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CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) executives, along with a peer AI infrastructure provider, recently shared insights on how they are financing rapid expansion, managing power constraints, and expanding product offerings as demand for AI compute accelerates.
Nick Robbins, Vice President of Corporate Development at CoreWeave, leads the company’s equity and equity-linked financing efforts and oversees investor relations. Robbins has been with CoreWeave for about seven months, having previously worked with the founders as an advisor at Morgan Stanley and as a pre-IPO investor.
CoreWeave finances its rapid expansion primarily through longer-dated “take-or-pay” contracts and asset-level delayed draw term loans (DDTLs). Approximately 90% of contract-level capital expenditures (CapEx) have been financed with DDTLs. The company outlined about $30 billion of CapEx tied to its backlog while targeting stabilized margins in the mid-20s.
The company prioritizes near-term, grid-connected power and operational flexibility. It has about 3.1 gigawatts of contracted power—mostly leased—expected to be largely online by the end of 2027. CoreWeave plans to scale self-built joint ventures, starting with a facility in Kenilworth, New Jersey, to gain greater control while managing physical constraints such as transformers and transmission capacity.
CoreWeave is expanding its partnership with NVIDIA, targeting an additional 5 gigawatts of AI cloud capacity by 2030. The company is also focusing on higher-margin add-on services including storage, networking, and CPU offerings, which have reached a roughly $100 million run rate. Additionally, CoreWeave is adapting to shifts in GPU technology and cooling solutions, such as adopting NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs and liquid-cooled data centers.
During the conference, the host highlighted CoreWeave’s rapid revenue growth—from $200 million to $5 billion over a few years—with expectations to double revenue again in 2026 and 2027. The company’s backlog was described as approximately $66 billion to $67 billion. Robbins noted that while CoreWeave has addressed questions about its differentiation, the market still debates how a hyperscale cloud can be built quickly without the legacy cash-flow engines of traditional hyperscalers.
Robbins explained that CoreWeave’s business model relies on longer-term “take-or-pay” contracts that provide visibility into future cash flows, even as the company incurs upfront costs during hypergrowth. He stated that at the contract level, stabilized margins are in the mid-20s. The company accepts early-period cost pressures because these contracts—averaging about five years in length—are expected to generate sufficient cash flow to service debt, cover operating expenses, and deliver free cash flow to shareholders over their duration.
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