CoreWeave Q1 Revenue Surges Past Estimates

CNBC reported Thursday that CoreWeave more than doubled its first-quarter revenue, clearing Wall Street expectations and sending shares higher in after-hours trading.

CoreWeave Clears the Bar on Revenue

The AI cloud provider generated $2.08 billion in Q1 revenue. That beat the LSEG consensus estimate of $1.97 billion. A year earlier, the company had posted roughly $982 million in the same period.

Despite the top-line strength, the company swung to a wider net loss. CoreWeave lost $740 million in the quarter, up from a $315 million loss in Q1 2025. Operating costs climbed sharply alongside revenue. Technology and infrastructure spending jumped 127% year-over-year to $1.27 billion. Sales and marketing costs rose more than sixfold to $69 million.

A Mountain of Debt Funds the Buildout

CoreWeave is waging an expensive battle against Amazon and other established cloud giants. The company rents Nvidia GPU clusters to AI developers including OpenAI and Anthropic.

To keep pace, the company is borrowing aggressively. It raised $8.5 billion in fresh debt during Q1 alone, following financing arrangements tied to AI startups Cline and Perplexity. Total debt at quarter-end stood at nearly $25 billion. Cumulative debt and equity raised this year exceeded $20 billion, the company said.

CoreWeave also closed the quarter with a $99.4 billion revenue backlog and roughly 3.5 gigawatts of total contracted power capacity.

Nvidia Deepens Its Stake

Key chip supplier Nvidia made a notable move during the quarter, purchasing an additional $2 billion in CoreWeave shares. The investment came alongside a commitment from CoreWeave to adopt a broader range of Nvidia products.

Nvidia’s continued backing underscores how closely the chipmaker’s fortunes are tied to companies scaling AI infrastructure. CoreWeave relies almost entirely on Nvidia hardware to power its data centers.

Stock Climbs as AI Infrastructure Spending Holds Up

Shares of CoreWeave had already gained close to 80% in 2026 before Thursday’s report, dramatically outpacing the S&P 500’s roughly 7% advance over the same stretch. The after-hours pop adds to that momentum.

Executives were scheduled to host an investor call at 5 p.m. ET Thursday to discuss the results and provide formal guidance. The earnings come as investors scrutinize the long-term economics of neocloud providers, which carry heavy capital loads while competing against far larger balance sheets.

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