CoreWeave's $103.7B backlog covers $52B debt, Evan Schlossman says

CoreWeave's numbers are striking: a Q2 earnings release showing operating lease liabilities of $16.3 billion, total debt of $35.6 billion, $4.6 billion in quarterly revenue and a $1.4 billion net loss. Against that, the $103.7 billion of RPOs is the whole argument for the solvency of the business, and Schlossman's role in making that argument is unusual — his fund, Neostellar, is a publicly traded vehicle giving retail investors exposure to pre-IPO startup equity, and it bought a $25 million CoreWeave stake in 2024 before selling 40% of it for a $15 million gain in Q2 2025.

The bear case is not really about the contracts' wording but about the counterparties. Francine McKenna does not doubt the agreements exist; she doubts Microsoft will honor them if demand for compute softens, and told Fortune that Microsoft "is ruthless and will eat CoreWeave for lunch." Schlossman's reply is that a force majeure event is one of the few ways Microsoft can get out of its contracts, and that even an OpenAI disappearance would leave CoreWeave with compute capacity worth more now than when the contracts were signed. Microsoft declined comment.

The wider worry is not confined to CoreWeave. Oracle issued a "force majeure" citation to Blue Owl over a New Mexico data center scheduled to come online in 2028, and Gartner estimates 80% of neocloud providers will cease independent operations by 2030 because their revenues won't cover their outgoings. Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid notes CoreWeave, rated BB+, sits apart from AI-linked names with stronger ratings — the AA-rated group (Meta, Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon) borrows at around 5–5.5% at the front end, while BBB names (Oracle and SpaceX) cluster around 8–8.5%.