CoreWeave CFO: $25B raised in debt and equity in 18 months
(2025/08/13)
- Reference: 1755097211
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/13/debtladen_coreweave_continues_to_invest/
- Source link:
Rent-a-GPU biz CoreWeave is still racking up eyewatering debts amid mounting net losses as it continues to burn cash on expanding datacenter capacity.
The New Jersey-based firm is one of a new breed of cloud providers that focuses on GPU-based server infrastructure and services used by customers for the development and training of AI models.
In its [1]second quarter results for the three months ending June 30 , CoreWeave grew its topline rapidly, reporting revenues of $1.21 billion, up 207 percent year-on-year and beating analyst estimates.
[2]
However, as the old saying goes, revenue is vanity and profit is sanity: the business recorded a net loss of $290.5 million for the three months, albeit better than the $323 million net loss logged for the period of 2024.
[3]
[4]
MarketWatch [5]reported that CoreWeave Shares sank by 10.4 percent in an extended trading session following the earnings announcement.
CoreWeave spent $2.9 billion in capital expenditure during the quarter, the largest amount in its history, as it continues to invest in building out infrastructure to meet customer demand. During the quarter it signed a [6]250MW bit barn capacity agreement with Applied Digital valued at $7 billion over 15 years.
[7]
CFO Nitin Agrawal disclosed on an earnings call that CoreWeave has taken on a total of over $25 billion worth of debt and equity since the start of last year, all to fund the building of its AI cloud infrastructure.
"Since the beginning of 2024, we have secured over $25,000,000,000 of debt and equity to fund the build out and scale the leading AI cloud platform."
And interest expense during Q2 was $267 million compared to $67 million a year ago, on the back of increased debt to support infrastructure scaling, partly offset by the lower cost of capital.
[8]
"Scaling our capacity and services remains a key ingredient for our success in this structurally undersupplied market," said CEO and Co-Founder Michael Intrator on the same call with financial analysts.
"We are aggressively expanding our footprint on the back of intensifying demand signals from our customers, ensuring that we maintain a durable, multiyear runway for growth. We are now on track to deliver over 900 megawatts of active power before the end of the year," he claimed.
Intrator believes AI applications are "beginning to permeate all areas of the economy," and as a consequence, demand for CoreWeave's cloud AI services is aggressively growing.
He also mentioned its [9]proposed $9 billion acquisition of Core Scientific , a bitcoin mining outfit masquerading as a high-density colocation provider, saying that this will allow CoreWeave to scale faster and more efficiently.
"Upon closing, CoreWeave would own approximately 1.3 gigawatts of gross power capacity across Core Scientific's national datacenter footprint, with an incremental one gigawatt or more available for future expansion," he said, claiming it would also eliminate more than $10 billion in future lease liability.
This follows a report in the [10]Financial Times earlier this month that some Core Scientific shareholders were not happy with the proposed merger, specifically that they were being offered CoreWeave shares in exchange amid concerns that the value of these could fall over the coming months.
CoreWeave's operating margin shrank to 2 percent from 20 percent a year ago, which it blamed on $145 million in stock-based compensation costs.
For Q3, the business expects revenue to fall in the range of $1.26 billion to $1.3 billion, while interest expenses will be in the range of $350 million to $390 million, Agrawal said. CoreWeave has raised its forecast for the whole of 2025 to within the range of $5.15 billion to $5.35 billion, a $250 million increase over prior guidance.
[11]CoreWeave may have built a house of (graphics) cards
[12]Tech titans: Wanna secure US AI leadership? Stop giving the world excuses to buy Chinese
[13]Dot com era crash on the cards for AI datacenter spending? It's a 'risk'
[14]How datacenters use water – and why kicking the habit is nearly impossible
[15]CoreWeave drops £1bn in UK datacenters – but don't expect the latest Nvidia magic just yet
However, Agrawal warned that a significant portion of CoreWeave's full year CapEx will fall in Q4, due to the timing of go-live dates of some of those infrastructure investments.
The latest financial news may not calm concerns over the sustainability of CoreWeave's model, even though it is clearly tapping into high level demand for its services.
The issue is that just a handful of hyperscalers make up its customer base. It lists OpenAI, Mistral AI, and IBM on its website, and [16]an SEC filing when it announced its IPO revealed that 77 percent of its revenue came from just two customers during 2024.
Microsoft accounted for 62 percent of the total, and Nvidia was understood to make up a large chunk of the rest. Putting all its eggs in those two baskets means that it is heavily reliant on the whims of management at the world's most powerful and valued tech businesses.®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://investors.coreweave.com/news/news-details/2025/CoreWeave-Reports-Strong-Second-Quarter-2025-Results/default.aspx
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[5] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coreweaves-mixed-earnings-fail-to-wow-ai-bulls-and-the-stock-falls-6bc57d8d
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/coreweave_applied_digital_nd/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/07/coreweave_core_scientific_buy/
[10] https://www.ft.com/content/70638957-52e7-4698-8c36-52364034b086
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/coreweave_graphics_cards/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/tech_titans_wanna_secure_us/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/datacenter_spending_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/04/how_datacenters_use_water/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/coreweave_datacenter_uk/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/28/coreweave_downsizes_ipo/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The New Jersey-based firm is one of a new breed of cloud providers that focuses on GPU-based server infrastructure and services used by customers for the development and training of AI models.
In its [1]second quarter results for the three months ending June 30 , CoreWeave grew its topline rapidly, reporting revenues of $1.21 billion, up 207 percent year-on-year and beating analyst estimates.
[2]
However, as the old saying goes, revenue is vanity and profit is sanity: the business recorded a net loss of $290.5 million for the three months, albeit better than the $323 million net loss logged for the period of 2024.
[3]
[4]
MarketWatch [5]reported that CoreWeave Shares sank by 10.4 percent in an extended trading session following the earnings announcement.
CoreWeave spent $2.9 billion in capital expenditure during the quarter, the largest amount in its history, as it continues to invest in building out infrastructure to meet customer demand. During the quarter it signed a [6]250MW bit barn capacity agreement with Applied Digital valued at $7 billion over 15 years.
[7]
CFO Nitin Agrawal disclosed on an earnings call that CoreWeave has taken on a total of over $25 billion worth of debt and equity since the start of last year, all to fund the building of its AI cloud infrastructure.
"Since the beginning of 2024, we have secured over $25,000,000,000 of debt and equity to fund the build out and scale the leading AI cloud platform."
And interest expense during Q2 was $267 million compared to $67 million a year ago, on the back of increased debt to support infrastructure scaling, partly offset by the lower cost of capital.
[8]
"Scaling our capacity and services remains a key ingredient for our success in this structurally undersupplied market," said CEO and Co-Founder Michael Intrator on the same call with financial analysts.
"We are aggressively expanding our footprint on the back of intensifying demand signals from our customers, ensuring that we maintain a durable, multiyear runway for growth. We are now on track to deliver over 900 megawatts of active power before the end of the year," he claimed.
Intrator believes AI applications are "beginning to permeate all areas of the economy," and as a consequence, demand for CoreWeave's cloud AI services is aggressively growing.
He also mentioned its [9]proposed $9 billion acquisition of Core Scientific , a bitcoin mining outfit masquerading as a high-density colocation provider, saying that this will allow CoreWeave to scale faster and more efficiently.
"Upon closing, CoreWeave would own approximately 1.3 gigawatts of gross power capacity across Core Scientific's national datacenter footprint, with an incremental one gigawatt or more available for future expansion," he said, claiming it would also eliminate more than $10 billion in future lease liability.
This follows a report in the [10]Financial Times earlier this month that some Core Scientific shareholders were not happy with the proposed merger, specifically that they were being offered CoreWeave shares in exchange amid concerns that the value of these could fall over the coming months.
CoreWeave's operating margin shrank to 2 percent from 20 percent a year ago, which it blamed on $145 million in stock-based compensation costs.
For Q3, the business expects revenue to fall in the range of $1.26 billion to $1.3 billion, while interest expenses will be in the range of $350 million to $390 million, Agrawal said. CoreWeave has raised its forecast for the whole of 2025 to within the range of $5.15 billion to $5.35 billion, a $250 million increase over prior guidance.
[11]CoreWeave may have built a house of (graphics) cards
[12]Tech titans: Wanna secure US AI leadership? Stop giving the world excuses to buy Chinese
[13]Dot com era crash on the cards for AI datacenter spending? It's a 'risk'
[14]How datacenters use water – and why kicking the habit is nearly impossible
[15]CoreWeave drops £1bn in UK datacenters – but don't expect the latest Nvidia magic just yet
However, Agrawal warned that a significant portion of CoreWeave's full year CapEx will fall in Q4, due to the timing of go-live dates of some of those infrastructure investments.
The latest financial news may not calm concerns over the sustainability of CoreWeave's model, even though it is clearly tapping into high level demand for its services.
The issue is that just a handful of hyperscalers make up its customer base. It lists OpenAI, Mistral AI, and IBM on its website, and [16]an SEC filing when it announced its IPO revealed that 77 percent of its revenue came from just two customers during 2024.
Microsoft accounted for 62 percent of the total, and Nvidia was understood to make up a large chunk of the rest. Putting all its eggs in those two baskets means that it is heavily reliant on the whims of management at the world's most powerful and valued tech businesses.®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://investors.coreweave.com/news/news-details/2025/CoreWeave-Reports-Strong-Second-Quarter-2025-Results/default.aspx
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[5] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coreweaves-mixed-earnings-fail-to-wow-ai-bulls-and-the-stock-falls-6bc57d8d
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/coreweave_applied_digital_nd/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJy2lIKBSEbwgfM-heCK6QAAAQo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/07/coreweave_core_scientific_buy/
[10] https://www.ft.com/content/70638957-52e7-4698-8c36-52364034b086
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/coreweave_graphics_cards/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/tech_titans_wanna_secure_us/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/datacenter_spending_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/04/how_datacenters_use_water/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/coreweave_datacenter_uk/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/28/coreweave_downsizes_ipo/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/