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Ep 3: CoreWeave's $104B Backlog and the AI Supply Squeeze

August 14, 2026

Stories Covered

S&P 500 breaks 7,800 — Second straight cool inflation print drops September Fed hike odds from 51% to 33%. Green light for growth and tech valuations. Semiconductor complex leads every sector, with SanDisk soaring 15%.
CoreWeave Q2 blowout — Revenue doubled year over year. $104 billion backlog. Raised prices 25% in July and customers didn't flinch. Even older A100 GPUs have contracts running through 2029. Stock jumped nearly 20%.
Nebius AI capacity auction — First auction cleared 15% above previous high. Two independent data points confirming AI compute is supply-constrained, not demand-constrained.
AMD $5B bond sale — Record bond sale to fund AI expansion. 2027 server revenue outlook already 20% bigger than the entire 2025 market. Partnering with Microsoft and Anthropic. BofA sees $210B CPU market by 2030 driven by AI agent workloads.
Intel $15B equity raise — Last week's equity raise contrasts with AMD's debt approach. Same goal, different financing — capex risk bifurcation playing out in real time.
Applied Materials beat — EPS of $3.50 beat by 10 cents. Sales of $9.1B beat as well. CEO says customers are providing rolling 8-quarter forecasts — unprecedented visibility. Q4 guidance above estimates. CFO expects significant DRAM revenue increase in H2 2026.
OpenAI $40B run rate — Revenue run rate topped $40 billion ahead of IPO. Real revenue, not projections.
SpaceX sovereign wealth investment — Norway's sovereign wealth fund (world's largest) invested $1.22B. Musk says AI will be SpaceX's biggest business by September. Grok 4.6 matched OpenAI's latest model at a fraction of the API price.
BCA Research: electricity bottleneck — Next AI bottleneck isn't chips, it's electricity. NextEra Energy announced $3.3B US-Japan deal for up to 10 GW of natural gas generation in Texas and Pennsylvania for AI data centers.
Burry's shorts squeezed — Burry doubled down shorting Nebius, but both Nebius (+20%) and CoreWeave (+20%) reported blowout earnings. The "future ghost towns" thesis takes another hit.

Compendium Themes

AI Infrastructure Investment — CoreWeave, AMD, Intel, Applied Materials all confirming massive buildout demand
Capex Risk Bifurcation — AMD funds through debt ($5B bonds), Intel through equity ($15B). Same goal, different financing.
Semiconductor Demand / Memory Cycle — Applied Materials' 8-quarter customer commitments, DRAM capacity expansion
Energy-AI Debt Collision — BCA Research: electricity is the next bottleneck. NextEra's $3.3B gas generation deal for AI data centers.
AI Talent War / Competition — OpenAI at $40B run rate, Grok 4.6 matching benchmarks at lower cost, SpaceX as AI player

Sources

Benzinga (via Alpaca News API)
The Arora Report
The Information
Bloomberg
BCA Research
Alpaca Markets API (price data, earnings results)

What to Watch Next Week

Broadcom Q3 earnings — Cathie Wood bought $16M of AVGO ahead of the print
Berkshire Hathaway 13F filing — Greg Abel's first portfolio moves as Buffett's successor
Nvidia Q2 earnings on August 26 — expectations sky-high after CoreWeave and Applied Materials set the table
DRAM revenue acceleration — Applied Materials CFO flagged significant H2 2026 increase
Energy-AI pipeline — NextEra's Texas/Pennsylvania gas generation deals, more capacity announcements?

Disclaimer: The Earnings Edge is for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing on this podcast constitutes professional financial or investment advice. The Earnings Edge does not offer individualized investment recommendations. Always do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.