CoreWeave's Backlog Hits $104 Billion; Interest Is Four Times Profit

Two Numbers, Released Half an Hour Apart

On the evening of August 11, just after the New York close, CoreWeave reported its second quarter.

Revenue had doubled in a year, $1.21 billion to $2.58 billion, up 112%. The stock rose 13% after hours, touching $102.

The same release carried a second number: net interest expense of $640 million, against $267 million a year earlier.

Guidance that night put the bill at $860-940 million for the third quarter, with adjusted operating income of $200-260 million.

In its own words, CoreWeave expects to pay roughly four times its operating profit in interest next quarter.

The market heard that sentence and bought the stock.

The Business of Renting Out Compute

CoreWeave is the largest of the so-called neoclouds: it buys GPUs from Nvidia in volume, installs them in data centers and rents them on multi-year contracts.

The appeal is revenue locked in up front: customers pay whether or not they use the capacity.

IPO filings showed 62% of 2024 revenue came from one customer, Microsoft; Meta, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic came later.

The company now says no single customer will account for more than 35% of contracted revenue.

You buy the chip today and collect over years, bridging the gap with debt.

CoreWeave is that market's most visible borrower; management cited its securitization of shorter contracts as evidence the credit window is open.

Total debt stood at $35.07 billion on June 30, against $5.52 billion of cash.

Annualize it and the blended cost of debt is roughly 7.3% — well above Treasuries, because the collateral is processors whose worth three years out is unknown.

A Backlog Is a Promise; a Megawatt Is a Calendar

The stock rose on the backlog: $104.2 billion as of June 30, up 246%, with $25 billion more added in the opening weeks of Q3.

Contracts running beyond four years grew from 10% to 21% of the book.

But a backlog is not revenue: a contract becomes revenue only when capacity is running, and the narrowest link is electricity.

The year-end target is 1.85 GW, 0.35 GW in six months; management sees a path to 8 GW by 2030, four and a half years out.

Where a Hundred Dollars Goes

The adjusted EBITDA margin is 59% — software-like, and its defenders' favorite number. The same quarter's GAAP net loss margin was negative 24%.

The 59% margin is not fake; the problem is that the same $58.60 must replace the aging machine and service the loan.

Third-quarter guidance midpoints at $3.53 billion of revenue and $900 million of interest: interest as a share of revenue rises from 24.9% to 25.5%.

The company also lifted its 2026 outlook that night: revenue midpoint up 2.4% to $12.8 billion, capital expenditure up 12.1% to $37 billion.

That is $4 billion more spending this year for $300 million more revenue this year.

The defense is reasonable — spending belongs to today, revenue to 2027. Three months ago the market read the identical sentence the other way.

What changed was the backlog's size: in May the extra spending looked like an unbacked bet, in August like what a $104 billion book requires.

The Other Side of the Table

A backlog is worth what the people who signed it can pay.

The four largest AI labs' contracted commitments are reported at $66.8 billion, all strong balance sheets or backed by them.

All are making the same wager: that AI models will eventually earn enough to justify today's spending.

The backlog is diversified by customer. It is not diversified by thesis.

What Is Left Over

Free cash flow was negative $5.74 billion. Sources differ on capital expenditure: the cash flow statement shows $6.42 billion, the slides $9.35 billion committed.

The full-year outlook is plainer: $12.4-13.2 billion of revenue against $35-39 billion of capital expenditure — $3 spent for every $1 earned.

Railways, telecom networks and power plants were built this way too. But there the asset lasts forty years and the rail does not go obsolete.

How many years a GPU produces revenue is the number the industry argues about most and knows least; a longer schedule books profit for longer.

With $1.393 billion of depreciation in one quarter, a one-year change in that assumption reshapes reported profit.

The debt sits on the same calendar: if part of the $35 billion falls due before the contracts it financed, the company must refinance early.

Nobody knows the credit market's mood at that moment.

CoreWeave joined the Nasdaq 100 in early August and now takes passive flows too.

The Lesson: Growth Has to Outrun Interest

A company growing on debt has two curves, revenue and interest; which is steeper is the story.

At CoreWeave, second-quarter revenue rose 112% year over year while interest rose 140%. Third-quarter guidance has revenue growing 24% sequentially and interest 40%.

The company says the gap will close because today's spending earns its return from 2027.

For that, the contracts' length, the processors' working life and the debt's maturity must meet on one calendar.

Figures in this piece come from CoreWeave's second-quarter press release of August 11, 2026, the guidance given on that evening's earnings call, and the financial press reporting both. Where sources diverge on capital expenditure, the discrepancy is preserved in the text as noted. Several customer-level contract values have not been disclosed by the company and rest on press reporting. Share prices and charts are live data and may differ at the time of reading.

Correction (September 13, 2026): prose tightened for rhythm; figures and sources unchanged.