CoreWeave’s balance sheet at 30 June 2026, filed with the SEC on 12 August, lists $5.52 billion of cash and cash equivalents against $35.07 billion of debt. By our arithmetic, that is about 16 cents of cash for every $1 of debt.
We ran the same calculation, on 28 October 2026, for seven US-listed companies that rent out or host AI computing capacity, using the latest balance sheet each has filed. Together they list $72.6 billion of debt and $27.6 billion of unrestricted cash, about 38 cents per $1 by our sum. CoreWeave alone carries 48% of that debt.
Short explainer · Neocloud debt brief
A vertical news Short narrated from the published headlines and opening lines of this piece and three related FourWeekMBA pieces on AI financing.
Business Pill · Free Cash Flow
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on free cash flow, the cash a company has left after capital expenditures. It explains the general idea only and does not discuss CoreWeave, the other companies named here or their debt.
The key insight: By our arithmetic from its 30 June 2026 balance sheet, CoreWeave held $5.52 billion of cash against $35.07 billion of debt, about 16 cents per $1, and it carries 48% of the $72.6 billion of debt on the seven balance sheets we compared.
Debt here is each balance sheet’s current plus non-current debt, including notes and convertible notes, and excluding lease liabilities. Cash is cash and cash equivalents. We show restricted cash separately, because companies hold it for specific uses and cannot spend it freely.
Six of the balance sheets are dated 30 June 2026. Applied Digital’s is dated 31 August 2026, the end of its fiscal first quarter. IREN’s 30 June balance sheet is the end of its fiscal year, from its annual report filed on 27 August.
Cash and cash equivalents per $1 of debt (current plus non-current, excluding leases) at seven US-listed AI-hosting companies, from each company’s latest filed balance sheet (30 June 2026; Applied Digital 31 August 2026). Rings include restricted cash. Ratios are our arithmetic. Sources: company 10-Q and 10-K filings and Nebius’s Q2 2026 6-K.
CoreWeave’s Debt Stack
CoreWeave’s 10-Q splits its debt into recourse and non-recourse borrowings. It lists $6.24 billion of recourse debt and $1.28 billion of non-recourse debt as current, and $25.17 billion of recourse and $2.39 billion of non-recourse debt as non-current.
The same balance sheet lists $1.38 billion of restricted cash and $16.32 billion of operating lease liabilities, which our debt figure leaves out. Counting restricted cash, coverage rises to about 20 cents per $1 of debt, by our arithmetic.
The Other Six
Nebius’s unaudited balance sheet at 30 June 2026, filed in a 6-K on 12 August, lists $8.04 billion of cash against $8.55 billion of debt, about 94 cents per $1 by our arithmetic. On 22 October, Nebius announced a $3.5 billion senior secured facility provided by Citi, which is not in that balance sheet.
IREN lists $5.90 billion of cash against $7.59 billion of debt, about 78 cents. It also lists $1.72 billion of restricted cash; with it, cash slightly exceeds debt, by our arithmetic.
TeraWulf lists $2.62 billion of cash against $5.21 billion of senior and convertible notes, about 50 cents. Applied Digital lists $2.95 billion against $6.38 billion of debt, about 46 cents, and Core Scientific $1.77 billion against $4.30 billion, about 41 cents.
Cipher lists $0.83 billion of cash against $5.54 billion of borrowings, about 15 cents, the lowest of the seven on unrestricted cash. It also lists $3.73 billion of restricted cash; with it, coverage is about 82 cents, by our arithmetic.
As we read the seven balance sheets, the spread is wide: Nebius lists about 94 cents of cash per $1 of debt and Cipher about 15 cents, by our arithmetic, on balance sheets dated 30 June 2026.
As we read them, restricted cash changes the order: Cipher’s $3.73 billion of restricted cash lifts its coverage to about 82 cents and IREN’s lifts its above $1, while CoreWeave’s moves it to about 20 cents.
The figures are balance-sheet snapshots; they do not show repayment dates, interest rates or the customer contracts behind the debt.
Nebius Group, release of 22 October 2026
“The facility provides access to capital at attractive rates to support Nebiusโs global capacity build-out”
Three Implications
FOR COREWEAVE Its 10-Q lists $7.51 billion of debt as current at 30 June 2026, $6.24 billion recourse and $1.28 billion non-recourse.
FOR NEBIUS It announced a $3.5 billion senior secured facility provided by Citi on 22 October, after its 30 June balance sheet.
FOR THE GROUP The seven companies list $72.6 billion of debt and $27.6 billion of unrestricted cash, about 38 cents per $1, by our sum.
The framework argues: “This is not a continuation of the cloud capex cycle.” It describes the subject of its analysis as the financing: how the money flows, where it cracks, what it buys and who can absorb it.
The seven balance sheets compared here are one view of who carries that financing outside the largest cloud companies. The framework does not discuss these figures.
What Is Not Established
A cash-to-debt ratio is a snapshot. It does not show when each loan falls due, what interest it carries, what customer contracts back it, or how much cash each company generates from operations. Nor does it reflect borrowing or repayments after each balance-sheet date.
Nscale, also described as a neocloud, is privately held and does not publish SEC filings, so it is not in the comparison. We do not compare the seven companies’ credit risk; we compare one line of each balance sheet with another.
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This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
On their latest filed balance sheets, seven US-listed AI-hosting companies list $27.6 billion of unrestricted cash against $72.6 billion of debt, by our sum. CoreWeave holds about 16 cents per $1 of its $35.07 billion, and Nebius about 94 cents.
A note on sourcing. Every balance-sheet figure comes from the company’s own SEC filing: 10-Q or 10-K for CoreWeave, IREN, Applied Digital, Cipher, TeraWulf and Core Scientific, and 6-K for Nebius. Ratios, sums and shares are our arithmetic; linked earlier pieces carry their own sources.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
