Feb 26 (Reuters) - CoreWeave beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, benefiting from the AI boom that has driven companies to its platform for the massive computing power needed to train and deploy advanced AI models.
However, CoreWeave's shares fell 7% after the bell, as its operating expenses more than doubled to $1.66 billion in the fourth quarter, and the company's net loss ballooned.
The company's adjusted loss widened to $284 million from $36 million in the same quarter
last year.
CoreWeave still faces lingering concerns regarding its backlog risk, debt and cost of capital, D.A. Davidson analyst Alexander Platt noted.
Revenue backlog was $66.8 billion as of December 31, CoreWeave said.
Nvidia announced a $2 billion investment in CoreWeave in January, becoming the AI infrastructure provider's second-largest shareholder.
CoreWeave's adjusted operating income margin was down 6% in the fourth quarter, from 16% a year earlier.
While the company's revenue backlog has become more diversified, large clients such as Microsoft and OpenAI remain critical to its growth trajectory.
CoreWeave has positioned itself as a more specialized and cost-effective alternative to the cloud divisions of Amazon, Google and Microsoft, attracting clients ranging from AI labs to large enterprises.
It has repurposed its high-performance GPU infrastructure, originally built for large-scale crypto mining, to establish itself as a premier cloud provider for the global AI sector.
The company reported revenue of $1.57 billion for the fourth quarter, compared with analysts' average estimate of $1.55 billion.
(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Maju Samuel)
