CoreWeave Q2 2026 earnings: loss narrower than feared as backlog tops $100 billion
CoreWeave posted a smaller-than-expected loss and slightly lighter revenue in Q2 2026, with sales more than doubling year over year even as heavy debt-funded spending widened its net loss.
| Q2 2026 | Reported | Expected | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | -$1.03 | -$1.24 | +16.9% |
| Revenue | $2.58B | $2.61B | -1.4% |
Key takeaways
- CoreWeave’s loss per share came in smaller than Wall Street feared, while revenue landed just shy of analyst estimates even though sales more than doubled from a year earlier — a sign the AI cloud-computing company is still growing extremely fast but not quite as fast as some had modeled.
- The bottom-line net loss widened sharply to $626 million from $290 million a year earlier, showing that rapid growth is still costing the company more than it brings in — a common trade-off for firms racing to build out data-center capacity.
- The fundamentals show a wide gap between a healthy gross margin (around 69% over the past year, meaning it keeps a large share of revenue after direct costs) and a negative operating and net margin — the difference is largely interest and other costs tied to the roughly $35 billion of debt CoreWeave has taken on to buy Nvidia chips and build facilities.
- CEO Michael Intrator said the quarter marked “an important inflection point” as the company’s scale began translating into better operating leverage, and that enterprise customer demand is broadening beyond its original AI-lab customer base.
- CoreWeave’s contracted revenue backlog — future business already signed but not yet delivered — passed $100 billion, with over $25 billion in new deals added just after the quarter closed, underscoring strong demand for its AI computing capacity.
- The company again pointed to hefty planned spending, expecting $31 billion to $35 billion in capital expenditures for 2026 as it keeps building out AI data centers and GPU capacity to serve that backlog.
- Management maintained its target of exiting 2026 with an annualized revenue run rate of $18 billion to $19 billion, signaling confidence that current growth trends will continue into next year.
- Shares rose sharply in after-hours trading following the report, as investors focused on the earnings beat and demand backlog growth rather than the widening net loss.
Q2 2026 in context
| Metric | Jun 2026 | Jun 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $2.6B | $1.2B | +112.5% |
| Net income | -$626M | -$290M | -115.9% |
| Free cash flow | -$5.7B | -$2.7B | -112.4% |
| Diluted EPS | -$1.14 | -$0.60 | -90.0% |
| Gross margin | 65.9% | 74.2% | -8.3 pts |
| Operating margin | -1.9% | 1.6% | -3.5 pts |
| Net margin | -24.3% | -23.9% | -0.4 pts |
Figures for the quarter ended Jun 2026 and the quarter ended Jun 2025, as reported to the SEC.
How the stock took it
CoreWeave Inc closed at $88.19 on Aug 10, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $107.73 on Aug 12, 2026, the first session after it — +22.2% across the report.
| Earlier report | Close before | Close after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 8, 2026 | $128.84 | $114.70 | -11.0% |
| Nov 13, 2025 | $85.43 | $77.36 | -9.4% |
| Aug 13, 2025 | $148.75 | $99.50 | -33.1% |
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Fundamentals
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 69.4% | Trailing 12 months |
| Operating margin | -2.6% | Trailing 12 months |
| Net profit margin | -25.6% | Trailing 12 months |
| Pretax margin | -25.7% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS | -$3.26 | Trailing 12 months |
| Revenue growth (YoY) | 111.7% | Latest quarter |
| Return on equity | -40.3% | Trailing 12 months |
Sources: company report · earnings call · CNBC · Yahoo Finance