CoreWeave already has $18.4B in debt at about 11%. That’s roughly $2B a year in interest. Just interest. Add another $8.5B even if they get a better 8 to 9% rate that’s another $700M a year. Now you’re at $2.7–$2.8B in annual interest before paying back a dollar of principal.
Then look at the business. If 2026 revenue is $12B and margins are 1.6%, that’s about $192M in operating income. $192M trying to cover $2.7B in interest. That’s not a tight squeeze. That’s not “they need to execute.” That’s a structural mismatch.
And this isn’t a software company with low reinvestment needs. It’s data centers. GPUs. Buildouts. Constant capital spending. Even before you think about growth capex, they’re short by roughly $2.5B just on interest versus operating income.
At that leverage level, tiny changes in rates matter. A couple hundred basis points either way changes the survival math. When your interest bill is bigger than your operating profit by an order of magnitude, you’re not operating with cushion you’re operating on continued access to capital markets. That’s the core issue.