CoreWeave beats quarterly revenue estimates as AI cloud demand surges

CoreWeave CRWV.O topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Tuesday and posted a smaller-than-expected loss, driven by strong demand for its AI cloud computing services, sending its shares about 14% higher in extended trading.

So-called neoclouds such as CoreWeave and peer Nebius NBIS.O, which offer hardware and cloud capacity to other technology companies, have seen demand skyrocket as a result of relentless enterprise spending on AI.

CoreWeave, whose close ties with Nvidia NVDA.O have made it a key supplier of compute capacity powered by Nvidia's AI chips, has attracted several high-profile customers so far this year. It has signed cloud capacity agreements with Meta META.O and Claude creator Anthropic.

The company reported revenue backlog of $104.2 billion as of June 30, up from $99.4 billion at the end of the first quarter. On top of the backlog, CoreWeave said it secured more than $25 billion of net new customer commitments in the current quarter.

"We outperformed our plan across the board, with the operating leverage we have been building beginning to show up clearly in our results," co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator said on a post-earnings call.

The company's near-term capacity was effectively sold out, translating into compute capacity agreements on "increasingly favorable terms" from a growing set of customers, Intrator added.

Total revenue more than doubled to $2.58 billion in the second quarter ended June, compared with analysts' average estimate of $2.56 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.

On an adjusted basis, it posted a per-share loss of $1.03, compared with market expectations for a loss of $1.20.

CoreWeave has been ramping up its infrastructure investments to meet the surge in demand. Its capital expenditures reached $9.4 billion in the June quarter, compared with $6.8 billion in the prior three-month period and the $2.9 billion reported a year earlier.