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CoreWeave (CRWV) is moving sharply higher after its Q2 report and stronger guidance reinforced that AI infrastructure demand remains intense while providing clearer evidence that rapid capacity expansion is translating into accelerating revenue and improving operating leverage. The bigger driver is the outlook, with Q3 revenue guidance of $3.45-$3.60 bln above the $3.42 bln FactSet consensus and FY26 revenue guidance raised to $12.4-$13.2 bln from $12.0-$13.0 bln, alongside higher active-power and year-end run-rate revenue targets.

• Revenue backlog reached $104 bln, up 246% yr/yr, but importantly excludes more than $25 bln of net new customer commitments signed in early Q3. More than half of Q2 backlog is already attached to contracts where delivery has commenced, with that proportion expected to exceed two-thirds by year-end, strengthening visibility into future revenue conversion.
• CRWV raised its year-end annualized run-rate revenue target to $18.5-$19.5 bln and now expects more than 1.85 GW of active power, up from more than 1.7 GW previously. Q2 ended with 1.5 GW active, while contracted power has subsequently reached 4.2 GW, providing infrastructure visibility for continued expansion.
• Adjusted EBITDA doubled yr/yr to $1.5 bln with a 59% margin, while adjusted operating income improved sharply sequentially to $128 mln. More importantly, Q2 contracts are expected to carry contribution margins 5-10 percentage points above recent deals, supported by strong pricing, including an approximately 25% increase across SKUs implemented in July.
• Managed inference is emerging as an important higher-margin growth engine, with booked ARR surging from roughly $1 mln to more than $100 mln within a few months and management targeting at least $250 mln by year-end. Storage, CPU, networking, and software also exceeded $400 mln of ARR in Q2, broadening CRWV beyond raw GPU capacity.
• FY26 CapEx guidance increased to $35-$39 bln as CRWV accelerates deployments, while Q3 interest expense is expected to reach $860-$940 mln. Still, the company raised roughly $18 bln of capital during Q2 and has reduced its weighted average cost of debt by nearly 300 bps over the past year, partially mitigating financing concerns.

Briefing.com Analyst Insight

The most important takeaway is that customer demand increasingly looks less like the constraint than CRWV's ability to bring infrastructure online fast enough to satisfy it. The $104 bln backlog, more than $25 bln of additional early-Q3 commitments, higher pricing, and improving economics on newly signed contracts provide substantial visibility behind the raised outlook. At the same time, the model requires extraordinary upfront investment, leaving a large gap between improving operating performance and bottom-line profitability as interest expense rises alongside debt-funded deployments. The next phase of the story therefore hinges on whether CRWV can convert backlog and new power capacity into revenue while expanding operating margins quickly enough to offset its escalating capital and financing requirements.