CoreWeave Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• CoreWeave booked more than $40 billion of new customer commitments this quarter, lifting contracted revenue backlog to $99.4 billion, with 36% expected to be recognized in the next 24 months and reduced concentration from non‑investment‑grade AI customers to under 30%.
• Revenue climbed to about $2.1 billion (up 112% YoY) as active power surpassed 1 GW and contracted power exceeded 3.5 GW, leaving the company largely sold out of 2026 capacity and targeting more than 1.7 GW of active power by end‑2026.
• Adjusted EBITDA was $1.2 billion (56%) while adjusted operating income was $21 million and net loss $740 million, which management attributes to timing effects from rapid capacity scaling. The company closed an $8.5 billion DDTL priced under 6%, raised $2 billion of NVIDIA‑linked equity, and reaffirmed full‑year guidance of $12–13 billion revenue and $900M–$1.1B adjusted operating income while raising full‑year CapEx to $31–35 billion.

CoreWeave NASDAQ: CRWV reported what management described as a “transformational quarter” for its first quarter of fiscal 2026, driven by record customer commitments, rapid infrastructure expansion, and new financing milestones intended to lower its cost of capital.

Bookings surge lifts backlog to nearly $100 billion

CEO Mike Intrator said the company delivered its “strongest quarter for customer bookings,” signing “more than $40 billion of new commitments” and increasing contracted revenue backlog to “nearly $100 billion.” CFO Nitin Agrawal put the quarter-end revenue backlog at $99.4 billion, up “nearly 50% sequentially” and “close to 4x year-over-year.”

Agrawal said the backlog is “near-term weighted,” with 36% expected to be recognized in the next 24 months and 75% in the next four years. He also said commitments from “non-investment grade AI native companies and foundation labs” now represent “less than 30%” of the overall backlog, reflecting diversification toward other customer types.

Intrator highlighted customer activity across AI labs and enterprise verticals. He said CoreWeave added Anthropic as a customer to support development and deployment of the Claude family of models, and signed multiple new orders with Meta, including the $21 billion agreement announced in early April. He also said financial services is “already approaching $10 billion” in revenue backlog, citing an expanded commitment from Jane Street that added “$6 billion of capacity in Q1” and a new customer win with Hudson River Trading. Intrator added that physical AI and spatial computing has surpassed $1 billion in backlog contributions, with recent customers including World Labs, PhysicsX, and Sunday Robotics.

Revenue climbs to $2.1 billion as active power surpasses 1 GW

CoreWeave generated approximately $2.1 billion of revenue in the quarter, up 32% sequentially and 112% year-over-year, according to both Intrator and Agrawal. Intrator said CoreWeave surpassed 1 gigawatt of active power during the quarter, calling it a milestone achieved by only “a handful of cloud companies” historically. He said the company remains on track to reach or exceed “more than 1.7 GW” of active power by the end of 2026.

Intrator also said total contracted power ended the quarter at “more than 3.5 GW,” up “more than 400 MW this quarter alone,” with “the substantial majority expected to be online by the end of 2027.” He said the capacity was added “entirely via long-term leases,” while the company also plans to accelerate self-build sites, with its “first self-build site” expected to come online later this year.

On demand and pricing, Intrator said average pricing for A100, H100, H200, and L40S GPUs increased quarter-over-quarter and the company remained “largely sold out for near-term capacity across our fleet.” Agrawal similarly said the company is “largely sold out of our 2026 capacity,” with pricing “increasing across the board from Ampere to Hopper to Blackwell,” and said the trend is extending into 2027 as CoreWeave begins allocating next year’s capacity.

Platform and product updates aimed at enterprise adoption

Intrator said CoreWeave continues to broaden its platform beyond GPUs, emphasizing an integrated stack spanning CPUs, storage, networking, software, and developer tools. He said more than 90% of reserved instance customers use “at least two” CoreWeave products, while more than 75% use “three or more.”

He highlighted several product announcements, including the launch of a Trust Center aimed at enterprise security and compliance. He also said the company introduced Flex Reservations and spot pricing, which were “immediately oversubscribed.” In addition, Intrator said CoreWeave announced CoreWeave Interconnect in collaboration with Google Cloud, building on AI Object Storage and “zero-egress offerings,” to reduce friction for customers operating across multiple clouds.

Intrator also said the company is beginning to offer CoreWeave Omni, which would enable it to deploy and operate its cloud stack inside customers’ own data centers “with their GPUs,” adding that early interest is “strong” among cloud, enterprise, and sovereign customers.

Profitability metrics, spending, and the timing effects of deployments

Agrawal reported adjusted EBITDA of $1.2 billion, up from $606 million in the year-ago quarter, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 56%. Adjusted operating income was $21 million, and adjusted operating margin was 1%, which Agrawal called the “low point” as the company ramps capacity. Net loss was $740 million, while adjusted net loss was $589 million.

Agrawal said operating expenses were $2.2 billion, including $153 million of stock-based compensation, and attributed expense growth to scaling active power capacity and converting backlog into revenue, along with higher sales and marketing investment to diversify the customer base. Interest expense rose to $536 million from $264 million in the year-ago quarter, driven by increased debt to support infrastructure scaling.

Both executives emphasized that margin pressure is largely timing-related. Agrawal explained that after receiving a “powered shell,” CoreWeave incurs lease and power costs and begins depreciating equipment during a fit-out process that typically takes “about one-two months,” when costs are recognized but revenue has not yet started. By “month three,” he said, CoreWeave is typically generating revenue and contribution margins normalize in the “mid-20s.” Intrator added that during rapid scaling, adding very large amounts of capacity relative to the installed base can create short-term margin impacts, which he expects to “reinflate” as the company reaches what he called “escape velocity.”

Capital spending rises and new financing lowers cost of debt

Capital expenditures totaled $6.8 billion in Q1, and Agrawal said construction in progress remained “roughly unchanged sequentially.” Liquidity at March 31 included more than $3.3 billion in cash equivalents, restricted cash, and marketable securities.

Management also discussed component pricing pressures. In response to analyst questions, Intrator said CoreWeave structures contracts to incorporate component costs and is “by and large” insulated from component price inflation because it includes those costs in pricing to target unit economics. Agrawal added that the P&L impact is “already incorporated” in the company’s guidance.

On financing, Intrator highlighted the closing of an $8.5 billion delayed draw term loan (DDTL 4.0), which he described as the first investment-grade delayed draw term loan backed by HPC infrastructure, receiving an “A-minus equivalent rating” from Moody’s, Fitch, and DBRS, and structured as non-recourse to the parent. He said it was oversubscribed and priced at an implied cost of “less than 6%.” Agrawal said CoreWeave raised $2 billion of equity tied to an expansion of its relationship with NVIDIA and noted that DDTL 4.0 also included an “ABS-style draw feature” unlocking an additional $1 billion upon contract stabilization.

Agrawal said the company secured more than $20 billion of debt and equity capital year-to-date, including more than $10 billion of additional transactions entering Q2. He also said S&P moved the corporate rating outlook from stable to positive. Agrawal noted the company has “no debt maturities until 2029” other than self-amortizing contract-backed debt and OEM vendor financing.

Guidance reaffirmed as capacity remains constrained

CoreWeave reaffirmed full-year guidance of $12 billion to $13 billion of revenue and $900 million to $1.1 billion of adjusted operating income. For Q2, the company guided to revenue of $2.45 billion to $2.6 billion and adjusted operating income of $30 million to $90 million, with Agrawal expecting sequential margin expansion for the remainder of the year and a return to “low double digits” in adjusted operating margin by Q4.

For capital expenditures, CoreWeave guided to $7 billion to $9 billion in Q2 and raised full-year CapEx guidance to $31 billion to $35 billion, saying the increase on the low end reflects higher component pricing. Agrawal said the company now expects to end 2026 with $18 billion to $19 billion of annualized run rate revenue, increasing the low end by $1 billion, and continues to expect to exceed $30 billion of annualized run rate revenue exiting 2027, with “more than 75%” already contracted excluding renewals.

In the Q&A, Intrator said CoreWeave estimates it is “materially in excess of 50%” inference usage based on power draw extrapolation, calling it a positive signal because inference reflects AI monetization by customers. He also said the “overwhelming majority” of component procurement required for 2026 is already locked in, with purchase orders and power secured, underpinning the company’s confidence in guidance.

About CoreWeave NASDAQ: CRWV

CoreWeave is a U.S.-based provider of GPU-accelerated cloud infrastructure designed to support compute-intensive workloads such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual effects rendering and other high-performance computing applications. The company supplies access to large fleets of modern GPUs and complementary infrastructure that enable customers to train and deploy large models, run inference at scale, and process graphics-heavy workloads with low latency and high throughput.

CoreWeave’s product offering includes on-demand and dedicated GPU instances, bare-metal servers, private clusters and managed services tailored for enterprise and developer use.

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