CoreWeave (CRWV.US)'s third-quarter revenue of $3.661 billion increased 168%, up 7.9% after the market

According to Woofun AI, Elon Musk (Elon Musk) and Chamath Palihapitiya previously issued a “death prediction” for emerging global computing power cloud vendors, which saw a dramatic reversal after CoreWeave (CRWV.US) released its financial report for the third quarter of 2026. After the market, the stock price rose sharply by 7.9% to an interim report of $52.58.

Despite a brief recovery in market sentiment, the new AI cloud leader at the center of the storm's tens of billions of dollars of debt black hole and cash flow pressure have not dissipated due to single-day stock price fluctuations, and Wall Street is still examining the sustainability of its high-leverage model. Prior to that, CoreWeave experienced a fierce doubling of stocks and bonds. The stock price plummeted by more than 40% in the past month, and its bond yield once soared to the level of junk bonds. The five-year credit default swap spread reached an intraday high of 1,200 basis points. The entire industry was waiting with bated breath for the final judgment on this “big test of life and death.”

Faced with questions from bears about “computing power eating away” and “slowing demand,” CoreWeave fought back head-on with a set of strong growth data. In the third quarter of 2026, the company's total revenue reached US$3.661 billion, surging 168% year on year and 42% month-on-month. Net revenue in a single quarter exceeded US$1 billion for the first time.

This achievement not only surpassed the Wall Street consensus estimate of $3.55 billion to $3.56 billion, but also surpassed the company's own guidance limit of $3.6 billion. Profitability was also impressive. The non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA reached US$2,256 billion, with a profit margin of 62%, better than market expectations of 57.6%; adjusted operating profit of US$379 million, far exceeding the previous guidance range of US$200 million to US$260 million.

Notably, the adjusted operating margin jumped from 1% in the first quarter and 5% in the second quarter to 10% in the current quarter, achieving the double-digit profit margin target one quarter ahead of schedule, indicating that the scale effect is being unleashed at an accelerated pace; however, compared with 16% in the same period last year, this profit margin has declined markedly.

Judging from the backlog of orders and future guidance, CoreWeave's growth momentum is still strong. As of September 30, the company's unfulfilled contract revenue backlog reached a record high of US$132.5 billion, surging more than US$28 billion in a single quarter from US$104.2 billion at the end of the second quarter, a sharp increase of 138% over the previous year. Of this, approximately 36% of the backlog is expected to be converted into actual revenue within the next 24 months, providing solid support for short-term results. Based on this, CoreWeave raised its 2026 full-year revenue guidance from $12.4 billion to $13.3 billion; adjusted full-year operating profit guidance was raised to $1,275 million to $1,375 million, a median increase of 26% over the previous year.

In addition, the 2026 year-end annualized revenue operating rate (ARR) target was also raised to $20 billion to $21 billion, showing management's high confidence in the long-term growth path.

Data compiled by Woofun AI shows that the extremely tight supply and demand structure has given CoreWeave strong pricing power. CEO Michael Intrator made it clear that all of the available production capacity in 2028 has been sold out, and even if all production capacity has not yet been put on the market, the portion that has already been put on sale has been sold out. In July 2026, the company raised SKU prices for all products by about 25%, and increased by an additional 10% at the end of the third quarter, and prices continued to rise in the fourth quarter. Chief Financial Officer Nitin Agrawal revealed that the current pricing for long-term contracts of 4 to 5 years has risen to $20 million to $25 million per megawatt, while the price of short-term contracts is as high as $40 million per megawatt per year.

More importantly, the “depreciation of old video cards” problem, which was previously attacked by bears, has been reversed. The renewal price of Hopper architecture chips increased 30% to 50% month-on-month in the third quarter, even higher than the initial price when they first signed the contract, proving that the scarcity of computing power resources continues throughout the life cycle.

However, unraveling the bright revenue data, CoreWeave's balance sheet revealed a huge debt black hole. Capital expenditure for the third quarter reached US$14.5 billion, and cash expenses for the purchase of property and equipment reached US$9.441 billion; based on the current quarter's operating cash flow of US$1,975 billion minus the above purchase expenses, the net free cash flow outflow was approximately US$7.466 billion, with a cumulative net outflow of about US$17.92 billion for the first three quarters. The company did not directly disclose the free cash flow caliber in the financial report. As of September 30, total book debt soared to US$46.873 billion. If we include US$18.697 billion in operating lease liabilities and US$649 million in financial lease liabilities, the total debt and leasing liabilities would total about US$66.22 billion.

More serious is the “inversion of profit and interest”: adjusted operating profit of $379 million (GAAP operating profit of only $207 million), but net interest expenses for a single quarter reached $846 million, directly leading to GAAP net loss of $709 million. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria notes that interest expenses are far higher than operating profits, indicating that current business revenue is insufficient to repay accumulated debt. Management expects interest expenses to rise further to $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion in the fourth quarter, and annualized interest expenses to reach $4.4 billion. The gap between profitability and financing costs remains huge.

To address debt pressure, CoreWeave adopted a triple breakout strategy. Chief Financial Officer Agrawal said that there are no plans to issue new parent-level unsecured bonds before the end of 2027 and instead rely on prepaid blood transfusions from customers. It is expected to receive approximately $9 billion in advance payments and deposits over the next three months. Currently, 70% of transactions include advance payments.

At the same time, the company switched to asset-level mortgages (DDTL). The overall weighted average debt cost is 7.9%, and the estimated interest rate for the new investment-grade DDTL is 7% to 7.5%, which can cover more than 90% of the capital expenses of related projects.

Additionally, Intrator revealed that over 130,000 GPU contracts and 170,000 GPU contracts will expire in 2027 and 2028, respectively, and that the 300,000 “zero debt” devices can bring in incremental annualized revenue of nearly $4 billion and nearly $10 billion in 2027 and 2028, respectively, without additional capital expenses. However, Wells Fargo Bank (WFC.US) analyst Michael Turrin warned that even under an optimistic scenario, capital expenditure in 2027 will reach 66 billion US dollars, there will still be a financing gap of at least 25 billion US dollars in additional debt, and if the source of advance payments comes from downstream startups that also rely on financing, their ability to withstand risks is questionable.

Physical delivery challenges and policy headwinds have further compressed the fault-tolerant space. Financial reports show that although active electricity has doubled to 1.7 GW, the activation rate is only 37%, and the total contracted electricity exceeds 4.6 GW. After the US midterm elections, attitudes towards energy-intensive data centers were tightened in many places, forcing CoreWeave to accelerate the spread of over 1.3 GW of contracted production capacity to overseas markets such as India, Indonesia, and Spain. Under the weight of $66.22 billion in broad debt and net interest of $846 million in a single quarter, Musk's “prediction of the collapse of the union” still hangs over his head. This three-quarter report, which has exceeded expectations, only proved that downstream demand is burgeoning and that players' furniture is preparing to transfer pressure. It temporarily put an end to liquidity fears, but it is far from rewriting the dangerous undertone of high leverage. CoreWeave got a breather tonight, but the cash flow test that will really determine its life and death has only just begun.