory landscape for AI data centers is also an unknown for CoreWeave.

Separately, CoreWeave said Wayve will train its autonomous driving models on CoreWeave. More on CoreWeave customers:

• Caterpillar’s AI Autonomy Efforts Accelerate, But Domain Knowledge Drives Returns
• How Capital One Evaluates and Governs Its AI Agents

In addition, investors and customers are watching to see if CoreWeave can grow out of its debt load. The company said its fourth quarter interest expenses in the fourth quarter will be $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion, but it'll have an annualized revenue run rate of $20 billion to $21 billion.

On the product front, CoreWeave continues to expand its reach.

• CoreWeave launches CoreWeave Forge: Here's a look at the strategy
• CoreWeave'e AI Cloud: From Infrastructure to the AI Loop
• AI Gets Cheaper. Demand Gets Bigger: Inside CoreWeave’s AI Infrastructure Strategy

CoreWeave reported a net loss of $709 million, or $1.27 a share, on revenue of $3.66 billion in the third quarter. Wall Street was expecting CoreWeave to report a non-GAAP loss of $1.21 a share on revenue of $3.54 billion. The GAAP loss estimate for the third quarter was $1.55 a share.

By the numbers:

• CoreWeave added 200 MWs of active power to end the quarter above the 1.7GW mark.
• Contracted power was up more than 900 MW to over 4.6 GW.
• The company raised more than $4.2 billion in convertible notes.
• In the third quarter, CoreWeave paid $846 million in interest. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, CoreWeave paid $2.02 billion in interest.
• CoreWeave had total liabilities of $87.46 billion with non-current recourse debt and operating lease liabilities the majority of the sum.

As for the outlook, CoreWeave said its 2026 revenue will be between $13 billion to $13.3 million with adjusted operating income of $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion. Capex for 2026 will be $37 billion to $39 billion, up from a previous outlook of $35 billion to $39 billion. CoreWeave said the increased range is due to deliver infrastructure sooner than expected.

CoreWeave added that interest expense in the fourth quarter will be $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion.