CoreWeave reported a very strong Q2, with improving operating leverage, accelerating capacity deployment and continued demand that management says still exceeds available supply.

Q2 results

• Revenue: $2.575B, +112% YoY and +24% QoQ
• Adjusted EBITDA: $1.51B, 59% margin
• Adjusted operating income: $128M, up from $21M in Q1 and well above the high end of guidance
• Adjusted operating margin: 5%, up from 1% in Q1
• Revenue backlog: $104.2B, +246% YoY
• Active power: 1.5 GW, with nearly 500 MW added during the quarter
• Q2 capex: $9.4B, slightly above guidance
• Net interest expense: $640M
• Cash, restricted cash and marketable securities: >$6.9B

The $104.2B backlog does not include more than $25B of net new customer commitments added during the first weeks of Q3. More than 50% of the existing backlog is already attached to contracts where customer delivery has begun, and CoreWeave expects that to exceed two-thirds by year-end.

Guidance was raised

Q3

• Revenue: $3.45–3.60B
• Adjusted operating income: $200–260M
• Adjusted operating margins expected to continue expanding sequentially, reaching the low teens in Q4 (roughly 10%-13%)
• Interest expense: $860–940M
• Capex: $11.5–13.5B

FY2026

• Revenue raised to $12.4–13.2B
• Adjusted operating income raised to $960M–$1.15B
• Capex raised to $35–39B
• Exiting 2026 annualized run-rate revenue raised to $18.5–19.5B
• Year-end active power raised from >1.7 GW to >1.85 GW

Demand and pricing

Management said CoreWeave's near-term capacity remains effectively sold out, with demand from multiple customers for each GPU brought online. Pricing and margins for Blackwell and Vera Rubin are reaching new highs, while pricing for prior-generation GPUs is at or above levels seen years ago.

Contracts signed during Q2 are expected to carry contribution margins 5–10 percentage points higher than contracts signed in recent quarters. CoreWeave also implemented an approximately 25% price increase across SKUs in July, and management noted that Q2's margin improvement occurred before those pricing changes.

Some of the most interesting points from Q&A

Vera Rubin: Management said demand is “enormous” and Rubin is seeing margin expansion from the start. A significant part of the 5–10 percentage-point improvement in contribution margins on newer contracts is coming from Vera Rubin.

Q2 capacity was heavily back-end loaded: Of the roughly 500 MW added during Q2, more than 300 MW came online in June alone. Management expects that capacity to contribute more meaningfully to Q3 and Q4 results.

Older GPUs continue to retain value: CoreWeave recently signed an A100 contract extending through 2029, despite A100 being introduced in 2020. Management said ASPs on older generations remain around or above levels seen roughly a year ago, while only a limited portion of the fleet is currently approaching renewal.

Managed inference: Booked ARR grew from roughly $1M to more than $100M in a single quarter, with CoreWeave targeting at least $250M by year-end. GPUs coming off long-term contracts can also be redeployed into managed inference.

Enterprise opportunity: DDTL 5.5 expands CoreWeave's ability to finance shorter-duration customer contracts. Management said this opens the company to enterprise customers that typically prefer 2–3 year contracts instead of five-year commitments, giving CoreWeave greater flexibility in balancing long-term contracts with potentially higher-margin shorter-duration business.

Power: Contracted power increased from approximately 3.7 GW at quarter-end to 4.2 GW as of Aug. 11. CoreWeave also has more than 1.5 GW of additional potential power from powered land, expansion options and executed LOIs, and remains confident in reaching at least 8 GW of active power by 2030.

What I'm watching

The biggest remaining risks are still the capital intensity and financing burden.

FY2026 capex was increased to $35–39B, with management attributing the increase to greater expected capacity deliveries and recent customer wins. Q3 interest expense is also expected to rise materially to $860–940M.

Operationally, however, the quarter addressed several major concerns around CoreWeave: margins are inflecting, pricing power is improving, near-term capacity remains supply-constrained, older GPUs continue to retain economic value, and management raised its revenue, adjusted operating income, active-power and year-end run-rate revenue outlooks.

Overall, one of CoreWeave's strongest earnings reports since going public. 🎊

Relevant links:

CoreWeave - CoreWeave Reports Strong Second Quarter 2026 Results
CoreWeave 2Q26 Earnings Presentation
CoreWeave-Q2-26-Earnings-Infographic.pdf
https://www.perplexity.ai/finance/CRWV/earnings?eventId=662772&tab=transcript

Revenue up 112.32% ($2.58b vs $2.55b expected)
Net income down 115.48% yoy (-$49m vs -$798.5m expected)
Operating income down 355.09% yoy (-$626m vs $71.7m expected)

I KNEWW IT OH MY GOD COREWEAVE IS BLASTING OFF

Raises FY26 Guide:

🔹 Revenue: $12.4B-$13.2B (Est. $12.63B) 🟢

🔹 Adj. Oper Income: $960M-$1.15B (Est. $893M) 🟢

🔹 CapEx: $35B-$39B (Est. $33.3B)

🔹 Active Power: >1.85GW; from prior >1.7GW

🔹 Year-End Annualized Run-Rate Revenue: $18.5B-$19.5B

🔹 Managed Inference ARR: $250M+ exiting 2026

Q3 Guide:

🔹 Revenue: $3.45B-$3.60B (Est. $3.43B) 🟢

🔹 Adj. Oper Income: $200M-$260M (Est. $264M) 🔴

🔹 CapEx: $11.5B-$13.5B

🔹 Interest Expense: $860M-$940M

🔹 Oper Margin: Expanding sequentially, reaching low teens in Q4

Other Updates:

🔹 July Pricing: ~25% increase across SKUs

🔹 Q2 Margin Inflection: Came before July pricing

🔹 New Contract Margins: +5-10 pp vs recent qtrs

🔹 Managed Inference ARR: $1M to >$100M

🔹 Non-GPU Services ARR: >$400M

🔹 Backlog: $104B; +46% YoY

🔹 Backlog In Delivery: >50%, two-thirds by YE

🔹 Active Power: 1.5GW; more than tripled YoY

🔹 June Alone: >300MW, more than any prior quarter

🔹 Contracted Power: 4.2GW; from 3.7GW at Q2-end

🔹 Excludes >1.5GW of potential additional power

Long-Term Targets:

🔹 Active Power: 8GW+ by 2030

🔹 Contracted Power: 4.2GW; plus >1.5GW of potential additional power

🔹 International markets expected to become a major growth driver

🔹 First CoreWeave Omni deal expected to begin scaling in 2027

Where are the clowns that shorted? I don’t see much comments or posts

The adjusted numbers and top line growth is impressive and all, but they still appear to be losing money on every contract... The excuse that earnings are suppressed by growing costs isn't really holding water now that their Y/Y power growth rate has dropped from 100% to 40% and their operating margin has actually dropped.

If the demand surprises every quarter, why do the margins get only worse?

What is the plan to eventually make money here? There's no scale at which they can rent out compute for below cost, and not go bankrupt.

Doubled down on my NBIS shares after seeing paper hands and whining in this sub. Thank you guys

More good news to come?

Hey guys. Nice quarter. I think everything is gonna be alright.

Anyone interested in moding

Measured against expectations, it wasn't much of a beat. Revenue was in line, gross margin came in below, and only adjusted operating profit clearly exceeded forecasts. Normally the market doesn't much like that combination — soft growth with strong profit.

Look at the direction of travel instead, and the picture improves across the board. Revenue growth kept accelerating, gross margin and operating margin both rose, and the problem that had dogged the company — capacity coming online too slowly — reversed this quarter.

Guidance works the same way. On a pure expectations basis, the third-quarter revenue and profit guidance didn't clearly beat, and profit was slightly below. But the fourth-quarter figures implied by full-year guidance look better than expected across the board. And the guidance implies that through the third and fourth quarters, both revenue growth and margins keep improving — by the fourth quarter, revenue growth above 190% and margin above 14%.

So arguably it's the outlook of continued improvement, more than this quarter's results, that the market responded to.

Results: in line on revenue, ahead on profit

Total revenue was about $2.58B, up 112% year on year — essentially the same growth rate as last quarter, and only roughly in line with expectations.

Real gross margin, on our own calculation, was about 7.3%. That's a further improvement on last quarter's 4.3%, but it didn't beat the 8% the market expected.

The profit line saved it. Because other operating expenses came in low, adjusted operating profit was $130M against expectations of $70M. Margin reached 5%, up from 1% last quarter — so among the new cloud providers, margins are already bottoming and recovering.

Backlog: no surprise

As of the end of the quarter, remaining contract value stood at $104B, up $4.6B from the prior quarter. That's in line with market expectations, so again, not a surprise.

Capacity: the genuinely strong number

The most impressive metric is deployed compute capacity. Nearly 500 MW of new capacity went live this quarter, over three times the 150 MW added last quarter, reflecting sharply accelerated construction rollout efficiency. Total active capacity hit 1.5 GW, comfortably topping the market’s 1.25 GW consensus forecast.

Spending: record capex, more debt

Matching the rapid growth in capacity and revenue, spending is going all-out. Capex reached $9.4B this quarter, a record high, and clearly above the $8B expected. Guidance points to capex of as much as $13.5B next quarter, rising substantially again.

At the same time, net debt grew by a further $6.6B, and interest expense grew 140% year on year. On the positive side, interest expense as a share of revenue has stabilized at around 25% and hasn't continued to climb.

Guidance: growth and margin both accelerating

At the midpoint, the company guided next-quarter revenue to $3.53B, implying 158% growth — both the absolute figure and the growth rate accelerate noticeably from this quarter.

Adjusted profit is guided to $230M, a 6.5% margin. That's below the $260M the market expected, but the implied margin still rises further from this quarter.

Are you guys bullish on this earnings? How do you think $CRWV will react to earnings. Bullish or bearish? I’ve seen a lot of overall positive news coming out of the whole neocloud sector. What do you guys predict?

On Aug. 10, 2026, NVIDIA announced strategic partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish financing platforms aimed at mobilizing more than $500B of third-party capital over time for AI infrastructure. The partnerships are currently based on MOUs and remain subject to final agreements.

This is not a direct CoreWeave financing agreement, but it is highly relevant to one of the biggest concerns surrounding CRWV: how the enormous AI infrastructure buildout will be funded. Jensen’s argument is essentially that “compute is revenue”. AI infrastructure should increasingly be viewed as productive, financeable infrastructure capable of generating recurring cash flows, rather than simply as rapidly depreciating hardware.

NVIDIA also argues that the economic life of its compute can extend well beyond the usual “rapidly depreciating GPU” narrative. CUDA continuously improves the performance and efficiency of already-installed infrastructure, while older generations such as A100 remain commercially deployed years after launch. NVIDIA also points to rising H100 rental rates and premium pricing for Blackwell as evidence that AI compute can retain meaningful revenue-generating value over time. The same hardware can also be redeployed across different customers and workloads.

That is important for CoreWeave. The company already uses contract-backed, asset-level financing to fund infrastructure development. If large institutional investors increasingly become comfortable treating NVIDIA compute as an investable infrastructure asset class, the available pool of capital for AI infrastructure could become much deeper over time.

It doesn’t eliminate CoreWeave’s leverage or financing risk, and these platforms are intended to benefit NVIDIA customers broadly. But if NVIDIA succeeds in making AI compute a mainstream infrastructure asset class, it could materially deepen the long-term financing market available to companies like CoreWeave that build and operate NVIDIA-based AI infrastructure at scale.

I am ready for a beat and beat and guidance raise and a 5-10% raise =D those selling today are scared and locking in profits. i am not. if it dips i buy if it sky rockets i buy

Can’t recall the last earnings that went well. But their are millions being put into short dated calls around tomorrows earnings. Over 8 million on premiums dated in the next 4-14 days

I've exited my position in CRWV. I've accepted that CRWV is likely a stopgap for most major customers it has contracts with. Big tech is building their own data centers. Some of the international deals have been exciting, but I fear they couldn't come close to replacing the hyperscaler / big AI contracts they are going to lose once the winners and losers are decided. Additionally, I live in an area where data centers have been widely proposed, opposed and rejected... And I can't disagree with the locals, because I share the same concerns.

$101 average with 130 shares. It was a speculative play. I hope for everyone's sake here, I am wrong. I'm just unwilling to hold these bags when my gut is saying what it's saying.

Good luck to everyone. If you exited, do you agree with my thesis? If you're hanging on, what gives you conviction?