{"id":37,"title":"CoreWeave's Two Prices for Money: 16% on Its Own Name, 7% on Its Customers'","slug":"coreweave-borrows-on-contracts","type":"post","shortSummary":"Revenue rose 168%, but the news was the debt: about 16% on CoreWeave's own bonds, about 7% on its next loan, backed by customer contracts.","body":"An update on a public forecast from November 1. Prices as of the November 12 close.\n\n\n\n16%.\n\nThat's about what CoreWeave's bond due in 2031 was yielding in mid-October, Reuters reported.\n\nOn Tuesday, the company's finance chief, Nitin Agrawal, drew the line on the earnings call:\n\n\n\"At current yields, we do not intend to issue additional parent-level unsecured debt through 2027.\"\n\n\n\nIn plain words: CoreWeave won't borrow more on its own name at that price.\n\nThe Strong Quarter\n\nThe quarter itself was good.\n\nRevenue was $3.66 billion, up 168% from a year earlier and above the $3.55 billion analysts expected, according to LSEG. CoreWeave raised its 2026 revenue forecast to $13.0–13.3 billion. The stock rose about 8% after hours.\n\nThe loss grew faster. CoreWeave lost $709 million in the quarter, against $110 million a year earlier.\n\nCoreWeave's third quarter: revenue rose from $1.37 billion in 2025 to $3.66 billion in 2026, and the net loss grew from $110 million to $709 million\n\nThe Two Prices\n\nSo where does the money for 2027 come from?\n\nManagement named four places:\n\n\nPrepayments from customers.\n\nFinancing from the hardware makers.\n\nLoans secured by specific customer contracts and the servers behind them.\n\nCash the business generates.\n\n\nThe loans are the big one. Agrawal expects the next one to launch \"in the coming weeks\" and to cover over 90% of what the new capacity costs.\n\nThe expected interest: about 7–7.5%.\n\nThink of it as a car loan instead of a credit card. The bank lends cheaper when it can point at the car.\n\nHere, the car is the servers, and the paycheck is a signed contract with an AI lab. Lenders like both. Agrawal said CoreWeave's existing secured loans still trade \"around par value.\"\n\nWhat lenders charge CoreWeave: about 16% on its unsecured bond due 2031 in mid-October, against an expected 7–7.5% on its next loan secured by customer contracts and servers\n\nThe Customers' Name\n\nCoreWeave owed $46.9 billion at the end of September. It plans to spend $37–39 billion on new capacity this year.\n\nMore and more of that will rest on its customers' contracts.\n\nThe biggest customers are the AI labs. One of them, Anthropic, is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq on November 19, targeting a valuation of up to about $1.4 trillion.\n\nNvidia sits on the other side of the same bet. It invested $2 billion in CoreWeave in January, sells it the chips, and co-signs for other AI customers.\n\nTwo days after CoreWeave's call, Nvidia's finance chief became its interim CEO.\n\nThe Freeze Bonus\n\nThe week before, voters across the US approved dozens of local measures restricting data-center development. Texas elected a governor who campaigned against data-center tax breaks.\n\nCEO Mike Intrator said the overwhelming majority of CoreWeave's power in Texas is already online, or fully permitted and under construction.\n\nHis view: if building slows across the industry, installed compute becomes scarcer, and GPU rental prices may stay higher for longer.\n\nThe Forecast\n\nForecast from November 1: CoreWeave, Nebius, Oracle, Broadcom and Nvidia, in equal weights, trail the Nasdaq 100 on price return through October 2027.\n\nOpened at the October 30 closes. By November 12, the five stocks were down 4.6% and the Nasdaq 100 down 0.3%: 4.3 points in the forecast's favour.\n\nCoreWeave's own stock is up 3.2% since then. Nvidia is down 18.8%.\n\nThe forecast basket since October 30: Broadcom +11.7%, CoreWeave +3.2%, Oracle −2.7%, Nebius −16.5%, Nvidia −18.8%; the equal-weight basket −4.6% against the Nasdaq 100's −0.3%\n\nCloses on the last trading day of October 2027. Wrong if the five stocks match or beat the index.\n\nA loan at 7% backed by an AI lab's contract is only as good as the lab.","author":{"id":null,"name":"Viet Phan","displayName":"Viet Phan","slug":null,"shortBio":"An independent researcher with interests in finance, technology, AI and emerging business models. Focused on understanding complex systems and uncovering overlooked opportunities.","roleLabel":null,"locationName":null,"avatar":{"id":null,"url":"https://vietphanx.com/authors/viet-phan.webp","originalUrl":"https://vietphanx.com/authors/viet-phan.webp","altText":"Viet Phan","caption":null,"takenAt":null,"locationName":null,"sourceDevice":null,"credit":null,"license":{"title":"All Rights Reserved","slug":"all-rights-reserved","licenseType":"all_rights_reserved","shortSummary":"Reuse requires permission except where allowed by law.","externalUrl":null,"attributionRequired":true,"commercialUseAllowed":false,"derivativeUseAllowed":false,"aiTrainingAllowed":"unspecified","aiSearchIndexingAllowed":"allowed","key":"all_rights_reserved","url":null},"reusePolicyNote":null,"publicUrl":null,"fileSize":null,"mimeType":null,"width":null,"height":null,"sizes":{"thumb":null,"large":null}},"websiteUrl":null,"externalUrls":[{"label":"X","url":"https://x.com/vietphanx"},{"label":"LinkedIn","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/viet-phan-anh/"}],"url":"https://vietphanx.com/me","jsonUrl":null,"markdownUrl":null},"provenance":{"canonicalStatus":"canonical","sourceType":"original","sourceUrl":null,"sourceNote":null,"originalPublishedAt":null,"canonicalUrl":"https://vietphanx.com/archive/coreweave-borrows-on-contracts"},"license":{"title":"All Rights Reserved","slug":"all-rights-reserved","licenseType":"all_rights_reserved","shortSummary":"Reuse requires permission except where allowed by law.","externalUrl":null,"attributionRequired":true,"commercialUseAllowed":false,"derivativeUseAllowed":false,"aiTrainingAllowed":"unspecified","aiSearchIndexingAllowed":"allowed","key":"all_rights_reserved","url":null},"reusePolicy":{"attributionRequired":true,"quotePolicy":"short_quotes_ok","reusePolicyNote":null,"aiTrainingAllowed":"unspecified","aiSearchIndexingAllowed":"allowed"},"preferredCitation":"CoreWeave's Two Prices for Money: 16% on Its Own Name, 7% on Its Customers'. by Viet Phan. published 2026-11-12T23:08:56.241Z. https://vietphanx.com/archive/coreweave-borrows-on-contracts. License: All Rights Reserved","citation":{"title":"CoreWeave's Two Prices for Money: 16% on Its Own Name, 7% on Its Customers'","author":"Viet Phan","publishedAt":"2026-11-12T23:08:56.241Z","updatedAt":"2026-11-13T17:09:28.049Z","canonicalUrl":"https://vietphanx.com/archive/coreweave-borrows-on-contracts","accessedAt":null,"license":{"title":"All Rights Reserved","slug":"all-rights-reserved","licenseType":"all_rights_reserved","shortSummary":"Reuse requires permission except where allowed by law.","externalUrl":null,"attributionRequired":true,"commercialUseAllowed":false,"derivativeUseAllowed":false,"aiTrainingAllowed":"unspecified","aiSearchIndexingAllowed":"allowed","key":"all_rights_reserved","url":null}},"heroImage":{"id":91,"url":"https://media.vietphanx.com/media/14d10b4a408e92726d699acf32dc9792145f76351feaa7e1729ae885b0f39d81.png","originalUrl":"https://media.vietphanx.com/media/14d10b4a408e92726d699acf32dc9792145f76351feaa7e1729ae885b0f39d81.png","altText":"What lenders charge CoreWeave: about 16% on its unsecured bond due 2031 in mid-October, against an expected 7–7.5% on its next loan secured by customer contracts and servers","caption":null,"takenAt":null,"locationName":null,"sourceDevice":null,"credit":null,"license":{"title":"All Rights Reserved","slug":"all-rights-reserved","licenseType":"all_rights_reserved","shortSummary":"Reuse requires permission except where allowed by law.","externalUrl":null,"attributionRequired":true,"commercialUseAllowed":false,"derivativeUseAllowed":false,"aiTrainingAllowed":"unspecified","aiSearchIndexingAllowed":"allowed","key":"all_rights_reserved","url":null},"reusePolicyNote":null,"publicUrl":null,"fileSize":null,"mimeType":null,"width":null,"height":null,"sizes":{"thumb":null,"large":null}},"socialImage":null,"galleryImages":[],"quest":null,"entities":[],"mentionedIn":[{"slug":"nvidia-kress","title":"The CFO Behind Nvidia's Circular Financing Now Runs Nvidia","shortSummary":"Nvidia has guaranteed up to $108 billion for its customers, $105 billion of it for one OpenAI data-center campus. Its CFO, who defended those deals, now runs the company. I give 3% that she formally cuts even $1 billion of it for risk reasons by June 2027.","type":"post","url":"https://vietphanx.com/archive/nvidia-kress","publishedAt":"2026-11-12T21:44:58.089Z"}],"relatedArtifacts":[],"publishedAt":"2026-11-12T23:08:56.241Z","updatedAt":"2026-11-13T17:09:28.049Z","jsonLd":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","dateModified":"2026-11-13T17:09:28.049Z","datePublished":"2026-11-12T23:08:56.241Z","description":"Revenue rose 168%, but the news was the debt: about 16% on CoreWeave's own bonds, about 7% on its next loan, backed by customer contracts.","author":{"@type":"Person","description":"An independent researcher with interests in finance, technology, AI and emerging business models. 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