The first time I talked about CoreWeave was more than one year ago in “IS MAGNETAR CAPITAL BLOWING AIR INTO THE NVIDIA (PONZI) SCHEME SO THEY CAN BET ON ITS IMPLOSION?” when I described how the hedge fund Magnetar Capital’s investment in CoreWeave had many similarities with the strategy they used before the GFC: help inflate the subprime bubble so they could bet on its implosion. Back in March this year, when I wrote “WILL COREWEAVE MARK THE END OF INITIAL FRAUD OFFERINGS?“, I laid bare for everyone to observe all the items that proved without any shadow of doubt how CoreWeave was such an obvious fraudulent operation.
Let me highlight this once again, just to make sure the scale of this whole fraud is clear to everyone: how is it possible that a company which struggled to raise enough demand for its IPO—ultimately launching thanks to an anchor order at $40 from Nvidia (which simultaneously acts as supplier, investor, and customer of CoreWeave)—can smoothly record a price increase over 400% in just 3 months? Obvious answer: price manipulation.
Fast forward to today, a new chapter has just opened in the CoreWeave fraud saga: the company (I believe mistakenly) provided a slide in the appendix of its latest earnings presentation, where it shows how its Ponzi scheme works.
As you can observe in the slide, upon signing a contract, CoreWeave uses the up-front money from the same contract to pay for GPUs and infrastructure investments UPON DELIVERY. This means that CoreWeave is effectively selling capacity it does not have. The disclaimer included in the slide, “These statements are generally representative of our contracted business but not applicable to every contract“, mistakenly spilled out another secret: Microsoft/OpenAI did not pay any upfront to CoreWeave that financed the buildup of all the infrastructure needed to serve that single client representing more than 50% of its $30 billion in “backlog revenues”—instead raising capital and a ton of debt. Loans, let’s not forget, collateralized using Nvidia H100 GPUs that, despite being already a deprecated product by Nvidia, CoreWeave implies in its amortization schedule will still have a 7-year operational life.
What is CoreWeave trying to do here? Something similar to what all other big tech companies are doing, and that I analyzed in “HOW BIG TECH SPENDING SPREE MORE AND MORE RESEMBLES 2000s TELECOMS EPIC FAIL“: CoreWeave is inflating its revenues and earnings today, even if it has not delivered any service, because CAPEX will be amortized over years, while operating costs won’t surface for at least 2 quarters (according to their infrastructure timing deployment they claim in the slide we saw earlier). What it cannot hide is its cash bleed.
Cash calculation is where CoreWeave loses the math completely. During the quarter, the company claims it invested $2.9 billion in CAPEX, while it also raised $2 billion in cash by issuing 9.25% Senior Unsecured Notes due 2030. According to its cash flow statement, CoreWeave operations also burned ~$250 million in the quarter. As of March 31, 2025, CoreWeave reported $1,276,456,000 in “Cash and Equivalents” and $624,250,000 in “Restricted Cash” for a total of $1,900,706,000 of “Cash”. However, as of June 30, 2025, CoreWeave reported $1,152,883,000 in “Cash and Equivalents” and $560,173,000 in “Restricted Cash” for a total of $1,713,006,000 of “Cash”.
Let’s do a quick math:
- $1,900,706,000 of “Cash” as of 31 of March minus;
- $1,713,006,000 of “Cash” as of 30 of June equals;
- minus $187,700,000
- $2,000,000,000 of Cash should have been received from issuing Senior Unsecured notes, but;
- $2,900,000,000 in CAPEX was spent by CoreWeave in the last quarter, according to the earnings release.
- Putting all together, we come down to a $712,300,000 discrepancy here.
Here is an interesting thing: on one side, CoreWeave claims it spent $2.9 billion in CAPEX in its presentation
But then, in its cash flows statement, CoreWeave reports it spent $2,452,992,000 for “Purchase of property and equipment, including capitalized internal-use software”
Which figure should we believe? Nevertheless, CoreWeave has a hole in its “Cash” between ~$265.3 and ~$712.3 million.
If you think this was shocking enough, I am sorry but I have a huge surprise for you now.
As you can see in CoreWeave’s Balance Sheet statement, the total “Cash” reported at the end of the period is $1,713,006,000.
However, the total “Cash” reported at the end of the period, according to its cash flows statement, is $2,053,583,000!
How does CoreWeave justify this discrepancy? The company included a new “Restricted cash and cash equivalents, non-current” figure for a total of 340,527,000 USD in its balance sheet. Hold on a second, how is it possible that cash is now a “non-current” asset?! This must be a new accounting frontier, I believe.
At this point, there is no doubt whatsoever that CoreWeave is cooking its books in what effectively is a fraud hiding in plain sight.
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