CoreWeave in the AI stack

The business and what the filings show

CoreWeave rents GPU capacity, all of it on Nvidia GPUs according to its filings, under long contracts with a handful of very large customers. Its revenue over the latest four quarters was $7.6B, +115%, while it spent $20.6B on equipment, 2.7 times its revenue. Its remaining performance obligations were $104B.

The business model is to sign multi-year contracts and borrow against them to buy GPUs. Microsoft accounted for about 67% of its 2025 revenue, and its largest recent contracts are with Meta (up to $21 billion) and OpenAI. Nvidia is its sole GPU supplier and also a shareholder, having bought $2.0 billion of its stock in January 2026.

CoreWeave grows fastest when capacity is scarce. Its risks are the mirror image: customer concentration, the cost of its debt, and the value of its GPUs if newer generations make them less competitive before the contracts that pay for them run out. Its stated six-year life for technology equipment is the assumption that matters most.

How AI shows up in the numbers

CoreWeave is AI infrastructure and nothing else: its revenue is rented GPU capacity, its capex is GPUs and data-center equipment, and its customers are AI labs and the hyperscalers that serve them. That makes its numbers a clean read on demand for rented AI compute, and a sensitive one, because its costs are fixed long before its revenue is earned.

CoreWeave’s $20.6B of capital spending over the latest four quarters is 4% of the $566B the five largest buyers spent over their latest four quarters (CoreWeave is not one of the five; the comparison shows its scale). The five together raised capex +81% on the four quarters before; CoreWeave’s own revenue grew +115%.

How it talks about AI

In its latest earnings release, furnished to the SEC on August 11, 2026, CoreWeave mentioned AI 14 times in 723 words of narrative text, about 19.4 mentions per 1,000 words. Of its 5 sentences about AI, 0 included a number: a revenue figure, a growth rate, a customer count or another measurable result. Across the 4 releases we read, back to November 10, 2025, AI mentions per 1,000 words went from 18.1 to 19.4.

Specific claims are easier to check against the numbers than general enthusiasm, which is why the share of AI sentences that carry a figure is worth watching alongside how often AI is mentioned. The sentences below are quoted from the release as published, after removing safe-harbor text and company boilerplate.

• “CoreWeave is built on the conviction that AI is foundational to every industry and that realizing its full potential requires a purpose-built platform.”

Source: earnings release (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1), August 11, 2026.

The trend in the numbers

Since the start of 2023, CoreWeave’s largest quarter by revenue was Q2 2026 at $2.6B, and its highest gross margin was 76% in Q4 2024. The latest quarter set the revenue record for the period.

Quarter by quarter, CoreWeave’s revenue grew +134% in Q3 2025, +110% in Q4 2025, +112% in Q1 2026, +112% in Q2 2026 on the same quarter a year earlier. Growth has been slowing, though from a high base.

Gross margin in the latest quarter was 66%, against 74% a year earlier, so more of each new dollar is passing through to costs. Operating margin moved from 2% to −2% over the same span. Over the latest four quarters it turned 91% of its revenue into operating cash flow and spent 271% of revenue on capital projects, against 243% a year earlier.

Where it sits in the stack

CoreWeave sits in the AI clouds layer of the AI stack. It is paid by the software layer; its own spending flows to servers, networking, power & DCs, chips.

Among the 8 companies in this layer on our map, it ranks number 6 by revenue and first of 7 by revenue growth. Its gross margin of 67% compares with 61% for the layer as a whole, a sign that it keeps more of each dollar than its neighbors. The full layer analysis is on the AI clouds page.

Latest four quarters for 10-Q filers; latest fiscal year for 20-F filers. Companies under $100 million of revenue are left out.

Against the 7 US-listed companies in its layer, CoreWeave grew +115% over the latest year versus +20% for the layer combined, and converted −180% of revenue into free cash flow versus 3% for the layer. It is taking share of the layer’s revenue.

What has to go right, and what could go wrong

What has to go right. Customers have to keep signing long contracts at prices that cover CoreWeave’s financing and depreciation, and its GPUs have to stay economically useful for the six years it depreciates them over.

What could go wrong. Concentration in Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, high borrowing, and rapid GPU generations are a demanding combination: a lost customer or cheaper newer chips could leave older capacity earning less than it costs to finance.

These describe the conditions the business depends on, as the filings show them. They are not a view on the stock.

Through the lens of Investing in AI

Rob May’s book offers six mental models for telling AI moats from traps. The one most useful for CoreWeave’s layer is “Expect major market dislocations”: Most markets move slowly. AI does not. A single technical result can force the market to reprice an entire layer overnight. Assume fast repricings and sudden business-model breaks are normal, and position to benefit from shocks.

The question it asks of any company is: Which three to five assumptions have to hold for this investment to work? Applied to CoreWeave, the filings on this page are the place to start: the margin trend shows whether it holds scarce value or passes it through, the customer and financing disclosures show who it depends on, and the commitments show what it has promised before the revenue arrives.

Customers and concentration

US companies must disclose any customer that accounts for 10% or more of revenue, and foreign filers usually describe their largest customers. Concentration matters because a company’s growth is only as durable as the handful of buyers behind it, and in the AI stack those buyers are often the same few companies.

• “We recognized an aggregate of approximately 67% of our revenue from our top customer, Microsoft, for the year ended December 31, 2025.” 10-K, March 2, 2026

Financing links

Investments, guarantees, purchase commitments, warrants and power contracts between CoreWeave and other companies, each quoted from the filing that discloses it. Numbers match the money-loop map.

• 10OpenAI → CoreWeavePurchase commitment

  Up to $11.9B through October 2030 (first agreement)

  “For example, in March 2025, we entered into a master services agreement with OpenAI, a private company, pursuant to which OpenAI has committed to pay us up to approximately $11.9 billion through October 2030.”

  CoreWeave 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2025, filed March 2, 2026

• 15Nvidia → CoreWeaveEquity investment

  $2.0B share purchase, January 2026

  “In January 2026, we entered into a securities purchase agreement with NVIDIA Corporation for a private placement of approximately 23 million shares of our Class A common stock at a purchase price of $87.20 per share, for aggregate gross proceeds of $2.0 billion.”

  CoreWeave 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026, filed August 12, 2026

• 16Microsoft → CoreWeaveReported revenue

  67% of CoreWeave’s 2025 revenue

  “We recognized an aggregate of approximately 67% of our revenue from our top customer, Microsoft, for the year ended December 31, 2025.”

  CoreWeave 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2025, filed March 2, 2026

• 17Meta → CoreWeavePurchase commitment

  Up to $21.0B through 2032

  “Similarly, in March 2026, we entered into an order form under an existing master services agreement pursuant to which Meta Platforms, Inc. ("Meta") initially committed to pay us up to approximately $21.0 billion (inclusive of access to new computing capacity through December 20, 2032 and the exercise of an existing option to access additional computing capacity through April 10, 2032) and, as a result, we also expect Meta to be a significant customer in future periods.”

  CoreWeave 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026, filed August 12, 2026

• 18OpenAI → CoreWeavePurchase commitment

  Up to $6.5B through May 2031 (one order form)

  “In May 2025, we entered into a master services agreement with OpenAI OpCo, LLC ("OpenAI") and in September 2025, we entered into an order form under this master services agreement pursuant to which OpenAI committed to pay us up to approximately $6.5 billion through May 31, 2031 and, as a result, we expect OpenAI to be a significant customer in future periods.”

  CoreWeave 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026, filed August 12, 2026

Commitments and backlog

• Backlog. CoreWeave reports $104B of remaining performance obligations, 13.7 times its revenue over the latest four quarters: contracted revenue not yet earned.
• Server life. CoreWeave depreciates its servers and network equipment over 6 years, after changes it disclosed: 5→6 years (January 1, 2023). See the useful-life calculator.
• Leases signed, not yet started. “The aggregate amount of estimated future undiscounted lease payments associated with such leases is $35.5 billion.” 10-Q

What to watch

CoreWeave’s next quarterly report will cover the quarter ending around September 29, 2026. Large companies must file a 10-Q within 40 days of a quarter’s end and a 10-K within 60 days of the fiscal year’s end, so the new figures should arrive by about November 28, 2026 at the latest. This page, the layer pages and the next quarterly report all update from that filing.

• Customer concentration in the 10-K, and whether Microsoft’s share falls as Meta and OpenAI contracts ramp.
• Interest costs and new financing, the largest swing factor in a model funded by debt.
• Backlog growth against capex, since new equipment should be matched by contracts that pay for it.
• Its place in the next quarterly AI Stack Report, which updates every company on the map from the new filings.

Figures from CoreWeave’s SEC filings, latest period ended June 30, 2026. Other companies: all company pages.