Key Takeaways
A five-year AI infrastructure deal with Meta Platforms worth up to $27 billion sent Nebius Group shares soaring 15 percent, intensifying its competition with the larger GPU cloud provider CoreWeave. The agreement significantly expands Nebius’s backlog and provides fresh capital to challenge its more established rival.
"We remain in the early stages of the most transformative infrastructure build-out in history," CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said, a sentiment that captures the high-stakes environment both companies operate in.
The Meta deal calls on Netherlands-based Nebius to provide $12 billion of dedicated capacity, with Meta having an option to purchase another $15 billion if it is not sold elsewhere. The announcement on March 15 pushed Nebius stock higher, continuing a run that has seen its valuation climb over 400 percent since resuming trading on the Nasdaq. Despite revenue growing 547 percent year-over-year to $227.7 million in the fourth quarter, the company’s aggressive expansion led to a net loss of $173 million.
The race to build out AI-ready data centers is fueling a massive spending cycle for these neocloud companies. While both firms are growing revenue at a triple-digit pace, they are also burning through cash to acquire high-powered GPUs and construct facilities. The central question for investors is which company can achieve the scale necessary to turn profitable first.
CoreWeave, based in New Jersey, holds the advantage in scale. It ended 2025 with 43 data centers and 850 megawatts of connected power, dwarfing Nebius’s 170 megawatts. CoreWeave’s revenue also reflects its larger footprint, hitting $1.57 billion in the fourth quarter, up 110 percent from a year ago. However, this growth came at a cost; the company’s capital expenditures of $8.2 billion in Q4 widened its adjusted net loss to $284 million. Armed with deals with OpenAI and Meta valued at more than $46 billion, CoreWeave projects revenue of $12 billion to $13 billion in 2026.
Nebius, which rebranded from Yandex and divested its Russian assets, is growing faster from a smaller base. In addition to the Meta contract, Nebius has a deal valued at as much as $19.4 billion to provide Microsoft with computing power. The company plans an aggressive expansion to end 2026 with between 800 megawatts and one gigawatt of connected capacity, a huge jump from its current position. This rapid growth, funded by deals with tech giants, has rewarded shareholders, with the stock up nearly 400 percent in the last 12 months, far outpacing CoreWeave’s 109 percent gain.
For investors, the choice between the two stocks presents a classic trade-off. CoreWeave is the current market leader in both execution and scale, with a market capitalization of $40.7 billion. Nebius, valued at $25.2 billion, offers a higher-growth narrative, validated by recent blockbuster contracts with Meta and Microsoft. While Nebius has all the ingredients to follow CoreWeave's path, it remains a smaller challenger chasing an entrenched, albeit rapidly growing, competitor.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
