CoreWeave Raises 2026 Forecast After 168% Revenue Growth

By Elena Vasquez

CoreWeave reported $3.66 billion in third-quarter 2026 revenue, up 168% from a year earlier, and raised its full-year revenue forecast to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion.

CoreWeave shares had lost more than 40% of their value over the previous month before the report. CNBC reported that investors were rotating out of AI infrastructure names while some CoreWeave bond yields topped 16%.

The shares rose 10.8% in premarket trading Wednesday, as of 5:08 a.m. ET, according to CNBC, which also reported higher trading in Nebius, Applied Digital and Iren.

What did CoreWeave beat in the third quarter?

Revenue exceeded the $3.55 billion analysts expected, based on LSEG consensus. CoreWeave reported an adjusted loss of 95 cents a share, narrower than the $1.16 forecast.

CoreWeave’s GAAP net loss widened to $709 million from $110 million a year earlier. The company reported net interest expense of $846 million, up from $310 million. Operating income increased to $207 million from $52 million.

“This was a breakout quarter for CoreWeave, with revenue increasing by more than $1 billion sequentially and adjusted operating margins reaching double digits a quarter ahead of plan,” said Michael Intrator, CoreWeave’s co-founder, chairman and chief executive.

CoreWeave reported adjusted operating income of $379 million, a 10% margin. It now expects full-year adjusted operating income of $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion.

CoreWeave said the guidance midpoint was 26% higher than its prior $960 million-to-$1.15 billion range. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha had expected $1.07 billion. CoreWeave also raised its year-end annualized run-rate revenue target to $20 billion to $21 billion.

CoreWeave’s quarterly earnings releases show revenue rising across five reported periods:

• Q3 2025: $1,365 million
• Q4 2025: $1,572 million
• Q1 2026: $2,078 million
• Q2 2026: $2,575 million
• Q3 2026: $3,661 million

On November 10, 2026, CoreWeave posted on X that revenue was $3.7 billion, up 168% year over year. It called the $379 million in adjusted operating income “well above guidance” and said double-digit adjusted margins arrived a quarter ahead of plan. The post also put active power above 1.7 gigawatts after doubling the footprint year to date.

How will CoreWeave pay for its buildout?

Nitin Agrawal, CoreWeave’s finance chief, told analysts on the conference call: “At current yields, we do not intend to issue additional parent-level unsecured debt through 2027.”

He added: “By contrast, the asset-level secured debt market has remained stable, with our loans continuing to trade around par value.” Agrawal projected less than $5 billion in incremental parent-level capital through 2027. He said CoreWeave planned to raise new debt tied to a set of contracts in the coming weeks.

Intrator said most capital needed through 2027 would come from delayed-draw loans tied to customer contracts, customer prepayments and financing from hardware partners. Only “a limited amount” would come at the parent-company level, he said.

CoreWeave expects about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the next three months. During the quarter, it sold about $4.2 billion of convertible senior notes in an upsized offering.

The company also established its first at-the-market equity program for up to 35 million Class A shares. CoreWeave closed its $2.6 billion DDTL 5.5 facility, its first built for shorter-duration customer contracts.

The mix matters because lenders have grown wary of AI-only borrowers, according to WebProNews’ tracking from last month. CoreWeave is leaning more on secured, contract-linked financing while keeping parent-level unsecured issuance on hold at current yields.

What is driving demand for CoreWeave’s capacity?

CoreWeave’s revenue backlog reached about $132.5 billion at the end of September. Its second-quarter results put the figure at roughly $104 billion at the end of June.

The company added more than 200 megawatts of active power during the quarter. CoreWeave’s active footprint reached more than 1.7 gigawatts, double its level at the start of the year.

Contracted power grew by more than 900 megawatts to over 4.6 gigawatts. CoreWeave’s international contracted power passed 1.3 gigawatts, including India, Indonesia and Spain.

Canva, Substack and Wayve became new customers, CoreWeave said. The company also expanded work with OpenAI, Perplexity, Jane Street and Cohere.

CoreWeave’s first production workloads on Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 racks ran for Cognition. The company said they delivered 4.8 times the token throughput of GB200 NVL72 systems.

The backlog gives CoreWeave a larger base for financing and deployment than its $104 billion June figure. It also raises the execution stakes, as customer contracts must support $37 billion to $39 billion of planned 2026 spending.

What spending and market tests come next?

CoreWeave raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $37 billion to $39 billion. The low end moved above the earlier $35 billion-to-$39 billion range because the company expects to deliver infrastructure to customers sooner than planned.

The company still targets more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power by year-end. CoreWeave guided to fourth-quarter interest expense of $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion.

CoreWeave identified Anthropic as a key customer. WebProNews reported that Anthropic is scheduled to debut on Nasdaq next week after setting its IPO range.

“We see that we're going to have long-term relationships with the AI labs,” Intrator said. The planned listing will place one of CoreWeave’s key customer relationships in public view.

Agrawal tied next year’s spending to contracts already signed: “Should we choose to focus only on our committed backlog, we would expect capex for 2027 to remain in line with our 2026 capex investment, while revenue and EBITDA grow significantly.”

That commitment offers a way to hold 2027 capital spending near 2026 levels if CoreWeave focuses on signed backlog. Its $1.05 billion-to-$1.15 billion fourth-quarter interest guide puts financing costs well above the $207 million of operating income CoreWeave reported for Q3.

The next read on the neocloud trade comes Thursday, when Nebius reports, according to WebProNews. WebProNews noted that Nebius’s shares had fallen by a similar amount before the results.

CoreWeave’s next test is whether its $132.5 billion backlog can support a $20 billion-to-$21 billion year-end revenue run rate without a return to parent-level unsecured borrowing at current yields.