$CoreWeave, Inc.(CRWV)$ is down 59% from its high 🔴
Yet,
Revenue is up 168%, backlog hit $132.5B, and demand is 10x capacity.
Here is my $CRWV Investment Thesis:🧵
1/ What does $CRWV do?
CoreWeave is a cloud company built for AI.
It rents out huge clusters of Nvidia GPUs to AI labs, hyperscalers and enterprises. It also sells the software to train, run and improve AI models on them.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google rent out computing for everything, from websites to storage. CoreWeave only does AI, so every data center it builds is designed around GPUs.
CoreWeave investor presentation slide: The Essential Cloud for AI
2/ The best AI cloud in the world
SemiAnalysis rates every GPU cloud in its ClusterMAX ranking.
$CRWV is the only provider to get the top Platinum rating 3 times in a row.
It also topped MLPerf Inference, with the highest server throughput of any cloud on Nvidia GB300 NVL72.
Furthermore, Nvidia gave $CRWV its Exemplar Cloud status.
CoreWeave GPU server racks
3/ First with Nvidia's newest chips
$CRWV was the first cloud to bring Nvidia's new Vera Rubin NVL72 online.
Cognition was the first customer to run it in production and got up to 4.8x more token throughput than on GB200.
I think getting every new Nvidia chip first is one of $CRWV's biggest advantages.
Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 racks at a CoreWeave data center
4/ Who's who of AI
$CRWV serves most of the world's leading AI labs, hyperscalers and AI enterprises.
In Q3:
- New customers: Canva, Substack, Wayve, Serve Robotics
- Bigger deals: OpenAI, Jane Street, Perplexity, Cohere
10% of the Fortune 500 are now $CRWV customers, and the number committing $100M+ grew 2.5x Y/Y.
CoreWeave Q3 2026 slide: customer wins and milestones
5/ Backlog is exploding
Revenue backlog hit $132.5B, +138% Y/Y.
$CRWV added $28.5B in just 3 months!
The backlog is 13x the revenue of the last 12 months, and more than half of it starts delivery by the end of this year.
CoreWeave revenue backlog: $55.6B in Q3 2025 to $132.5B in Q3 2026
6/ Demand is 10x capacity
The CEO said: "We have 10x as much qualified demand as available capacity through the end of 2027."
For 2028, demand is already several times larger than capacity, and $CRWV hasn't even started selling its 2028 capacity yet.
CoreWeave demand in numbers from the Q3 2026 earnings call
7/ Power
$CRWV's power footprint is growing fast:
- 1.7GW active, doubled in 2026
- 4.6GW contracted, +900MW in Q3
- 52 active data centers
- 1.85GW+ active by year end
So, $CRWV can almost triple its active power with sites it has already signed.
CoreWeave contracted power capacity by quarter, 1.3GW to 4.6GW
8/ Going global 🌍
$CRWV now has 1.3GW+ of contracted power outside the US, in Canada, Denmark, Spain, India and Indonesia.
It also works with Leidos to bring secure AI cloud to defense and intelligence missions.
I think sovereign AI could become one of $CRWV's biggest growth markets.
CoreWeave data center map
9/ Prices are going UP
In July, $CRWV raised prices by about 25% across the board. Later in Q3, it raised them another 10%, and prices kept rising in Q4.
- Short-term capacity: $40M+ per MW a year
- New 4-5 year contracts: $20M-$25M per MW a year
Simply put, customers are willing to pay more because there isn't enough AI compute to go around.
Chart: CoreWeave contract pricing per MW per year
10/ Old GPUs are a gold mine
In Q3, prices for older Ampere and Hopper GPUs rose 30-50% Q/Q, above their original contracts.
130K GPUs come off contract in 2027 and 170K more in 2028. All of them are fully paid off.
At today's prices, re-signing them adds almost $4B of annual revenue in 2027 and almost $10B with 2028, with zero new capex.
Chart: extra annual revenue from re-signed GPUs
11/ Software
$CRWV Forge puts Weights & Biases, training, inference and agent tools in one place.
70% of the new cloud customers in Q3 were already using Forge.
Managed inference launched this year and already has $250M+ of booked ARR. The CFO said its growth is limited mainly by how much capacity it gets.
CoreWeave Forge slide
12/ Unbelievable revenue growth
Quarterly revenue went from $116M to $3.66B in under 3 years! 🤯
That's 31x.
In Q3, revenue grew 168% Y/Y, and $CRWV added over $1B in a single quarter.
CoreWeave quarterly revenue chart
13/ Margins are exploding
Adjusted operating margin:
Q1: 1%
Q2: 5%
Q3: 10%
Q4 guide: ~16%
Adjusted EBITDA margin hit 62%, the highest in 5 quarters, and double-digit operating margins came a quarter earlier than planned.
Chart: CoreWeave adjusted operating margin by quarter
14/ Beat and raise
Q3 revenue of $3.66B beat the top of $CRWV's own $3.45B-$3.6B guide.
Adjusted operating income was $379M, vs $200M-$260M guided.
2026 guidance went up:
- Revenue $13.0B-$13.3B
- Adj. operating income +26% at the midpoint
- Exit ARR $20B-$21B
CoreWeave 2026 guidance raised table
15/ Funding is getting cheaper
- Cost of debt fell to 7.9%, down 250 bps Y/Y
- The next loan facility is expected at 7-7.5%, with an investment-grade rating
- $9B of customer prepayments and deposits arrive in the next 3 months
- Adj. EBITDA covered interest 2.7x in Q3
Management expects EBITDA less interest to more than double in 2027.
CoreWeave EBITDA covers interest table
16/ Analyst estimates
- Revenue: $13.0B ➡️ $44.6B by 2028
- EBITDA: $7.8B ➡️ $29.5B
- EPS: positive in 2028, at $1.94
Management also expects adjusted net income to turn positive in H1 2028.
Chart: CoreWeave revenue and EBITDA estimates 2025 to 2028
17/ Simplified valuation model
- 2030 capacity: 5GW
- ARR per MW: $16M
- 2030 revenue: $80B
- Net margin: 10%
- Net income: $8B
- Shares: 670M
- EPS: $11.93
P/E of 20-30: $239-$358, +293% to +489% upside
P/E of 30-40: $358-$477, +489% to +686% upside
From yesterday's close of $60.77.
Simplified CoreWeave valuation model for 2030
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