| Line | $M | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 2,078 | 10-Q income statement |
| Cost of revenue | (1,484) | incl. ~$680M GPU D&A |
| Operating expenses | (738) | SG&A + R&D |
| Operating loss (GAAP) | (144) | starting point |
| + Depreciation & amortization | 847 | GPU + facility |
| + Stock-based compensation | 153 | non-cash |
| Reported EBITDA | 856 | 41.2% margin |
| QoE adjustments — typical provider ranges | ||
| − One-time IPO/listing costs | (38) | non-recurring |
| − Customer concentration premium | (95) | top-2 customers >60% of revenue |
| − GPU residual-value haircut | (180) | D&A understated vs economic life |
| − Power capacity ramp costs | (48) | pre-revenue MW build |
| + Run-rate scaling (annualized new contracts) | 62 | illustrative |
| + Tax shield from lease structure | 48 | recurring |
| Adjusted EBITDA · normalized | 605 | 29.1% margin |
From $856M reported down to $605M after stripping non-recurring items, sizing concentration risk, and re-pricing depreciation against true GPU economic life. 29% margin, not 41%.
The $251M of net adjustments isn't an accounting argument — it's a view on durability. Concentration premium says: if the top 2 customers leave, revenue doesn't degrade linearly. GPU haircut says: 4-year straight-line books may understate true 3-year economic life given AI hardware refresh cycles.
CRWV · $109.50MC $52.7B
Cash $2.24B · Capex $7.70B · Lease liab. $9.78B · Interest exp. $536M/Q
~70% of revenue · Adj. EBITDA margin ~38%. Long-term contracted GPU capacity, mostly hyperscaler-adjacent. The driver of every dollar of reported EBITDA.
~21% of revenue · Adj. EBITDA margin ~14%. Pay-as-you-go workloads, lower utilization, lower lock-in. Growing but dilutive to margin.
~9% of revenue · Adj. EBITDA margin ~22%. Attach to compute, capacity-priced. Useful for stickiness, not the EBITDA engine.
| GPU useful life | D&A / yr | Adj. EBITDA | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 years (current book) | 2,260 | 605 | 29.1% |
| 5 years | 2,712 | 492 | 23.7% |
| 4 years (common QoE base) | 3,390 | 323 | 15.6% |
| 3 years (bear case) | 4,520 | 40 | 1.9% |
The choice of GPU life moves CoreWeave from a ~30% margin business to a ~2% margin business without changing a single contract, customer, or operating cost. This is why every buyer-side diligence stress-tests this assumption first.
The historical analogue isn't cloud — it's mainframe leasing in the 1980s, where 5-year vs 3-year lives created the gap between IBM Credit and the secondaries. Today the question is: does H100 hold residual value when B300 ships?
| Company | Profile | Rep. EBITDA | Adj. / Rep. | Driver |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoreWeave (CRWV) | AI GPU infra · concentrated | $3.4B '26E | ~70% | GPU life, concentration |
| Equinix (EQIX) | Data center · diversified | $4.2B | ~94% | long lives, low customer risk |
| Digital Realty (DLR) | Data center · diversified | $2.9B | ~92% | similar to EQIX |
| Iris Energy (IREN) | GPU + bitcoin · transitional | $190M | ~62% | asset mix, segment shift |
| Applied Digital (APLD) | HPC + crypto hosting | $45M | ~48% | single-customer concentration |
The 1.5x problem. At a 4-year GPU life, CoreWeave looks like a 16% margin business. At 6 years it's 29%. Buyers and sellers fight this one before they fight price. Lenders moonlight at the bottom of the range.
The 62% problem. With ~62% of revenue from two customers, every QoE applies a 10–20% haircut for concentration. The premium scales with contract length: 3-year customers get a haircut; 7-year customers get a discount.