When neocloud CoreWeave reports its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday afternoon, investors will want to see continued triple-digit sales growth coupled with the beginning of a slow march toward profitability.

Wall Street analysts expect $2.6 billion in sales, up 111% from last year, a growth rate roughly in line with the last two quarters. The company has gone from $16 million in annual sales in 2022 to an estimated $12.6 billion this year. That's backed by a $99 billion backlog, mostly comprising large AI cloud contracts from Microsoft, Meta Platforms, OpenAI, and others. It's speedrunning its transformation into a "hyperscaler" like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

CoreWeave has a flywheel powering this growth. It gets funding, mostly from debt, to build large AI data centers filled with Nvidia equipment to fulfill its contracts. Rapid sales growth gives lenders the confidence to provide more funding, fueling the next round of expansion.

In the last 12 months, the company spent $16.6 billion on capital expenditures, nearly double the amount from a year earlier, and spending could go as high as $35 billion this year. At the end of March, the company had $25 billion in debt on its balance sheet, with $8.8 billion remaining untapped on its existing facilities. Since then, it has secured financing commitments for up to $14 billion, including bonds, convertible notes, delayed-draw debt facilities, and a $1 billion equity investment from hedge fund Jane Street, which is also a customer.

CoreWeave also sold 2 billion euros of bonds. As of March, the company had $15 billion in lease liabilities, with another $41 billion in leases that had not yet begun.

Because of the debt and capex cycle, the two largest expenses for CoreWeave are depreciation on its investments and interest on its borrowings. Together, they consumed 81% of the $2.1 billion in sales that the company reported in the first quarter, up from 64% in 2024. This led to an adjusted pre-tax loss of $491 million last quarter, up from $104 million the year before. To help anchor investor expectations, the company has issued quarterly guidance for capex and interest expense -- up to $9 billion and $730 million in the second quarter, respectively.

Analysts project that this will be the quarter when CoreWeave begins a slow climb to profitability, with adjusted pre-tax income not expected to turn positive until 2028.

CoreWeave has an unusually close relationship with Nvidia, which is its most important supplier, a 9% shareholder, and a customer. Nvidia has committed $6.3 billion to backstop any idle server capacity in CoreWeave data centers.

CoreWeave had its initial public offering in March 2025, but most of its shares remained with insiders and early investors. In the past six months, four insiders have sold 24 million shares, and the fund Magnetar unloaded another 15 million shares, according to FactSet. The most recent sale was last week -- 307,692 shares sold by CEO Michael Intrator at an average price of $91.80.

Since insiders and early investors were allowed to start selling shares about a year ago, the stock has declined 10%, while the S&P 500 index has gained 20%.