Shares in CoreWeave Inc. fell more than 5% in late trading today after the cloud artificial intelligence infrastructure provider fell very short of expectations on earnings but reported a beat on revenue in its fiscal first quarter, the company’s first report since it went public in March.

For the quarter ended March 31, CoreWeave reported a diluted adjusted earnings per share loss of $1.49, up from a loss of 62 cents per share in the first quarter of 2024, on revenue of $981.6 million, up a stunning 420% year-over-year. The earnings fell well short of the 66 cents per share expected by analysts, while revenue came in ahead of an expected $859.98 million.

In an earnings report with surprisingly large growth numbers, CoreWeave reported adjusted operating revenue of $163 million in the quarter, up 550% year-over-year, on an adjusted operating margin of 17%, up three basis points year-over-year. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization came in at $606 million, six times higher than the $105 million CoreWeave booked in the first quarter of 2024.

Not surprisingly, customer growth was key to the huge increases and CoreWeave landed multiple customer wins in the quarter, including a deal with OpenAI that added $11.2 billion to the company’s revenue backlog. As of the end of the quarter, CoreWeave had a revenue backlog of $25.9 billion.

Other business highlights in the quarter included the general availability launch of CoreWeave AI Object Storage, a high-performance object storage solution optimized for artificial intelligence workloads. Designed for low-latency data access, CAIOS supports efficient training and inference at scale, further expanding CoreWeave’s infrastructure offerings for demanding AI applications.

Additionally, CoreWeave partnered with IBM Corp. to support the development of IBM’s Granite models and continued its infrastructure expansion by adding 420 megawatts of active power capacity, with another 1.6 gigawatts under contract.

The quarter also saw CoreWeave announce that it entered an agreement to acquire AI model development firm Weights & Biases Inc. for an undisclosed price.

“We’ve delivered an outstanding start to 2025 on multiple fronts. Our strong first quarter financial performance caps a string of milestones, including our IPO, our major strategic deal with OpenAI as well as other customer wins, our acquisition of Weights & Biases and many technical achievements,” co-founder and Chief Executive Michael Intrator said in the company’s earnings release. “Demand for our platform is robust and accelerating as AI leaders seek the highly performant AI cloud infrastructure required for the most advanced applications.”

For its fiscal second quarter, CoreWeave expects revenue of $1.06 billion to $1.1 billion, ahead of the $986.7 million expected by analysts, and for the full year, the company forecasts revenue of $4.9 billion to $5.1 billion.

Image: CoreWeave