CoreWeave Expects $9B in Prepayments as Bond Yields Top 15%

CoreWeave expects about $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits over the next three months, including more than $3 billion tied to new contracts for capacity it has already built, the neocloud told investors in its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday. The move puts hyperscaler cash, not the bond market, at the center of how it funds its AI buildout.

"We will not use the unsecured debt market to fund our business at current yields, nor do we need to," CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said during Tuesday's earnings call, after the company's bond yields exceeded 15% last month. In August, CoreWeave closed a $2.6 billion loan designed specifically for shorter-term customer contracts, known as DDTL 5.5, which lets it borrow in installments as it needs the money.

Shorter deals are now strategy, not exception. CoreWeave raised prices across its offerings by about 25% in July and another 10% later in the quarter, and is deliberately steering capacity toward higher-priced short-term work. "We are also allocating more capacity to short-term opportunities, where the pricing justifies it, selling capacity at more than $40 million per megawatt annually, while pricing for new infrastructure on four- and five-year contracts is moving to $20 million to $25 million per megawatt," the chief executive said.

Q3 revenue hit $3.66 billion, up 168% from a year earlier, but CoreWeave also posted a $709 million net loss and $846 million in quarterly interest expense against a $132.5 billion backlog, TechCrunch reported. The pattern is spreading: rivals Nebius and IREN have also leaned on Microsoft prepayments for their own buildouts. It lands in the middle of a run of CoreWeave finance coverage on our tracker this week, which also noted the company shopping a $4 billion loan at roughly half the yield of its bonds.