CoreWeave, the cloud provider specialized in artificial intelligence, reported its third-quarter 2026 results on Monday evening (November 10): revenue of $3.66 billion, up 168% from the same period in 2025, when the company had recorded $1.36 billion. The figure beat the $3.55 billion estimate from analysts polled by LSEG and cited by CNBC, and also came in above the top end of the company's own guidance.
"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, co-founder, chairman and CEO, in the official results release.
The quarter in numbers
- Revenue: $3.66 billion, up 168% year over year and more than $1 billion above the second quarter ($2.57 billion).
- Adjusted operating income: $379 million, well above guidance of $200 million to $260 million, with an adjusted margin of 10% — up from 1% in the first quarter and 5% in the second.
- Adjusted EBITDA: $2.26 billion, a 62% margin.
- Revenue backlog: approximately $132.5 billion as of September 30, a record and up 138% year over year, versus about $104 billion at the end of the second quarter.
- Net loss: $709 million, or $1.27 per share, versus a $110 million loss a year earlier.
- Active power: more than 1.7 gigawatts, after adding over 200 megawatts in the quarter and doubling capacity since the start of the year.
2026 guidance raised
CoreWeave raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion, and its adjusted operating income guidance to $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion, a 26% increase at the midpoint versus prior guidance. The company also now expects annualized run-rate revenue of $20 billion to $21 billion exiting 2026, and still expects more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power by year-end.
Spending remains heavy: 2026 capex is expected at $37 billion to $39 billion, with the low end raised from the prior range. Capex in the third quarter alone was $14.5 billion. To fund the expansion, Intrator pointed to about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits expected in the next three months alone, alongside operating cash flow and contract-backed financing.
The other side of the balance sheet
Not everything is positive. Net interest expense reached $846 million in the quarter — more than four times the $207 million operating income — and the company expects $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion in interest expense in the fourth quarter alone. That debt cost is what pushes the company to a net loss even as operations expand. Total debt stood at $46.87 billion as of September 30, according to balance-sheet data cited by specialist press.
CoreWeave shares (Nasdaq: CRWV) rose in extended trading after the release, reflecting the market's positive read on AI compute demand.
Why the result matters for the AI debate
The report lands amid doubts about the pace of AI infrastructure spending: just days ago, Nvidia's drop and the Nasdaq correction raised the question of who will foot the bill for the data-center race, as Geekiki reported in Nvidia cai e Nasdaq entra em correção com medo do custo da IA. CoreWeave is a direct gauge of that demand, as it rents GPU capacity to AI labs, hyperscalers and enterprises — and the record backlog, together with rental price increases of 25% and then 10% during the quarter, suggests demand still outstrips supply.
Among the quarter's technology milestones, the company highlighted NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 deployments coming online, with the first production workloads for Cognition reaching 4.8x greater token throughput than the GB200 NVL72, the launch of CoreWeave Forge, an AI development environment, and record-setting MLPerf Inference v6.1 performance with GB300 NVL72 racks.
CoreWeave is also expanding internationally: in late October it energized its first capacity in Denmark, at the DEN01 data center in Copenhagen, as Geekiki reported in CoreWeave DEN01 estreia na Dinamarca com data center em Copenhague e rede global de IA.
Sources
- CoreWeave Reports Strong Third Quarter 2026 Results — official CoreWeave release (Business Wire), November 10, 2026.
- CoreWeave (CRWV) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript — The Motley Fool, November 10, 2026.
- CoreWeave earnings bring good news for AI trade — TradingView/Invezz, November 10, 2026.
Image credit: photo of a CoreWeave data center with NVIDIA racks, via Grafa.
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts and internet sources. The figures cited come from CoreWeave's official release and the earnings-call transcript; projections are the company's own estimates and may change. Please consult the original sources for the complete data.
By Muse
