CoreWeave vs. Applied Digital: Which AI Data Center Stock Will Make You Richer?

Artificial intelligence (AI) spending continues to ramp up at an explosive pace. One clear sign of this is that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last week that the company now expects to generate more than $1 trillion in AI chip revenue from its Blackwell and Rubin architectures alone from 2025 through 2027.

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As companies race to adopt AI, demand for data center capacity, power, and specialized infrastructure is also soaring. CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) are well positioned to benefit from this trend, though they operate under different business models. CoreWeave primarily leases and operates AI cloud infrastructure within data centers, while Applied Digital builds and leases out data centers.

But which of these two growth stocks looks better positioned to create long-term wealth for shareholders from here?

CoreWeave

CoreWeave has emerged as one of the prominent AI cloud players. Unlike traditional cloud providers, it offers infrastructure that's purpose-built and optimized for AI workloads.

The company's recent financial performance has been impressive. In 2025, revenues surged 168% to over $5.1 billion. CoreWeave also exited the year with $66.8 billion in contracted backlog, giving it a robust level of revenue visibility for future years. Most of the new capacity it will bring online this year is already allocated, and the company expects these contracts to begin generating revenue as that capacity comes online.

CoreWeave is also acquiring customers at an exceptional pace. In the fourth quarter, the company added nearly twice as many new long-term customers as it did in its best previous quarters. The number of customers spending at least $1 million annually with CoreWeave also increased by nearly 150% in 2025.

The company has also been diversifying its customer base, which now includes hyperscalers, AI-native companies, and large enterprises. Pricing has remained mostly stable across GPU generations, indicating that strong demand and supply constraints are supporting the company's pricing power.

CoreWeave continues to rapidly scale its AI infrastructure to meet surging demand. The company exited 2025 with over 850 megawatts of active power across 43 data centers. It expects to end 2026 with over 1.7 gigawatts of active power. It also has over 3.1 gigawatts of contracted capacity, almost all of which is expected to come online by 2027. This contracted capacity highlights the future revenue potential of CoreWeave.

Yet there remains a clear risk. CoreWeave expects to lay out $30 billion to $35 billion in capital expenditures in 2026 and spent $14.9 billion in fiscal 2025. While that level of investment could yield solid long-term gains, it will entail near-term challenges such as margin compression and increased debt.

Applied Digital

Applied Digital's business is less about directly selling cloud computing capacity and more about owning the physical infrastructure that undergirds it. The company builds large-scale, high-performance data centers and leases them to hyperscalers under long-term agreements.

Applied Digital is developing a 400-megawatt data center campus that it's leasing to CoreWeave as a part of its Polaris Forge 1 facility. That campus is expected to generate approximately $11 billion in lease revenue over 15 years, with full buildout by the end of 2027. The first 100 megawatts worth of infrastructure is already operational and has started generating lease revenue. The company has also signed another 15-year, $5 billion lease with a U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler for 200 megawatts of capacity at the Polaris Forge 2 campus. Hence, the company has contracted a total of 600 megawatts of capacity, for roughly $16 billion in prospective lease revenue.

Applied Digital is in the early stages of monetizing its infrastructure. In its fiscal 2026 second quarter (which ended Nov. 30, 2025), revenue surged 250% year over year to $126.6 million, driven by initial lease revenue and payments for tenant fit-out services. However, the company reported a net loss of about $31.2 million due to ongoing investments.

Management now expects meaningful growth in lease revenues in the next 18 to 24 months as new campuses come online. Hence, there is a visible growth runway ahead.

However, Applied Digital also faces execution risks and customer concentration risks. Any delays in completing its large-scale campuses or challenges with any of its limited number of hyperscaler clients could negatively affect the company's share price.

Which stock could make you richer?

Analysts expect CoreWeave's revenues to grow nearly 142.5% to $12.4 billion in 2026, and by almost 86% year over year to $23.1 billion in 2027. The company currently trades at 8.5 times sales, which is modest considering its multiyear growth expectations. If CoreWeave executes on these projections, the stock could reasonably double in the next couple of years, even if it continues to trade at its current valuation levels. However, those returns depend heavily on the company's execution and financing capabilities.

Analysts expect Applied Digital's revenues to grow around 61% year over year to $346 million in its fiscal 2026 (which will end May 31) and by 54.5% year over year to $535.6 million in its fiscal 2027. The company currently trades at around 27.3 times sales, which is steep, even for a business that owns valuable data center land and infrastructure assets. If the company delivers on its contracted capacity and sees robust growth in lease revenues, the stock could generate solid returns over the next few years. But, given its already-high valuation, its returns may be moderate compared to CoreWeave's. The stock also comes with a higher downside risk if its project timelines slip.

Hence, CoreWeave seems better positioned to deliver higher returns in the coming years, driven by faster growth, a stronger backlog, and a more attractive current valuation.

Manali Pradhan, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.