NVIDIA's &#34;godson,&#34; AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave, saw its revenue double in the fourth quarter of last year, while losses increased rather than decreased. This high-growth, heavy-investment report reflects the cost of the rapid expansion in the AI computing power sector.
For the fourth fiscal quarter ending December 31, 2025, CoreWeave's revenue grew by over 110% year-on-year, exceeding analyst expectations by more than 1%. The company's revenue for the fiscal year 2025 was $5.131 billion, an increase of approximately 168% from the previous year. CEO Michael Intrator stated that the company became &#34;the fastest cloud service provider to achieve $5 billion in annual revenue in history&#34; in 2025.
CoreWeave's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Nitin Agrawal disclosed that by the end of 2025, the company's backlog revenue had increased to $66.8 billion, more than four times that at the beginning of the year. The surge in backlog orders indicates that demand for AI computing power is still accelerating. Agrawal stated, &#34;This provides excellent visibility for our growth in 2026 and beyond. CoreWeave is fully prepared to achieve sustained high-speed growth.&#34;
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However, CoreWeave's profitability in the fourth quarter was significantly under pressure. The company shifted from profitability in the same period of 2024 to losses, with earnings per share (EPS) widening to a loss of $0.89, which is more than four times the analyst expectation of a loss of $0.21. The net loss was $450 million, nearly 8.9 times the loss of $51 million a year ago. Key factors dragging down profits include rapidly increasing depreciation and amortization for expanding computing power, significantly rising interest expenses, and amplified equity incentive costs post-IPO.
During the earnings call, CoreWeave executives revealed that they expect capital expenditures to be at least $30 billion in 2026. This means that this year's capital expenditures will at least double compared to last year and triple compared to 2025.
The company also anticipates that profits will expand in every quarter of 2026, with double-digit percentage growth in the fourth quarter; first-quarter sales are projected to be between $1.9 billion and $2 billion, with adjusted operating profits ranging from $0 to $40 million; by the end of 2026, annual recurring revenue (ARR) is expected to be between $17 billion and $19 billion, reaching $30 billion in 2027.
After the earnings report was released, CoreWeave's stock price, which fell over 0.4% on Thursday, plummeted further during the earnings call, with after-hours losses exceeding 10%.
Analysts believe that the market's &#34;scrutiny&#34; is mainly focused on the decline in profit margins, the widening losses, and the significant increase in interest burdens brought about by expansion. Under high valuation expectations, investors are more sensitive to the quality of growth and capital efficiency. Additionally, CoreWeave's earnings report did not provide detailed performance guidance, which can easily amplify uncertainty in after-hours trading. Investors will pay closer attention to whether the growth rate can be maintained in 2026, whether capital expenditure intensity will continue to rise, and when profit margins will improve
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<h2>AI Computing Power Demand Drives Continued Expansion of Customer Coverage</h2>
Fourth-quarter revenue surged from $747 million in the same period last year to $1.572 billion, a year-on-year increase of approximately 110.4%. The company attributes this growth to a broader customer base adopting CoreWeave Cloud to run &#34;diverse and continuously growing workloads,&#34; and disclosed a batch of customer and partnership progress:
<ul>
<li>Customer Side: Coverage includes AI labs, hyperscalers, and enterprise clients, mentioning Cognition, CrowdStrike, Cursor, Mercado Libre, Midjourney, Runway, etc.</li>
<li>Partnership Side: The company emphasized the continued expansion of partnerships with existing hyperscaler cloud customers and announced a global partnership with CrowdStrike, targeting a secure AI cloud foundation for the &#34;agentic era.&#34;</li>
</ul>
For CoreWeave, the key to this type of &#34;AI infrastructure supply&#34; business lies not only in signing contracts but also in the ability to continuously deliver GPU and power resources. The company disclosed an additional approximately 260 MW of active power capacity in the fourth quarter, bringing total active power capacity to over 850 MW; at the same time, it increased total contracted power to approximately 3.1 GW and further diversified its supplier mix.
<h2>Backlog Revenue Reflects Increased Visibility, But Delivery and Capital Pressures Are Also Heavy</h2>
As of the end of 2025, CoreWeave's backlog revenue reached $66.8 billion. The company specifically noted that this metric includes remaining performance obligations (RPO) and other amounts expected to be recognized as revenue under already committed customer contracts, provided that delivery and service availability requirements are met.
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For investors, this figure reinforces two layers of &#34;visibility&#34;:
<ul>
<li>Demand Visibility: In a phase where AI training/inference demand remains tight, long-term contracts and backlog orders indicate higher customer stickiness and future revenue lock-in.</li>
<li>Delivery Visibility: For orders to convert into revenue, the core constraints remain the speed of data center, power, network, and GPU deployment; this often corresponds to higher capital expenditures, supply chain coordination, and financing needs. The market reacted somewhat negatively after hours, reflecting a re-pricing of &#34;how much investment is needed for growth and when profits will materialize.&#34;</li>
</ul>
Another item echoing the backlog is deferred revenue: as of the end of 2025, the company's total deferred revenue amounted to approximately $8.185 billion, of which $1.709 billion is short-term and $6.476 billion is long-term. An increase in deferred revenue typically represents a rise in signed, invoiced but not yet recognized revenue, which also supports operating cash flow to some extent
<h2>Year-on-Year Operating Loss, Interest and Depreciation Amplifying Profit Fluctuations</h2>
The deterioration of the company's GAAP earnings in the fourth quarter was one of the direct triggers for the decline in stock price after hours:
<ul>
<li>Operating profit margin turned negative: The operating loss in the fourth quarter was $89 million, compared to a profit of $113 million in the same period last year (2024), with the operating profit margin dropping from 15% a year ago to -6%.</li>
<li>Net loss widened: The net loss in the fourth quarter was $452 million, compared to a net loss of $51 million in the same period of 2024, with the net loss rate expanding from -7% to -29%.</li>
<li>High interest expenses: The net interest expense in the fourth quarter was $388 million, approximately 2.6 times the $149 million of such expenses in the same period last year, with the annual net interest expense reaching $1.229 billion.</li>
</ul>
In terms of cost structure, total operating expenses in the fourth quarter surged to $1.661 billion, 2.6 times that of the same period last year, mainly from:
<ul>
<li>Technology and infrastructure expenses of $950 million, compared to $398 million in the same period last year</li>
<li>Cost of revenue of $509 million, compared to $182 million in the same period last year</li>
<li>Management expenses of $150 million, compared to $48 million in the same period last year</li>
<li>Equity incentive expenses of $157 million in the fourth quarter (compared to only $8 million in the same period last year), totaling $630 million for the year (compared to $31 million in the same period last year), with the &#34;visibility&#34; of equity incentives post-IPO significantly disturbing profits under GAAP.</li>
</ul>
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It is noteworthy that CoreWeave's non-GAAP metrics still indicate that the business is operating well, but profits are suppressed by financial and non-cash items:
<ul>
<li>Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $898 million, 3.3% lower than the market expectation of $929 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 57%, down from 65% in the same period last year</li>
<li>Adjusted operating profit for the fourth quarter was $88 million, with an adjusted operating profit margin of 6%, down from 16% in the same period last year</li>
<li>Adjusted net loss for the fourth quarter was $284 million, compared to an adjusted net loss of $36 million in the same period last year</li>
</ul>
The decline in profit margins indicates that while the company is rapidly expanding computing power supply, the pressure from costs, depreciation, and financing structure on current profits is increasing—this type of &#34;high growth but insufficient profit elasticity&#34; combination is often a reason for greater sensitivity in stock prices following earnings reports.
<h2>Positive Operating Cash Flow, Heavy Asset Expansion Leading to Higher Leverage and Refinancing Needs</h2>
In terms of cash flow, CoreWeave had a net inflow of $1.559 billion from operating activities in the fourth quarter, with a total net inflow of $3.058 billion for the year. The strong operating cash flow is partly due to an increase in deferred revenue (with deferred revenue increasing by $2.772 billion in the fourth quarter), but the growing &#34;occupancy effect&#34; can also be seen—accounts receivable increased, leading to a cash outflow of $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter, with annual accounts receivable cash outflow reaching $2.749 billion
The investment side highlights the &#34;heavy asset attributes of AI infrastructure companies&#34;:
<ul>
<li>Capital expenditures for property and equipment purchases in the fourth quarter amounted to $4.060 billion</li>
<li>Total capital expenditures for the year reached $10.309 billion</li>
</ul>
By the end of 2025, the company's heavy asset scale on the asset side is rapidly increasing: net fixed assets of $30.557 billion (up from $11.915 billion at the end of 2024), and right-of-use assets of $8.231 billion. The liability side is also expanding accordingly: interest-bearing debt at the end of the period totaled approximately $21.373 billion (of which $6.708 billion is due within one year), coupled with high interest expenses, making the market more vigilant about its financing costs, refinancing pace, and interest rate sensitivity.
The company also disclosed actions to &#34;enhance financial resilience&#34;: including the issuance of approximately $2.6 billion in convertible bonds and expanding its revolving credit facility to $2.5 billion. For a company still in the phase of &#34;first expanding computing power,&#34; such actions help extend the funding runway, but they also lead investors to pay more attention to the speed of balance sheet expansion and the path to capital return.
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<h2>Business and Technical Progress: Accelerating the &#34;Platformization&#34; Capability Around the NVIDIA Ecosystem and Developer Workflow</h2>
On the product and ecosystem side, CoreWeave continues to strengthen its differentiated narrative of &#34;born for AI,&#34; including:
<ul>
<li>Becoming the first cloud vendor rated as an NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud, supporting GB200 NVL72 training workloads</li>
<li>Receiving the Platinum ClusterMAX rating from SemiAnalysis for the second consecutive time</li>
<li>Launching AI Object Storage for AI workloads and announcing &#34;zero egress migration&#34;</li>
<li>Releasing Serverless RL (managed reinforcement learning capabilities) and expanding Mission Control capabilities (such as telemetry relay, GPU straggler detection, etc.)</li>
<li>Expanding platform capabilities and developer workflows through the acquisition of Monolith and Marimo</li>
<li>Launching CoreWeave Federal to enter government and public sector scenarios and participating in related programs from the U.S. Department of Energy</li>
</ul>
These actions collectively point in one direction: beyond &#34;GPU supply + data centers,&#34; CoreWeave is attempting to shift competition from pure computing power leasing to a more platformized toolchain and workflow, thereby increasing customer stickiness and monetization efficiency per unit of computing power. What the market will be more concerned about next is whether this platformization capability can bring more stable profit margins while scaling up, and how the company will describe the delivery pace and profit path for 2026 during its earnings call

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CoreWeave stated that it aims to become the fastest cloud service provider to achieve $5 billion in annual revenue by 2025. By the end of the year, the revenue from backlog orders, including RPO, reached $66.8 billion, more than tripling since the beginning of the year. Q4 EPS reported a loss of $0.89, which is 1.6 times larger year-on-year and more than four times analysts' expectations, with operating income turning from profit to a loss of $89 million year-on-year, and a net loss of $452 million, nearly nine times that of a year ago. The company expects capital expenditures to be at least $30 billion in 2026, at least three times that of 2025, with ARR revenue reaching as much as $19 billion by the end of the year. The stock price fell more than 10% in after-hours trading

- In Q4 2025, CoreWeave's revenue soared over 110%, reaching $1.57 billion, but the company reported a net loss of $452 million, nearly nine times higher than the previous year.  
- The surge in backlog orders to $66.8 billion indicates strong AI computing demand, while the expanding capital expenditure is projected to exceed $30 billion in 2026.  
- Despite impressive growth figures, investors reacted negatively due to declining profit margins and concerns about the company's rising interest expenses and cash flow challenges.

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CoreWeave's Q4 revenue doubled sharply, with year-end backlog revenue of 66.8 billion, unexpected widening of losses, and a plunge in after-hours trading | Earnings Report Insights