Neocloud Loan and Note Rates: IREN 8.5%, CoreWeave 9.9%

IREN’s loans and notes other than convertibles carried a weighted effective interest rate of about 8.5% at 30 September, by our arithmetic from its 10-Q. TeraWulf’s only such debt, $3,200 million of secured notes, carried 8.7%, and Applied Digital’s three secured notes averaged a 7.8% stated rate at 31 August. CoreWeave’s comparable figure at 30 June was about 9.9%, as we reported.

All four sit above the 7% to 7.5% yield CoreWeave’s finance chief guided for its next investment-grade loan, by 0.3 to 2.9 percentage points, by our arithmetic. Nebius’s 30 June debt note lists only convertible notes, $10,041.8 million of principal at a weighted 1.9% coupon but a 5.1% effective rate, by our arithmetic from its 6-K.

Business Pill · Credit Spread Explained

An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on why two borrowers pay different rates. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss these companies.

Five Neoclouds, One Yardstick

We took each company’s latest filed debt table and weighted each line’s rate by its principal. The tables of IREN, TeraWulf, CoreWeave and Nebius print an effective interest rate per line, which includes issuance costs and discounts. Applied Digital’s table prints the stated rate, so its figure is a coupon average.

Convertible notes are averaged separately, since holders can convert them into shares. The quarter-ends differ: 31 August for Applied Digital, 30 September for IREN and TeraWulf, and 30 June for Nebius and CoreWeave, whose third-quarter debt tables were not on EDGAR when we checked at 00:57 UTC on 12 November.

This is the borrowing that builds the capacity Big Tech rents. Our filings piece on Big Tech’s debt covers how much the hyperscalers themselves have borrowed against their capex.

Who Pays What on Loans and Notes

IREN’s non-convertible debt splits in two. The financing supporting its Microsoft Agreement, a delayed draw term loan with $409 million drawn at 7.22% and $1,571 million of private-placement senior notes at 7.09%, is non-recourse. Two August equipment financings in Canada, $947 million at 10.70% and $355 million at 10.38%, are guaranteed by the parent, the 10-Q says. Our piece on IREN’s Microsoft build covers the contract behind the first.

TeraWulf’s $3,200.0 million of 7.75% senior secured notes due 2030 carry an effective rate of 8.7%, which includes the stated interest, its 10-Q says; $105.4 million of issuance costs and up-front fees is amortised into interest expense. Its March bridge loan at SOFR plus 2.75% was repaid in April.

Applied Digital’s three secured notes range from 6.75% to 9.25%: $2,350 million at 9.25% due December 2030, $2,150 million at 6.75% due March 2031 and $1,590 million at 7.00% due June 2031, its 10-Q shows. They average 7.8%, by our arithmetic. The 10-Q also prints a 7.3% weighted-average interest rate for its term loans, the company’s own measure.

CoreWeave’s 9.9% at 30 June is the highest of the four. By our tally of the five tables, it is also the only company carrying unsecured notes other than convertibles, five series at 9% to 10% effective in its 10-Q.

The Guide Is Already the Rate on Some Secured Debt

Five instruments in these tables already price inside or below CoreWeave’s 7% to 7.5% band, by our tally. They are IREN’s delayed draw term loan at 7.22% and its senior notes at 7.09%, Applied Digital’s 7.00% and 6.75% notes due 2031, and CoreWeave’s own non-recourse DDTL 4.0 at 7%.

Floating-rate margins cluster too. IREN’s delayed draw term loan bears Term SOFR plus 2.25%, the same margin as the floating tranche of CoreWeave’s DDTL 4.0 and Applied Digital’s revolving credit facility. Nebius’s first secured facility, about $775 million signed on 10 July, bears SOFR plus 2.50%.

Its $3.5 billion, 364-day Citi facility of 22 October bears Term SOFR plus 2.75%, “increasing up to a maximum of 3.50% per annum”, its release says. At the top of the range, CoreWeave’s recourse DDTL 5.0 carries SOFR plus 4.50% and DDTL 5.5 Term SOFR plus 5.5%, per its 10-Q.

CoreWeave’s finance chief, Nitin Agrawal, said on 10 November that the next DDTL should price “at a spread that implies a 7% to 7.5% yield based on current SOFR”. Our explainer on how CoreWeave borrows covers why a contract-backed loan and a parent note price so differently, and our loan piece covers the loan itself.

Convertibles: Low Coupons, Higher Effective Cost

Convertible notes make up 67% of IREN’s $10,041 million of principal, 44% of TeraWulf’s $5,725 million and all of Nebius’s 30 June debt, against 7% at Applied Digital, by our arithmetic. IREN’s six series carry a weighted effective rate of 1.1%.

Nebius’s coupons and effective rates sit furthest apart: a weighted 1.9% stated against 5.1% effective, a 3.2-point gap, by our arithmetic. The 6-K says each earlier series “accretes to a higher principal amount in stages up to maturity”, and the March 2026 notes reach 120% of their original principal at maturity.

TeraWulf’s 1.00% convertible notes due 2031 carry an effective rate of 10.9%, the highest convertible rate in the five tables, by our tally; the 10-Q ties a discount on them to the bifurcation of their conversion feature. Its 0.00% notes due 2032 carry 0.4%.

Nebius has kept borrowing since its 30 June table. It closed $5.75 billion of new convertibles on 24 August, $3.45 billion at 0.50% due 2030 and $2.3 billion at 4.50% due 2034, per its release, and exchanged $800 million of original principal of its 2029 and 2031 notes for about 15.8 million shares.

The Structural Read

As we read the tables, the cheapest non-convertible money in the group is secured debt: IREN’s non-recourse financing for the Microsoft Agreement at 7.09% to 7.22% and Applied Digital’s 2031 notes at 6.75% and 7.00%, while CoreWeave’s unsecured notes carry 9% to 10% effective.

As we read Nebius’s table, its low coupons are not its full cost: accretion lifts the effective rate on its convertibles to a weighted 5.1%, by our arithmetic, above IREN’s 1.1% on its own convertibles.

Three Implications

FOR COREWEAVE’S NEXT LOAN The 7% to 7.5% guide brackets IREN’s non-recourse debt at 7.09% to 7.22% and starts at Applied Digital’s 7.00% 2031 notes, by our tally of the filings.

FOR CONVERTIBLE-HEAVY BORROWERS Convertibles are 67% of IREN’s principal and all of Nebius’s 30 June debt, by our arithmetic; Nebius’s 6-K shows effective rates of 4.15% to 7.06% on coupons of 1.00% to 3.00%.

FOR THE NEXT DATA POINTS CoreWeave’s and Nebius’s debt tables at 30 September were not on EDGAR when we checked on 12 November.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework The AI Capex Map and the State of AI Infrastructure.

The framework reads: “the capex race is no longer a corporate spending cycle. It is a sovereign-scale financing problem dressed in tech-company clothing — and the financial architecture is starting to invert.”

As we read it, the five debt tables show that financing problem at neocloud scale: secured loans and notes near 7% where specific assets stand behind them, 9% to 10% on CoreWeave’s unsecured notes, and convertibles whose effective rates run from 0.4% to 10.9%, per the filings. The framework predates these filings and does not discuss them.

What Is Not Established

The averages mix effective rates with Applied Digital’s stated rates and use different quarter-ends, so they compare approximately. CoreWeave’s and Nebius’s 30 September debt tables were not on EDGAR when we checked. Nebius’s floating-rate facilities have no effective rate in the documents we read and are left out of the averages. The 7% to 7.5% figure is a guide for a CoreWeave loan not yet signed. This is not investment advice.

The Bottom Line

By our arithmetic from their filings, neocloud loans and notes other than convertibles cost from about 7.8% at Applied Digital to 9.9% at CoreWeave, with IREN at 8.5% and TeraWulf at 8.7%. Five secured instruments already price inside or below CoreWeave’s 7% to 7.5% guide. Nebius and IREN lean on convertibles instead, where Nebius’s accreting notes carry a 5.1% effective rate against a 1.9% coupon.