CoreWeave's third-quarter revenue of $1.36 billion exceeded expectations, but slow construction led to a downward revision of the full-year revenue guidance, causing the stock price to plummet 6% in after-hours trading

For those optimistic that the construction of AI infrastructure will go smoothly, CoreWeave's latest financial report has poured cold water on their hopes.

On November 10th, CoreWeave released its third-quarter financial report after U.S. stock market hours, showing mixed results. The third-quarter revenue of $1.36 billion exceeded expectations, but the revenue forecast for the entire year of 2025 was lowered to a maximum of $5.15 billion. The financial report details are as follows:

Q3 Financial Performance:

• Revenue of $1.36 billion, a year-on-year increase of 134%, exceeding the expected $1.29 billion;
• Net loss of $110 million (loss of $0.22 per share), significantly narrowed from $359 million in the same period last year;
• However, the operating profit margin was only 4%, below the expected 6.5% and lower than the same period last year.

Revenue Guidance Downgrade:

• The revenue forecast for the entire year of 2025 was lowered from a previous high of $5.35 billion to $5.05-5.15 billion, below analysts' expectations of $5.29 billion, primarily due to delays by third-party data center contractors.
• The company's capital expenditures for 2026 are expected to "far exceed" more than double that of 2025 ($12-14 billion).

Surge in Order Backlog:

• Revenue order backlog reached $55.6 billion, nearly double that of the previous quarter;
• Contracted power capacity increased from 2.2 gigawatts to 2.9 gigawatts.

Significant Contract Progress:

• In Q3, signed a six-year contract with Meta worth up to $14.2 billion, expanded a $6.5 billion agreement with OpenAI, and secured a sixth contract with a "leading hyperscale cloud service provider."

CEO Michael Intrator admitted during the earnings call that the delay by a third-party data center contractor directly led to the company's revenue forecast cap for 2025 being reduced from $5.35 billion to $5.15 billion.

Although he attempted to downplay the impact, claiming that affected clients had agreed to adjust the delivery schedule while "keeping the total contract value unchanged," CoreWeave's stock still fell nearly 6% in after-hours trading following the report's release.

(CoreWeave fell 5.74% in after-hours trading)

The Game of Scale and Profit Margin

CoreWeave's third-quarter revenue of $1.36 billion surged 134% year-on-year, a figure that is impressive enough. However, the operating profit margin was only 4%, which not only fell short of analysts' expectations of 6.5% but was also lower than the same period last year.

Analysts believe this indicates that CoreWeave is sacrificing increasingly thin profit margins for market share and scale expansion.

The company's growth logic essentially involves borrowing massive private equity debt secured by NVIDIA chips to rapidly build data centers, which are then leased to AI giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft This model looks perfect during a demand surge, but the continuous narrowing of profit margins suggests that competition is intensifying.

After all, traditional cloud giants like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are also rapidly expanding their AI infrastructure, and whether CoreWeave's "neocloud" label can support premium pricing remains uncertain.

However, the company's revenue order backlog has reached $55.6 billion, nearly double that of the previous quarter.

This backlog includes a $14.2 billion six-year contract with Meta, a $6.5 billion expanded agreement with OpenAI, and a sixth contract with a "leading hyperscale cloud service provider" (the company declined to disclose the specific name).

Large-scale Capital Expenditure

The company's CEO pointed out that the constraint CoreWeave currently faces is the shortage of "powered-shell" data centers available for rapid deployment of equipment.

After the plan to acquire data center operator Core Scientific was rejected by its shareholders due to a low bid, CoreWeave was forced to accelerate the pace of building its own data centers, such as its project in Pennsylvania.

CFO Nitin Agrawal further revealed that the company's capital expenditure in 2026 is expected to "far exceed" more than double that of 2025 (between $12 billion and $14 billion). Analysts believe this is an extremely aggressive investment pace for a company that may only have around $5 billion in total revenue for 2025.

CEO Intrator recently publicly refuted concerns about a "data center bubble," believing that AI will drive economic growth enough to cover investment costs. However, investors remain concerned about whether CoreWeave can continue to secure financing to support this cash-burning pace