CRWV: CoreWeave Posts Revenue Beat but Stock Drops 8% on Data Center Troubles

It’s prime data center buildout time and they just said they’re behind schedule?

💾 Strong Top Line, Weak Timeline

• CoreWeave CRWV delivered a solid quarter on paper, posting revenue of $1.36 billion, ahead of Wall Street’s $1.29 billion forecast.
• Adjusted operating income came in at $217.15 million, easily topping the $177.2 million estimate. The company also reported an adjusted EPS loss of 22 cents, narrower than expectations for a 40-cent loss.
• But the numbers didn’t make investors happy. The stock tumbled 8% in after-hours trading after executives admitted that a third-party developer partner was behind schedule in building new data center capacity.

⚙️ AI Demand Still Overheating Supply

• CEO Michael Intrator struck an upbeat tone despite the setback, declaring that “CoreWeave’s position as the essential cloud for AI has never been stronger.”
• On the conference call, management said AI demand “far exceeds” available capacity, keeping the company in a “supply-constrained environment.”
• Still, the company’s 2025 revenue guidance — $5.05 billion to $5.15 billion — came in below the Street’s $5.3 billion consensus, a cautious outlook that suggests it’s not just the data centers running into delays.

💸 Big Deals, Bigger Expectations

• CoreWeave spent the quarter cementing its status as a key AI infrastructure provider:
• It signed a $14 billion AI compute pact with Meta; It expanded its partnership with OpenAI, one of its largest customers. It landed a $6.3 billion deal with Nvidia for unused cloud capacity.
• The backlog of contracted work ballooned to $55.6 billion, nearly double from Q2, but the buildout delay could slow recognition of that revenue.