CoreWeave Reports 168% Revenue Growth While Carrying $41.6B Debt

CoreWeave posted third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion, up 168.3% year over year, while carrying $41.6 billion of corporate debt on its balance sheet. The company, which trades on NASDAQ as CRWV, reported the figure two days before Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) delivered its own results, and the two reports sketch the same demand picture from opposite financial positions.

Both companies said demand for AI compute exceeds the capacity they can bring online. That is the entire bull case for the AI infrastructure layer in one sentence. The divergence appears in how each company pays for it.

Nebius posted revenue of $980.8 million, up 571.3% — a faster growth rate than CoreWeave on a much smaller base. The two reports arrived in the same week and traded within a point of each other in investor attention. What separates them is leverage, cash, and the source of funding for future capacity.

How much capacity does each company actually have?

CoreWeave says qualified demand sits at 10 times its available capacity through the end of 2027. The company raised prices approximately 25% in July and another 10% later in the quarter, and its adjusted operating margin reached 10% — a quarter ahead of plan. Scale is not the problem. The company lists roughly $132.5 billion in backlog as its demand signal.

Nebius had a rockier quarter. About $325 million of its revenue came from a non-recurring asset-light deal, which inflates the headline figure relative to the recurring business. Colocation delays in New Jersey pushed the company's 2026 revenue guidance to the low end of its $3.0–$3.4 billion range. Prices still rose more than 20% per GPU-hour from the second quarter, and Databricks, Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG) and Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) all signed multi-year deals.

The comparison in headline numbers:

• Q3 revenue: CoreWeave $3.66B (+168.3%) vs. Nebius $980.8M (+571.3%)
• Q3 net loss: CoreWeave $709M vs. Nebius $37.5M
• Cash on hand: CoreWeave $4.12B vs. Nebius $7.43B
• 2026 capex guidance: CoreWeave $37–$39B vs. Nebius approximately $27B
• Demand signal: CoreWeave ~$132.5B backlog vs. Nebius $12B+ signed since Q3 began

What is the debt actually costing CoreWeave?

Debt is the price of CoreWeave's growth. Net interest expense of $846 million helped drive the $709 million GAAP net loss for the quarter. The fourth-quarter interest expense is guided to $1.05–$1.15 billion, which means the cost of leverage rises even as revenue compounds.

CoreWeave's CFO told analysts: "we will not use the unsecured debt market to fund our business at current yields, nor do we need to." Management expects to need less than $5 billion of parent-level capital through 2027. Another approximately $9 billion in prepayments and deposits should arrive within the next three months.

That helps, but a debt-to-equity ratio of 8.94 leaves shareholders with a thin buffer. For comparison, Nebius holds $12.30 billion of shareholders' equity against its much smaller obligations.

Are customer prepayments replacing the bond market?

Both companies are turning to customers, rather than creditors, to finance capacity. CoreWeave's incoming $9 billion in prepayments and deposits is the larger example. Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh said "prepayments on Q3 agreements covered more than 100% of the associated capex."

On paper, Nebius has the cleaner funding model — customer cash covers the buildout before it happens. Even so, the company's operating cash flow came in at negative $273 million for the quarter, and it added $5.75 billion in convertible notes. Those notes convert into equity, which makes dilution a live risk for both companies. CoreWeave's at-the-market program covers up to 35 million shares.

The funding question matters beyond these two tickers. If AI compute providers can finance data centers from customer prepayments rather than debt markets, capital constraints loosen for the entire buildout. If they cannot, interest expense — visible in CoreWeave's $846 million quarterly bill — becomes a structural drag on the sector's margins.

What happens when the contracts roll off?

CoreWeave's renewals are the number to watch. More than 130,000 GPUs come off contract in 2027, and management says renewing them could add approaching $4 billion of annualized revenue with no new capital expenditure. That would be margin expansion without new debt — the scenario that eases the balance-sheet risk.

Nebius faces its own execution test. Its company-owned sites in Missouri, Alabama and Finland must deliver $12–$13 billion of 2027 revenue and pre-tax breakeven in the fourth quarter of 2027. The New Jersey colocation delays show how easily power and construction timelines can slip.

Which stock did investors punish — and why?

Investors punished Nebius more on Thursday. Its shares fell 16.84% to $128.64, while CoreWeave fell 6.86%. The analysis in the source argues that reaction focuses on a timing problem — the New Jersey delays and the one-off revenue — and misses a more lasting advantage: Nebius holds more cash, carries a much smaller loss, and reports $12.30 billion of shareholders' equity.

CoreWeave has the bigger backlog, but interest costs absorb much of its operating profit. If its 2027 renewals come through and interest expense stops rising, the leverage risk would ease. Until then, CoreWeave carries the greater balance-sheet risk against the same demand, while Nebius holds the stronger funding position.

Both companies sit at the chip layer of the AI buildout. The power, thermal and connectivity suppliers downstream of them represent a separate investment thesis, one the source maps in a separate report on seven AI infrastructure stocks that are not chipmakers.

The next hard data point arrives with CoreWeave's fourth-quarter interest expense, guided at up to $1.15 billion — the clearest single measure of whether scale is outrunning the cost of the debt that built it.