CoreWeave and Nebius Are Chasing $145 Billion in AI Deals on $16 Billion of Revenue

Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia have committed more than $145 billion to two AI cloud providers whose combined 2026 revenue is projected near $16 billion, a gap now financed through debt, equity from Nvidia, and legal capacity guarantees running into the next decade.

Microsoft and Meta's Commitments Outweigh CoreWeave and Nebius's Revenue by Nearly 10-to-1

CoreWeave and Nebius have become the two most closely watched "neoclouds" — companies that rent out GPU compute capacity rather than building AI models themselves. Their pitch to hyperscalers rests on speed: both companies say they can stand up the newest Nvidia hardware faster than Microsoft, Meta, or Google can build it internally.

That pitch has attracted commitments far larger than either company's current business. Microsoft has committed roughly $60 billion across CoreWeave, Nebius, and smaller private neoclouds. Meta has committed $35.2 billion to CoreWeave, following a $21 billion expansion of that agreement, plus up to $27 billion with Nebius, for a combined Meta commitment of up to $62.2 billion. Microsoft and Meta's commitments alone reach roughly $122.2 billion — close to 90% of AWS's trailing-twelve-month revenue. Once OpenAI's and Anthropic's compute agreements are added, total commitments surpass $145 billion, though the exact value of those two deals has not been disclosed.

Set against that, CoreWeave's FY2026 revenue is estimated at $12.6 billion, and Nebius's at $3.4 billion — a combined $16 billion against $145 billion in contracted demand. The chart below sets both sides of that gap on the same scale.

Nvidia Sits at Every Point of the Financing Loop

Nvidia's relationship with both companies goes beyond being their main hardware supplier. Nvidia is also an equity investor and a demand backstop, and the money tends to move in a circle: Nvidia funds the neoclouds, and the neoclouds spend heavily on Nvidia chips.

Nvidia's $2 billion investment in CoreWeave and $2 billion investment in Nebius were not its first. A 13F filing from Nvidia disclosed an $896.7 million CoreWeave stake as of Q1 2025, and a separate 13F disclosed a $33 million Nebius stake as of Q4 2025 — evidence the investment relationship predates the recent headline deals. Nvidia also backstops CoreWeave directly: under a disclosure describing the arrangement, Nvidia is "obligated to purchase the residual unsold capacity through April 13, 2032" whenever CoreWeave's data center capacity goes unused by its own customers, an arrangement that started at an initial value of $6.3 billion.

This structure comes as CoreWeave and Nebius continue funneling large sums back to Nvidia for next-generation chips, including the Blackwell Ultra and Rubin platforms — CoreWeave was recently first to bring a Vera Rubin system online. For Nvidia, the arrangement can look like a modest equity outlay in exchange for two large, recurring GPU buyers; for CoreWeave and Nebius, it raises a separate question — how much of their growth depends on one supplier also acting as their financier.

CoreWeave's Balance Sheet Shows the Cost of Rapid Buildout

CoreWeave's latest quarter illustrates how expensive it is to convert contracted power into active, revenue-generating capacity. Revenue reached $2.08 billion, up 112% year over year, and operating cash flow came in at $2.98 billion. But capital expenditures of $7.7 billion left free cash flow at negative $4.71 billion for the quarter. That gap pulled the company's cash balance down 28.3% quarter over quarter to $2.27 billion, while total debt rose 16.1% to $24.86 billion.

Most of that debt runs through GPU-backed delayed draw term loans. In March, CoreWeave closed an $8.5 billion DDTL 4.0 facility — its first to carry an investment-grade rating, supported by a long-term contract with an investment-grade customer. As of Q1 2026, only $1.26 billion of that facility had been drawn, meaning the remaining $7.24 billion will still show up in CoreWeave's debt load as it is deployed. In May, the company closed a $3.1 billion DDTL 5.0 facility backed by non-investment-grade customer contracts, which did not receive an investment-grade rating and carries a higher interest rate. On June 11, CoreWeave also announced its intention to offer $3.5 billion in senior notes, a raise not yet reflected in the figures below.

Rising Treasury Yields Are Pushing Interest Costs Toward Revenue

CoreWeave's cost of capital is also becoming more exposed to broader rate moves. The fixed-rate tranche of its DDTL 4.0 facility is tied to U.S. Treasuries with an average weighted maturity of about 3.14 years, plus a 2% premium. That portion of the yield curve has risen from below 3.6% at the start of 2026 to nearly 4.2% by June, meaning each new draw on that facility costs more than the last.

The effect already shows up in CoreWeave's income statement. Interest expense reached $536 million in Q1 2026, equal to 25.8% of the quarter's revenue and 46.3% of adjusted EBITDA. For the following quarter, CoreWeave has guided to a revenue midpoint of $2.525 billion and interest expense of $690 million — a ratio of 27.3%. Interest expense is growing faster than revenue in this comparison, and it would take either a slower pace of debt issuance or a reversal in short-to-mid Treasury yields to change that trajectory; neither is guaranteed by anything disclosed so far.

For now, both companies are still expanding: CoreWeave is targeting 1.7 GW of active power by the end of 2026, and Nebius is targeting 800 MW to 1 GW of connected power over the same period, against contracted pipelines of 3.5 GW apiece. Whether that expansion outruns the debt and interest costs financing it will depend on how quickly backlog converts to active, billable capacity — and on where Treasury yields sit when the next facility comes due.