CoreWeave’s revenue rose 168%; its interest bill was four times its operating profit

01The fastest quarter of growth this year

Revenue was US$3,661m against US$1,365m a year earlier, and US$1,086m more than in April–June.¹² Growth on a year earlier had settled at 110–112% for three quarters; this quarter it reached 168%.³⁴⁹¹⁰

Almost all of it is contracted. CoreWeave sells capacity on committed contracts, which are take-or-pay: the customer pays for the capacity whether it uses it or not. Those contracts were 98% of revenue in April–June. They usually run one to six years, and revenue is recognised evenly over the term once the capacity is delivered. The rest is on-demand, pay-as-you-go use.²³

CoreWeave raised its 2026 revenue guidance to US$13.0–13.3bn and expects to leave the year at an annualised run rate of US$20–21bn, which it defines as the last month’s revenue times 12. It added more than 200 MW of active power in the quarter, to over 1.7 GW, and expects more than 1.85 GW at year-end.¹

02Where each dollar of revenue goes

At CoreWeave the largest cost is the GPU itself, and it arrives as depreciation. CoreWeave writes its computing equipment off over six years, a period it lengthened from five in 2023.³ Depreciation and amortisation were US$1,889m in the quarter, 52% of revenue. Depreciation of servers, networking gear and software sits in the line CoreWeave calls technology and infrastructure; the cost of revenue line holds data-centre rent and power, along with the depreciation of power installations.¹²

Adjusted EBITDA, the first of CoreWeave’s non-GAAP measures, adds depreciation, interest, tax and share-based pay back to the result: US$2,256m, a 62% margin. Its adjusted operating income, which keeps depreciation in, was US$379m, or 10%; a year earlier that margin was 16%. Operating income under US accounting rules was US$207m, 6% of revenue.¹ The gap between 62% and 6% is mostly the price of the hardware, spread over its life. If GPUs earn for fewer than six years, each year’s real cost is higher than the books show; CoreWeave’s filing lists the useful life of its GPUs among the estimates that “could significantly affect” its results.²

03Why interest is larger than operating profit

The interest comes from how the GPUs are paid for. In the quarter CoreWeave spent US$9,441m on property and equipment and its operations brought in US$1,975m. Net new borrowing of US$7,957m covered the gap.¹ Total debt, recourse and non-recourse, was about US$46.9bn on 30 September, from US$21.4bn on 31 December and US$14.0bn a year earlier.¹⁹ Recourse debt can be claimed from the parent company; non-recourse debt only from the assets of the subsidiary that borrowed it. Against that debt sat shareholders’ equity of US$4.0bn, and the company also carries US$18.7bn of operating lease liabilities, the category that holds its data-centre leases.¹³

The price of the money is high. On 30 June CoreWeave’s term loans carried effective rates of 7% to 15%, its senior notes 9–10% and its equipment financing 9–11%; only its convertible notes, which can turn into shares, cost about 2%.² In the quarter it raised about US$4.2bn of convertible notes, set up a programme to sell up to 35 million new shares on the market, and closed a US$2.6bn delayed-draw loan priced at the SOFR benchmark plus 5.5 percentage points.¹² Interest guided at US$1.05–1.15bn for October–December is 24–36% above this quarter’s.¹

04What the backlog promises, and what it does not

Backlog was about US$132.5bn on 30 September, from about US$104bn on 30 June, US$99.4bn on 31 March, US$66.8bn at the end of 2025 and US$55.6bn a year earlier.¹⁵⁶⁷⁸ The June release had said that more than US$25bn of new commitments signed early in the third quarter were not yet in its figure.⁵ At the midpoint of guidance, the backlog is about ten times 2026 revenue.

The definition carries the limits. Backlog counts committed contracts “subject to the satisfaction of delivery and availability of service requirements”.¹ The part reported in its financial statements, remaining performance obligations, is net of expected credits, of revenue lost to delivery delays, and of capacity CoreWeave has the right to resell. Of the US$103.7bn on that measure at 30 June, 41% was expected within 24 months, 39% in months 25 to 48 and the rest up to month 78.² Timing depends on others: in November 2025 CoreWeave announced delays by a third-party data-centre provider in delivering sites.² CEO Michael Intrator said about US$9bn of customer prepayments and deposits are expected in the next three months.¹

05The bill for the next quarter

CoreWeave’s guidance spells out the next three months. Revenue of US$13.0–13.3bn for the year leaves US$4.69–4.99bn for October–December. Adjusted operating income of US$1.275–1.375bn for the year, after US$528m in the first nine months, leaves US$747–847m for the quarter, below the US$1.05–1.15bn of interest CoreWeave expects in it. Capital expenditure for the year is now US$37–39bn; the low end rose from US$35bn because, the company says, it expects to deliver infrastructure to customers sooner than planned.¹

Contracted power, the electricity CoreWeave has secured for future sites, grew by more than 900 MW in the quarter to over 4.6 GW, about 2.7 times what it runs today.¹ Turning that power into revenue takes GPUs, and this quarter’s were paid for mostly with debt. The same strain shows at another financier of US AI data centres: SoftBank, in its quarter to September, wrote off power equipment bought for those sites while its finance cost rose.