CoreWeave vs. Nebius: Wall Street Expects Double-Digit Gains From Only One of These AI Players

Investors have piled into artificial intelligence (AI) stocks in recent years, buying shares of companies involved in various areas of the technology -- from chip designers to players in fields like voice AI. The industry offers investors a wide range of choices, and many of these have already delivered significant gains. For example, chip designer Nvidia and voice AI player SoundHound AI have advanced 1,300% and nearly 400%, respectively, over three years.

One area of AI that's emerged as a winning one is cloud infrastructure, most specifically the GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) space. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are the key chips driving crucial processes like the training and inferencing of models, so they are in great demand. GPUaaS companies allow customers to rent this compute as needed rather than going out and buying their own chips.

Two companies that have emerged as current and potentially future winners are CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS). Their stock prices have soared more than 200% and 300%, respectively, so far this year. Wall Street is optimistic about the future of these players, but expects double-digit gains from only one in the coming 12 months.

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The CoreWeave story

CoreWeave's cloud offerings differ from those of major cloud providers because it specializes in AI workloads. Customers don't turn to CoreWeave for general cloud services but instead for top Nvidia GPUs to run their AI projects. Since CoreWeave focuses on this, it's able to optimize its offering to favor efficiency for its customers.

Another plus is that CoreWeave has a particularly close relationship with Nvidia. Nvidia owns 7% of CoreWeave stock, signaling the chip giant's confidence in this business. And CoreWeave has been the first to launch Nvidia's latest platforms, such as the Blackwell architecture. This is important because every day counts for customers aiming to run their workloads -- the sooner they can get their projects going, the sooner those projects can bring in revenue.

All of this has translated into explosive revenue growth for CoreWeave, with revenue advancing more than 400% year over year in the first quarter and revenue tripling year over year in the second quarter.

The Nebius story

Nebius, like CoreWeave, rents out compute to customers as well as access to managed services that they can use across their AI platforms. The company emerged last year after a reorganization of Russian technology company Yandex. Yandex businesses operating outside of Russia were kept and renamed Nebius, and the company's focus shifted to AI.

Nvidia also has a stake in this up-and-coming cloud company, holding 1,190,476 shares, representing about 1.5% of Nvidia's investment portfolio, while CoreWeave accounts for 91% of Nvidia's holdings. Still, any investment from the chip giant is positive as Nvidia has what it takes to clearly assess the AI story ahead and may be well positioned to select winners.

Like CoreWeave, Nebius has seen demand surge. In the company's latest earnings report, it said quarterly revenue climbed more than 600% to $105 million. And it increased its annual run rate revenue guidance to the range of $900 million to $1.1 billion -- up from an earlier forecast of $750 million to $1 billion.

What Wall Street predicts

Both of these stocks have roared higher recently. And now, a look at Wall Street's price forecasts shows the average prediction is for CoreWeave to advance 6% over the next 12 months and Nebius to climb 23%.

These are just the average predictions. The most optimistic analyst forecasts a 75% gain for CoreWeave and a 66% increase for Nebius.

Considering this, which stock should investors favor? Is one better than the other? Not necessarily.

Wall Street estimates aren't an exact science, so it's possible CoreWeave and Nebius may not perform as predicted over the coming months. And 12 months is a pretty short term, so this period is unlikely to define a stock's full potential.

It's better to take a long-term view, and here, we can see that both players could deliver revenue and stock performance thanks to demand for GPUaaS. Of course, there are risks involved in this newish market, so these stocks are better left to aggressive investors. But if you fall into this category, CoreWeave and Nebius both could make excellent additions to your long-term AI portfolio.

Adria Cimino has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Nebius Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.