CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) shares jumped nearly 15% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the AI cloud provider reported third-quarter results and highlighted a roughly $133 billion backlog, but short seller Jim Chanos questioned the economics behind the company’s growth.
Chanos Questions Capital Returns
Chanos wrote Wednesday on X that CoreWeave’s annualized revenue per average active megawatt was $9.2 million in the third quarter, down year-over-year.
He also argued that CoreWeave is still using about "$4 in capital to generate $1 in revenues" and said that, after stock-based compensation and assuming a 10-year asset life, the business produces only a "2-3% pre-tax ROIC."
Chanos separately challenged management’s discussion of customer prepayments, saying "cash is tight" and citing what he calculated as a 0.4-times quick ratio.
"They need to do another equity deal soon, IMO," Chanos wrote.
CoreWeave Points To Demand, Pricing
CoreWeave reported $3.66 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 168% year over year, while revenue backlog reached $132.5 billion. Management said active power exceeded 1.7 gigawatts during the quarter.
CEO Michael Intrator said on the company’s earnings call that CoreWeave has "10x as much qualified demand as available capacity" through the end of 2027, while demand for 2028 is already several times larger than available capacity.
Management also said short-term capacity is selling for more than $40 million per megawatt annually, while new four- and five-year contracts are being priced at $20 million-$25 million per megawatt.
Prepayments Bolster Funding Plan
CoreWeave expects to collect about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the next three months, including more than $3 billion tied to recontracting existing infrastructure.
The company also raised full-year revenue guidance to $13 billion-$13.3 billion and expects to exit 2026 with annualized run-rate revenue of $20 billion-$21 billion.
How Has CRWV Performed in 2026?
The stock was lower by 53.86% over the last year, down 31.95% year-to-date, and lower by 40.63% over the last month. It closed 0.51% lower at $48.73 per share on Tuesday; the stock was up 15.34% to $56.20 in premarket trading on Wednesday.
Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings indicate that CRWV maintains a negative price trend in the short, long, and medium terms.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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