CoreWeave projects massive capital spending of $30-$35 billion in 2026 to double its AI infrastructure capacity

CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed AI cloud infrastructure provider, is guiding for capital expenditures of $31 billion to $35 billion in 2026, roughly double the $14.9 billion the company spent in 2025, as it races to expand data-center capacity to meet surging demand from AI model developers.

The company raised the lower end of its capex range to $31 billion in May 2026, citing rising component costs, according to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. The guidance reflects CoreWeave’s ambition to scale its AI infrastructure footprint as customers including Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic lock in long-term computing agreements.

CoreWeave ended the first quarter of 2026 with more than 1 gigawatt of active power across nearly 50 data-center locations. The company plans to roughly double that to more than 1.7 gigawatts of active power by year-end 2026, according to Constellation Research and CNBC. To support this expansion, CoreWeave has secured over $20 billion in debt and equity financing year-to-date, improving its access to capital while lowering borrowing costs.

The aggressive capex plan is backed by strong demand visibility. CoreWeave’s contracted revenue backlog reached $99.4 billion as of March 31, 2026, up from $66.8 billion in February 2026, according to Yahoo Finance and Seeking Alpha. Management noted that roughly 36% of the backlog is expected to be recognized within the next two years, while roughly 75% will convert into revenues over the next four years.

AI Infrastructure Buildout Across the Industry

CoreWeave’s capex push is part of a broader infrastructure sprint. Hyperscalers—Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Oracle—are collectively planning $650 billion to $700 billion in capital spending for 2026, according to Futurum Group, Goldman Sachs, and Fortune. Amazon alone spent $43.2 billion on capex in the first quarter of 2026, primarily for AWS and generative AI investments, according to Yahoo Finance.

The five largest hyperscalers are expected to increase their combined capex by 36% year-over-year, with roughly 75% tied to AI infrastructure, according to CreditSights. For CoreWeave, component cost inflation emerged as a headwind. The company cited rising prices for semiconductors and infrastructure gear when it raised its capex lower bound in May 2026, per the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

CoreWeave’s execution will be tested by supply-chain challenges and intense competition from rivals such as Nebius Group, which has set its own ambitious $20 billion to $25 billion capex plan for 2026, according to Yahoo Finance. The company faces the broader challenge of converting its massive backlog into profitable cash flow. CoreWeave reported a net loss of $740 million in the first quarter of 2026, up from a loss of $315 million a year earlier, according to Yahoo Finance.