Shares of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) plunged over 5% in pre-market trading on Thursday following the release of its first quarterly earnings report as a public company. While the cloud computing startup reported stronger-than-expected revenue, investor concerns over its high capital expenditure (CapEx) guidance weighed heavily on the stock.
The Nvidia-backed company posted first-quarter revenue of $981.63 million, marking a 420% year-over-year increase and beating the Wall Street estimates of $859.77 million. This impressive growth was driven by rising demand for its liquid cooling solutions, which support AI-focused infrastructure, including data center chips and servers.
However, CoreWeave reported an adjusted loss of $1.49 per share, significantly wider than analysts’ expectations of a $0.66 loss per share.
The company also disclosed a revenue backlog of $25.9 billion as of March 31, 2025, including $14.7 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO). Significant contributions to this backlog came from key customer wins, including a strategic partnership with OpenAI, which accounted for $11.2 billion, and a collaboration with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to provide compute capacity for IBM’s Granite models.
Operating expenses reached $1.01 billion during the quarter, up 487% year-over-year. The AI hyperscaler ended the period with $1.28 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
For Q2, CoreWeave forecasts revenues between $1.06 billion and $1.1 billion, well above analyst expectations of $986.7 million. Additionally, the company raised its full-year 2025 revenue forecast to a range of $4.9 billion to $5.1 billion, signaling strong growth potential and beating analyst estimates of $4.61 billion.
In its outlook, the company also pointed to major expansion plans, including a potential $4 billion agreement with a large AI enterprise and a $21 billion funding round to boost infrastructure and capacity.
However, CoreWeave’s hefty capital expenditure guidance of $3–3.5 billion for Q2 raised red flags, as it is roughly three times its expected revenue for the quarter. Investors worried this could pressure free cash flow, complicate efforts to reduce debt, and potentially lead to more share dilution.
In a statement, Michael Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, said the company had a strong start to 2025, marked by financial success, an IPO, key partnerships (including with OpenAI), and key technical achievements. He emphasized growing demand for CoreWeave’s cloud infrastructure among AI leaders and said the company is rapidly expanding to meet it, asserting, “The future runs on CoreWeave.”
Founded in 2017, CoreWeave operates data centers across the U.S. and Europe. The company provides cloud infrastructure powered by Nvidia GPUs to large tech and AI firms. CoreWeave went public on the Nasdaq on March 28, 2025, at $40 per share.
As of the latest update, CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) shares are down 5.13%, trading at $64.
Salman Akhtar is a finance, stocks, and technology journalist with years of experience across various news organizations. He has contributed his expertise to outlets such as 24NewsHD, TrimFeed, The Voice Pakistan, and TheTechBasic. Salman is passionate about making complex topics accessible to a broad audience. His dedication to delivering accurate and timely information has established him as a trusted voice in the industry. Read Full Bio
