To The Moon

CoreWeave Q3 Review: Strong Demand, Mixed Results

CoreWeave's Q3 results topped expectations but full-year guidance was revised down. Combined with disclosures about delays at third-party data centers, the stock fell more than 6% after hours.

Core Financial Indicators

~Q3 revenue: $1.36B, up 134% year over year, above company guidance and Street expectations.

~Q4 revenue guide: $1.54B, implying growth decelerating to 106% year over year. Partly due to slower-than-expected progress at third-party data centers.

~Revenue backlog beat expectations. It reached $55.6B at Q3 end, with more than $25B added in the quarter. Nearly doubled versus Q2, about 4x year to date. Customer concentration fell quickly. The largest customer(OpenAI)'s share of backlog dropped from roughly 85% at the start of the year, to about 50% in Q2, and about 35% in Q3.

~Adjusted operating income in Q3 exceeded the prior $175M expectation, but the Q4 guide implies a sizable QoQ decline. Management said that in Q4 the company will go live with the largest deployment in its history, and the front-loading of costs and expenses has resulted in a higher cost-and-expense ratio.

Key Points

Capex Guidance Revised Down

Capex guidance cut 40% mainly on delivery delays. 2025 capex is now expected at $12–14B, down from the prior $20–23B. Long-term capex remains solid, and 2026 capex is projected to be “well over twice” 2025 levels. Q3 capex was $1.9B, below expectations because certain facilities were delayed, so more spend sat in CIP rather than flowing through capex.

Delays center on powered shells, not GPUs or power supply. This is a temporary, system-level supply-chain issue rather than a demand issue. The company remains supply-constrained, and AI compute demand from customers far exceeds current capacity. This dynamic also shapes the company's outlook for Q4 and for revenue growth into 2026.

CoreWeave is mitigating with multi-sourcing, selective self-build, and running projects in parallel. As the overall base scales, the relative impact of delays should diminish.

Capacity and Supply Side

Active power online is about 590 MW, up 120 MW quarter over quarter. Signed power and facility commitments total 2.9 GW, slated to come online over the next 12–24 months. More than 1 GW is saleable but not yet online.

GPU Life Cycle

A customer renewed, two quarters early, a contract covering 10,000+ H100s that was approaching expiration. Pricing was within plus or minus 5% of the original contract, indicating the residual utility of prior-generation GPUs and platform stickiness.

Financing Costs and Liquidity

Interest expense was $311M in the quarter. This rose year over year due to leverage taken on for expansion, but the marginal cost of funding is trending lower.

The DDTL 3.0 facility priced at SOFR + 400 bps, about 900 bps below prior non-investment-grade tranches. An additional $3B tranche priced at SOFR + 425 bps. In July, the company issued $17.5B of notes with a coupon 25 bps lower than the inaugural May issuance.

Cash and liquidity totaled $3B at quarter end. The funding stack is being optimized across cost and tenor. There is no major maturity pressure before 2028, excluding OEM installment and amortizing contractual debt.

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