CoreWeave (CRWV is aggressively expanding its AI infrastructure to meet increasing customer demand, necessitating massive capacity additions. 2026 capital expenditures are now projected to be between $35 billion and $39 billion (up from $31-$35 billion), indicating the scale of its AI infrastructure ambitions.

Second-quarter revenues of $2.6 billion jumped 112% year over year and 24% sequentially. Backlog reached $104.2 billion, surging 246% year over year. This does not include more than $25 billion of net new customer commitments secured in the early third quarter.

To support these long-term commitments, CoreWeave is rapidly expanding its infrastructure footprint. At second-quarter end, it had 1.5 gigawatts of active power, after adding nearly 500 megawatts during the quarter. Contracted power was 4.2 gigawatts, offering visibility toward the company's goal of at least 8 gigawatts by 2030.

CoreWeave Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

CoreWeave Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | CoreWeave Inc. Quote

However, such enormous capex does create financial pressure. Capex was $9.4 billion, while construction in progress increased sequentially to $11.9 billion in the second quarter. Management noted that capex is front-loaded, requiring a combination of debt, customer prepayments and other corporate-level capital to fund buildouts.

Operating expenses reached $2.6 billion, including $165 million in stock-based compensation, due to ramping of active power and backlog conversion. The infrastructure buildout has led to an interest expense of $640 million, compared with $267 million a year earlier. Interest expense is expected to climb further to $860-$940 million in the current quarter, due to increasing debt.

To fund expansion, CoreWeave has secured more than $32 billion in debt and equity capital financing year to date.

Whether this aggressive capex spend proves to be a growth driver or a massive risk depends on CoreWeave's execution, financing costs and capacity monetization.

Challenges for CRWV remain significant amid intense competition from rivals such as pure-play Nebius Group N.V. NBIS and tech behemoths like Microsoft MSFT, Amazon and others, which are also aggressively ramping up capacity.

Capex Plans for Other Players in the AI Infra Space

Nebius is another rapidly growing AI infrastructure company. As it doubles down on AI infrastructure, NBIS has set an ambitious $20-$25 billion capex plan for 2026. The company spent nearly $5.7 billion as capex in the second quarter for buying GPUs, GPU-related hardware and for expansion of its data center footprint.