Article published Oct 5, 2026. Prices below use latest available snapshots.
CoreWeave ($CRWV) has been in a broken long trend since its May-to-July slide and is now basing: down 34.71% in the year to the October 5 close and 5.4% under its 200-day average, while Nebius ($NBIS) is up 86.15% and 38% above its own. Demand held. Second-quarter 2026 revenue doubled to $2.58 billion and the contracted order book kept growing. What rose faster was the cost of paying for it. CoreWeave pays effective rates of 9% to 15% on most of its loans and notes, its net interest expense reached $640 million in Q2, a quarter of revenue, and since January it has sold stock, convertible bonds and, in September, an at-the-market share program into a market that now charges more for all three. Nebius funded a similar build with customer prepayments, equity and convertible notes, and ended June with cash close to its debt. Most of the gap opened before July; since then CoreWeave has gone sideways. The call is to wait for a close above the 200-day average that holds.
Data as of 2026-10-05 close: CRWV $87.39, RSI 50.4, +0.3% vs SMA20, +0.4% vs SMA50, −5.4% vs SMA200, 7D +2.73%, 30D −2.2%, 3M +1.08%, 1Y −34.71%, −42.96% from the 52-week high.
Quick Snapshot (as of 2026-10-05)
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| The call | 🟡 Wait for a held close above the 200-day average. Entry none yet (trigger: a close above the 200-day, $92.37 on 2026-10-05, that survives a retest, with $85.64 intact) · stop n/a · first target n/a · medium conviction |
| What is CoreWeave? | A GPU cloud. It leases data centers, fills them with NVIDIA systems and rents the capacity to AI labs, hyperscalers and enterprises, almost entirely on multi-year take-or-pay contracts (98% of Q2 revenue, per the 10-Q). |
| Why look now? | The neocloud lane has split on the long window: CoreWeave -34.71% over one year, Nebius 86.15%. On September 17 CoreWeave filed for a proposed $3.0 billion convertible note and a sale of up to 35 million shares. |
| What is the proof? | Q2 revenue $2.58 billion, +112% year over year (GAAP); remaining performance obligations $103.7 billion at June 30, up from $60.7 billion at December 31 (10-Q, 10-K). |
| What is the objection? | Q2 net interest expense of $640 million against a $49 million GAAP operating loss; $35.6 billion of debt principal against $5.5 billion of cash at June 30, plus $16.3 billion of operating-lease liabilities (10-Q). |
| Stock setup | -5.4% against the 200-day and flat against the 20- and 50-day: a coil just above $85.64, the past year's most-traded price. The long trend is broken until the 200-day is reclaimed. |
Action Matrix (as of 2026-10-05)
| Signal | Condition | Level | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🟢 Buy | A close above the 200-day average, then a pullback that holds it | 200-day: $92.37 on 2026-10-05 | The long trend restarts only above its average; buying the first strong day is the entry pattern the desk's graded calls say loses |
| 🟡 Wait | Closes between $85.64 and the 200-day | $85.64 to the 200-day | Where it trades now: a tight range with no trend |
| 🔴 Out | A close below $85.64 | $85.64; next shelf $81.78 | Losing the year's most-traded price fails the base; also the stop for any position opened on the buy signal |
| 🟠 Target | First objective after a confirmed buy | $109 | The price of the April $1.0 billion private placement (10-Q); trim or trail there |
| 🔴 Thesis breaks | Net interest expense again grows faster than revenue in the Q3 report (scheduled November 11), new equity is sold below $85.64, or a customer delays or cancels committed capacity | — | The case for a re-rating is that funding costs stop compounding faster than revenue |
The Story Right Now (as of 2026-10-05)
CoreWeave ($CRWV) has been in a broken long trend since its May-to-July slide and is now basing: down 34.71% in the year to the October 5 close and 5.4% under its 200-day average, while Nebius ($NBIS) is up 86.15% and 38% above its own. It trails the S&P 500 by 50.08 points over that year, sits 42.96% under its 52-week high, and its 50-day average is below the 200-day. Most of the damage predates July: over the last three months CoreWeave is up 1.08%, Nebius 9.18%. The slide ran from the May 7 first-quarter report, which missed on earnings per share, guided second-quarter revenue below consensus and raised the capex floor (TipRanks, May 7), through a July 24 drop of 11.4% that Yahoo Finance headlined as being "about what it's spending, not what it's selling," to a 52-week low in late July (the desk's September 25 report).
Social takes quoted here are attributed opinion from X accounts; the case itself rests on the 10-Q, the 10-K and the Q2 release.
The binding constraint is the price of money. Three filed facts carry it. First, net interest expense was $640 million in Q2, up 140% year over year against revenue up 112%, and it has run between 22% and 27% of revenue in each of the last six quarters (10-Q and SEC XBRL; desk arithmetic). That line also carries imputed interest on prepaid contracts; interest on debt alone was $558 million (10-Q). Adjusted EBITDA covered net interest about 2.4 times. Second, the spread on CoreWeave's own GPU-backed loans has widened through 2026. March facility: SEC filing: “at daily compounded SOFR plus 2.25% per annum” May facility: SEC filing: “SOFR + 4.50%” August facility: SEC filing: “Term SOFR plus an applicable margin of 5.5%” The March loan is non-recourse and secured by specific contracts, so part of that gap is structure; the May and August loans are both company-guaranteed and still widened by a full percentage point. Third, debt service is already larger than operating cash flow: SEC filing: “our cash flows dedicated for debt service requirements totaled approximately $6.2 billion”, against $3.66 billion of operating cash flow in the same six months (10-Q). The rate backdrop moved against it: the Federal Reserve raised rates on September 16 for the first time since 2023, and the 10-year Treasury closed at 5.24% on October 1 (the desk's September 16 and October 2 briefs). The neocloud lane fell 16.1% as a group in the week to September 15 while the high-yield credit proxy slid to an RSI of 25 (the desk's September 15 brief); the September 14 brief read a 10-year at 5% and an expected Fed hike as the constraint on the whole long-duration AI complex.
The stock also has a steady supply of sellers. On September 17 CoreWeave filed an 8-K and a prospectus supplement for a proposed $3.0 billion convertible note and an at-the-market sale of up to 35 million shares (StockTitan's summary of the 8-K; the desk's September 17 brief). That is about 6% of Q2's weighted share count, roughly $3.1 billion at the October 5 price. The stock fell 4.16% that day on 3.8 times normal volume. It follows NVIDIA's January purchase of 23 million shares at $87.20 and a $1.0 billion placement at $109 in April (10-Q); the weighted share count rose 13% year over year. Insiders add to it. Magnetar, a 10% holder, sold 4.38 million shares on August 12–14 (about $479 million), and the chief executive has sold a block nearly every week since July 7, twelve of them exactly 307,692 shares: thirteen sales worth about $347 million through September 29 (Form 4s; desk tally). The October 1–2 cluster is small and mechanical: eight officers report sales on September 30 at one price, $87.69, beside an exercise code, the pattern of a vesting date, totaling $17.6 million.
The demand side does not explain the gap. SEC filing: “Revenue backlog1 was approximately $104 billion as of June 30, 2026” SEC filing: “more than $25 billion of net new customer commitments added in early Q3” The September 17 filing also said the company is contracting compute at higher prices (the desk's September 17 brief). SemiAnalysis's ClusterMAX ratings kept CoreWeave in its top Platinum tier alongside Nebius (the desk's October 2 brief). Customer concentration is falling: SEC filing: “We recognized an aggregate of approximately 36%, 26%, and 10% of our revenue from our top three customers for the three months ended June 30, 2026” A year earlier, SEC filing: “We recognized an aggregate of approximately 71% of our revenue from our top customer for the three months ended June 30, 2025”
Nebius shows what the market is paying for instead. Its customers fund more of the build up front: SEC filing: “70% of deals including prepayments” SEC filing: “covering 50-60% of the associated capex” At June 30 it held $8.04 billion of cash against $8.55 billion of debt, after selling NVIDIA a pre-funded warrant for about $2 billion (the desk's August 13 dive and September 28 profile). CoreWeave's contracts carry thinner deposits: SEC filing: “the weighted-average prepayment across all our active contracts was 15% to 25% of the TCV” Both companies burn cash on capex. Nebius's growth reaches shareholders with roughly zero net debt in front of it; CoreWeave's passes through $35.6 billion of lenders first.
The setup is a coil on support. Price sits within half a percent of its 10-, 20- and 50-day averages, 2.0% above $85.64 and 5.7% under the 200-day (desk arithmetic), and it sits in no Momentum Board tier. October 5 itself told nothing new: CoreWeave fell 2.49% and Nebius 4.22% on a Nasdaq record day; news pulled October 5 holds nothing dated to either move, no company event is on the desk's calendar for the date, and the day's captures note the divergence and new Nebius insider filings without naming a cause. Cause unknown.
The call: wait. The watch call from the desk's September 25 report stands: buy only after a close above the 200-day, with $85.64 intact; a close below $85.64 ends the watch. The desk's graded calls (small samples) show bottom-fishing buys losing and first-day-of-strength entries with distant stops losing, so the entry is a held retest of the 200-day, with the stop at $85.64, about 7% under today's 200-day.
What changes it, in date order. Applied Digital, a CoreWeave landlord, is scheduled to report around October 7–8; Nebius on November 10 or October 22 (listings differ); CoreWeave on November 11 (provider estimate). That print is the test: whether net interest expense grows slower than revenue, the terms of the convertible, and whether adjusted operating margin recovers from its second-quarter level, which was down sharply from a year earlier (Q2 release). A cheaper funding source would change the read outright: a larger prepayment share, a lower loan spread, or strategic equity priced well above $87.
Extended analysis
Summary
CoreWeave rents GPU computing capacity. It leases data-center shells and power, buys NVIDIA systems, and sells the capacity under multi-year committed contracts; the 10-K puts the weighted-average contract term at about five years. Revenue was $5.13 billion in 2025 and $4.65 billion in the first half of 2026 (SEC XBRL).
Its customers are the companies that need the largest clusters soonest: AI labs, hyperscalers and, increasingly, enterprises and trading firms. Microsoft was the dominant customer in 2025: SEC filing: “67% of our revenue from our top customer, Microsoft, for the year ended December 31, 2025” The 10-Q names Microsoft and OpenAI as significant customers, expects Meta to become one, and cites a commitment from Jane Street.
The company finances the build in its own words: "We primarily finance our infrastructure development through asset-level debt supported by take-or-pay customer contracts, supplemented by corporate-level equity and debt financing" (10-K). The model depends on two prices: the spread lenders charge against those contracts and the price at which the company can sell equity. Both moved against it in 2026 while the build scaled faster than the contracts' cash.
The decisive uncertainty is timing: whether contracted revenue grows into the debt before refinancing and new issuance cost more. Principal of $10.6 billion falls due between July 2026 and the end of 2027 (10-Q maturity table).
Why This Moment Is Different
The financing market for GPU clouds tightened in the third quarter.
- Loans got dearer. The August facility priced at SOFR plus 5.5 percentage points, the widest of the company's 2026 loans (10-Q subsequent events). TheBuildout relayed the same deal as evidence that lenders want higher yields and tighter cash-flow protection (September 20, secondhand). A roughly $1.1 billion junk bond for a Blue Owl–sponsored data center leased to CoreWeave launched on September 21 (Bloomberg).
- Rates rose. The Fed's September 16 hike was its first since 2023, citing energy prices from the Iran war and sticky inflation (the desk's September 16 brief). The 10-year closed at 5.24% on October 1, and on October 2 every bond and credit fund the desk tracks closed below an RSI of 25, high yield lowest at 17.7 (the desk's October 2 brief).
- The company came back to market. The September 17 filings proposed $3.0 billion of convertibles and an at-the-market program for up to 35 million shares, after more than $10 billion of unsecured debt and convertibles raised in the second quarter (Q2 release).
- The lane has more paper to absorb. Nebius sold $3.75 billion of convertibles in March (a March 17 market report) and a pre-funded warrant to NVIDIA; IREN runs an at-the-market program an X account puts at $6 billion (@aleabitoreddit, September 24); Nscale has filed for an IPO (per @michaelsikand, September 26, unverified); Cerebras hit a post-IPO low on a lockup expiry (the desk's October 2 brief).
How the stock got here, dated:
- May 7: first-quarter EPS of −$1.40 against −$0.92 expected, Q2 revenue guidance of $2.45–2.6 billion against $2.69 billion consensus, and the 2026 capex range raised to $31–35 billion (TipRanks). Magnetar sold 1.22 million shares at $134.51–138.63 in the days after (Investing.com, May 8).
- July 7: the lane sold on a Bloomberg report that Meta, a CoreWeave customer, plans to sell its own surplus AI capacity (as summarized in a July 7 Nebius news item).
- July 24: down 11.4%; Yahoo Finance: "The Sell-Off Is About What It's Spending, Not What It's Selling" (headline only on file).
- August 11–12: Q2 revenue doubled and full-year guidance rose to $12.4–13.2 billion; the stock rose about 14% (CNBC).
- September 8: up 16% intraday on OpenAI and backlog commentary (Invezz); the chief executive's sale that day averaged about $100 a share (Form 4).
- Week to September 15: down 18.9% as the whole lane sold (the desk's September 15 brief).
- September 17: down 4.16% on 3.8 times volume on the offering filings.
- Since: from 11.6% under the 200-day on September 18 (the desk's September 18 brief) back to within about 5% of it by October 5.
How the Business Makes Money
| Line | What it is | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Committed (take-or-pay) contracts plus a small on-demand business | $2.58B; committed contracts 98% |
| Cost of revenue | Data-center rent, power, facility depreciation, site staff | $879M |
| Technology and infrastructure | Server and network depreciation, R&D and infrastructure staff | $1.51B |
| Depreciation and amortization | Fleet depreciation, inside the lines above | $1.39B, +149% YoY |
| Operating income (GAAP) | After depreciation, stock pay and overhead | −$49M |
| Interest expense, net | Debt interest plus imputed interest on prepaid contracts, net of capitalized interest | $640M |
| Net loss (GAAP) | −$626M |
Source: SEC 10-Q and Q2 release; percentages by desk arithmetic.
One basis note matters here. Data vendors' statements show a gross margin near 66% because they subtract only cost of revenue. Depreciation of the GPUs sits in technology and infrastructure, so the GAAP operating margin of −1.9% is the honest unit-economics line, and adjusted EBITDA (59% margin, Q2 release) excludes both depreciation and interest, the two costs that decide this story.
Power is the capacity measure. SEC filing: “Expanded active power by nearly 500 MWs to reach 1.5 GW” SEC filing: “Grew total contracted power to approximately 3.7 GW” Both are up from the year-end levels in the 10-K.
What the Company Says It Is Becoming
Management guides to a much larger build. Second-quarter guidance, given on the call, set 2026 revenue at $12.4–13.2 billion, adjusted operating income at $960 million to $1.15 billion and capex at $35–39 billion (CNBC, August 11). TheBuildout's relay of the call puts the 2030 target at 8 GW (secondhand). The 10-Q states the funding consequence plainly: "We anticipate that future investments may require significant debt and/or equity financing. The sale of additional equity would result in dilution to our stockholders."
The filed risks lead with the balance sheet. The 10-Q risk factors warn of "our high level of debt and the restrictive covenants in the credit agreements," note that the company must "maintain specified financial covenant ratios," and list customer concentration, sole reliance on NVIDIA GPUs, three suppliers at 23%, 20% and 17% of 2025 purchases, and data-center moratoria, including New York's July 2026 moratorium on sites of 50 MW or more. Texas ordered a halt on data-center permits in September (CNBC, September 21).
What the Street and Public Conversation Say
The sell side remains bullish on paper: aggregator pages show a consensus Buy with average 12-month targets of about $137–142 (Benzinga, October 2; Investing.com, October 5). Simply Wall St's October 4 page argues that "debt, dilution and balance-sheet strain cap upside." These are aggregator summaries, not independent research.
The bear case is consistent and old. @MartinShkreli on August 12: "debt is too large to generate FCF." @aleabitoreddit consolidated a neocloud thesis from CoreWeave into Nebius, writing in November 2025 that Nebius had no "high interest debt that $CRWV, $APLD, and others face" (quoted again September 24). BCA's Noah Weisberger called neoclouds "cyclical leasing companies" (MarketWatch, August 20). Headlines in the October 5 social sweep repeat the theme: "Why CoreWeave Is Weighed Down by Its Debt Load" (Yahoo Finance), "CoreWeave Has Slumped on Debt Concerns. It Is Issuing More Convertible Bonds" (Barron's), and "credit agreement amendment puts liquidity covenant in focus" (ts2.tech). Those three are titles without dates or bodies on file.
The bull case argues scale and price. @pequityresearch quotes a customer who chose CoreWeave over Nebius and Lambda on "maturity of the organization, pricing, security and availability of the latest GPUs," while calling the rivals' pricing "very competitive" (October 5). @MMatters22596 calls it a possible 20-bagger while conceding "the debt is a major execution risk" (October 5); @ZaStocks posts a tightening chart, "From compression comes eventual expansion" (October 5). @michaelsikand puts CoreWeave at 0.92 times enterprise value to backlog against 1.72 for Nebius and 1.54 for IREN (September 26, unverified), a measure of how heavily the market discounts each dollar of CoreWeave's backlog.
Source quality is low. No independent credit analysis is in the corpus; the social layer is opinion and engagement-weighted video.
The Neocloud Lane: Who Is Actually Broken
Trend read uses the one-year change, the one-year excess return over the S&P 500 and the distance from the 200-day average.
| Company | As of | Price ($) | 1Y (%) | 1Y vs S&P 500 (pts) | vs 200-day (%) | 30D (%) | Off 52w high (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hut 8 ($HUT) | 2026-10-05 | 89.27 | 115.52 | 100.15 | 10.9 | -4.58 | -36.6 |
| Nebius ($NBIS) | 2026-10-05 | 232.57 | 86.15 | 70.78 | 38 | 2.73 | -22.44 |
| TeraWulf ($WULF) | 2026-10-05 | 14.79 | 23.56 | 8.19 | -18.2 | -10.42 | -50.44 |
| Cipher ($CIFR) | 2026-10-05 | 15.48 | 0.91 | -14.46 | -15.5 | -12.74 | -48.64 |
| Core Scientific ($CORZ) | 2026-10-05 | 16.6 | -7.31 | -22.68 | -16.2 | -7.21 | -45.5 |
| Applied Digital ($APLD) | 2026-10-05 | 24.7 | -10.86 | -26.23 | -23.1 | -6.33 | -51.31 |
| IREN ($IREN) | 2026-10-05 | 40.48 | -29.9 | -45.27 | -11.2 | -9.4 | -47.34 |
| CoreWeave ($CRWV) | 2026-10-05 | 87.39 | -34.71 | -50.08 | -5.4 | -2.2 | -42.96 |
| Galaxy Digital ($GLXY) | 2026-10-05 | 22.65 | -41.68 | -57.05 | -8.9 | -13.98 | -50.68 |
On the October 5 tape, two names are intact trends: Hut 8, a deep pullback still above its 200-day on a year more than doubled, and Nebius, 38% above its average. TeraWulf is up on the year but under its 200-day, so its trend is under test. The other six are down or flat on the year, behind the index and under the 200-day: broken. CoreWeave's year sits mid-pack among the broken names; the outlier in this lane is Nebius. Cerebras ($CBRS) listed in May and has no one-year history.
Testing the Leads
| Lead | What the evidence shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Debt load and its cost | Debt carrying value $35.1B at June 30 against $21.4B at December 31; loans and senior notes carry effective rates of 9% to 15%, the convertibles 2%; Q2 net interest $640M, 25% of revenue; loan spreads widened through the year (10-Q) | Primary driver. Filed, measured, and matched by the price path and the coverage |
| $3B convertible and 35M-share sale (September 17) | Down 4.16% on 3.8× volume that day; about 6% of the share count | Real, but recent. Explains September's failure to rebound, not the year's gap |
| Credit-agreement amendment, liquidity covenant | Only a headline on file, undated. The 10-Q records a November 2025 revolver amendment "to modify certain covenant metrics" and states DDTL covenant compliance at June 30. The September 22 8-K's contents were not read | Unverified. No covenant problem appears in the filings read |
| Insider selling (October 1–2 Form 4s) | October 1: the chief executive's weekly 307,692-share block. October 2: eight officers, one $87.69 price on September 30, exercise codes, $17.6M in total. The larger flow is the weekly CEO block and Magnetar's August sales. Nebius insiders also sold, $19.1M on October 1–5 | Supply, not signal. The fixed weekly block reads as a pre-arranged schedule; plan status is unconfirmed because the Form 4 footnotes were not read |
| Customer concentration | Falling: the top customer went from 71% of Q2 2025 revenue to 36% of Q2 2026 (10-Q) | Not a driver of the past year; still the top filed risk |
| Capex and financing model vs Nebius | See the comparison below | The core difference |
| Dilution and ATM supply across the lane | CoreWeave's ATM; IREN's (attributed); Nebius's March convertible and NVIDIA warrant; new neocloud listings | Lane-wide. Nebius also issued and still outperformed, so dilution alone does not explain the gap |
Two Ways to Fund the Same Build
| Q2 2026 (filed) | CoreWeave | Nebius |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $2.58B, +112% YoY | $582.3M, +454% YoY |
| Adjusted EBITDA margin | 59% | 40.6% |
| Operating cash flow | $679M | $2.25B |
| Purchases of property and equipment | $6.42B | $5.66B |
| Free cash flow (operating cash flow less capex) | −$5.74B | −$3.41B |
| Cash vs debt, June 30 | $5.52B vs $35.1B (plus $16.3B operating leases) | $8.04B vs $8.55B |
| Strategic equity in 2026 | NVIDIA, 23M shares at $87.20 (January); $1.0B at $109 (April) | NVIDIA, about $2B pre-funded warrant; 9.3% holder |
| Newest debt pricing | SOFR + 5.5% (August facility) | $775M secured facility at a mid-single-digit rate (call summary, attributed) |
Sources: CoreWeave 10-Q and Q2 release; Nebius Q2 6-K exhibits as reconstructed in the desk's August 13 dive and September 28 profile. Free cash flow by desk arithmetic.
The two companies are growing into the same demand with different claims ahead of shareholders. Nebius is also concentrated and also burns cash; the desk's September 28 profile records three customers supplying a majority of its Q2 revenue. The difference is who funded the capex: Nebius's customers and equity holders, or CoreWeave's lenders.
The Conviction Chain
| Link | Evidence | Confirms | Breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demand is contracted and growing | RPO $60.7B → $98.8B → $103.7B over two quarters; Q2 revenue +112% | Q3 revenue on the path to the $12.4–13.2B guide | Backlog shrinks, or a customer delays or cancels capacity |
| Funding cost is the binding constraint | Interest 22–27% of revenue in each of six quarters; loan spreads wider through 2026 | Interest again outgrows revenue in Q3 | Interest growth falls below revenue growth as cheaper paper replaces 11–15% loans |
| Equity supply caps rallies | September ATM and convertible; weekly CEO block; 13% more shares year over year | Rallies stall under the 200-day | ATM completed or withdrawn; selling blocks stop |
| The Nebius gap is about capital structure | Nebius cash roughly equals debt; customer prepayments fund half or more of its capex | Nebius keeps outperforming on the same demand news | Nebius levers up and keeps outperforming, which would make growth rate the explanation |
Weakest link: the price attribution in link two. The filings prove the cost of money rose; that it, rather than Nebius's faster growth rate (+454% against +112%), drove the stock gap is inference, supported by the headlines and the price path. Conviction is medium for that reason.
Financial Proof
| Quarter | Revenue ($M) | YoY | QoQ | GAAP op. margin | Net interest ($M) | Interest / revenue | Net loss ($M) | D&A ($M) | Operating cash flow ($M) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | 982 | n/a | n/a | −2.8% | 264 | 27% | −315 | 443 | 61 | SEC XBRL |
| Q2 2025 | 1,213 | n/a | +23.5% | +1.6% | 267 | 22% | −291 | 559 | −251 | SEC XBRL |
| Q3 2025 | 1,365 | n/a | +12.5% | +3.8% | 311 | 23% | −110 | 630 | 1,689 | SEC XBRL |
| Q4 2025 | 1,572 | n/a | +15.2% | −5.7% | 388 | 25% | −452 | 821 | 1,559 | SEC 10-K less 9M |
| Q1 2026 | 2,078 | +112% | +32.2% | −6.9% | 536 | 26% | −740 | 1,147 | 2,984 | SEC 10-Q |
| Q2 2026 | 2,575 | +112% | +23.9% | −1.9% | 640 | 25% | −626 | 1,393 | 679 | SEC 10-Q |
Quarterly flows are de-cumulated from year-to-date filings by desk arithmetic; Q4 2025 is the 10-K year less nine months. Year-over-year growth needs four prior quarters, so it starts in Q1 2026.
What the series says:
- Growth re-accelerated, then cooled. Sequential growth jumped to 32.2% in Q1 and eased to 23.9% in Q2, still a doubling year over year.
- Operating leverage has not shown up in GAAP. Operating margin turned negative in Q4 2025 and stayed there, because depreciation (+149% YoY in Q2) grew faster than revenue as new capacity came online ahead of billing. Adjusted operating margin also fell sharply from a year earlier (Q2 release).
- Interest is a fixed quarter of revenue. It has not fallen as a share of revenue at any point in six quarters, which is why revenue growth has not reached the bottom line.
- Cash flow depends on deposits. Operating cash flow swings with prepayments (Q2 came in at $679 million, after a much larger Q1) while capex ran $14.1 billion in the half (10-Q).
- Positioning is not crowded. Short interest fell to 54.9 million shares at September 15 from 64.4 million at July 15, 2.4 days of volume (Massive). Short-sale volume spiked to 77.6% of trading on September 18, the day after the offering filings; the cause is not established in the corpus.
Debt maturities and terms (10-Q, June 30, 2026)
| Due | Principal ($B) |
|---|---|
| Rest of 2026 | 4.41 |
| 2027 | 6.18 |
| 2028 | 4.42 |
| 2029 | 2.42 |
| 2030 | 3.22 |
| Thereafter | 14.90 |
| Total | 35.55 |
Effective rates on the recourse stack: 15% on the 2028 delayed-draw loan; 11% on OEM equipment financing and the August 2030 delayed-draw loan; 9% on the newer delayed-draw loans; 9–10% on the senior notes; 2% on the 2031 and 2032 convertibles. The non-recourse March facility runs at 7%. After quarter end the company signed a $2.6 billion delayed-draw facility and drew $1.2 billion of it, and drew $1.2 billion on its revolver (10-Q subsequent events). Total liquidity was $15.6 billion at June 30, including $10.0 billion of undrawn facilities. The 2032 convertibles convert at about $119.60 a share, with capped calls to $230.
Stock Setup and What to Watch
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| As of | 2026-10-05 |
| Price ($) | 87.39 |
| RSI | 50.4 |
| vs 20-day (%) | 0.3 |
| vs 50-day (%) | 0.4 |
| vs 200-day (%) | -5.4 |
| 200-day level ($) | 92.37 |
| Past year's most-traded price ($) | 85.64 |
| Nearest support shelf ($) | 81.78 |
| 7D / 30D / 3M (%) | 2.73 / -2.2 / 1.08 |
| 1Y (%) | -34.71 |
| Off 52-week high (%) | -42.96 |
| Relative volume | 0.59 |
The October 5 close sits just above the past year's most-traded price, with the 50-day average under the 200-day. Volume was 0.59 times average on October 5: no one is forcing the issue.
Dated catalysts:
- October 7–8: Applied Digital reports (provider dates differ). It leases capacity to CoreWeave, so its tenant commentary is a direct read.
- October 22 or November 10: Nebius reports (listings differ).
- October 23: Core Scientific reports (provider estimate).
- October 27: Microsoft reports, opening the hyperscaler capex season.
- November 11: CoreWeave's Q3 report (provider estimate). Watch net interest expense against revenue growth, the convertible's terms, adjusted operating margin, capex guidance and the active-power count.
- November 20: review date on the desk's open CoreWeave watch call.
Risks and Kill Tests
To the bearish read (what would make waiting wrong):
- A financing at a lower spread, or a prepayment-heavy contract that funds a site, would show the cost of capital falling.
- A squeeze is possible but not set up: short interest has been falling, not rising.
- Strategic buyers paid $87.20 and $109 this year; the stock is back at NVIDIA's January price, and a new strategic investment at a premium would re-anchor it.
To the business (thesis breaks):
- Net interest expense outgrows revenue again in Q3.
- New equity is sold below $85.64, or a larger at-the-market program follows the September one.
- A customer delays acceptance or cancels committed capacity; Meta selling its own surplus capacity is the named competitive risk (July 7 report).
- A covenant amendment, waiver or liquidity test appears in a filing. None does in the 10-Q.
- Refinancing: $6.18 billion of principal is due in 2027.
Cross-references
- Lanes: neoclouds and AI hosting (the focus lane), AI infrastructure, AI bottlenecks, AI power, the NVIDIA open-agent ecosystem, and TheBuildout's data-center operators.
- Momentum Board, October 5: CoreWeave appears in no tier; Nebius is in the 30–40%-above-the-200-day tier; Hut 8 and IREN appear among multi-year outperformers in pullback. No washout-turn signal for CoreWeave.
- Prior desk calls: the July 8 AI compute landlords industry report passed on CoreWeave, reopening only on "a financing regime change — interest expense stabilizing while revenue keeps compounding, and a reclaimed $98–100." That call is history: it predates Q2, the Fed hike and the September offering, and its condition is still unmet, since Q2 net interest rose to $640 million from $536 million. The September 25 "bottom-feeding AI software split" report opened the current watch (a close above the 200-day with $85.64 intact; review November 20).
- Related research: the desk's August 13 Nebius deep dive and September 28 Nebius profile; the September 25 report's CoreWeave section, "the fastest grower pays the most for money."
- Campaign: CoreWeave's financing is context evidence in "AI spending: the supplier earnings reversal case" (monitoring; next review October 30), which tests the financing channel separately from orders.
Refresh History
- 2026-10-05: first desk deep dive on CoreWeave. CRWV closed $87.39 with RSI 50.4, 0.3% above its 20-day average and down 2.2% over 30 days; the call is to wait for a held close above the 200-day.
Sources
Primary filings
- CoreWeave Q2 2026 Form 10-Q — debt note, liquidity, concentration, RPO, risk factors, subsequent events. Receipt: 10Q-2026-08-12.html.
- CoreWeave Q2 2026 earnings release (8-K exhibit 99.1) — receipt CRWV-302095683cd04d95.
- CoreWeave 2025 Form 10-K — business, financing model, Microsoft share; cached 10k-business,
10k-risk_factors.json. - 8-K filed 2026-09-17, 424B5 filed 2026-09-17, 8-K filed 2026-09-22 — capture stubs 2026-09-17-crwv-8-k-0001769628-26-000429,
2026-09-17-crwv-424b5-0001628280-26-062362.md,2026-09-22-crwv-8-k-0001769628-26-000432.md(bodies not captured). - Form 4s: CEO, filed 2026-10-01; CEO, 2026-10-02; Chief Development Officer, 2026-10-02; Chief Strategy Officer, 2026-10-02; CFO, 2026-10-02; Magnetar, 2026-08-14. Receipts: -crwv-4-, filing-watch (generated 2026-10-05; August 14–27 cluster).
- Nebius Q2 2026 release, shareholder letter, financial statements, NVIDIA investment 6-K — 6k-financials-2026-08-12; prepayment receipt NBIS-5f05a8ef4e34ce27; Nebius Form 4s 2026-10-0*-nbis-4-*.
Price and fundamentals
- Tape: neoclouds (data as of 2026-10-05, Schwab, fetched 2026-10-05T21:00Z).
- Statements: company-facts and
key-financials.json(fetched 2026-10-05); income-statements,cash-flow-statements.json,balance-sheets.json,short-interest.json,short-volume.json(cached 2026-09-25; a 2026-10-05 refresh hit a provider 410). Series computed by desk script. - Momentum Board and washout-turn screen: 2026-10-05-monster-scan, 2026-10-05-washout-scan.
- Calendar: 2026-11-11-crwv-earnings,
2026-11-10-nbis-earnings.md,2026-10-07-apld-earnings.md,2026-10-08-apld-earnings.md,2026-10-23-corz-earnings.md.
News
- News receipt: latest (fetched 2026-10-05T23:53Z, ok) and
articles.jsonl; latest (fetched 2026-10-05T22:36Z, ok, newest item 2026-08-19) andarticles.jsonl(July 7 Meta-cloud selloff item, March 17 convertible report, TradingKey Q2 call summary for the $775M facility). - StockTitan: CoreWeave plans $3B converts, 35M-share sale (2026-09-17)
- CNBC: Q2 report (2026-08-11)
- TipRanks: Q1 report and guidance (2026-05-07); TIKR (2026-05-08)
- Investing.com: Magnetar sales (2026-05-08)
- Yahoo Finance: "The Sell-Off Is About What It's Spending" (2026-07-25) — 2026-07-25-yahoofinance-coreweave-stock-fell-11-4-on-friday-the-sell-off-is-about-wh-4-212700175-html
- Invezz: September 8 surge
- Bloomberg: CoreWeave-tied data center junk bond (2026-09-21) — 2026-09-21-bloomberg-coreweave-tied-data-center-project-kicks-off-junk-bond-offer-tlqcynkjh6vc00
- MarketWatch: neoclouds as "cyclical leasing companies" (2026-08-20) — 2026-08-20-marketwatch-neocloud-stocks-like-coreweave-are-having-a-moment-x2014-and--mktw-0005189991
- CNBC: Texas data-center permit halt (2026-09-21)
- TheBuildout relays (secondhand): lender terms (2026-09-20, 2026-09-20-thebuildout-ai-infrastructure-lenders-demand-tougher-terms-as-financing--a28f7ad4), capex guidance (2026-08-12, 2026-08-12-thebuildout-coreweave-raises-2026-capex-guidance-to-39-billion-amid-surg-6ef959d5).
- Aggregators: Benzinga price targets, Investing.com financials, Simply Wall St.
- Social-sweep headlines (titles only): Yahoo Finance, debt load, ts2.tech, covenant, Barron's, convertibles — 2026-10-05-social-search-coreweave-crwv.
X posts (attributed opinion)
- @MartinShkreli (2026-08-12); @pequityresearch (2026-10-05) — via the social sweep above.
- @aleabitoreddit (2026-09-24, quoting November 2025) — 2026-09-24-aleabitoreddit-wow-nbis-relative-outperformance-is-wild-back-in-63133062; @aleabitoreddit on ATMs (2026-09-24) — 2026-10-05-aleabitoreddit-aaoi-is-finally-done-with-their-600m-atm-program-27268373.
- @michaelsikand (2026-09-26) — 2026-09-28-michaelsikand-chat-have-we-ever-seen-a-neocloud-board-this-sta-29894287; @michaelsikand, October 5 — 2026-10-05-michaelsikand-when-the-nasdaq-hits-a-new-ath-but-sndk-lite-and-55978967.
- @MMatters22596 (2026-10-05) — 2026-10-05-MMatters22596-the-upside-potential-crwv-is-offering-here-is-in-57457153; @ZaStocks (2026-10-05) — 2026-10-05-ZaStocks-crwv-from-compression-comes-eventual-expansion-d-52342493.
- SemiAnalysis ClusterMAX (2026-10-02), as cited in the desk's October 2 brief.
Desk context
- Briefs: 2026-09-14-market-brief,
2026-09-15-market-brief.md,2026-09-16-market-brief.md,2026-09-17-market-brief.md,2026-09-18-market-brief.md,2026-09-23-market-brief.md,2026-10-02-market-brief.md; market conditions 2026-10-05-market-conditions. - Prior calls and research: 2026-07-08-ai-compute-landlords-industry-report, 2026-09-25-bottom-feeding-ai-software-split, 2026-08-13-nbis-deep-dive, 2026-09-28-NBIS; campaign
ai-capex-digestion(ACTIVE). - Graded-call lessons: CALL-LESSONS (lessons 6, 7, 9).