Observatory / CoreWeave: who funds the next round?
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RESEARCH ARCHIVEPrimary data and report excerpts are labeled separately. Incomplete history stays incomplete.About the data

ARGUSX / COREWEAVE WATCH / 01

Who funds
the next round?

CoreWeave debt, funding duration, cash coverage and institutional put disclosures, with dated sources and explicit gaps in options evidence.

Edition 2026-10-20 · Financial snapshot 2026-06-30

OCC / OPTIONS SNAPSHOT

Where are deep out-of-the-money puts concentrated?

An OCC series-level snapshot is now available. Counts below cover the CRWV option root only, in contracts. Other roots and OTC positions are excluded; holder identities are not available.

Deep-OTM put OI502,621K / S ≤ 70% · contracts
Share of CRWV-root put OI26.4%All puts: 1,902,359
Change vs prior session / week— / —Comparable historical snapshots unavailable; not zero change

Retrieved October 20, 2026, 09:31 UTC. OCC describes OI as derived from the prior day’s settlement, but this batch response has no explicit settlement date. October 19 is therefore not recorded as a confirmed OI date.

Definition and price reference

Our definition: strike K ≤ 70% of reference share price S. The October 19 close of $61.12 gives a $42.784 cutoff. This is an editorial definition, not an exchange standard or a synchronized delta/moneyness measure. The price is reported by Stock Analysis (attributed to S&P Global), cross-checked against FinanceCharts.

At K/S ≤80% ($48.896), put OI is 615,090 contracts. Date alignment affects classification; this settlement snapshot should not be mixed with a live premarket price.

Expiry distribution

Days to expiry are measured from October 20, 2026. Bars are scaled within this chart; percentages use total deep-OTM put OI as denominator.

0–30 days45,229 · 9.0%
31–90 days201,954 · 40.2%
91–180 days19,815 · 3.9%
181–365 days34,179 · 6.8%
>365 days201,444 · 40.1%
View all 19 expiries
ExpiryPUT OIShare
2026-10-2312,4562.5%
2026-10-3022,7714.5%
2026-11-068,8181.8%
2026-11-131,1840.2%
2026-11-2027,9325.6%
2026-11-279310.2%
2026-12-1883,62416.6%
2027-01-1589,46717.8%
2027-02-197,5751.5%
2027-03-197,8431.6%
2027-04-164,3970.9%
2027-06-1724,8404.9%
2027-09-179,3391.9%
2027-11-199840.2%
2027-12-1730,0686.0%
2028-01-2137,9777.6%
2028-06-1644,2948.8%
2028-12-1578,36215.6%
2029-01-199,7591.9%

Changes: a captured baseline, history still missing

One snapshot is verified so far. The raw response and checksum are retained; daily and weekly changes remain unavailable. This public OCC endpoint has no documented historical-date query. Cboe DataShop historical EOD data is a candidate for backfilling, but data and public-display rights have not been obtained.

Future comparisons must separate same-contract OI changes, threshold migration caused by price changes, and newly listed or expired contracts. Aggregate changes are not institutional buying, and trading volume cannot substitute for OI changes.

Market OI, institutional disclosures, intent: three separate layers

EstablishedNot established
OCC: open contracts by strike and expiryHolder identity, trade direction, or which positions are hedges
SEC 13F: Jane Street’s June-end put-equivalent shares (below)Whether still held, whether deep-OTM, expiry, or intent

Excluded: 4 rows under 1CRWV and 56 under 2CRWV. Their deliverables have not been verified. Each open contract has two sides; OI is not a count of bearish investors.

OCC batch documentation · OCC settlement convention · Stock Analysis · FinanceCharts · Cboe EOD · Download calculations and provenance

CHAPTER 01

Can the funding keep up?

Research date: October 20, 2026. Financial snapshot: June 30, 2026. These are not today’s cash balances. We follow the timing of customer collections, infrastructure spending and debt service.

Debt carrying value · June 30$35.07bn

After unamortized discounts and issuance costs.

Cash / current debt · June 300.74×

5.524 / 7.513. A stock comparison, not DSCR.

Operating cash / cash capex · H126%

3.663 / 14.117. External funding still matters.

This supports a financing-dependence thesis, not a finding of imminent default. New loan terms, delivery and actual collections are the next tests.

Q2 earnings release ↗

CHAPTER 02

Debt has several layers

June 30, 2026USD billionDefinition
Recourse debt31.405Carrying value
Non-recourse debt3.663Carrying value; customary carve-outs apply
Total debt35.068Carrying value, excluding leases below
Before unamortized discounts and costs35.551Matches the debt maturity schedule
Operating leases16.319Present-value liability
Finance leases0.221Present-value liability
Uncommenced leases35.5Undiscounted future payments, not current debt

Do not add equipment financing twice or combine undiscounted future commitments with present-value liabilities as if they were one debt measure. Undrawn facilities are not cash.

Maturity schedule

PeriodUSD billion
Remaining 20264.413
20276.184
20284.416
20292.421
20303.221
Thereafter14.896

June 30 schedule, before later borrowings or repayments. The remaining six months of 2026 plus calendar 2027 are not “the next twelve months.”

Debt of $35.551bn divided by annualized H1 adjusted EBITDA is about 6.67×; using annualized Q2 gives 5.89×. These are mechanical run-rate comparisons, not trailing-twelve-month or covenant leverage measures.

10-Q: debt, leases and maturities ↗

CHAPTER 03

EBITDA is not cash available for debt service

MeasureResultImportant limit
H1 operating cash / cash capex26.0%The rest is not necessarily all debt-funded
Q2 operating cash / cash capex10.6%One quarter cannot be extrapolated mechanically
H1 operating cash less cash capex−$10.454bnNot a cash-runway estimate
Q2 adjusted EBITDA / net interest expense2.36×Excludes principal and capex requirements
Q2 GAAP operating income−$49mDifferent from adjusted EBITDA

For every $100 of cash capex

H1: $26 operating cashCash capex = 100
Q2: $11 operating cashCash capex = 100

Gray is investment not covered by operating cash; cash reserves, equity or other financing can bridge it. Customer prepayments and working capital affect operating cash flow.

The 2.36× proxy uses net interest expense, not total cash interest. Capitalized interest and noncash items matter. A proper DSCR requires matched cash available for debt service and principal/interest payments; we do not publish a false-precision DSCR.

Financial statements and non-GAAP reconciliation ↗

CHAPTER 04

Five-year debt. Three-year contracts.

$2.6bnDDTL 5.5 · August 10, 2026

About five years of financing.
About three years of customer contracts, on average.

The announced facility is priced at SOFR + 5.50%. A facility amount is not a drawn balance: do not simply add it to June debt.

What bridges the timing difference: renewals, re-leasing, or residual GPU value? The structure permits renewal or re-leasing subject to agreement criteria. Average contract duration does not mean every contract expires together or that revenue necessarily disappears after year three.

The company presents shorter contracts as a way to reach more customers and potentially improve margins. Our research question is whether renewal economics and cash generation support the remaining debt.

Official DDTL 5.5 announcement ↗

How does backlog become cash?

Commitment → delivery → service → collection → operating and equipment costs → debt service

Revenue backlog was $104bn at June 30. It establishes a scale of commitments, not $104bn of freely available cash. Delivery conditions, costs, timing and customer credit determine the cash available to lenders.

Backlog definition ↗

CHAPTER 05

What is the credit market pricing?

Axios reported on October 16 that CoreWeave’s five-year CDS had approached 1,100bp the previous day. This is a dated media observation, not a verified October 20 live quote.

Axios report ↗

Track bond price, yield to maturity, benchmark rates and credit spread separately. Higher secondary-market yields do not immediately reset existing fixed coupons. They can, however, signal tougher future financing conditions.

CDS-implied default probabilities depend on recovery assumptions and pricing models and include risk premia. They are not literal forecasts of bankruptcy.

Research hypothesis

Tighter financing → constrained investment or dilution → slower delivery and collections → more difficult refinancing. This is a path to test, not a claim that every step has occurred. Stable funding, better delivery and improving cash coverage would weaken the concern.

CHAPTER 06

Institutional puts: what the filing does—and does not—show

We extracted CRWV rows from Jane Street’s original SEC XML and aggregated other-manager rows within the filing. Holdings date: June 30, 2026. Filed: August 14. This is one verified sample, not a market-wide ranking.

Jane Street disclosureUnderlying shares
PUT21,991,800
CALL15,601,500
Common stock13,885,024

These are underlying shares, not option contracts or premium paid. Strike, expiry and intent are missing. Subtracting call shares from put shares does not produce a net short position.

Original SEC 13F XML ↗
QuestionEvidence status
Current institutional deep-OTM hedgesNot identifiable from these public disclosures
Strike and expiry of disclosed putsNot disclosed in 13F
CRWV-root deep-OTM put OIOCC snapshot added above; not a confirmed same-day market-wide total
Still held on October 20?Not established by a June snapshot
Q3 institutional holdingsIncomplete before the November 16 filing deadline

13F omits written options and does not supply a complete short or OTC hedge book. Exchange open interest does not identify the ultimate holder or strategy. Put volume is not net buying or newly opened positions.

SEC reporting rules and calendar ↗

The options snapshot and these institutional disclosures are separate datasets. Matching their quantities cannot identify holders or prove hedging intent.

CHAPTER 07

Updates and corrections

Edition: October 20, 2026. This is a manually verified dated research snapshot. Live options and automatic topic updates are not connected. We retain observation dates when checking for new information.

New filings, financing terms or corrections may change the analysis. Submit primary sources through site feedback. This is research, not personalized trading advice.

Download calculation inputs and sources (JSON) ↗

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