9AM HOUR: CoreWeave CEO "First on CNBC" After Stock Soars and Boosts AI Trade, Nvidia Picks Law Firm to Conduct Jensen Huang Probe 11/11/26

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1:29hits a wartime high, 10 million barrels a day. Our roadmap begins with CoreWeave. Shares are up on its Q3 results, beating on revenue, lifting its guidance. Mike and Trader will join us at Post 9 after the opening bell. CoreWeave is a company closely tied to NVIDIA, of course. We'll continue to track the fallout involving the company's CEO. Republicans considering issuing a subpoena to Jensen Wang, that over his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. And Goldman Sachs updates its Fed forecasts adds another rate hike to its outlook. Let's begin with CoreWeave, given the boost to the AI trade, the stock surging on the company's raised guidance in this quarterly beat, including a revenue jump of almost 170 percent.

2:10This is Mike Entrader talking about compute demand on the call last night. Demand for compute is growing faster than the capacity to deliver that infrastructure. And that is being echoed by the expansion of the margins that we are seeing on each additional contract. We are largely sold out through 2027. There is overwhelming demand for that. And we are also sold out through 2028. we're not sold out to 2028, but any infrastructure that we have placed on the market has been sold. And so we have significant demand that we could deliver that infrastructure into. Look forward to talking to Mike in a few moments, Jim.

3:03Not going to use unsecured debt in this current cycle, path to profitability by 28. Right. He's another form of prepaid debt that actually works very well. So those who are looking at the public markets, seeing 15, actually, I kind of, the public markets went up last night after the conference, say 14, 15 percent. I think you can kind of say that that's no longer a good way to look at the company. I would say that he also talked about international demand. So when you say that maybe the blue wave is going to hurt demand, I think Mike will tell you that is not the case, the amount of money he will be making still sounds like to a lot of people chimerical, that it's really just he just keeps putting it out.

3:47But in reality, I really heard because of the H100 chips that he has, David, that are worth far more than we thought in years five, six, seven. He's sitting on a goldmine. I know those ads. Well, that's an important point. The idea that chips that are five or six years old actually still have a great deal of value. It was a key question we asked in the early days of Corey Weave's life as a public company. What will the depreciation look like for these chips as they get older? Will they be worth anything? Of course, the answer, at least right now, is they're worth a lot. And that's great value.

4:20That said, you know, this is a company that no longer is going to borrow unsecured, that is relying in part on customer financing. Right. And that has interest costs. It's still far outweigh right now its earnings. And right now it's got to that's got to change. But he does have that stuff that's worth a great deal. These basically these incredibly expensive chips that are still worth a great deal. And David, I mean, I would tell you it's the hyperscalers that are doing the prepay. It is not companies that we don't have to that we have to worry about their balance sheet. Right. They are real customers, the kind of customers we know.

4:55The other guys, I hope they have it. Nebius may have it, we put up right now. Yeah, right. And to your point, he said on the call,$9 billion in prepayments and deposits from signed customer contracts in the next three months alone. And those are high-quality customers, as we know. Someone at the beginning asked about demand on the conference call. Now, that person can't be kicked off all calls going forward, although I think that maybe they should rethink their ill-advised posture. But this was an incredible demand call. A couple of that with what GEV said to me last night, GEV Renova, which is whatever SoftBank's doing, the demand is incredible for turbines, just incredible.

5:34And then we all see what's going on with Anthropik. And we say to ourselves, wait a second, did we oversell these stocks off the blue wave? Did we oversell them off of the prurient problems of Jensen Wang? Has the group come back to a level where it's the cheapest it's been in many, many years? And I think the answer is yes. And I think that that's why you're having a rally. Well, stock was$80 a month ago. So you call this a rally? You call it what? I think that this stock was up three when they reported. Then it was flat. Then it was down a dollar. And I like what I see happening. NVIDIA is harder because there were two people who went off.

6:11People think it's a sinking ship. And they want to very much to, right now, disassociate themselves. I think that's probably going to be a suboptimal strategy when it comes to the stock. Why do you, Mario? We're talking about NVIDIA now. Because I don't think, I think that in the end Jensen Wang will be there. I think that there are issues with Jensen Wang that have to do with the actual, his actual stature with our country that makes it so. I know this is going to sound jingoist, but we need the guy. Yeah. We need the guy. I said this day one, and I'll reiterate it. The facts rarely get better in situations like this.

6:45That's true. We certainly hear a lot of things that we can't confirm at this point. None of them sound good. The fact that they have made him get counsel is something that you do not want to hear. He needs to get counsel. He has counsel. By the way, now Wachtell Lipton is hired by the board of NVIDIA to investigate, obviously, what has happened here. And I would point out that June Kim, who is the partner at Wachtell who will be handling this investigation, was a former U.S. attorney. For not very long, but yes. Not very long, but nonetheless, he was a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

7:17And Wachtell's a real clean. You're not going to be able to. He knows his way around criminal wrongdoing. Although he was only there for Michigan. How soon he's been at Wachtell, he was at Cleary. He just moved to Wachtell. Jim, I just think it's way too early to assess whether, in fact, Mr. Wong is going to stay. Even if his board bends over backward to make sure that that would be the case, there are national security implications for potentially what has happened here that we don't know yet have any real sense of. I'm asking, if you're asking me for a long-term, not Cal, she goes, I don't use that, bet, I will say that he will come out.

7:53He will not be in an orange jumpsuit when we're finished with this. He doesn't need to be in an orange jumpsuit not to be dismissed as the company's CEO. He can be Martha Stewart, who went to prison and was able to be a non-executive person who worked at the company. What? Yeah, that's what happened to Martha Stewart. She was not separate. Martha Stewart ran her own company. What did you just say? Martha Stewart ran her own company. She was sentenced to jail. I understand that. Are you saying somehow that if this goes really badly for Jensen, he can operate NVIDIA from jail? No! I'm saying that you go to jail, you pay your time, and then the SEC lets you work at a company, but you can't run it.

8:34I mean, MSO no longer trades. You don't think that's going to happen to him? I gave him the worst case. Okay. I gave him the worst case. That's a bad case. No. Remember how you started by saying they rarely get better? Yes, the facts rarely get better. I gave you a really bad case. You did. You did. But you ended somehow on an optimistic note. Well, because after you pay your time to jail, which I don't think Jensen's going to. You even got Carl shaking his head. I am saying the worst case I've ever seen because when she got out of jail, she came on my show. That was the first show. She did say that she was not at Yale.

9:08She was at jail. Came out hot. Now Reuters has this piece that a Chinese university with ties to the PLA got age 200 last month, despite being on a blacklist. Look, I think that you can try. The Chinese are very clever at getting what they want. And I think they are. They are. It's going to be hard to stop. The key will be in part of an investigation, and what our own State Department also is aware of, will be did Jensen Wang have any idea that the chips that were really being sold to Megaspeed were actually just being sold to China? I agree. What was the financing arrangement between Megaspeed and NVIDIA?

9:48Did they pay anything for those chips at all? Were they fully financed? There's so many questions around this, Jim, that have yet to be answered. in any way. I think it's very difficult for you to sit there and say, oh, he's going to stay. I'm thinking about what the arc would be of what could happen. And the odds, he's got his own counsel. He's separated from the company. He'll negotiate something, I believe. Maybe there'll have to be a large fine. I don't think he'll go to jail. And I think people have to understand that the SEC does let people work at a company, but not run the company. It's just what they do.

10:28I'm not saying that's our country. That's our country. That's what we do. That's what we do. The scenario you're describing would not be a good one for shares of NVIDIA. I think we can all agree on that. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. As we're talking here, it is Veterans Day, and we do have some members of the armed forces coming into the NYSE this morning to sign the book and they'll ring the bell. We always like to point out 11th day of the 11th month, Jim, armistice to end the war of all wars, 1919. Yeah. And I saw that President Truman once made it so it's more universal. It's a very important day.

11:11Very important day. So if you see a veteran today, and make sure you thank them for their service. As for NVIDIA, Jim, I know you're not happy with this Baird downgrade and their target cut from 500 to 200. Well, they're all trying to get in line. And look, it's been very few stocks that are harder to own during this downturn. I've been frozen on it. I've said it's no longer an ongoing trade. David asked me what I think is going to happen. I thought he meant for me to look through and come up with determination. And I can punt. I can say, how the hell do I know? And the people at home don't want to hear, how the hell do I know?

11:54Because I've been working around the clock on this thing, and I know he's got counsel. There are some things that are not knowable, at least for us, even as good a reporter as you try to be. Well, I'm saying that I looked at all the history of people who both Justice and the SEC have gone after who want to stay at a company. And it's remarkable how often you end up to stay. But it's also not as the officer. OK, that's what I'm saying. OK, well, we'll see. A lot of big question marks. The key news item that obviously we all are aware of is Wachtel is investigating. I mentioned the gentleman who will be doing that.

12:32The board has hired them. And Jensen, as has to be the case, has his own counsel as well. Yes, his own counsel in the city. I think Ian Buck will give the speeches going forward. I think Ian Buck will be talking this weekend. I think he's the guy that you'll start hearing. I'm sorry, who is this gentleman? Ian Buck. Yeah, he's the guy who actually came up with the CUDA system. And he actually is the guy who gave the Vera chip to Anthropic personally. Oh, so he's going to be taking a higher profile role. Yeah, well, they can't. The absence right now is deafening and horrendous for everybody. Particularly for a man, as we said, who was literally out there every week, if not numerous times, talking to people, talking about AI, all the promise for the technology.

13:21Well, I do think that you have a series of events and you have a series of products and you can't just get the live fallow as this man battles the various investigations. Well, as we mentioned yesterday, today's the deadline to respond to House Foreign Affairs about next week's closed door proposed closed door briefing. Kevin Kramer, senior senator on GOP senator on Senate banking. He's got to go. And that's security risk. some of your former co-anchors saying he should step down in a sign of character? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that he gets his day. I don't think you should just say, from what I know, he should be gone.

14:05I don't. Again, we'll see what the investigation finds. We'll see what the board chooses to do. If the board has been lied to, what do they choose to do? The board has basically cut him loose if he has his own counsel. And then what does the national security apparatus of the United States choose to do here, I think, is a very important component of this. But do you not think it's important that who this man is and what he means for our country? I do. But I don't know what they know, Jim. I don't know what they know either. I'm trying to figure out when you go through what he may have done, whether he has to pay some sort of penance, maybe even a fine.

14:40I'm not going to talk about jail. I'm not going to talk about that. But I do think that it's possible for him to serve at that company without running that company. I think that's a very odd thing you're describing for the most important company in the world, arguably. It's been the way the SEC says you should do it. But Jensen's going to be, what, in his house under house arrest and running NVIDIA? No, there's more things that you can do besides be the CEO, be an important person to the company. Okay. Okay. There's also the ongoing questions about what happened at Commerce, what happened on Air Force One.

15:19As the Times said yesterday, was the president reminded about this intelligence? He was not on the original manifest, then was added, right? That's going to be, that's the D.C. side. It's big, and I'd like to know exactly what was said between Commerce and the General Council, because I know that that's the connection. I think that NVIDIA might put forth an innocent interpretation that the Commerce Department said you can use Megaspeed, so go use Megaspeed. I still believe the relationship between NVIDIA and Megaspeed in particular and whether or what they knew about what was happening to those chips and whether that was truly a straight relationship where you're paying us and we're giving you the chips and we've investigated Megaspeed and we know that they have the capacity outside of China to deploy these chips in their own data centers, I think that will be important here.

16:12Well, I think it's important to know that the people at NVIDIA, and David's going to scoff at this, but I'm going to say it, thought that they were building the next core weave, a Southeast Asian core weave, and therefore they could use all of the GPUs. Even with all the customers here who were begging, begging for the chips. Meanwhile, they had about eight megawatts or something like that deployed, and they bought chips that were multiples and multiple of that ability to actually deploy. Okay, so let's say that this weekend I sat down at the PC and I said, all right, let me give you an even more wild story than it's been, and just say it.

16:50Well, you've got a pretty wild story already. Basically saying the guy's going to, you know, get, I don't know. I'm saying what can happen. He's going to run the company from some remote location. Well, minimum security, but still. Of course, I did not say any of that. Yes, you did. I said the worst is that you go to jail, you come back, and you can be an important person but not an executive. That's the government's strategy. That's what the government has done. I am sorry. I wish I had made it up. You know what would have been better if I had said, David, I have an idea instead of what the truth is.

17:22But I'm stuck with the damn truth, which you, by the way, cannot handle it. I can't handle it. We'll take a short break. Be back in a minute.

18:11Thank you.

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19:27Thank you.

20:06Thank you.

20:24since Kingdom Come, is that periodically they give you a special dividend. Now you can say, well, so what? I mean, the stock gets knocked down by the special dividend. But it shows you the fealty they have with shareholders. It's$30, David, giant buyback,$4 billion repurchase. This company uniquely has been very hard on a lot of the suppliers to try to get inflation down. And I think that Walmart's a similar one. But they are saying, look, you raise your prices by this. Yep. Well, let me tell you, Kevin Warsh doesn't like that. Well, they don't say that, but we are going to come in and buy and make Kirkland their own brand at half your price.

21:06So you better... You've got a long term on Costco. Just give me a long one. I don't know. It's just amazing. Well, Richard Glanty was the CFO for 38 years, so almost the whole time until recently. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a winner. That's only 10 years. I mean, we can go 20, but yeah. Yeah, this is about keeping America from having too high inflation. And you get, obviously, they're done on volume. They make their money on the card, not at the register. But this is about how you have a plan to help America save money. And it works. And only Walmart has held, really held the line. But these guys, when you raise your price too much, you go and you say, Hey, Tito's, you think your vodka is so good?

21:52We can refine it 10 times, too. Kirkland brand, which is a huge seller. Huge seller because Tito said, hey, you know, we're not going to do it. I've dealt with them. I have used them. I've created a product. They just crushed me after they were done with it. They said, hey, nice to meet you. We got to go. Got an opening bell just a few minutes away, Bolliway, followed by, of course, CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrader. Intrader? Right here at Post9, as he always is after earnings. Yeah. As we said at the top of the show, trying to put maybe two 1 % gains back-to-back, Jim. That close on the post-election day rally day would have been 76-88.

22:31We won't be too far from there. I mean, I think people have tried to find other areas that they find exciting, but they just dip for each day. One day they decided the banks were great. Then one day they decided drugs were great. Then medical health and FinTech. and finally, and then retail, they've come full circle and finally come back to tech today. So it's a really interesting wave of money going from one area to another and hating that area the next day, hating it. These big internal rotations are a new story in the fall. Let's hit the opening bell here at the big board on Wall Street at the United States Armed Forces.

23:10On this Veterans Day, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Craig Sokola, Commander Expeditionary Strike Group 2 ringing the bell at the NASDAQ in Times Square. It's NFL's Salute to Service, the league's initiative honoring service members, veterans, and military families at SIBO in Chicago. It's SIBO's Veterans Associate Research Group, along with Academy Securities in recognition of Veterans Day today. So, how are you feeling about this bounce overall? Well, I do think that we needed to hear that there will be some demand. The demand is better. We're going to get that from Intrader. In a moment. I think that we've got some news.

23:49I mean, look, I guess you won't call it news, but the book is getting filled better than I thought, frankly. On Anthropic. For Anthropic. And I think. What? No, I said yesterday on this program and on the 10 that there was a hope and a plan that they would start to try to move the pricing up. They haven't officially as yet. No, they haven't. But that was what I was talking about yesterday, and others now are reporting as well that that is certainly a possibility, that they will get to$1.5 trillion by the time this thing prices a week from now. And that would be very bullish. And then after that, Carl, I look at the calendar, and it's pretty clear sailing.

24:25So, I mean, we have a gauntlet that's over in eight days. And when I say it's over, then you're going to start seeing things like what you just tweeted, which is the gasoline is coming down. And you're going to have all these people calling for three rate hikes, and they're going to have egg with muffin all over their face. Because what's going to happen is we're going to have a dramatic decline in the price of oil. If Ukraine goes to peace with Russia at the same time that we go to peace with Qatar to Iran, where are we going to put all the oil? Where are these guys who do three rate hikes? We mentioned the Saudi output in October.

24:57We got Witkoff and Kushner in Abu Dhabi at this trilateral. We'll see what happens with Iran and the Houthis are really the problem now. Right, they are in a big army, but I do think that there is, you don't really need to say that there are going to be three. You're staking a ground that makes it so you can say, listen, it turns out there's only two. I don't want to play that game. So is Goldman wrong to add this third hike in March? Yeah. Because their argument is that we normally get some January price hikes, just always, but they think this year it could be a little bit more robust. Well, I think that there's also a kind of a grind higher theory at Goldman that I've been subscribing to.

25:35And this would certainly put an end to that. And I think it's too aggressive without knowing what's going to happen in the next 72 hours when it comes to both Ukraine and Iran. I mean, Ukraine talks were very serious yesterday. And it's no longer the talks of Munich. We're not having that. Zelensky's at the talks. And Zelensky said the talks are going well. If you have a lot of Russian oil and you have a lot of Iranian oil and the price comes down because of the insurance, you don't need the actual price of shipping. Then, David, you have a very deflationary scenario that would give wars a chance to breed.

26:11And these people who I think just like to say, hey, I want to stake in the ground and I want to do three. I think they can come back and say, well, looks like we don't need to. Right. I get it. I get it. And obviously we keep a close eye on oil prices for that very reason. And you also keep a close eye on, obviously, the largest companies in the world, most of which their stocks, at least this morning, are up. I would note shares of Oracle up 6 percent. You know, I did. There was a CFO interview. And I thought, actually, her comments and the conversation we had was generally positive. It was great.

26:42But the stock did not react that way. You know what I said? No one listened to David Faber like I do. That was like a great interview. I said, oh, my God, they're totally for real. They've got a real plan. And then the stock went down. I know. And it was like, well, maybe I didn't hear it right. I wondered the same, Jim. And then I did the print. I did the print of it. It was really, I wanted to buy Oracle for the first time at 100 points. There was no doubt about the$20 billion they raised being the last of it. And when you talk about the increased profitability, given the fixed margin they have in terms of their contracts, they went from$10 billion a gigawatt to$16 billion is what they're going to get paid.

27:20And yeah, I agree. I thought the takeaway in many ways would be more of a positive one. That does seem to be playing out perhaps this morning. Her credibility. From the time I spent yesterday with Hillary Maxson, the CFO of Oracle, who took over the job, let's call it, in late April. And he does have a transcript, to be fair. There were lines in this transcript that said, Jim, you better get positive on Oracle by the time you go in to see David the next day. My God, it was good. Why don't we think that these power generation cancellations by Mossasan are the beginning of something? Well, because G.

27:54Vinova gave this to me. They said, I was talking, I said, listen, how come you don't take advantage of the fact that they cancel? It's kind of like you buy a house and you walk away from the down payment. Just in this case, it's$3 billion. Yeah, exactly. We can't speak to the accounting or the contracts. SoftBank's announcement is no positive or negative financial impact on us. We did not recognize any cancellation income in third quarter. Don't expect any fourth quarter. It also didn't free up any slots to resale because our capacity remains broken for. Salt Bank has confirmed that the 10 gigawatt project in Ohio is moving forward.

28:28Right. That directly contradicts what we did yesterday. It does. And so it becomes, continues to be confusing. Guys, it would be worth, it's worth mentioning Anthropoc. Obviously, we continue to play, we'll pay very close attention to. But OpenAI also out. A lot of this was known. In fact, SoftBank also, in their earnings, pointed to a number of things there. But they did have their first$10 billion revenue quarter at OpenAI. Obviously, put that in contrast to the third quarter of Anthropic had its roughly$16.8 billion and a run rate that ended that is currently at above$80 billion for Anthropic.

29:03So OpenAI, it's somewhere closer to$50 billion. That said,$1.2 billion customers. They did lose a lot of money at OpenAI as well, some$10 billion. I did ask the CFO of Oracle yesterday about that company's important relationship with OpenAI and whether they're still confident about it. You can take a listen. OpenAI indeed is a good partner with us. I think they're a customer but also partner. We also use ChatGPT a lot. We put it into our own technologies. We're very close to the team there, as you might expect. They're an important part of our business. We're an important part of their business.

29:42And we feel comfortable with their business plan. We keep in touch with their financials on a quarterly basis more than the general market would know. And we feel comfortable with what they're doing enough to support the contracts that they have with us. Some$650 billion in RPO, but about half of that is open and live. They're positive. They're positive. And you know, also, it's very positive. It was Corley. Yes, CoreWeb was. And the stock surging after reporting its third quarter revenue beat, raising its guidance. The company's also closely tied to NVIDIA. We can get to that. Michael and Trader, welcome back to the show.

30:19Thank you for having me. That's a great week. Okay. I don't know where to start because the pluses were actually so good. Your revenue was amazing. The adjusted losses, much less than I thought. Margins improved a quarter ahead of the plan. But I think maybe if you can just start by saying the demand and how outsized it is, because there were some analysts who still seemed to think that this is the tail end of this revolution. Yeah, that doesn't really actually track with the facts on the ground. The demand for this infrastructure, and I've said this to you guys now for years, outpaces the world's capacity to deliver infrastructure.

30:56And that is the case. I think I said that we are 10x oversubscribed to the existing capacity that we have left in 2027. And we are multiples over described, oversubscribed on the capacity we have out in 2028. And so I heard those questions, too. And I would like to reiterate what you're hearing across the market, which is the demand for the infrastructure is and remains overwhelming. There is a story that we've been believing since the so-called blue wave, which is that basically we're not going to have a lot of new data centers because of what's happening in the United States. Your international exposure makes me think that maybe we're being too parochial about our own country.

31:41There is worldwide demand, and it's growing. It's insatiable. Yeah, that's certainly true. There is a massive groundswell of demand around the world for computing infrastructure. But taking a moment in talking about the U.S., right? You know, we don't see any impact on our ability to deliver the data centers within the U.S. that are required for us to deliver on our backlog. You know, in Texas, Governor-elect, you know, said that, you know, facilities that are permitted and under construction will continue. And, you know, we've been really, really thoughtful about the broad distribution. You sent her a letter, which just said basically, listen, we're good citizens.

32:28I like that. Now, I think it's very important that we get to the fact that a lot of us were grading your company by looking at public debt and thinking 15, 16. Well, that is very close to where I regard it as a danger zone. You pretty much cleared that up by doing two things. One, the H100s are worth a lot more than you think when you get them. But also, you indicated there's another kind of debt to the company that actually is basically trading at par. That is correct. Our asset level debt has basically been rock solid through this entire thing. There is an enormous demand for that product. We're about to launch another asset level debt in the next week or two that has already been rated high investment grade.

33:13We suspect that that will be underwritten in the market at a 7 % to a 7.5 % interest is what we expect. And that will once again bring down the average cost, average weighted cost of capital for CoreWeave. And that's really, really exciting. You know, it is been a priority for the company to monitor that. And, you know, the high yield debt is just one corner of how CoreWeave accesses capital. And you saw that in our earnings when I said, OK, high yield debt is getting expensive. We'll go to prepayments, which we have done in the past. And we raised nine billion dollars worth of prepayments and deposits.

33:51And, you know, that's just another way for us to go about financing the business to ensure that we have the capital at reasonable costs to be able to execute on our roadmap. Right. I mean, a key focus for investors is adjusted operating income and interest expense. And I mean, I am still looking. I think in the fourth quarter, interest expense is still going to outpace your adjusted operating income. When do those two actually change trajectories? And so your interest expense is actually going to be less than your operating income adjusted. So our interest expense went up by 20 percent. Our adjusted operating income went up by 300 percent.

34:35Right. If you look at the trajectory, it is clear that our interest expense, while growing as it should, because we are delivering massive scale of infrastructure. You know, we have 1.7 gigawatts in the ground. We will get to 1.85 gigawatts by the end of the year. That is massive amounts of infrastructure. And so, yes, the debt is growing and the interest expense associated with it, but it is not growing nearly as fast as the adjusted operating income, which will cover that debt by a large amount as we talk about reaching adjusted operating income profitability in 2028. Right. Does your inability or your unwillingness to issue unsecured debt, certainly at the prices you'd have to right now, in any way mitigate certain expansion plans you had, for example, building your own data centers?

35:27Yeah. So look, CoreWeave has so many levers to manage our cost of capital. It has so many levers, including accelerating, slowing down, But we are a success-based business. We are only going to place deals into the market if they make economic sense, including the cost of the components, including the cost of capital, including the price we're able to sell at. And so we are targeting margins here, and the margins are expanding. And that is the key to this. The margins for the infrastructure, for the product, for the cloud that we are delivering is expanding. What does it mean for more equity issuance?

36:09So, once again, we really do look at all of the tools available to us to ensure that we are raising money in the most cost-effective way possible. We have issued equity in the past through pipes, through other vehicles. We have also issued convertible notes. But right now, the least expensive capital available to us was the prepayments. And you saw us move very aggressively to raise$9 billion of prepayments and deposits because that is the right way for CoreWeave to raise the capital that it needs now. And because our product, because our cloud, because the infrastructure we deliver is so in demand, we were able to turn those levers very, very quickly in order to raise the capital that we need to continue to execute on our business plan.

36:57It's fantastic. All right. So, Michael, you are an NVIDIA shop. You're known as NVIDIA shop. From the day I met you, you're incredibly close to Jensen-Wong. First, what has he told you since all this has occurred? Second, is there someone to deal with at this 40 ,000-person company, 42 ,000, besides the man who founded it and we all think is the only person that you'll ever hear or see from this company? Okay, so look, NVIDIA is an extraordinary company, right? It is not one person. It is an extraordinary company. There are thousands of people over there that interface with thousands of people at my company every day.

37:38They integrate on the technology. They integrate on the physical infrastructure. They integrate on the networking. We have a close relationship with them up and down the companies. And they are a great partner. They have been a great partner for us for years. They will continue to be a great partner for us. with regards to Jensen, I just don't think it's really appropriate for me or for that matter for anyone to really have too much of an opinion here. They've begun a process. Let's let the process run. All right. Well, how about the chips themselves? A lot of people felt that these things for five years would be worthless, including people who told me out of my mind that I thought his chips, this company's chips would be worthwhile.

38:20The value of a five-year-old H100 chip isn't worth more than you paid for it five years ago. So this is one of the most exciting aspects of the earnings report that we just went through. It's where I got to talk about the H100s that we installed four years ago will be coming off contract in 2027 and how that technology has now been contracted at a 20 to 50 percent premium over where it was originally contracted. The demand for the infrastructure is enormous and overwhelming. The life cycle of this has been an ongoing discussion in the market. And I believe that this should resoundingly put this to bed.

39:05This infrastructure will last beyond the depreciable life. Do you see a two-way market of compute because of this? I think it's one of the tools that the world is building. Are you hoping to do it because you know the country needs it? We absolutely are participating in it. We had a lot of things we got to do. And two way market is definitely part of what has to happen in order for there to be transparency on price. Yeah. I mean, speaking about pricing, I think you raised prices 25 percent in July, another 10 percent later in the quarter. Any pushback at all from customers? The the the customer base realizes that there is a supply demand imbalance.

39:45and they are looking at it from the perspective of what can they generate at their companies from the compute. So they are happy to pay an increased level because the margins that they are making, and you saw this in the Anthropic paperwork, the margins that they're making, they support higher prices for compute. And therefore, we have tremendous demand for this infrastructure. And with that, we were able to raise prices. I think you've seen that universally across the space. Yeah. Sorry. Did Ina Hossa respond to your letter? And can you address how much of planned capacity might migrate into 28?

40:27Because you did say you're waiting for 28 to season, I think is how you put it. So I want to be very clear. We're not, our build plans are not being delayed or affected or in any way transformed. The build plan for 2028 is in progress. So when we say that we're waiting for it to season, we just think that it is better for CoreWeave to wait with the infrastructure and be closer to delivery before we bring it to market to sell it. And that's really how we've approached it. We're trying to compress that timeline so that we're able to get the best prices, the best margins and the best customers into that infrastructure.

41:08But Carl did reference a letter I believe you sent to the governor elect in Texas, who's obviously ran on potentially pausing data centers. Any response there and or any expectations? I think you said the post-election ship was seismic, but it would not have an impact on your business. Yeah. So, look, I want to be clear that that letter got a lot of mileage in the media. But we have relationships, contacts with all of the governors that are in states where we have data centers and we have in excess of 53 data centers around the world. You know, the letter was picked up in the press aggressively because of the perspective that things are really changing in Texas.

41:55When I talk about our infrastructure and our build and our timelines, I'm talking about our backlog, which is an enormous amount of cash that will ultimately cover all of our debt, will cover all of our operating expenses and drive enormous profit to the company. And that's what the important part is. And we want to make sure that the investing public and our clients know that there is not a disruption in our ability to deliver that infrastructure. And CoreWeave has done an incredible job delivering the infrastructure. Do you believe in the overall thesis, though, that if, in fact, fewer data centers are built, it actually makes the compute even more valuable that currently exists?

42:33So there is a great argument to be made that if there is, you know, our operating assumption is not a slowdown. But in the case that there is a slowdown, it does make the installed capacity that's operational, the GPUs that are coming out of contract that, by the way, are fully paid off. Right. Our DDTLs have paid off in excess of four billion dollars already. And that is wonderful to see that machine work. OK, so then, Mike, let me ask you. You're a trader. You've traded. I know you're a good one. Is the best investment that your company could make be the nine and three quarters of October 1st, 2031, which you could buy right now at 81.7?

43:14Should you be doing that instead of all this other stuff? So I would be lying if I said that I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about buying back our bonds. Well, then don't lie. Why don't you do it? because I can deploy the capital internal to our company at a higher rate of return. Better than that rate of return? You better get a 16 % return? I don't see a 16 % return. You saw his guide to an adjusted operating income of between 16 % and 17 % next quarter. And you can look at the trajectory of our adjusted operating returns and realize that it's going to be far in excess of 16%. I would love to buy those bonds, but the truth of the matter is we have better uses for capital in our company than buying back the bonds.

44:00Maybe those who don't have better uses should be thinking about buying those bonds. Yeah, perhaps. Can I real quick, the bears on your stock will point to all the selling from you and your co-founders saying$3.3 billion since the IPO,$2.4 billion this year. How do you respond to what are significant sales, obviously? So this is going to be the first time I've said this. I've canceled my 10B5. Yes, thank you. It is done. Thank you. Any kind of selling from us will just be RSU's kind of normal tax stuff. But there will be, you know, until there is a material change in our equity pricing, my 10B5 has been sidelined.

44:45ATM still? ATM is different. That's a corporate level. Yeah, that's corporate. That's not him selling. Yeah. No, but why not cancel? If the stocks are cheap, why not let it get hard? The ATM sits on the shelf. We will use it opportunistically if we need to raise capital. That's the right thing for a company to do. Thanks for sharing a little news with us, too, Michael. Appreciate that. Michael, thank you very much. See you. Of course, it comes on when the debt's high, low. It doesn't matter because now it's got prepayments. Rain or shine. Thank you, Michael. It was a great quarter for us. Thanks, Michael.

45:16Sure thing. S &P, meantime, up about eight-tenths of a percent. Tech is leading up 2-2, led by some old standbys, SanDisk, Bloom Energy, Lumentum, Dell Micron. We're back in a minute. It's time for Jim and Stop Trading. We talked about whether things have changed. And I look at SK Hynix this morning in a publication, Business Korea. Hey, why not? Let's take everything we can get. By product, Semi-Inductors led the growth. This is so far for the first 10 days of the month. The semiconductor exports totaled$16.63 billion, surging 331.2 % year on year and setting a new record for the first 10 days of any month.

45:58This matters. This group is not going away. SK Hynix is not going away. Micron's not going away. We all wrote all these off. And perhaps after the blue wave in particular, when you listen to Michael Entrader, if you feel as negative as you may have, if you listen, Michael, then I can't help you. I just can't help you. Do you honestly believe that Sandisk gets back to two grand? I'm not a Sandisk fan. I'm a Mike Rump fan. Sandisk is a company that didn't reinvest the way I like. Sanjay Marocha is spending tens of billions of dollars in this country to meet the demand. He's an American hero. The ninth is coming up quickly.

46:34We'll learn more about potential buybacks over there. I think it's better sooner than later, Sanjay, who watches the show, as do a lot of other people, David, on that Oracle interview. Sometimes they watch it on a delay. Sometimes they do. Oracle also up, obviously, in part because of Michael. Of course, well, Michael. That was a very important interview for those who want to wait another day like you did with Oracle. You can watch it again tomorrow and lose some money. Jim, we'll see you tonight. Mad Money, 6 p.m. You've been listening to the opening hour of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. All opinions expressed by Squawk on the Street participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet, or another medium.

47:13You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Such opinions are based upon information Squawk on the Street participants consider reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Squawk on the Street disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com forward slash Squawk on the Street disclaimer.