CoreWeave reported Q2 2026 after the close on August 11. Revenue was $2.575B, up 112.5%, just past the $2.56B consensus and inside its own $2.45–2.60B guided range. The net loss was $1.14 a share against roughly $1.21 expected — a beat on both lines.
Michael Intrator called it "an important inflection point … as our scale began to translate into expanding operating leverage." The numbers support him more than they have in any prior quarter. They also show what that leverage is currently paying for.
The call, graded
We previewed this print yesterday around one framing: $21M of adjusted operating income in Q1 against $536M of interest.
| What we said to watch | What the print says |
|---|---|
| Whether gross margin holds above 65% after four quarters of decline | Held, and ticked up — 65.54% → 65.86%. The first quarter that did not fall. |
| Interest expense against adjusted operating income | Both grew. Adjusted operating income 6x'd to $128M; interest rose to $640M. Ratio improved 3.9% → 20%; the absolute gap is unchanged at ~$512M. |
| Backlog conversion, not backlog size | Backlog $104B, and the footnote adds $25B+ of net new commitments in early Q3. Still no conversion schedule. |
| Customer concentration | Materially better disclosure — Caterpillar, Bentley Systems, Grammarly, Isomorphic Labs among new names. No updated top-customer percentage. |
| Whether guidance appears at all | It did not. As predicted, the Outlook section again says guidance comes on the call, not in the filing. |
The leverage is real
| Q1 2026 | Q2 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $2,078M | $2,575M |
| Adjusted operating income | $21M | $128M |
| Adjusted operating income margin | 1% | 5% |
| Interest expense, net | $(536)M | $(640)M |
| Operating cash flow | $2,984M* | $679M |
*Q1 operating cash flow was flattered by a large receivables reversal; Q2's $679M is against −$251M a year ago.
Adjusted operating income grew six-fold in a quarter. That is the strongest evidence yet that this business has an operating model underneath the capex. But set it beside the financing cost and the picture is unchanged in absolute terms: interest exceeded adjusted operating income by $515M in Q1 and by $512M in Q2.
The ratio improved a lot. The gap did not move.
One caution on the headline non-GAAP number: adjusted EBITDA was $1,510M at a 59% margin, and depreciation and amortization in the quarter was $1,393M. Roughly 92% of that EBITDA is depreciation added back on the GPU fleet that generates the revenue. For a business whose principal cost is the wasting asset itself, EBITDA is the least informative line in the release.
What it cost
| Quarter | Revenue | Revenue YoY | FCF | FCF margin | R40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q2 | $1.21B | +206.7% | −$2.70B | −223.0% | −16.2 |
| 2025 Q3 | $1.36B | +133.7% | −$0.70B | −51.3% | 82.4 |
| 2025 Q4 | $1.57B | +110.4% | −$2.50B | −159.1% | −48.7 |
| 2026 Q1 | $2.08B | +111.7% | −$4.71B | −226.7% | −115.0 |
| 2026 Q2 | $2.58B | +112.3% | −$5.74B | −223.0% | −110.7 |
Operating cash flow turned positive for the first time in this series (+$679M). Free cash flow still went further negative than any prior quarter, because capex was $6.42B — 9.5 times operating cash flow.
On our house definition, the score is −110.7. For this business that is a description rather than a verdict: a debt- and lease-funded GPU builder mid-construction will print deeply negative free-cash-flow margins for as long as it is building. Growth has now held at almost exactly 112% for three consecutive quarters.
The balance sheet is the company
This is where the quarter is most striking.
| 2025-12-31 | 2026-06-30 | |
|---|---|---|
| Property and equipment, net | $30.6B | $46.7B |
| Operating lease right-of-use assets | $8.2B | $16.6B |
| Total debt (recourse + non-recourse) | $21.4B | $35.1B |
| Total liabilities | $46.0B | $72.0B |
| Total stockholders' equity | $3.3B | $5.0B |
Debt grew $13.7B in six months. In Q2 alone CoreWeave drew $13.5B of new debt against $3.9B of repayments, issued $1.0B of common stock privately, and bought $492M of capped calls. Then, on August 10 — the day before this release — it closed the $2.6B DDTL 5.5 facility, the first where lenders take renewal risk on contracts shorter than the loan.
Total liabilities are now 14x equity. At $640M a quarter, interest is running at roughly $2.6B annualised and rising with each draw.
The backlog got bigger and closer
Revenue backlog reached approximately $104B, up from $99.4B — and the footnote does more work than the headline: it excludes more than $25 billion of net new customer commitments added in early Q3. Five weeks of signing worth roughly ten quarters of current revenue.
Physically, active power nearly doubled: +500 MW to 1.5 GW, against ~3.7 GW contracted and a stated path to 8 GW by 2030.
The customer list is the quiet change. Last quarter's highlights were AI labs and a $21B Meta commitment. This quarter names Caterpillar, Bentley Systems, Grammarly, Isomorphic Labs and Sunday Robotics. That is the enterprise diversification the shorter-dated DDTL 5.5 structure was explicitly built to finance — the strategy and the balance sheet moving together.
The bottom line
Every operational line improved: growth held at 112%, gross margin stopped falling, adjusted operating income rose six-fold, operating cash flow went positive, and the backlog grew by more than a year of revenue in five weeks.
None of it yet covers the cost of the money. Interest was $640M against $128M of adjusted operating income, free cash flow was −$5.74B, and debt grew $13.7B in half a year. The inflection Intrator describes is real and it is in the right direction; it is roughly a fifth of the way to the line that matters.
What would settle it is the third consecutive quarter of adjusted operating income growing faster than interest expense. This was the first.
What we learned
- Operating leverage is real and the gap is unchanged. Adjusted operating income rose six-fold to $128M while interest rose to $640M. The ratio improved from 3.9% to 20%; the absolute gap stayed at about $512M.
- Gross margin stopped falling for the first time in five quarters — 65.54% to 65.86%.
- Backlog grew to $104B, with $25B+ of net new commitments disclosed in early Q3, and still no conversion schedule. Size is not the question; timing is.
- Customer disclosure improved materially — Caterpillar, Bentley Systems, Grammarly and Isomorphic Labs named — but there is still no updated top-customer percentage.
- Guidance again did not appear in the filing, exactly as the preview predicted: the Outlook section defers it to the call.
Figures are from CoreWeave's Q2 2026 earnings release, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to its 8-K on August 11, 2026 (accession 0001769628-26-000362), which includes discrete three-month income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow columns. The $2.6B DDTL 5.5 Facility is from Exhibit 99.1 to its 8-K of August 10, 2026 (accession 0001769628-26-000357). Revenue growth, free-cash-flow margin and Rule of 40 scores are computed from our stored CoreWeave series; free cash flow is operating cash flow less cash purchases of property and equipment including capitalized internal-use software, and excludes finance-leased hardware. Consensus figures and the $2.45–2.60B guidance range are third-party and sourced from the Q1 call rather than a filing.
