CoreWeave Inc (NASDAQ:CRWV) and Nebius Group NV (NASDAQ:NBIS) shares are climbing Tuesday. Piper Sandler initiated coverage on the two leading AI neocloud providers. Here’s what you should know.
- CoreWeave stock is charging ahead with explosive momentum. What’s driving CRWV stock higher?
Piper Sandler Starts Coverage On Leading AI Neoclouds
Piper Sandler analyst James Fish initiated coverage of CoreWeave with an Overweight rating and a $151 price target, while starting Nebius at Neutral with a $224 target. Both calls point to the same underlying story: demand for AI computing capacity is outrunning the industry’s ability to build it, and CoreWeave and Nebius are among the best-positioned suppliers poised to benefit.
Fish framed the two as “leading” public neoclouds that stand to benefit from tight supply, close ties to Nvidia and cost structures that undercut even the big hyperscalers by more than 40%.
The bull case leans heavily on the sheer size of the opportunity. Piper Sandler pegs the GPU-as-a-service market at roughly $18 billion today, growing to over $100 billion by 2029, a pace the firm actually views as conservative. The takeaway for investors: even modest share gains in a market growing that fast translate into outsized revenue growth for the two companies, and that math is doing a lot of the work behind the analyst’s targets.
Why CoreWeave Got The Nod Over Nebius
Piper Sandler’s preference for CoreWeave comes down to a mix of differentiation and financial discipline. The firm pointed to CoreWeave’s proprietary software layer as something that lowers its cost per unit of AI output and lets customers run workloads across multiple providers, a flexibility edge over rivals.
Just as important, Piper Sandler said the way CoreWeave structures its financing — tying debt and equity raises directly to signed customer contracts — reduces the funding risk that has made investors nervous about capital-intensive AI infrastructure plays broadly.
Nebius Gets Credit For Different Playbook, But Faces Near-Term Test
Nebius earned praise for a leaner, less capital-heavy approach: leasing rather than owning much of its real estate, designing its own server hardware for efficiency and collecting prepayments from big customers to help fund expansion.
Fish believes that model could support a business generating well over $25 billion in annual recurring revenue within a few years. The more cautious rating, though, reflects a real near-term overhang — a public hearing this week tied to permitting for one of Nebius’s major data center sites, which Piper Sandler flagged as a swing factor for how confident investors should be in the company’s growth timeline right now.
CRWV,NBIS Shares Jump
Price Action: CoreWeave shares were up 8.31% at $92.91 at the time of publication on Tuesday, while Nebius shares were up 5.78% at $224.86, according to Benzinga Pro.
Image: PJ McDonnell/Shutterstock
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