$22.4 billion in OpenAI contracts fuels expansion
Clearly, the expansion of the OpenAI partnership provides the most significant growth lever for CoreWeave, which just signed a new deal worth up to $6.5 billion. This agreement brings the total value of their agreements to $22.4 billion. This deal marks the third major expansion of the partnership between the two companies this year. OpenAI seeks multiple partners for an unprecedented datacenter buildout. OpenAI will build at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers with NVIDIA and will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI. This expansion follows OpenAI’s Stargate initiative, which targets $500 billion in AI infrastructure investment over four years. In April 2026, OpenAI closed a funding round that raised $122 billion, pushing its valuation to $852 billion. In June 2026, OpenAI held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $16 billion Stargate campus in Saline Township, Michigan. OpenAI reported $2 billion in monthly revenue as of April 2026 and maintains 900 million weekly active ChatGPT users. CoreWeave reported a revenue backlog of $104.2 billion for the second quarter of 2026. The company also added more than $25 billion in customer commitments in the early part of the third quarter.
Dell hardware powers massive GPU clusters
CoreWeave integrates its Cloud Services Platform with the Dell AI Factory and NVIDIA to provide AI infrastructure. The companies shipped the first liquid-cooled Dell IR7000 racks with NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 to support the CoreWeave Cloud Services Platform. These 21-inch liquid-cooled racks use Dell PowerEdge XE9712 servers. CoreWeave uses Dell’s Professional Services to deploy and validate these racks, which helps compress implementation timelines. The Dell hardware integrates with managed software services like CoreWeave Kubernetes Service and SUNK. CoreWeave’s deployment of the NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking platform facilitates large language model training and real-time inferencing in large-scale AI deployments.
| Feature | Dell PowerEdge XE9680 | Dell PowerEdge XE9680L |
|---|---|---|
| Cooling Type | Air-cooled | Direct liquid-cooled |
| Form Factor | 6U | 4U |
| Processor | 4th or 5th Gen Xeon | 5th Gen Xeon |
| GPU Support | Up to 6 GPU boards | HGX H200 or B200 |
| Max Memory | 4 TB DDR5 | 4 TB DDR5 |
The Dell PowerEdge XE9680 handles performance demands of large language models. The XE9680L version uses 5th Gen Xeon processors and supports HGX H200 or B200 boards. The XE9680 model has a 6U form factor and relies on air cooling. The XE9680L offers a 4U direct liquid-cooled design. Both systems use up to 4 TB of DDR5 memory across 32 slots. The XE9680 relies on 2800 W, 3000 W, or 3200 W Titanium power supplies. CoreWeave also uses Dell’s ProSupport One for Data Center. The XE9680 model includes ten x16 PCIe Gen5 full-height, half-length slots at the front. Both models support up to sixteen E3.S NVMe drives or eight 2.5-inch NVMe or SAS/SATA SSDs. These systems leverage NVIDIA Bluefield-3 DPUs.
Revenue growth versus heavy debt
CoreWeave revenue hit $2.575 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a 112% year-on-year increase. The company also expanded its contracted power to 4.2 gigawatts, a significant increase from the 3.7 gigawatts recorded in June 2026. This expansion supports liquid cooling deployment. However, the company carries $14 billion in debt as of the third quarter of 2025, a figure that reflects the massive cost of scaling. The company reported a net loss of $740 million during the first quarter of 2026, a deficit that underscores the heavy spending required for capacity expansion. CoreWeave is investing $6 billion to build a new state-of-the-art AI data center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which will have an initial capacity of 100 megawatts and a potential to scale up to 300 megawatts. Financial services firms represent over $10 billion of the CoreWeave order backlog. Total assets climbed 154.22% year-on-year to $55.57 billion at the end of Q1 2026. The company’s debt-to-equity ratio sits at approximately 10.67. CoreWeave launched a $3 billion convertible debt offering to fund AI infrastructure expansion. The company also started an at-the-market stock sale program for up to 35 million shares. CoreWeave’s revenue reached $2.08 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a 111.69% year-on-year increase. In the third quarter, CoreWeave signed short-term customer contracts for compute capacity priced at approximately $40 million per megawatt on an annualized basis. You should consider the risks of this aggressive capital deployment. Does the heavy debt load threaten long-term stability?
