By Dan Gallagher

Being a small company serving some of the world's largest ones isn't for the faint of heart.

CoreWeave's annual revenue has more than tripled in a year's time due to soaring demand for artificial-intelligence computing services. Much of that has come from tech giants like Microsoft and Meta Platforms.

They have agreed to pay CoreWeave tens of billions of dollars over several years to augment their own massive AI computing needs. And ChatGPT-owner OpenAI is also a major customer, having signed an expanded deal worth $6.5 billion with CoreWeave in September.

But big deals like that set up big expectations.

In its third-quarter report Monday, CoreWeave posted a "backlog"-meaning total contracted revenue not yet recognized-of $55.6 billion. That is a near doubling of that figure in just three months' time. The catch is that publicity around the deals meant the number wasn't a surprise. Some analysts were actually expecting it at $60 billion.

Also, these sorts of mammoth deals require a lot of complicated work for the projects to start generating revenue. That leaves lots of room for things to go wrong.

CoreWeave warned investors Monday that delays by one of its data-center partners would result in fourth-quarter revenue coming in well below expectations. The company stressed the total value of the related contract hasn't changed and that the affected customer has agreed to extend the deal.

Still, it's a sharp reminder that CoreWeave needs everything to go right. It is competing with the same tech giants to build out extensive AI infrastructure. That has left CoreWeave with nearly five times as much debt as cash and an annual capital-expenditure bill more than twice its revenue.

CoreWeave's stock slid Tuesday following the results, but it is still trading at more than double its IPO price from March. There is plenty more room for things to go wrong.

Dan's column was first published in our AI & Business newsletter. Sign up here for a weekly digest exploring AI's impact on business with news, insights and data from our global team of tech journalists.

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November 11, 2025 14:24 ET (19:24 GMT)

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