Shares of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) rallied as much as 14% in extended trading after Monday’s close and traded up roughly 18% intraday Tuesday, August 12, 2026, after the AI-cloud specialist posted a second-quarter report that beat on nearly every operating line and raised full-year guidance for the second time this year. Revenue more than doubled from a year ago, the contracted-revenue backlog vaulted to $104 billion, and management pointed to a Q3 growth acceleration that would put quarterly revenue at more than triple the prior year’s level.
The print offered the clearest evidence yet that CoreWeave’s bet — leveraging up its balance sheet to build data-center capacity ahead of hyperscaler and frontier-lab demand — is currently working. It also crystallized the cost: a widened net loss, another eleven-figure capex run-rate, and customer concentration that keeps the stock volatile around every disclosure.
Q2 2026 by the numbers
Per the company’s Q2 press release, revenue rose to $2.575 billion, up 112% year over year and ahead of the Wall Street consensus around $2.56 billion. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $1.510 billion, a 59% margin. Adjusted operating income of $128 million (5% margin) roughly doubled the ~$66 million analysts had modeled. Net loss widened to $626 million, or $(1.14) per diluted share, from a $290 million loss a year earlier — largely a function of interest expense on the debt CoreWeave has raised to build capacity.
| Metric | Q2 2026 | Q2 2025 | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $2,575M | $1,212M | +112% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $1,510M | n/a | 59% margin |
| Adj. operating income | $128M | n/a | 5% margin |
| Net loss | $(626)M | $(290)M | loss widened |
| Diluted EPS | $(1.14) | $(0.60) | wider loss |
| Capex | $6,422M | n/a | 6-month: $14.1B |
| Revenue backlog (6/30) | $104B | n/a | contracted revenue |
| Active power | 1.5 GW | n/a | contracted: 3.7 GW |
The $104 billion backlog — and how fast it is growing
Backlog is the single number most bulls point to for CoreWeave, and it moved sharply again this quarter. Contracted revenue stood at $104 billion at the end of Q2, up from roughly $30 billion at the time of the March IPO. According to reporting on the earnings call, that number had already grown to roughly $129 billion by the time of the release — nearly $30 billion of new commitments in the six weeks after the quarter closed.
Three deals drove the acceleration:
- Meta committed an incremental $21 billion in cloud-compute spending during the quarter, expanding an existing multi-year arrangement.
- Anthropic signed a new multi-year agreement for training and inference capacity, per management’s post-earnings commentary.
- Jane Street, the quantitative trading firm, added a $6 billion cloud-services commitment alongside a $1 billion strategic equity investment in CoreWeave.
The Meta expansion and the Jane Street deals in particular give the company visibility on a large slice of 2027 and 2028 revenue, and are the operational answer to the recurring bear question of whether the AI capex cycle can support the pace at which CoreWeave is building capacity.
Raised guidance: what management now expects
CoreWeave raised its full-year 2026 outlook again, and set a Q3 bar that would imply another sharp sequential ramp:
- Full-year 2026 revenue: $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion (previously $12.0 billion to $13.0 billion).
- Full-year 2026 adjusted operating income: $960 million to $1.15 billion.
- Full-year 2026 capital expenditures: $35 billion to $39 billion.
- Year-end active power target: more than 1.85 GW, raised from prior 1.6 GW.
- Q3 2026 revenue: $3.4 billion to $3.6 billion, implying roughly 158% growth at the midpoint.
The FY26 revenue midpoint of $12.8 billion is now more than 3x the $3.9 billion the company reported for full-year 2025. The capex guide, meanwhile, is a reminder of how differently CoreWeave’s P&L shape looks from the hyperscalers it serves — capex will exceed revenue by nearly 3x this year, funded through a combination of debt-secured-against-GPU contracts and equity.
The bear case did not disappear
Three concerns remained visible in the numbers:
Losses are widening in absolute dollars. The $626 million net loss is more than double the $290 million loss a year earlier, driven by interest expense on the debt used to fund the buildout and by depreciation as more capacity comes online. Adjusted operating income is positive and expanding, but GAAP profitability is still further out.
Customer concentration is still high. CoreWeave has previously disclosed that a small number of customers — Microsoft historically the largest, alongside OpenAI and Meta — account for the bulk of revenue. The new named wins in the release (Bentley Systems, Caterpillar, Grammarly, Isomorphic Labs, Sunday Robotics) begin to diversify that book, but the top-of-house still drives the P&L.
The debt stack is not small. The company’s SEC filings disclose multi-billion-dollar borrowings under delayed-draw term loans and other secured facilities backed by contracted-revenue collateral. If a major counterparty ever renegotiated or delayed — the risk the market’s highest-probability implied default numbers seem to price in — the cash-flow gap between capex and cash from operations could widen.
What to watch next
Two catalysts will test the thesis. First, delivery on the Q3 guide: the midpoint requires the company to add roughly $925 million of sequential revenue in a single quarter, which in turn requires bringing new active-power capacity online on schedule and having customers ramp against it. Second, the pace at which the backlog converts into recognized revenue and cash. Bulls point to the $104–$129 billion backlog as a multi-year revenue floor; the bear case is that the further out you go, the more optionality customers have to reshape commitments as GPU pricing and alternative-provider capacity evolve.
For now, the market’s vote is clear: after the print, CRWV extended its post-IPO gains, and the sell side’s revenue and EBITDA models moved higher. Whether that translates into GAAP profits — and how much dilution or leverage it takes to get there — remains the story that will define CoreWeave over the next year.
Sources
- CoreWeave Q2 2026 press release — investors.coreweave.com
- CoreWeave Q2 2026 earnings call highlights: record revenue and $104B backlog — Yahoo Finance
- CoreWeave 2026 revenue guide and 1.85 GW power target — Seeking Alpha
- CoreWeave Q2 2026: $129B backlog grew $29.6B in six weeks — Tech Times
- CoreWeave (CRWV) Q2 earnings report 2026 — CNBC
- CoreWeave SEC filings (CIK 0001769628)
Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.