Neocloud scorecard, Q2 2026: backlog, capex and debt at the GPU clouds
CoreWeave, Nebius and Nscale hold about $247B of contracted revenue, 19 times annualised sales, funded by capex of up to 9.7 times revenue and rising debt.
Key findings
- CoreWeave, Nebius and Nscale report about $247B of contracted revenue between them (backlog of about $104B, commitments of more than $40B and contracted value of $103.4B), roughly 19 times their combined annualised revenue of about $12.9B. The measures are defined differently and are not strictly additive.
- CoreWeave’s Q2 2026 revenue rose 112% to $2.58B, but net interest expense of $640M consumed 25% of revenue and 42% of adjusted EBITDA. Total debt reached about $35.1B at June 30, 2026, up 64% in six months.
- Capex is running far ahead of revenue: CoreWeave spent $6.4B in cash on property and equipment in Q2, 2.5 times revenue, and Nebius spent $5.7B, 9.7 times revenue.
- Customer concentration is the common risk. Three customers were 72% of CoreWeave’s Q2 revenue, and a single Anthropic contract of up to about $44.6B is 43% of Nscale’s contracted value.
- Oracle is the scaled comparison: cloud infrastructure revenue grew 121% to $7.4B in the quarter ended August 31, 2026, against remaining performance obligations of $664B, capex of $28.5B and debt of $125.3B.
- The listed names fell in Q3 2026 despite the backlog growth: CoreWeave was down 12.5%, Nebius 14.6% and Applied Digital 34.7% from June 30 to September 30.
Scope
Neoclouds are companies whose main business is renting GPU capacity, as opposed to the hyperscalers covered in our AI capex ledger. This scorecard covers the listed operators that reported in 2026 (CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN and Applied Digital), Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business as the scaled comparison, and three private operators with recent marks (Nscale, Lambda and Crusoe). For background on the business model, see our guide to neoclouds.
The scorecard
| Company | Period | Revenue | Net income (loss) | Cash capex | Contracted revenue measure | Total debt | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoreWeave | Q2 2026 | $2,575M | ($626M) | $6,422M | About $104B backlog | $35.1B | $5.5B |
| Nebius | Q2 2026 | $582M | ($190M) | $5,657M | More than $40B commitments | $8.5B | $8.0B |
| Oracle (cloud infrastructure line) | Quarter ended Aug. 31, 2026 | $7.4B ($19.3B company total) | $4.7B (company) | $28,499M | $664B RPO (company) | $125.3B | $36.4B |
| IREN (AI cloud segment) | Quarter ended June 30, 2026 | $70.5M ($137.2M company total) | ($684M) (company) | $1,978M | $4B contracted annual recurring revenue | $7.6B | $5.9B |
| Applied Digital | Quarter ended Aug. 31, 2026 | $342M | ($184M) | $2,075M | About $36B base-term lease revenue | $6.4B | $2.9B |
| Nscale (private, S-1 filed) | First half 2026 | $141M | ($1,020M) | n/a | $103.4B contracted value (Aug. 31, 2026) | n/a | n/a |
Total debt for CoreWeave, Oracle, IREN and Applied Digital is the sum of current and non-current balance sheet debt lines, not a company-stated total. IREN capex combines property, plant and equipment with computer hardware purchases. Applied Digital is a data center landlord; CoreWeave is the anchor tenant at one of its five leased campuses (400 MW of about 1.41 GW), so part of its lease revenue overlaps with CoreWeave’s cost base and it is not added to the neocloud total.
CoreWeave: growth, leverage and three customers
CoreWeave remains the reference neocloud. Revenue has more than doubled in a year and backlog has nearly doubled in nine months, but the income statement shows what that growth costs to finance.
| Quarter | Revenue | Adjusted EBITDA | Net loss | Net interest expense | Cash capex | Revenue backlog | Active / contracted power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 2025 | $1,365M | $838M | ($110M) | $311M | $3,279M | $55.6B | about 590 MW / 2.9 GW |
| Q4 2025 | $1,572M | $898M | ($452M) | $388M | $4,060M | $66.8B | 850 MW+ / 3.1 GW |
| Q1 2026 | $2,078M | $1,157M | ($740M) | $536M | $7,695M | $99.4B | 1 GW+ / 3.5 GW+ |
| Q2 2026 | $2,575M | $1,510M | ($626M) | $640M | $6,422M | about $104B | 1.5 GW / 3.7 GW |
Adjusted EBITDA margin was 59% in Q2, but that measure excludes depreciation and interest, the two largest costs of a GPU fleet. On a GAAP basis the company posted an operating loss of $49M and a net loss of $626M. Its 10-Q shows remaining performance obligations of $103.7B, with about 41% to be recognised in the 24 months to June 30, 2028. The company said it signed more than $25B of additional commitments early in Q3 that are not in the June figure, and that contracted power had reached about 4.2 GW by August 11.
The 10-Q identifies customers by letter: Customer A was 36% of Q2 revenue (71% a year earlier), Customer B 26% and Customer C 10%. Concentration has fallen sharply at the top but three buyers still account for 72% of sales. Contracts named in company announcements include OpenAI commitments of up to about $22.4B, Meta agreements of up to about $14.2B plus a further $21B signed in March 2026, and a multi-year Anthropic agreement of undisclosed size.
Financing in 2026 has spanned every layer of the capital structure: an $8.5B investment-grade delayed-draw term loan at SOFR plus 2.25%, a $3.1B publicly syndicated delayed-draw term loan, $3.5B of 1.75% convertible notes due 2032, and $1.25B of 9.625% senior notes alongside EUR 2B of 8.500% notes, plus equity placements of about $2B with Nvidia and $1B with Jane Street. According to call summaries, management raised 2026 capex guidance to $35B to $39B in August and guided Q3 interest expense to $860M to $940M.
Nebius: the fastest grower, funded differently
Nebius reported Q2 2026 revenue of $582.3M, 5.5 times the $105.1M of a year earlier, with annualised run-rate revenue of $3.0B at quarter end, up from $1.25B at the end of 2025. Group adjusted EBITDA was $236.2M. The company relies more on equity, convertibles and customer prepayments than CoreWeave does: it ended June with $8.0B of cash against $8.5B of debt, after $4.3B of convertible notes and a $2B Nvidia investment in Q1 and about $2.8B of at-the-market share sales in Q2. It expects more than $9B of customer prepayments in 2026.
Its contract base is anchored by Microsoft ($17.4B to $19.4B, announced September 2025) and Meta (up to $27B over five years, announced in the Q1 2026 letter), within total customer commitments of more than $40B. Guidance for 2026 is revenue of $3.0B to $3.4B and year-end annualised run-rate revenue of $7B to $9B, with a contracted power target of 5 GW. Nebius does not report remaining performance obligations or customer concentration percentages.
Oracle: the scaled comparison
Oracle is not a neocloud, but its cloud infrastructure business now shows the same economics at larger scale. Infrastructure revenue reached $7.4B in the quarter ended August 31, 2026, up 121%. Remaining performance obligations were $664B, up 46% from $455B a year earlier, with about 13% due within 12 months. Capex of $28.5B exceeded operating cash flow of about $23B, interest expense rose 55% to $1.43B, and the 10-Q discloses $288B of lease commitments, substantially all for data centers, that have not yet commenced. Debt of $125.3B sits beside a fully used $20B at-the-market equity program. We cover the financing side in more depth in the AI debt ledger.
Miners turned clouds and landlords
IREN’s AI cloud revenue doubled quarter over quarter to $70.5M in the three months to June 30, 2026 and exceeded bitcoin mining revenue ($66.7M). The company reports $4B of contracted annual recurring revenue for 2026 capacity against $1B operating as of August 26, anchored by a $9.7B Microsoft contract and a $3.4B Nvidia contract, and aims to substantially complete the transition of its mining capacity to AI cloud by the end of 2026. It funded the build with $6.3B of convertible notes and $4.7B of share issuance in fiscal 2026.
Applied Digital, which leases data centers rather than GPUs, reported revenue of $341.9M for the quarter ended August 31, 2026, with about 1.41 GW of critical IT load leased and about $36B of base-term contracted revenue. Our miner hosting tracker covers the wider group of bitcoin miners signing similar leases.
Private marks: Nscale, Lambda and Crusoe
| Company | Latest mark | Contracted revenue | Notes | Source type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nscale | $14.6B (Series C, March 2026, press); S-1 filed Sept. 18, 2026 | $103.4B contracted value at Aug. 31, 2026, of which $2.6B active | First-half 2026 revenue $140.6M, net loss $1,020.1M; Anthropic contract of up to about $44.6B is to be funded through external financing not yet secured, per the S-1 | SEC filing |
| Lambda | Seeking up to $4B at a $14.5B pre-money valuation (reported Oct. 6 to 7, 2026; not closed) | About $50B backlog as of September 2026 per a letter to investors cited by the WSJ, mostly a roughly $35B Anthropic contract | IPO reported to be targeted for 2027 | Press reports |
| Crusoe | More than $3B raised at roughly $30B (reported Sept. 3, 2026; not company-confirmed) | Not disclosed | Builder of the Abilene campus for Oracle and OpenAI; Series E was $1.375B at over $10B in October 2025 | Press report; company release for Series E |
Nscale’s S-1 is the most informative private disclosure. Contracted value grew from $38.0B at the end of 2025 to $103.4B eight months later, yet only $2.6B of that relates to active capacity. The gap between signed contracts and delivered capacity is the central execution question for the whole group.
Share prices
| Ticker | Close Dec. 31, 2025 | Close June 30, 2026 | Close Sept. 30, 2026 | Q3 2026 | Year to date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoreWeave (CRWV) | $71.61 | $99.54 | $87.12 | -12.5% | +21.7% |
| Nebius (NBIS) | $83.71 | $276.17 | $235.88 | -14.6% | +181.8% |
| Oracle (ORCL) | $194.91 | $146.55 | $137.30 | -6.3% | -29.6% |
| IREN (IREN) | $37.77 | $45.73 | $40.88 | -10.6% | +8.2% |
| Applied Digital (APLD) | $24.52 | $37.30 | $24.37 | -34.7% | -0.6% |
All five fell in Q3 even as backlogs grew, which is consistent with the pattern in our AI equities scorecard: the market rewarded the largest, self-funded platforms and marked down the leveraged, smaller-capitalisation parts of the trade.
Risks
- Interest burden. CoreWeave’s interest expense is guided to rise at least as fast as revenue, and a significant share of its term-loan debt is floating rate.
- Customer concentration. A handful of buyers, several of them AI labs that are themselves loss-making, account for most contracted revenue.
- Delivery. Backlog becomes revenue only when power and GPUs are live. Nscale had $2.6B active out of $103.4B contracted, and IREN flagged in its 10-K that a Texas interconnection audit could delay energisation.
- Financing dependence. Nscale’s largest contract depends on external financing that is not yet in place, and guidance at CoreWeave assumes continued access to debt markets.
- Depreciation. Reported adjusted EBITDA excludes GPU depreciation; useful-life assumptions (Nebius extended servers from four to five years in 2026) materially affect reported profit.
Methodology
Scope and period: the most recent reported quarter for each company as of October 11, 2026. CoreWeave and Nebius report calendar quarters (Q2 2026); Oracle’s fiscal Q1 2027 and Applied Digital’s fiscal Q1 2027 ended August 31, 2026; IREN’s fiscal Q4 2026 ended June 30, 2026. Nscale figures are from its Form S-1 and cover the first half of 2026.
Definitions: revenue, net income, adjusted EBITDA and cash capex are as reported in earnings releases, shareholder letters and SEC filings. Capex is cash purchases of property and equipment and differs from the accrual figures management cites on calls. Contracted revenue measures are not like for like: CoreWeave reports revenue backlog and remaining performance obligations, Nebius customer commitments, Oracle company-wide remaining performance obligations, IREN contracted annual recurring revenue, Applied Digital base-term lease revenue and Nscale total contracted value. Total debt for CoreWeave, Oracle, IREN and Applied Digital is derived by summing balance sheet lines.
Computations: growth rates, ratios, the combined contracted figure for CoreWeave, Nebius and Nscale ($104B, $40B and $103.4B) and the annualised revenue comparison (latest quarter multiplied by four for CoreWeave and Nebius; first half multiplied by two for Nscale) were computed in Python. Share price returns are simple price returns from closing prices on stockanalysis.com.
Limitations: CoreWeave guidance comes from a third-party call summary, not a transcript; Nebius guidance is from its shareholder letters. CoreWeave’s customers are not named in its filings. Lambda and Crusoe figures come from press reports of rounds that were unconfirmed or not closed. Current revenue for Lambda and Crusoe could not be verified and is not shown. This report is not investment advice.
Sources
- CoreWeave second quarter 2026 results (as of August 11, 2026)
- CoreWeave Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (as of June 30, 2026)
- CoreWeave first quarter 2026 results (as of May 7, 2026)
- CoreWeave fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 results, Form 8-K exhibit (as of February 2026)
- CoreWeave update on contracted capacity (as of September 17, 2026)
- MarketBeat summary of CoreWeave’s Q2 2026 call (as of August 11, 2026)
- Nebius Q2 2026 shareholder letter, Form 6-K exhibit (as of August 12, 2026)
- Nebius Q1 2026 shareholder letter, Form 6-K exhibit (as of May 13, 2026)
- Oracle fiscal Q1 2027 earnings release (as of September 10, 2026)
- Oracle Form 10-Q for the quarter ended August 31, 2026 (as of August 31, 2026)
- IREN fiscal 2026 results, Form 8-K exhibit (as of August 27, 2026)
- Applied Digital fiscal Q1 2027 results, Form 8-K exhibit (as of October 7, 2026)
- Nscale Form S-1 (as of September 18, 2026)
- DatacenterDynamics on Lambda’s reported funding round (as of October 7, 2026)
- Bloomberg (via Bloomberg Law) on Crusoe’s reported funding round (as of September 3, 2026)
- Stock Analysis price history pages (CRWV shown) (as of October 9, 2026)
- CoreWeave third quarter 2025 results (as of November 2025)
- CoreWeave convertible senior notes pricing (as of April 10, 2026)
- CoreWeave senior notes pricing (as of June 11, 2026)
- Nebius Q2 2026 financial results, Form 6-K exhibit (as of August 12, 2026)
- Nebius Q3 2025 shareholder letter, Form 6-K exhibit (as of November 2025)
- IREN Form 10-K for fiscal 2026 (as of June 30, 2026)
- IREN Q3 fiscal 2026 results, Form 8-K exhibit (as of May 7, 2026)
- Press report on Nscale’s Series C (as of March 2026)
- Crusoe Series E announcement (as of October 24, 2025)
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Subscribe to the newsletterQuestions on this report
What is a neocloud?
A neocloud is a company whose main business is renting GPU computing capacity for AI workloads, such as CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda, Crusoe and Nscale, as opposed to the general-purpose hyperscale clouds run by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
How large is CoreWeave's backlog and debt?
CoreWeave reported revenue backlog of about $104B at June 30, 2026, against Q2 revenue of $2.58B. Total debt was about $35.1B, and net interest expense was $640M in the quarter, about 25% of revenue.
What is the main risk for GPU cloud companies?
Concentration and financing. Three customers were 72% of CoreWeave's Q2 2026 revenue, a single Anthropic contract is 43% of Nscale's contracted value, and capex of 2.5 to 9.7 times revenue is funded largely with debt, convertibles and customer prepayments.
BlockWest Research reports are built from public filings, company disclosures and third-party data providers named in each report. Figures are point-in-time and are not updated after publication unless noted. This is research and commentary, not investment advice. Spotted an error? Email the desk via the contact page.