Better Datacenter Stock: CoreWeave (CRWV) or Nebius (NBIS)?

CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS), both providers of AI infrastructure services, have generated impressive returns over the past 12 months. CoreWeave's stock has risen nearly 70%, while Nebius' shares have rallied more than 510%.

Both stocks attracted a stampede of bulls as the AI market rapidly expanded. But should you buy either of these high-flying AI datacenter stocks right now?

Image source: Getty Images.

The differences between CoreWeave and Nebius

CoreWeave was originally an Ethereum mining company, but it abandoned that business model after the 2018 cryptocurrency crash. It subsequently repurposed its GPUs and data centers to remotely process AI tasks, and it expanded its network from just three data centers at the end of 2022 to 43 data centers running more than 250,000 GPUs today.

Nebius was once known as Yandex, the tech company that owned Russia's top search engine and other popular cloud-based services and mobile apps. In 2022, the sanctions against Russia drove it to divest its Russian assets, relocate its headquarters to the Netherlands, and reinvent itself as a cloud-based AI infrastructure company. It now operates a single first-party data center in Finland, and leases additional data centers across the U.S., the U.K., and Europe.

CoreWeave helps companies process GPU-intensive tasks at a more cost-efficient rate than more diversified cloud infrastructure platforms. Nebius provides customized AI services for the data training, edtech, and robotics markets. It also integrates managed software services into its data centers, making it more of a "full stack" AI infrastructure company than CoreWeave. Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is both a key supplier and a top investor for both of these companies.

Which company is growing faster?

From 2022 to 2025, CoreWeave's revenue soared from $16 million to $5.1 billion, but its net loss widened from $31 million to $1.2 billion. In the first quarter of 2026, its revenue rose 112% year over year to $2.1 billion, but its net loss widened from $315 million to $740 million.

It also ended the first quarter with a high debt-to-equity ratio of 10.7, and its debt levels should continue to rise as it buys more GPUs and opens more data centers. On the bright side, it's sitting on a backlog of nearly $100 billion -- so it has plenty of room to grow if it can build enough data centers to meet the market's soaring demand for its AI infrastructure services. Its top customer is Microsoft, but it's been diversifying its customer base with additional deals with OpenAI, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), and IBM.

Nebius' earlier financial reports (as Yandex) are no longer relevant. After fully reinventing itself as an AI infrastructure company, its revenue jumped 351% to $530 million in 2025. It posted a profit of $29 million for the year, but that was due to divestments and other one-time benefits. On an adjusted basis, which excludes those temporary gains, its net loss still widened from $239 million to $447 million.

In the first quarter of 2026, Nebius' revenue surged 684% year over year to $399 million, while its adjusted net loss widened from $84 million to $100 million. Its backlog nearly reached $50 billion, buoyed by two massive deals with Meta and Microsoft, yet it still ended the quarter with a manageable debt-to-equity ratio of 2.1.

Which stock is the better value?

From 2025 to 2028, analysts expect CoreWeave's revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to grow at 97% and 102% CAGRs, respectively. However, they still expect it to remain unprofitable under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) -- and for its net losses to continue to widen.

During those three years, analysts expect Nebius' revenue to grow at an even faster 233% CAGR. They also expect its adjusted EBITDA to turn green in 2026 and rise at a 187% CAGR over the following two years. They also expect it to generate a GAAP profit in 2028.

With a market cap of $61 billion, CoreWeave looks surprising cheap at less than five times this year's sales. Nebius, with a market cap of $53 billion, is valued at 16 times this year's sales.

Nebius' stock seems pricier than CoreWeave's, but I think its stronger growth rates, lower debt-to-equity ratio, and more manageable losses justify that higher valuation. Nebius' customized, full-stack services also give it a firmer foothold in the growing AI inference market than CoreWeave, which focuses more on training AI algorithms with its cloud-based GPUs. So if I had to pick one of these stocks over the other, I'd go with Nebius over CoreWeave.

Leo Sun has positions in Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum, International Business Machines, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.