Shares of Nvidia-backed CoreWeave climbed 24.7% on Wednesday, helping revive the AI trade after weeks of selling, as the cloud provider reported surging demand for the computing hardware that powers artificial intelligence models.
The company posted $3.66 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 168% from a year earlier, and raised its 2026 sales forecast to a range of $13 billion to $13.3 billion. The results lifted Nvidia shares and also buoyed AI infrastructure stocks including Nebius, IREN, Oracle and Applied Digital. The Nasdaq gained 1.6% on the day.
What the numbers showed
CoreWeave reported a $132.5 billion revenue backlog, which represents contracted business it expects to deliver over time rather than cash already collected. The company said it is working with customers including OpenAI, Cohere and Perplexity, and that it had more than 1.7 gigawatts of active power capacity at the end of September.
CoreWeave also expects about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the next three months. Being paid before delivering all contracted services could reduce its near-term need to borrow at a time when investors have grown uneasy about the debt financing behind AI data centers.
Alongside the revenue growth, CoreWeave posted a $709 million net loss.
“This was a breakout quarter for CoreWeave, with revenue increasing by more than $1 billion sequentially,” CEO Michael Intrator said in the company's earnings release.
Why Nvidia's role matters
CoreWeave buys Nvidia GPUs, installs them in data centers and rents the computing capacity to companies developing or running AI models. Its revenue growth is evidence that businesses remain willing to pay for AI computing capacity, though it does not by itself establish that the spending required to supply that capacity will produce sustainable profits.
Nvidia's ties to CoreWeave extend beyond a typical supplier relationship. In January, Nvidia invested another $2 billion in CoreWeave shares at $87.20 each, expanding a business arrangement aimed at building more than five gigawatts of AI data-center capacity by 2030. The companies also agreed to introduce new Nvidia technology across CoreWeave's infrastructure, including its Rubin platform and Vera CPUs, making CoreWeave a showcase and customer for future Nvidia hardware.
“Together, we're racing to meet extraordinary demand for NVIDIA AI factories,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said when the expanded deal was announced in January.
Nvidia also has a $6.3 billion initial agreement to buy CoreWeave's unused computing capacity through April 2032, subject to the contract's conditions. The arrangement gives CoreWeave a buyer for capacity it cannot sell elsewhere, while Nvidia gains access to cloud computing built around its own chips.
The circular-financing debate
The overlapping relationships explain both the enthusiasm and some of the criticism surrounding AI investment: Nvidia sells the hardware, invests in a company buying that hardware, and has committed to purchasing some of the computing services it helps create. Skeptics describe the structure as “circular finance” and view it as a warning sign, while the agreements themselves are real commercial contracts. The overlapping financial interests complicate attempts to measure independent demand.
Risks remain
CoreWeave is one of a group of specialized GPU-rental businesses known as neoclouds. Some, including CoreWeave — which began as an Ethereum miner — have roots in crypto infrastructure, where operators were already accustomed to running large amounts of power-hungry hardware.
Bernstein analysts described the quarter as “about the best quarter we could have asked for,” according to Reuters, but warned that CoreWeave would be among the companies hit hardest if the shortage of available AI computing capacity begins to ease.
The Nvidia partnership does not remove that risk. Newer processors can make older GPUs less competitive, while electricity availability, construction delays and higher borrowing costs can all squeeze returns. An oversupply of AI computing would also put pressure on the rental prices CoreWeave earns.
