CoreWeave, the cloud computing firm that rents out artificial intelligence infrastructure, beat Wall Street's revenue forecasts in the third quarter, reporting sales of $3.66 billion on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. Revenue rose 168% from about $1.36 billion a year earlier and came in above the roughly $3.55 billion analysts had expected, according to LSEG data cited by CNBC.

The shares closed regular trading at $48.73, down 0.5%, before rising about 6% in after-hours trading once the results were out. The reaction was a rare bright spot for a stock that has lost more than 40% of its value over the past month as investors have questioned the cost of the AI infrastructure boom.

Growth comes with heavy spending

The headline growth was accompanied by a sharply wider loss. CoreWeave recorded a net loss of $709 million, or $1.27 a share, compared with a loss of $110 million a year earlier. On an adjusted basis the loss was $1.00 a share, narrower than the $1.16 loss analysts had forecast. Interest expense jumped to $846 million in the quarter, up from $310 million a year ago, as the company's debt climbed to about $47 billion.

The cash demands of expansion were stark. Operations generated $1.98 billion of cash in the quarter, but the company spent $9.44 billion on equipment, leaving a free cash outflow of about $7.7 billion. Chief financial officer Nitin Agrawal told analysts the company plans to raise new debt tied to customer contracts in the coming weeks, while ruling out new unsecured bonds through 2027 at current yields.

Backlog jumps as outlook rises

Management raised its full-year revenue forecast to between $13.0 billion and $13.3 billion, up from $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion in August, and lifted its adjusted operating income forecast to $1.275 billion to $1.375 billion. The company's contracted revenue backlog grew to $132.5 billion at the end of the third quarter, up from $104 billion three months earlier.

For the fourth quarter, CoreWeave expects revenue of $4.7 billion to $5 billion, with interest expense rising further to between $1.05 billion and $1.15 billion. Chief executive Michael Intrator argued on the earnings call that demand for AI computing capacity remains strong and that prices for older graphics processors have held up.

The results make CoreWeave the first big test of AI-cloud demand this earnings season. Revenue growth of 168% shows customers are still hungry for computing power, but the $7.7 billion quarterly cash burn and $47 billion debt pile explain why the market has punished the shares. Whether the after-hours bounce holds will depend on whether investors believe the $132.5 billion backlog can eventually pay for the build-out. Source links: Motley Fool and Zacks.