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Received yesterday — 27 July 2025

Better Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock: CoreWeave vs. Nebius

Key Points

  • Nebius and CoreWeave have been in red-hot form on the stock market this year thanks to the terrific demand for their cloud infrastructure solutions.

  • Both companies seem to be able to sustain their impressive growth in the long run, thanks to the lucrative AI-related market that they are serving.

CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) have witnessed a rapid jump in their share prices this year. Investors have been buying these stocks hand over fist because they are benefiting big time from the growing demand for cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

CoreWeave stock has shot up a remarkable 224% in just four months since going public in March this year, and Nebius has clocked healthy gains of 84% so far in 2025. Both companies are in the business of renting out data centers powered by graphics processing units (GPUs), which their customers use to train AI models, build applications, and scale up those applications in the cloud.

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But if you have to choose one of these two stocks for your portfolio right now, which one should it be? Let's find out.

A person working on multiple computer screens.

Image source: Getty Images.

The case for CoreWeave

CoreWeave's rally since its initial public offering (IPO) can be attributed to the terrific growth in the company's revenue and backlog. Its top line jumped by more than fivefold in the first quarter to $981 million, and it's on track to sustain its outstanding momentum.

That's because the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service market in which CoreWeave operates is growing at an incredible pace. Grand View Research estimates that the cloud AI market could generate $650 billion in annual revenue in 2030, nearly 7.5 times the size of this market last year. CoreWeave is capitalizing on this lucrative opportunity by offering access to the top-of-the-line GPUs from Nvidia along with server processors from AMD.

The company claims that customers using its cloud AI infrastructure enjoy significant cost and performance advantages. It says its infrastructure is "purpose-built for compute-intensive workloads, and everything from our servers to our storage and networking solutions are designed to deliver best-in-class performance."

The demand for the company's AI infrastructure is outpacing supply, so it is focused on scaling up its capacity quickly to satisfy the strong demand. Management said on its May earnings conference call that it has raised over $21 billion to expand infrastructure and data center capacity.

The company recently announced the upcoming $9 billion acquisition of Core Scientific, which could bring another 1 gigawatt (GW) of data center capacity and help lower its costs from its existing leases with Core Scientific.

CoreWeave forecasts a reduction of over $10 billion in future lease liabilities once the acquisition is complete, followed by annual run-rate cost savings of $500 million by the end of 2027. Before this acquisition was announced, CoreWeave was projecting a fourfold increase in its data center capacity under its existing capacity contracts.

This focus on enhancing data center capacity should pave the way for outstanding growth for CoreWeave since it was sitting on a revenue backlog of almost $26 billion at the end of the first quarter -- 63% higher from the year-ago period. As such, analysts are expecting its revenue to continue increasing at a strong pace.

CRWV Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year Chart

CRWV Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year; data by YCharts.

CoreWeave is likely to remain a top AI stock since it is serving a fast-growing market and is investing aggressively to capture a share of it.

The case for Nebius

Nebius shot up impressively last week after Goldman Sachs put a 12-month price target of $68 on the stock. The investment bank said that the company's full-stack AI infrastructure, which includes hardware and software tools, allows it to make the most of the impressive opportunity in this space.

Goldman's price target calls for a 31% jump in the stock in the coming year. And there is a good chance that the company could surpass that given its 385% revenue jump year over year in the first quarter to $55 million. More importantly, the growth in its annual revenue run rate was much faster at 684% year over year to $249 million.

That improved to $310 million in April, and the company forecasts an annual revenue run rate of $750 million to $1 billion by the end of the year, driven by the new data center capacity it is planning. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Arkady Volozh said:

We are rapidly expanding our capacity footprint. In just three quarters, we've gone from one location in Finland to five locations across Europe, the U.S., and now the Middle East. We are actively exploring new sites in the U.S. and around the world, and we expect to provide more news on this soon.

Unlike CoreWeave, Nebius provides more than just AI hardware infrastructure to customers. Its cloud platform also offers developer tools and services that customers can employ to refine their AI models, run inference tasks, and develop custom solutions. This is why Goldman believes that Nebius could be a leader in the cloud AI space.

The company's balance sheet -- with $1.45 billion in cash and $188 million in debt -- allows it to continue putting more money into its cloud infrastructure. This explains the healthy top-line growth it is projected to deliver.

NBIS Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year Chart

NBIS Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year; data by YCharts.

So, like CoreWeave, Nebius is likely to remain a high-growth company. But is it a better buy than its larger peer at this point?

The verdict

Both CoreWeave and Nebius are growing at healthy rates and are expected to sustain that. So, investors should look at their valuations to decide which is the better buy.

The two companies aren't profitable right now considering their aggressive infrastructure investments, so we need to compare their price-to-sales ratios (P/S).

NBIS PS Ratio (Forward) Chart

NBIS PS Ratio (Forward); data by YCharts.

Nebius stock is way more expensive than CoreWeave when comparing sales multiples, indicating that the latter is a better buy even after its strong rally this year. Moreover, CoreWeave is growing faster, has a huge backlog, and is sitting on ample resources to continue expanding its data center footprint, making it the easy choice for investors considering which of these two AI stocks is worth adding to their portfolios right now.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,063,471!*

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See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Harsh Chauhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Goldman Sachs Group, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Nebius Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

If I Could Buy Only 1 Nvidia-Backed Data Center Stock, This Would Be It (Hint: It's Not Nebius)

Key Points

  • Nvidia has ownership stakes in "neocloud" companies Nebius Group and CoreWeave.

  • While each company is positioned to benefit from investments in AI infrastructure, CoreWeave's growth prospects appear more robust over the long term.

  • Wall Street is forecasting CoreWeave's revenue to triple over the next couple of years, which should help pave a path to profitability.

Following the end of each quarter, financial services firms that manage over $100 million in stocks are required to file a form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These filings represent an itemized breakdown of all the stocks that the fund bought and sold during the most recent quarter.

While investors may not realize it, corporations can also invest their cash into equity positions of other businesses. According to Nvidia's recent 13F filing, the semiconductor darling currently holds positions across six stocks. Two of its holdings are spread between artificial intelligence (AI) data center stocks, Nebius Group and CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV).

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Fresh off a hot initial public offering (IPO) earlier this year, CoreWeave has emerged as an integral player in the AI infrastructure market. Let's dive into CoreWeave's business and explore how the company is transforming the AI landscape.

What does CoreWeave do?

For the last few years, investors have learned about the important role that advanced chipsets known as graphics processing units (GPUs) play in the development of generative AI. The GPU market is largely dominated by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, both of which are able to command hefty price tags for their coveted data center hardware.

While AI has served as an unprecedented tailwind for the chip market, one of the subtle nuances is that this demand has brought a series of complications to supply and demand dynamics.

This is where CoreWeave comes into play. CoreWeave operates as a "neocloud," which is a specialized type of business that allows companies to access GPU architecture through cloud-based infrastructure. This flexible model appeals to businesses that may not be able to purchase GPUs directly from Nvidia or its cohorts due to rising price dynamics.

A layout of words and chart boxes describing CoreWeave's business model.

Image source: CoreWeave.

By offering an agile and potentially more affordable model than cloud hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform, CoreWeave has been able to attract a number of high-profile customers and ink a series of multiyear, billion-dollar deals.

What does CoreWeave's growth look like?

For the quarter ended March 31, CoreWeave generated $982 million in revenue -- up 420% year over year. While the company's net loss widened more than twofold compared to the year-ago quarter, CoreWeave has some catalysts that should quickly turn around the dynamics of its profitability profile. See estimates in the chart below.

CRWV Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year Chart

CRWV Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year data by YCharts

During the earnings call, management raised guidance for both revenue and capital expenditures (capex). While more spending may stifle profitability in the short term, these investments are necessary foundations for the longer-term opportunity in AI infrastructure.

As Wall Street's estimates pictured in the chart above showcase, CoreWeave's investments today should help secure more access to Nvidia's Blackwell GPU architecture and should ultimately serve as a tailwind for more accelerated growth down the road.

Artist's rendering of an AI chip inside of a GPU cluster.

Image source: Getty Images.

Is CoreWeave stock a buy right now?

In the chart below, I compare CoreWeave to Oracle on a price-to-sales (P/S) basis. Oracle is also a leading player in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), having just signed a $30 billion cloud deal of its own, so it's comparable to CoreWeave. That single deal is expected to bring in nearly twice the amount of CoreWeave's total 2027 revenue. And yet, investors are placing a twofold premium on CoreWeave's P/S multiple when compared to Oracle.

CRWV PS Ratio Chart

CRWV PS Ratio data by YCharts

I think there are a couple of nuances to point out when it comes to CoreWeave's valuation relative to a peer such as Oracle.

First, Oracle is experiencing a transition period -- effectively replacing slow-growth (or no-growth) segments of the business with its new, budding data center infrastructure operation. For this reason, investors are likely applying a discount to Oracle relative to a high-growth AI stock such as CoreWeave.

Moreover, CoreWeave completed an IPO earlier this year. Since then, the company has inked an $11.2 billion deal with OpenAI, announced the planned acquisition of Core Scientific to bolster its platform, and earned a spot in some of Wall Street's most respected institutional portfolios.

This confluence of factors is more than enough to garner outsize excitement and enthusiasm from investors. For these reasons, I'm not surprised to see CoreWeave trading at such a premium.

I think the most prudent course of action for investors is to buy CoreWeave stock at different price points over a long-term time horizon. If you invest the same amount of money at set time intervals, that is known as dollar-cost averaging, and can help mitigate risk by removing specific timing and price points from the equation.

Overall, I see CoreWeave as a compelling opportunity that is well positioned to dominate the infrastructure chapter of the AI narrative. If I could buy only one Nvidia-backed data center stock, CoreWeave would be it.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,063,471!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,041% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 183% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Adam Spatacco has positions in Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Nebius Group and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Received before yesterday

Why CoreWeave Stock Was Climbing Today

Key Points

Shares of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, were on the move today after the company announced that it would invest $6 billion to open a new data center in Pennsylvania.

The news shows the company continuing to invest in the rapidly growing market, paving the way for new capacity. Additionally, CoreWeave could be benefiting from news that Nvidia will now be allowed to sell its H20 AI chips in China, which benefits a key ally and investor in the company, and paves the way for other companies to do the same, expanding the semiconductor market.

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The stock closed up 6.2% on the news.

Three engineers standing in a data center.

Image source: Getty Images.

CoreWeave announces a new data center

CoreWeave has been seeing scorching-hot growth since it pivoted its business model to AI infrastructure, providing computing capacity to companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI, and it needs new data centers to fuel that growth.

This morning, CoreWeave said it would commit more than $6 billion for a state-of-the-art data center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The announcement will be made at an event with President Trump, with both of its senators and the governor present.

The facility will be one of the first large-scale data centers in that region and will have an initial capacity of 100 megawatts, with the potential to expand to 300 MW.

Including the Lancaster facility, the company will now have 33 AI data centers, including 28 in the U.S.

What's next for CoreWeave?

The AI infrastructure company just wrapped up a quarter where it reported 420% revenue growth, and it's expected to continue to expand at a rapid rate.

While CoreWeave may be a long way from profitability, investing in new data centers makes sense when demand is growing this fast.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $680,559!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,005,670!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,053% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Jeremy Bowman has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

AI, Superman, and Solar's Kryptonite

In this podcast, Motley Fool host Anand Chokkavelu and contributors Jason Hall and Matt Frankel discuss:

  • AI stocks in the data center space (including CoreWeave).
  • Winners and losers in energy and solar from Trump's "big, beautiful bill."
  • Ranking the intellectual property of Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Disney, and Netflix.
  • Prime Day and other made-up holidays.
  • Stocks to watch.

And Dave Schaeffer, founder and CEO of Cogent Communications, talks with Motley Fool analysts Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo about how Cogent's deals with customers like Netflix and Meta Platforms work and what keeps him awake at night.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

Where to invest $1,000 right now

When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,053%* — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500.

They just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 14, 2025

This podcast was recorded on July 11, 2025.

Anand Chokkavelu: Yes, we're talking all kinds of stocks. This week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show starts now. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I'm Anand Chokkavelu. Joining me are two of my favorite fools, Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. Today, we'll talk about stock market winners and losers from the Big Beautiful Bill. We'll pit Superman versus the Hulk, and we'll of course debate stocks on our radar. But first, we'll discuss whether there's an AI opportunity in investing in data centers. Upstart data center company, CoreWeave, again made news this week this time for announcing the purchase of Core Scientific for $9 billion. This allows it to add infrastructure to consolidate vertically as it seeks to gain market share among AI and high performance computing customers. CoreWeave is just the tip of the data center iceberg. Matt, what categories of data center opportunities are out there?

Matt Frankel: First, you have hyper scalers. These are companies like AWS, Microsoft, Desha. They are companies that operate the large scale data centers. They offer computing and storage infrastructures to customers. As Anand put it, there's CoreWeave, which is one of the least understood recent IPOs that I know. [laughs] They rent out GPU data center infrastructures to customers. It's not always practical for companies to invest in all of NVIDIA's latest chips on their own, for example. That's really what they do. There's the REITs still, Digital Realty and Equinix are the two big ones. They own the data centers. CoreWeave is actually a big Digital Realty tenant. Then there's power generation. I know Jason's going to talk about this a little bit later in the show, but data centers consume a lot of power, and it's growing at an exponential pace. These chips that NVIDIA produces, they are power drains. Nuclear, especially, could be a big part of the solution, but solar and other renewables are also in there.

Jason Hall: We're definitely in the land grab phase of the infrastructure buildout for accelerated computing. I think accelerated computing is maybe a better description than just AI. We talk about the Cloud REIT large. As we see more of the companies involved start to monetize things like AI agents at scale. I think that's where these investments are going to pay off.

Anand Chokkavelu: Big question. Do any of these categories interest you all for investing?

Matt Frankel: Well, I'm well known as being the real estate guy at the Motley Fool, so it shouldn't be a big surprise, but Digital Realty is my second largest and my second longest running REIT investment in my portfolio. I'm an Amazon shareholder, and I know that's not their only business, but AWS is the primary reason I own it. I don't own CoreWeave yet, and I think the stock is a little bit pricey, to say the least. But the more I read about it, the more I'm intrigued by the company. As I mentioned, they're a big tenant of Digital Realty, so I have some exposure already.

Jason Hall: The things about CoreWeave that concern me is the stock is definitely expensive. But if the opportunity is even close to as large as we think, it could still work out, but they're going to need a lot of money to pay for what they're trying to do and depending on how much of that is from raising debt versus secondary offerings of shares, there's still a lot of questions there. But, Anand, you've given me a chance to talk about Brookfield here. [laughs] How do I not take that opportunity? But I do think that there's a couple of Brookfield entities that are positioned really well here. I want to talk about the providing the energy part of it. Brookfield Renewable is really in the driver seat here as a global provider of renewable energy on multi decade contracts. It is not just accelerated computing, it's the energy transition REIT large. We've already seen it strike big deals with Microsoft and others to provide renewable power on those multi decade contracts. The dividend is really attractive, too. BEP, that's the partnership, yields over 5%. The corporate shares BEPC, it yields about 4.5%. Since mid 2020, that's when Brookfield Renewable rolled the corporation part out and restructured its dividend. The payouts been increased almost 30%. There's a lot to like here. Beyond the yield, I think it's primed to be a total return dynamo over the next decade. If you don't want to own a company that's in the energy part, you want to own the infrastructure, just take a look at sister company Brookfield Infrastructure. The tickers there are BIP and BIPC.

Anand Chokkavelu: Of course, these aren't the only AI stocks out there. Hi, NVIDIA. Do any other areas of AI interest you guys?

Matt Frankel: I love that. You can't talk about AI and data centers without talking about the chipmakers. NVIDIA just hit $4 trillion today as the day we're recording this. NVIDIA is an amazing business, and it has more room to grow than people think just in the data center accelerator space, which is why they're getting so much attention for good reason. The market size is expected to roughly double over the next five years. That's not even to mention the opportunities they have in chips for autonomous vehicles, chips for gaming and more but I prefer AMD, which is often referred to as NVIDIA junior, but I don't think it should be. It's an incredibly well run company that's been a mistake to bet against in the past. As Intel found out the hard way, just having a dominant market share in an area of chip making is not always enough.

Jason Hall: An area of the market that I think could do really well some of the legacy enterprise software giants. I think there may be underappreciated winners from AI. I'll use Salesforce, ticker CRM as an example. It's really starting to get traction with things like it's data cloud and with AI agents. It's starting to sell. We're seeing really rapid uptake of those things and monetization. It has a benefit, an advantage over a lot of these AI start-ups that are just pure AI businesses. It's already a trusted integrated partner with hundreds of thousands of enterprises. It knows their business, it knows their challenges, regulations, opportunities and that credibility, I think, is an edge that we don't give enough credit to. We shouldn't underestimate switching costs, I guess, is what I'm really getting at. You look at Salesforce rates for about 21 times free cash flow and less than seven times sales. That's a really good opportunity. I think it equates to double digit returns if it can just grow revenue around 8-12% a year over the long term, which I think it can.

Anand Chokkavelu: We started to talk a bit about energy and the need for it with all this AI. Let's talk about the energy industry implications of the Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law last week. Jason, can you give us the summary of the energy portions?

Jason Hall: Summarizing anything's hard for me, but I'll try. I think the short version is the incentives for renewables, they're getting gutted, really. There's a 30% investment tax credit or ITC for short. The residential solar and battery systems portion of that had been in place to run through 2032 before gradually declining for a few years after that. That now expires. The systems have to be fully installed and commissioned by the end of this year. The commercial ITC for solar and wind projects was on a similar track, but now it expires at the end of 2027, but those projects must begin construction by July 4th of 2026 to qualify for that 30% tax credit. It also terminates the tax credit for new and used EVs, $7,500 for a new EV and up to 4,000 for a used EV. The purchase has to happen before September 30th of this year, so a couple of months. Lastly, it ends the US regulatory credits around vehicle emissions that automakers buy largely from Tesla. This is a significant and profitable revenue stream for EV makers that essentially is going away.

Matt Frankel: Jason, when you say renewables are being gutted, you're essentially referring to solar and wind, if I'm not mistaken. It's not gutting anything for nuclear power, correct?

Jason Hall: That's correct. These things you get are the pure renewables as we think of them.

Anand Chokkavelu: Let's put a fine point on this with specifics. Who are the relative winners and losers, Jason?

Jason Hall: This could be an hour long show, but I'll try to summarize it here. Thinking about the companies that are most directly affected, I think Canadian Solar, which is a large manufacturer of solar panels and energy storage, and they really largely target the utility market, but also residential is definitely a loser here. In the near term Sunrun, its business model is tied to these tax credits as an installer and to some degree, First Solar is also going to be affected. I don't think there's really any winners out of this when it comes to solar. But I think Enphase is probably still in a better position in the market may believe. Maybe First Solar as well. It's been through these battles before, and it has been a winner over the long term. If you look at wind, GE Vernova has been on a huge run. I love that business, but I don't love the stock right now. Tesla, I think maybe one of the bigger losers that investors haven't really considered. Last fiscal year, it earned 2.76 billion in revenue from regulatory credits. That's largely pure profit. Then there's also the loss of those EV tax credits for buyers. That might be offset from some incentives for US made autos that are part of the bill now that were part of the law, but I think this puts Tesla in a tougher spot. The tailwinds are not favorable for fossil fuels before this. This doesn't really change any of that. There's opportunities there, but not because of the law.

Matt Frankel: The reason I asked about nuclear a minute ago is because that's really what I see as the big winner here. I like some of the nuclear focused utility providers. Constellation Energy is one that comes to mind. One of their stated goals is to have the largest carbon free nuclear power fleet in the US by 2040. Jacob Solutions, they provide consulting and design services to the industry. Ticker symbol is J, so it's really easy to remember. They recently had some really big nuclear contract wins. I'm going to push back on Jason's Tesla as a big loser. One, they're American made cars. They qualify for that new auto loan interest deduction, so that could help offset what they're losing from the EV tax credits. They have a big energy storage business, and AI has not only giant power demands, but very variable power demands, and it's going to create a lot of need for large scale energy storage, and Tesla does that. I think they're worth watching.

Jason Hall: That's the one part of Tesla's business that's done extraordinarily well. Over the past few years, as the EV business has weakened, is that the battery business.

Anand Chokkavelu: Now quickly the big question, is solar still investable, Jason?

Jason Hall: I think so. We have a very US centric view, obviously, and the US is a massive important market for solar. But you look around the world and the regulatory environment is still largely favorable. I think if you're willing to write out plenty of volatility, that global opportunity is still really good. Businesses like Enphase, businesses like First Solar that have been through these battles before, and even a Canadian Solar, where it has a ton of projects that it's been funding to build on its books that the math just got changed for them in some big ways. The valuation is so cheap that I think that there's some opportunity there.

Matt Frankel: Taking a step back, the reason you have incentives for solar energy, for EVs, for all this, is because without them, they're not price competitive with the existing technologies. The gap has narrowed significantly, especially in solar over the past say 10 years as to the efficiency of the products themselves and just how much they cost. Eventually, solar is going to be able to stand on its own without incentives. But like Jason said, you have to be able to write out some volatility because that could be five years, that could be 10 years, that could be 20 years so eventually, it won't matter.

Anand Chokkavelu: After the break, we'll move from solar to something else that gets its power from the yellow sun. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anand Chokkavelu, here with Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. One of our Brothers Discovery's much anticipated latest reboot of Superman hits theaters on Friday. Hoping the Justice League can one day catch Disney's Marvel cinematic universe and hot on the heels of last week's Jurassic World Rebirth from Comcast. In honor of Summer movies, we're going to rank those three companies based on the value of their intellectual property. We'll throw in Netflix for good measure. Its headline this week was stating that half of its global audience now watches anime. Chokkavelu household certainly does with one piece. My kids have gotten me into it. For those unfamiliar, they have more episodes than the Simpsons. Matt, once again, your four choices are Warner Brothers Discovery. That includes the DC Universe, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Harry Potter, the Matrix, Looney Tunes, all our favorite HBO shows. You got Comcast with Shrek, Minions, Kung Fu Panda. You got Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Mickey Mouse. Finally, you got Netflix with things like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Squid Game, newer Adam Sandler movies, and tons of niche content. Mentioned anime, you could argue whether that's niche content or not at this point. Whose intellectual property do you most value, Matt?

Matt Frankel: See, I said Disney. All four of these have excellent intellectual property, and I'll give you a more elaborate description there. In my household, you mentioned your household, how you have all these streaming things. We have a streaming service from all four of these. We have the Peacock service, which is a comcast product. We have HBO Max, which is a Warner Brothers discovery product. We have Disney Plus, and we have Netflix. Disney Plus also has Hulu attached to it. I ask myself, which is the least dispensable? I could cancel all the other ones before I'd be allowed to cancel Disney Plus for the other members of my household. Their film franchises are beyond compare. They have a much longer history of building intellectual property than all of these, especially in terms of valuables. Mickey Mouse is so old, it's not even intellectual property anymore. It's over 100-years-old, so I think it's actually in the public domain now. I have to say Disney, although it's a lot closer than I would have thought a few years ago.

Jason Hall: Yeah, if you had have asked me a few years ago, I absolutely would have said Disney, but I'm going to give the advantage to Netflix here. Let me contextualize that. I think the total value of Disney's IP is probably higher, but Netflix's ability to monetize it more effectively all over the world, I think, is even better than Disney's. I don't think any of these businesses in their studios have done a better job of making content that's relevant in more markets around the world than Netflix does. Let's be honest, I was able to watch Happy Gilmore with my eight year old son this weekend and I watched that on Netflix, that's bridging generations right there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Three things. One, Chokkavelu household is very excited for Happy Gilmore, too. Even my wife is in on it. Two, the Steamboat Willie era, Mickey Mouse is free to the world. The other ones aren't. I'm glad I'm not the only one with way too many streaming services, Matt. Let's talk about Last Place. Who are you cutting first, Matt?

Matt Frankel: Well, all those streaming services are still less than I was paying for direct TV a few years ago, so I think I'm doing all right. For me, the last place, it was between Comcast and Warner Brothers Discovery, both of which have amazing intellectual property, just to show you what a tight race this is. Comcast has universal. I was just in Orlando, and the universal theme parks are massive down there. But I have to put Comcast in last place. Just because Warner Brothers, I think the HBO Max acquisition was such a big advantage for them. They have some of the most valuable television assets of all time. More people watch the sopranos now than they did when it was originally on TV. It's a very valuable valuable asset, Game of Thrones. All these HBO shows that are among the highest rated shows of all time are part of their library. In addition to their film studio and all the other assets that we can't name because it's not that long of a show. I'd have to give Comcast last place, although, like I said, there's a good argument to be made for most of these to be in the top one or two.

Jason Hall: Yeah, I think that's fair. I agree with Matt that Comcast is the Number 4 here. But I don't think that's a flaw. It's just the nature of its business. About two thirds of its business comes from its cable subscriptions and high speed Internet. It's built differently than these other companies. I think it's fine that it's a little bit smaller.

Anand Chokkavelu: I will say, just to defend Comcast a little. I was thinking about my parents live in Florida, and it's high time we bring my two boys to Disney World or something like that. Honestly, the Universal theme park, the new one with Nintendo, Mario and the Harry Potter realm, it's close. We might we might prefer that one, but just to give a little love to Comcast and Universal. Jason Hall and Matt Frankel, we'll see you a little bit later in the show, but up next, we'll talk to the founder of one of the top five networks in the world, so stick around. This is Motley Fool Money. [MUSIC].

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anand Chokkavelu. Dave Schaeffer is the founder and CEO of Internet Service Provider Cogent Communications. Believe it or not, Cogent's the seventh successful company Dave Schaeffer has founded. Shaffer joined Fool analysts Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo to discuss how it deals with customers like Netflix and Meta platforms work and what keeps him up at night.

Asit Sharma: Well, hello, fools. I am Asit Sharma and I'm joined by fellow analyst Sanmeet Deo today, and our guest is Dave Schaeffer. Dave is CEO of Cogent Communications. He's also the founder of this company founded in 1999. Dave has grown Cogent Communications into a global tier one Internet service provider. It's ranked as one of the top five networks in the world. Dave is also a serial entrepreneur. He's founded six successful businesses prior to Cogent, and foolishly, he's also one of the longest serving founder CEOs in the public markets. We're delighted to have him with us today. Dave Schaeffer, welcome.

Dave Schaeffer: Hey, well, thanks for that great introduction.

Asit Sharma: To get started, let's jump in. Dave, for our members who might be unfamiliar with the ISP or Internet service provider industry, can you just explain what Cogent does and how it makes money?

Dave Schaeffer: Yeah, sure. Cogent provides Internet access to customers and to other service providers. I think virtually everyone uses the Internet, but rarely understands how it operates. Cogent has a network of approximately 99,000 route miles of intercity fiber that circumnavigates the globe and serves six continents. We then have an additional 34,000 route miles of fiber in 292 markets in 57 countries around the world. That network is solely built for the purpose of delivering Internet connectivity. When a customer buys Internet access, what they are really buying are interfaced routed bit miles connected to other networks. If you tried to sell a customer that they would have no idea what you're talking about. The average bit on the public Internet travels about 2,800 miles. It goes through eight and a half unique routers and 2.4 networks between origin and destination. Coaching carries approximately 25% of the world's Internet traffic on its network and has more other networks connected directly to it than any other network.

Asit Sharma: Yours is a primary network. Oftentimes, we hear of middlemen carriers in between ourselves sending that bit. Let's say I'm chatting with Sanmeet over Slack, sending him some bits as we have been exchanging through the day and him receiving that. But you are, I think we can think of Cogent as being the primary fiber that is the backbone of this information communication network, is that correct?

Dave Schaeffer: That is correct. We operate two very different customer segments, roughly 95% of our traffic, but only 37% of our revenue comes from selling to other service providers. We provide Internet connectivity to 8,200 access networks around the world and about 7,000 content generating businesses. Whether it be Bell Canada, British Telecom, China Telecom, Comcast or Cox. They could be customers of Cogent on the access side, where they aggregate literally billions of end users. Then on the other side, we sell connectivity to large content generating companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, where they use us as their Internet provider. The second portion of Cogent's business is selling directly to end users. That represents about 63% of our revenues, but only approximately 5% of our total traffic. Cogent is an ISP, primarily in North America, where we connect to a billion square feet of office space, where we sell directly to end users. Then globally, we sell to multinational companies, oftentimes using last mile connections from third parties.

Asit Sharma: I always like to understand how exactly the companies I'm looking at make money. For example, for Netflix or Meta, or you pick a content provider, whoever it might be, when they work with you, explain that to me how they buy? Do they buy bandwidth in a package? Do they have a contract? How does that work? When they look to you to say, hey, we want to buy some bandwidth?

Dave Schaeffer: Yeah, so typically, we will provide them connections in multiple markets around the world. They will then have a minimum commitment level, and then above that, they pay on a metered basis. The way in which we bill is megabits per second at peak load over the course of the month. We bill at the 95th percentile, which means if you have a very spiky event that lasts less than 18 hours in a month, you don't pay for that incremental bandwidth but everything below that peak utilization, you pay a bill on a per megabit basis.

Dave Schaeffer: That is the way in which any service provider, whether it be an access network like Telkom South Africa, or a cable company like Rogers in Canada would buy from us. But for our corporate customers, the billing model is very different. For corporate customers, they typically buy in end user locations, not in data centers, and they are paying us a flat monthly fee for a fixed connection that is unmetered. I think of it as an all you can eat model.

Sanmeet Deo: There is a monthly recurring revenue that you get. It's just that with your network or your content customers, it could vary based on their usage. They could dial it up, dial it down, based on, like, this week, actually, they're dropping Squid Game, so they can anticipate they're going to need a lot of bandwidth versus maybe next month, their content late is a little lower, so they won't use up as much versus the corporate customers are paying more of a recurring, not based on volume. Is that accurate?

Dave Schaeffer: Is correct, Sanmeet. Virtually all of our revenue is predictable, even for those variable usage customers, there is oftentimes a very consistent pattern to their usage, and their bills do not vary by more than a couple percent month over month.

Sanmeet Deo: Dave, let's go on to looking at a review of recent performance. 2024 was a great year for Cogent. It crossed $1 billion in annual revenue. Can you just walk us through the highlights of your key business segments, wholesale, enterprise, net-centric? What drove the performance? Also did anything about the year surprise you as you went through it?

Dave Schaeffer: Two things. First of all our Internet based business represents 88% of our revenues across all three segments. We do derive about 12% of revenues from selling some adjacent services. Those being co location in our data center footprint. Optical transport or wavelength services and the leasing out of IPV4 addresses. We did generate about $1 billion in revenue in 2024 and 2024 was a year of significant transition for Cogent. Cogent had organically grown between 2005 and 2020 as a public company with no M&A at a compounded growth rate of 10.2% per year average over that period. We also were able to experience significant margin expansion during that period, where our EBITDA margins expanded at roughly 220 basis points per year over that same 15 year measurement period. When COVID hit, our corporate segment slowed materially because people were not going to offices, and as a result, Cogent's total growth rate had decreased to about 5% and our rate of margin expansion slowed to about 100 basis points. In May of '23, we acquired the former Sprint Long Distance Network, a Sprint Global Markets Group business from T-Mobile. That business was actually in decline and burning cash. In 2024, we significantly reduced that cash burn, and we were able to begin to repurpose some of the flow Sprint assets. In order to facilitate this transaction, T-Mobile paid us in cash over a 54 month period beginning in May of '23, $700 million. In 2024, a significant milestone for Cogent was our ability to take out much of that burn from that business and to actually accelerate the decline in that acquired business, as many of the products that were being sold or gross margin negative services.

Anand Chokkavelu: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. Up next, we've got stocks on our radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

I'm Anand Chokkavelu, joined again by Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. This week's been Prime Day week invented out of thin air in 2015 to boost sales. It's almost literally become Christmas in July for Amazon, and to a lesser extent, all the imitating retailers. Got me wondering. Is this the greatest feat of something from nothing marketing we've seen? If not, what's competing with it, Jason?

Jason Hall: I think it's not even something from nothing. I think they stole this idea. Christmas in July has been around literally since the 1900. I think they're getting maybe a little bit too much credit for just being a really big retailer, smart enough to say, hey, we're doing a sale when there was nothing else going on, and people were like, oh, it's a big sale. Well, people kept coming, so it just gets bigger every single year.

Matt Frankel: Before e-commerce, Jason's right, remember the Sunday paper that had all the flyers from all the stores. They'd have their semi annual sales. The President's Day weekend sales were the ones I remember that were the biggest deals ever that really were just meant to invigorate sales in a historically slow time of year. But really, this concept has been applied over and over. Think of how many tourist destinations create random festivals in the worst months to go, like, weather wise. I used to live in Key West, Florida, and the biggest party of the year is called Fantasy Fest. It was created to invigorate tourism during hurricane season. It's a concept that's worked over and over, and this is a big one.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan.

Dan Boyd: I just wanted to jump in here and mention Father's Day and Mother's Day. Surprised that you guys didn't mention those. We're all fathers here on the podcast, so I know that we enjoy Father's Day, but, like, come on. They're nothing. They were just created to sell stuff.

Anand Chokkavelu: You're not going to mention Valentine's Day, Mr. Grinch.

Dan Boyd: Valentine's Day has somewhat historical significance with all the St. Valentine's stuff. I didn't want to go too far into it in my grumpiness Anand, but I guess we can throw that one on the fire.

Anand Chokkavelu: Speaking of Singles Day in China. The Alibaba took that cemented in the '90s. I think less commercy, but then it became more commercy. Two other things, Sears' catalog. Let's not forget. A lot of times Sears really is the Amazon before Amazon we forget about it because we see it at its late phases. It wasn't the first catalog, Tiffany, Montgomery Ward, they beat it to the punch. But when it was going, it was called the Consumer Bible. Then on a smaller scale, I'll give one more. Just shout out to Spotify rapped. They do a wonderful job inventing a thing to get us more engaged. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, who we just recently, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. We're more likely, historically, an amusing comment. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?

Jason Hall: How about Church and Dwight? Ticker C-H-D. I don't know if we give some of these legacy consumer brands companies enough talk. What's Church and Dwight? You've probably heard of Arm & Hammer baking soda. But they also own a lot of other retail brands. You might be familiar with Orajel, if you've ever had a sore tooth or you have a baby that kind of thing comes up. They own Trojan, which is another brand that people might be familiar with. But here's my personal. Right now, I have a cold. I'm living and functioning off of Zicam. That's a Church and Dwight product that's really getting me through. Over the long term, it's been a great investment. Over the past 10 years, the stocks returned about 10.5% in total returns. That's underperformed the market, but it's better than the market's long term average. I think there might be something there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, a question about Church and Dwight?

Dan Boyd: Not really a question, Anand, but more of a comment. Jason, you forgot to mention OxiClean in the Church and Dwight product catalog here as a parent of a three-year-old and a nine month old laundry is a very important thing on our house, and I don't think we could survive without that OxiClean.

Jason Hall: I will raise your three-year-old and nine month old with an eight and a half year old who plays soccer. My house runs on that stuff. I'm with you there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Matt, what's on your radar?

Matt Frankel: Well, now what's on my radar is the OxiClean that I have in the closet right there. But as far as the stock, I'd have to say SoFi. Ticker symbol S-O-F-I. Fantastic momentum. They've done a great job of creating capital white revenue streams in recent years. The growth is actually accelerating. They recently announced they're bringing crypto back to their platform now that the banks are allowed to do so. That's going to be a big driver. Not only crypto, they're going a step further. They're going to start bringing blockchain facilitated money transfers across border for free. They have lots of big plans. They recently started doing private equity investing for everybody. Guys like you and me can invest in companies like SpaceX and OpenAI that are pre IPO through SoFi's platform through venture funds. There's a lot going on in this business, and it's still a relatively small bank, and they aim to be a Top 10 bank within the next decade.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, question about SoFi.

Dan Boyd: Well, absolute F to name. SoFi, just terrible. I feel like smart people like them could have come up with something better, but private equity investing is very interesting, Matt, though a little scared to me without the reporting regulations that public companies have to do.

Matt Frankel: I do think it was a natural thing, though, now that all these companies are waiting longer than ever to go public. SpaceX is a massive business. OpenAI has a, $100 billion plus valuation. There's a lot to like there and a lot of potential.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, which company you're putting on your watch list, OxiClean or private equity stuff.

Dan Boyd: I'm going to go with Church and Dwight for some of that beautiful OxiClean.

Anand Chokkavelu: That's all for this week. See you next time.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anand Chokkavelu, CFA has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, First Solar, Microsoft, Netflix, Salesforce, SoFi Technologies, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Asit Sharma has positions in Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, Microsoft, Nvidia, Salesforce, Upstart, and Walt Disney. Dan Boyd has positions in Amazon and Walt Disney. Jason Hall has positions in Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Infrastructure, Brookfield Renewable, Enphase Energy, First Solar, Nvidia, SoFi Technologies, Upstart, and Walt Disney and has the following options: short January 2026 $27 calls on SoFi Technologies, short January 2027 $32.50 puts on Upstart, and short January 2027 $40 puts on Enphase Energy. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon, Brookfield Asset Management, Digital Realty Trust, SoFi Technologies, Upstart, and Walt Disney and has the following options: short December 2025 $95 calls on Upstart. Sanmeet Deo has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Brookfield Asset Management, Constellation Energy, Digital Realty Trust, Equinix, First Solar, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Salesforce, Tesla, Upstart, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group, Brookfield Renewable, Comcast, Enphase Energy, Ge Vernova, and T-Mobile US and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Has Big Tech Partnerships and Big Potential

Key Points

Through July, AI infrastructure specialist CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) has been the biggest initial public offering (IPO) of the year.

CoreWeave's actual public offering was a disappointment. It was both undersubscribed and priced lower than the company intended. In fact, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) had to come in and help rescue the offering by buying a large position in the IPO. The opening day performance was also a dud, and the stock opened down from its IPO price of $40 and closed even with it, showing underwhelming interest.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

However, since the late March debut, broad market trends have shifted, and AI stocks are back in vogue as concerns about a trade war and a recession have receded.

As a result, CoreWeave stock surged as high as $188 before a recent pullback, though it's still trading at more than triple its IPO price.

A person whose face is partly obscured by digital images.

Image source: Getty Images.

What CoreWeave does

CoreWeave was founded as Atlantic Crypto, an Ethereum miner, but pivoted its business model in the crypto winter of 2018-2019 when crypto mining fell on hard times and it discovered that the idle GPUs it owned could be rented out instead as computing capacity to run AI applications and models.

Today, the company provides generative AI-focused cloud computing infrastructure through its CoreWeave Cloud Platform, which combines proprietary software and cloud services to manage and deliver the AI infrastructure needed to power the leading AI models.

As a cloud platform purpose-built for generative AI, CoreWeave is differentiated from the giant hyperscalers -- Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet -- some of which are the company's biggest customers. For example, its platform delivers higher performance and more uptime than alternative offerings, allowing its customers to build their AI models faster.

In part because of its close relationship with Nvidia, CoreWeave is also regularly the first cloud provider to deploy new AI instances (i.e., resources). In recent weeks, it has made two such announcements. For example, it became the first company to make Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition instances generally available, which achieve 5.6 times faster large language model inference than the previous generation.

CoreWeave has some key partners

Among the risks investors pointed out when CoreWeave went public was its customer concentration. Its prospectus said that Microsoft accounted for 62% of its revenue in 2024.

Due to the nature of its business, CoreWeave has a small number of customers, including start-ups like Mistral, Cohere, and OpenAI, and big tech companies like Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, IBM, and Nvidia. Management said in its first-quarter earnings report that no company makes up more than 50% of its backlog.

While customer concentration is a risk, the relationships with these companies are also a source of strength, especially with Nvidia, which owns 24.2 million shares of CoreWeave, currently worth roughly $3 billion. OpenAI also invested $350 million in the company in March, which is likely worth several times more today. That came as part of a deal for OpenAI to pay $11.9 billion to CoreWeave over five years.

Because both companies are investors in CoreWeave, they are more likely to remain customers and support its business, creating a symbiotic relationship.

Why CoreWeave has big potential

Management is reporting blistering growth. In the first quarter, revenue jumped 420% to $981.6 million, showing off the surging demand for its services as well as the speed with which it's expanding its capacity.

Demand for AI computing is expected to grow for years, if not decades, and CoreWeave is poised to be a leader in AI cloud infrastructure. The company is still deeply unprofitable due to the need to acquire GPUs to run its cloud platform, but it makes sense to invest when revenue is growing by triple digits.

While CoreWeave is certainly risky, and valuing the stock is difficult right now, it has considerable upside potential, even after tripling from its IPO price in just a few months.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $671,477!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,010,880!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,047% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Jeremy Bowman has positions in Amazon, Ethereum, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Ethereum, International Business Machines, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Dinosaurs Roar for Comcast; CoreWeave Goes Shopping

In this podcast, Motley Fool Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross and senior analyst Jason Moser discuss:

  • Jurassic World Rebirth delivers for Comcast.
  • CoreWeave finally gets it done for Core Scientific.
  • Oracle makes a deal with the federal government.
  • Two stocks to look at if the market pulls back: Samsara and Howmet Aerospace.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

A full transcript is below.

Should you invest $1,000 in Comcast right now?

Before you buy stock in Comcast, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Comcast wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $694,758!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $998,376!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,058% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

This podcast was recorded on July 07, 2025.

Andy Cross: Dinosaurs roar for Comcast while CoreWeave makes an acquisition. Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Andy Cross, joined by Motley Fool's Senior Analyst and advisor Jason Moser. Jason, happy Monday.

Jason Moser: Happy Monday, AC. Good to see you.

Andy Cross: Good to see you. Thanks for being here. We got confirmation today that CoreWeave is buying another AI Data Center company, and Oracle is cutting cloud prices for Uncle Sam. We'll also talk about two companies we're keeping an eye on if the price is right. But, Jason, let's start with the summer movies, Universal's Jurassic World Rebirth reportedly brought in more than 300 million globally this weekend, giving a nice wind to Comcast, the parent owner of Universal. This continues that strong summer at the box office that included how to train your dragon also from Universal and Apple's F1. Jason, is this good news for long suffering Comcast shareholders like me?

Jason Moser: [laughs] It's not bad news. Most certainly it's not bad news. Now, Comcast content and experiences studio segment brought in $11 billion in revenue in 2024, along with about $1.4 billion in operating profits. This isn't something from the revenue side that is a tremendous needle mover, but maybe it's a needle mover to the extent that we would say the same thing for Disney. This is the content space that can be very lumpy some years are better than others. If you look at the same segment, the content and experience, the studio segment, we talked about $11 billion in revenue in 2024. That was $12.3 billion in 2022. It ebbs and flows. But this is terrific news. I'm amazed. The original Jurassic Park came out back in 1993. They have pulled a Disney to an extent and have really expanded and stretched out this IP library. I think that is a good sign for Comcast shareholders.

Andy Cross: Jason, 100%. I see this again, this Comcast stock has not done that well over the past couple of years. It now yields about 3.7%. Of course, we have the spin off, the spin out of the media properties called Versant later this year, where they're going to spin off CNBC and USA, MSNBC, the Golf Channel, and a few other properties. I think that's got a lot of investors interested in Comcast, at least for me, those of us who own it. But this is the seventh film franchise of the Jurassic franchise, and that franchise is worth about $6 billion. It is a Disney play, Jason, because they're using that in their IP. They're using the theme parks. I saw promotions all around the world, all around the cable properties for the Jurassic rebirth movie. They were showing older Jurassic movies on some of those cable properties this weekend. I think from that perspective, it does help build that franchise out, and it's going to be a very competitive summer. Disney itself has its fantastic four coming out this summer. We have the much anticipated Superman movie from Warner Brothers coming out this year, but I think it does help build out that franchise that has become more and more valuable to those universal theme parks, including the one that just opened up this year.

Jason Moser: No question. This also plays into that summer blockbuster. We always look to see what the summer blockbusters are going to be. I just think it's noteworthy these results, particularly given the tepid reviews that the movie's gotten. I haven't seen it, and I take criticisms with a grain of salt, but 51% on rotten tomatoes and a cinema score of B from the opening weekend audience. That's not lighting the world on fire from a critics perspective, but clearly the audience loved it.

Andy Cross: Also, Jason, interesting notes over the weekend that Netflix, with its 300 million subscribers, they said at the Anime Expo in Los Angeles this weekend that more than half its subscribers now watch Japanese anime. I found that interesting just because it continues to show the power of the Netflix globally as a brand, and one reason why they're along with YouTube, one of the most valuable media properties out there.

Jason Moser: We've always said they do such a good job with that data. Personally, I'm not an anime consumer, but I think this is a great example for investors, where it's not necessarily wise to extrapolate one personal taste into a potential idea, just because it's not something that you like or eat or watch, it doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity there, and that 50% number globally, really does tell us something impressive about Netflix's market position.

Andy Cross: 100%. When Motley Fool Money returns, CoreWeave goes shopping.

AI infrastructure company CoreWeave announced that it will buy Core Scientific for around $9 billion in an all stock deal. That's about $20 per share based on CoreWeave stock. Now, shares of Core Scientific Jason are down around 20% today to about 15, so the market's sensing something here.

Jason Moser: This is an arms race like we haven't seen in some time. Companies are just rushing to build out their AI capabilities, and this is just another sign of that. But I think it's really noteworthy that Core Scientific shares being down so much today. There can be a number of reasons why something like that might happen. Investors don't think that it will go through, perhaps another bidder comes in. But, AC, I wonder if this doesn't have something to do with the deal structure itself and what it's saying about the market's perspective on CoreWeave, because that nine billion number that's being bandied about, let's make sure we understand. That's just based on the July 3rd share price. Core Scientific shareholders are going to receive 0.1235 shares of CoreWeave for each share of Core Scientific that they hold. But as noted in the release, and this is important. The final value will be determined at the time of the transaction closed. That's not until later in Q4, so I don't know. Do you think this is like a glass half empty view on CoreWeave and whether they can hold their valuation? Because the stock has been on fire since it went public.

Andy Cross: It went public just this year, and the stock's done just fantastically well, and Core Scientific has done very well, although it has a little spotted history. It's one of those sparks back in 2021 that when it came public out there was about $4 billion, and it basically lost almost 100% of its value, had to declare bankruptcy, defile from the markets, came back to the public markets in January 2024. Actually, CoreWeave tried to buy them last year for about $6 per share. Now they're paying far more for that. It does give CoreWeave the vertical integration, Jason, that I think that they need to build out. They're going to add 9 or 10 AI data centers of Core Scientifics give them massive gigawatts of capacity. As CoreWeave is trying to build out its own AI data centers, it does need to continue to build out that capacity. CoreWeave is Core Scientific's largest tenet, so it makes sense from a vertical integration perspective. But I think the market is just saying with a share issuance, so soon after CoreWeave became public, there are some doubts about at what price they're going to have to get Core Scientific into the CoreWeave family.

Jason Moser: Exactly. I certainly understand the market's enthusiasm around CoreWeave. When you're selling yourself as the AI hyperscaler. There is something to that, and this is clearly a company that's playing a big role in the space. They just reported revenue growth, 420% in this most recently reported quarter. But again, and you're right, vertical integration, this is going to be something that really gives CoreWeave more power over its platform and to that power. This is a power play. Through this acquisition, CoreWeave is going to own approximately 1.3 gigawatts of gross power, along with the opportunity of one plus gigawatts of potential gross power available for expansion. A gigawatt is a lot of power, AC. That power is a medium sized city, and you think about the Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam, one of our biggest hydroelectric generators here in the country. That's responsible for about two gigawatts of capacity. You can see how this could really impact CoreWeave if it goes through.

Andy Cross: Prediction time, do you think it's going to go through? Do they have to lower the price, readjust the deal terms? You think, Jason?

Jason Moser: I think it's going to go through. I think that probably the market's enthusiasm is going to remain for Core. You think the stock will ebb and flow here a little bit. My suspicion is it'll go through. Probably not going to end up at that $9 billion valuation at the end of the day because that is pretty extreme for a company like Core Scientific. That's like 18 times full year revenue in 2024. We might see some change in the price there, but my suspicion is it'll go through.

Andy Cross: There's definitely some synergies there and some cost savings, but I think it'll go through, too, but I do think they'll have to readjust the terms.

Jason Moser: [laughs] Exactly.

Andy Cross: Next up on Motley Fool Money, Oracle gives Uncle Sam a deal. Let's move over to news that Oracle is cutting cloud service prices for the US government by as much as 75% as reported this weekend by the Wall Street Journal. Jason, who's a winner here? Is this an Oracle beneficiary, a US federal government beneficiary or a little bit of A, a little bit of B?

Jason Moser: I'm going to walk the fence here and say a little bit of A, a little bit of B. It does feel like both win somewhat here. This feels a bit like taking a page out of the book of Bezos. He was always known for driving down those prices in so many cases. He's got that quote, "Your margin is my opportunity." He's taking that Uber long-term view. AC, I think for federal agencies, they're under this mandate to modernize while also managing tighter budgets at the same time. So the old saying cash is king, I think, in this case, it seems maybe cost is king, and we're seeing other cloud providers follow the same lead, Salesforce has done the same thing in regard to Slack, Google, Adobe. This isn't anything necessarily new. But then I think for Oracle, these discounts can help lock in really multi year contracts. That offers more stability for their business model and revenue prediction. If they can extend those relationships, then you can start talking a bit about maybe exercising a little bit more pricing power down the road if they do a good job. I can see both parties benefiting from that.

Andy Cross: I thought this was a little bit more beneficiary for Oracle when I first started studying it. But then I think the GSA, the General Services Administration is starting to shake their big stick here to try to get some pricing out of some of these big players. It is interesting to me that this is for the licensees, not really for the subscription, and it goes through November. The pricing option goes through November of this year. It does give Oracle a foot in. It's really the first deal the GSA cut for government wide solutions, including lots of areas where Oracle and other cloud titans provide some of those services and compete very heavily. I think it's just more evidence of CFO Safra Catz, becoming more and more competitive, trying to push Oracle into markets. Clearly Oracle has had some nice beneficiaries here in the markets and in their business as the stock is gone really well. It's up 60% the past year or 40% year to date, Jason. It's north of a $600 billion company. Thirty five times earnings. That's almost two times its five year average. What do you think about Oracle, the stock going forward?

Jason Moser: I'm glad you brought that up. It does seem like a little bit of a richer valuation, but going back to Safra Catz, he's looking at fiscal 2026 targets here, cloud revenue growth projected to grow from 24% to over 40%. Then that IAAS, that infrastructure as a service. That growth there is projected to hit about 70%. Anytime you see valuations like that, you have to just step back and say, why is the market doing that? Where's the growth? I think that's where they're seeing some of that growth. Now they just have to deliver.

Andy Cross: I think so, too. I do, again, like this licensing play because as they continue to push more subscription, this does get into the core part of what Oracle has done for so long and done so well for so many years. I think it is a nice foothold for Oracle. I guarantee that GSA is going to be issuing lots of different pricing asks of lots more providers as they continue to manage their own footprint as they push toward to be a little bit more technological savvy at the federal government. Finally, today, Jason, stocks are down a little bit, but passed through all time highs last week. Let's end things with two stocks that we're keeping fresh on our watch list if the prices are right. What are you looking at?

Jason Moser: Everybody loves stock ideas, AC?

Andy Cross: Of course.

Jason Moser: One that I just continue to keep my eye on is a company called Samsara. Ticker is IOT. It's now a $22 billion company, and Samsara operates its Connected Operations Cloud, which is a software platform that connects all of the devices that a company has and its buildings, its equipment, its cards, and other facilities. The platform then establishes this massive network of data and information specific to that company. Now the company's still working its way to profitability. Technically, it's cash flow positive, but stock-based compensation more than eats that up, which isn't uncommon for a company at this stage of its life cycle. It's around 14 times forward sales projections today. Now, when I wrecked this company in the trend service back in the beginning of 2023, it was at 13 times. It's been a bit of a bumpy ride, and the stock has pulled back a little. But when you look at the fundamentals of this business, they just reported first quarter results that exceeded all targets that leadership set a quarter ago, revenue up 32% annualized recurring revenue up 31%. They have 2,638 customers with ARR over $100,000. That's up 35% from a year ago. It is a company that continues to grow and establish a fairly dominant position in its market is what it seems. It really does seem like this is becoming the top dog at its space. I think it's also a company that possesses a lot of those hidden gems traits.

Those principles that our CEO Tom Gardner loves, he's so fond of. You get reasonable, remarkable growth into expanding markets, check. Led and owned by true long-term believers in the company, check. This is a company that is led by co-founders Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket. They own almost 70% of the voting power in a relentless curiosity toward bold technical exploration. That is a double check for a company like this. If we ever see any material pullback in this one, I certainly would be very tempted to add it to my portfolio.

Andy Cross: Jason, do you have any thoughts on these cute ticker names, IOT? [laughs] Does that tend to scare you away from a company?

Jason Moser: Not really. I never would recommend a company on the ticker alone, but you just made me think of core scientific and its ticker cores. It's like the smoky and the bandit ticker. It's funny to see those sometimes.

Andy Cross: Jason, I'm looking at Howmet symbol HWM. It's formerly part of Alcoa. Its history is steeped into high precision metalworking, 90%. It provides 90% of all structural and rotating aero engine components for the aerospace, transportation, and energy markets. These are really super high end precision airfoils and forging, forge wheels and chassis for the commercial trucking and auto space. The stock has doubled over the past year, and it's up almost 50% since the Rule Breakers team over in Stock Advisor, we recommended it just this year. It has these really serious competitive advantages that we love to see. Its patents, manufacturing, the history behind it, its core clients. You don't really want to mess around with replacement parts for these kinds of really high precision manufactured items. It does have some opportunities in the energy space because it provides the blades for the engine turbines that power a lot of the energy that goes into supporting data centers. I do love this business.

It's just the stock has done so well, and while the Stock Advisor team, as well as our Rule Breakers team love buying into strength, I just want to see, I'm not going to criticize anybody for adding this great business to their portfolio. But for me, I'm just looking for a little bit of maybe a market breather before I start looking at Howmet symbol HWM just a wonderful business, $73 billion. It's not small, and it has a lot of room to grow in the aerospace market.

Jason Moser: Plenty of examples in my investing life where patience tends to pay off.

Andy Cross: 100%. [laughs] There you have those two high quality companies in Samsara and Howmet that we're watching. If the markets go on a little bit of a tailspin here in the dog days of summer, maybe they go added to our portfolio. That's a rap for us today here at Motley Fool Money. Jason Moser, thanks for joining me here.

Jason Moser: Thanks for having me.

Andy Cross: Here at the Motley Fool we love hearing your feedback, to be part of that feedback or to ask a question, email us at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool Editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. For all of us here at Motley Fool Money, thanks for listening, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Andy Cross has positions in Adobe, Alphabet, Apple, Comcast, Netflix, Salesforce, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Jason Moser has positions in Adobe and Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Alphabet, Apple, Netflix, Oracle, Salesforce, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool recommends Comcast, Howmet Aerospace, and Samsara. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Better AI Stock: C3.ai vs. CoreWeave

Key Points

  • C3.ai is growing again, but its business model still looks shaky.

  • CoreWeave is carving out a high-growth niche with its cloud-based GPUs.

  • The higher-growth company is still a better overall investment.

C3.ai (NYSE: AI) and CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) are both poised to profit from the expansion of the artificial intelligence (AI) market. C3 develops AI algorithms and standalone modules that can be plugged into an organization's existing software infrastructure. CoreWeave's data centers provide cloud-based GPUs for processing AI tasks.

C3 went public at $42 in December 2020, but it now trades at around $25. CoreWeave went public in March 2025 at $40, and it now trades at about $160. Let's see why the bulls embraced CoreWeave while shunning C3 -- and if the former remains a better buy than the latter.

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The shape of a brain made up of colorful digital lines.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why didn't C3 impress the market?

C3's revenue only rose 6% in fiscal 2023 (which ended in April 2023) as it grappled with tougher macro headwinds, faced intense competition in the AI space, and cannibalized some of its own subscriptions with its new consumption-based fees. It also faced an uncertain future as its joint venture with energy giant Baker Hughes, which regularly accounted for around 30% of its revenue, was set to expire at the end of fiscal 2025. All of those headwinds -- along with its declining gross margin and persistent losses -- drove away the bulls. Rising interest rates further compressed its valuations.

However, C3's revenue grew 16% in fiscal 2024 and 25% in fiscal 2025. That acceleration was sparked by its new generative AI modules, more federal contracts, and its strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon, and McKinsey. It also recently renewed its joint venture with Baker Hughes for another three years. It expects its revenue to rise 15% to 25% in fiscal 2026, while analysts anticipate 19% growth.

From fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2028, analysts expect C3's revenue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%. It looks reasonably valued at 7.5 times this year's sales, but it won't break even anytime soon. In fiscal 2024, it abandoned its goal of turning profitable (on an adjusted basis) in favor of ramping up its investments in its generative AI modules.

While C3 is still growing, it hasn't proven its business model is sustainable yet. Its insiders also sold more than twice as many shares as they bought over the past 12 months, and that chilly insider sentiment suggests its upside potential is limited.

Why did CoreWeave's stock blast off?

CoreWeave was originally an Ethereum mining company, but it repurposed its mining GPUs to process AI tasks after the cryptocurrency crash of 2018. It subsequently opened more data centers, spent $100 million on Nvidia's H100 GPUs in 2022, and served up its processing power remotely through its cloud-based platform. It also leveraged its GPUs as collateral to secure more funding and scale up its business. It claims its dedicated cloud-based GPUs can process AI tasks roughly 35 times faster at 80% lower prices than traditional cloud platforms.

CoreWeave currently operates 33 data centers across the U.S. and Europe, up from just three centers at the end of 2022. It achieved that expansion with some big investments from Nvidia, Cisco, and PureStorage, and its top customers now include AI leaders like Microsoft and OpenAI.

From 2022 to 2024, its annual revenue soared from $16 million to $1.9 billion -- but its net loss widened from $31 million to $863 million as it opened more data centers, bought more GPUs, and grappled with higher energy costs. From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect its revenue to grow at a CAGR of 105% to $16.6 billion as it turns profitable in the final year. CoreWeave's stock still seems reasonably valued (but not cheap) relative to that growth trajectory at 16 times this year's sales.

But most of its expansion was funded by big debt offerings, and it ended its latest quarter with an alarmingly high debt-to-equity ratio of 9.9. However, its insiders bought 19 times as many shares as they sold over the past 12 months -- and that confidence suggests it could successfully scale up its business and narrow its losses.

The better buy: CoreWeave

C3.ai and CoreWeave are both still speculative AI plays. But if I had to pick one, I'd stick with CoreWeave because it's growing faster with a clearer path toward profitability than C3. C3 might keep expanding, but I'm not confident it can stabilize its business while staying ahead of its competitors in the crowded enterprise AI software market.

Should you invest $1,000 in C3.ai right now?

Before you buy stock in C3.ai, consider this:

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Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $687,764!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $980,723!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Leo Sun has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Cisco Systems, Ethereum, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Pure Storage. The Motley Fool recommends C3.ai and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Fantastic News for CoreWeave Shareholders

Key Points

  • CoreWeave scored significant wins in the first half, with revenue and stock performance soaring.

  • The company is a key partner of Nvidia and depends greatly on demand for the AI leader’s chips.

CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) delivered an exciting first half to investors. The company, known for its close relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), made its market debut, reported triple-digit quarterly revenue growth, and went on to gain 300%.

Investors are excited about CoreWeave as the company has seen soaring demand for its AI cloud services, and with the AI market potentially heading for $2 trillion in a few years, this momentum could continue. And just last week, this up-and-coming AI giant delivered even more fantastic news to shareholders. Let's check it out.

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The letters AI are written on a chip.

Image source: Getty Images.

More than 250,000 Nvidia GPUs

First, though, let's catch up on the CoreWeave story so far. As mentioned, the company is linked to Nvidia, and this is in two ways: CoreWeave's main business is the leasing out of compute power in the form of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), or the main chips fueling key AI tasks such as the training and inferencing of models. The company has a fleet of more than 250,000 GPUs operating in about 32 data centers, and customers can rent access to them by the hour or for a much longer period. So CoreWeave offers them a great deal of flexibility.

The second link to Nvidia is the fact that this AI powerhouse holds a 7% stake in CoreWeave. This support is a positive sign for CoreWeave and its investors because Nvidia, with its dominant position in AI, knows how to recognize potential winners. So, if Nvidia is investing in an AI company, other investors may want to give that particular company a closer look.

Now, let's consider the fantastic news CoreWeave just delivered to shareholders. The company said it became the first to make Nvidia's latest chip update -- Blackwell Ultra -- commercially available. This is in the form of the Nvidia GB300 NVL72 system built by Dell, a platform that CoreWeave says represents a "major leap" for AI reasoning and AI agent projects.

The GB300 NVL72 brings 1.5 times greater AI performance than the initial Blackwell chip -- GB200 -- that was launched in the fourth quarter of last year. And CoreWeave then was the first to make the Blackwell system available to customers too.

CoreWeave competes with other cloud providers such as Amazon's Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and those companies have both hefty resources and a broad customer base -- and they, too, offer Nvidia products and services. But, what could help CoreWeave stand out over time is this first access to Nvidia products and the fact that CoreWeave specializes in AI workloads. So, CoreWeave being first to launch Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra is key because it's establishing itself as the place for customers to go if they aim to gain immediate access to Nvidia's latest innovations.

CoreWeave revenue climbs 400%

This could help boost CoreWeave's already soaring demand. In the most recent quarter, revenue climbed more than 400% as customers rushed to the company for compute power. Considering CoreWeave now is launching Blackwell Ultra, it's reasonable to expect strong growth in the upcoming quarter too amid demand for this high-performance platform.

All of this is great news for early investors in this young AI stock. But what if you haven't yet invested in CoreWeave? Is it too late to get in on this soaring stock? This depends on your appetite for risk and your investment horizon.

Stocks never rise in a straight line without any sort of pause. So, it's possible that in the near- or mid-term, CoreWeave will see its shares stagnate or dip. And, though demand is high, it's important to remember that risk is present too: CoreWeave must invest heavily in GPUs in order to keep up with demand, and this may make it difficult to reach and secure profitability. This will be a point to watch in the upcoming quarters.

All of this means CoreWeave isn't the best fit for cautious investors or those who are uncomfortable with some ups and downs. But, aggressive investors with a long investing horizon may pick up a few shares of this highflyer and hold on -- if AI momentum continues at this pace and demand for Nvidia's GPUs remains strong, CoreWeave and its shareholders may be among the first to benefit.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $699,558!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $976,677!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Adria Cimino has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Why Nebius Group Rocketed 50.6% in June

Key Points

  • Nebius rallied over 50% in June, on top of a 62% rally in May.

  • Neoclouds have been soaring in the past couple of months, as optimism over AI grows again.

  • One analyst said he liked Nebius' stock more than a high-profile competitor's, sending Nebius soaring.

Shares of artificial intelligence (AI) neocloud Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) rocketed 50.6% in June, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Neoclouds and other AI-related stocks had great months in June in general, as the sector not only recovered from the April "Liberation Day" plunge, but also saw continued bullish data and statements from major tech CEOs on the growth of AI.

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In addition, one analyst wrote a note comparing Nebius to one of its main neocloud rivals, CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), preferring Nebius over its better-known competitor.

Arete gives Nebius the thumbs-up

On June 5, analyst Andrew Beale of boutique sell-side analyst firm Arete Research published a note, giving Nebius a "Buy" rating, with an $84 price target. In contrast, the analyst gave CoreWeave a "Neutral" rating. Beale concludes that both stocks will trade according to how short of graphics processing unit (GPU) supply the world is at the moment, but that he preferred Nebius due to its lower "embedded valuation" relative to CoreWeave.

Room full of server banks.

Image source: Getty Images.

Nebius actually trades at a higher valuation than CoreWeave based on this year's revenue estimates, with CoreWeave trading at about 14.5 times this year's revenue estimates of $5 billion. On the other hand, Nebius trades around 22 times 2025 revenue estimates of $526 million. However, Nebius has lots of net cash on its balance sheet of about $1.44 billion, while CoreWeave has about $6.2 billion in net debt. Nebius is also much earlier in its growth trajectory.

Nebius is unique

Like CoreWeave, Nebius is backed by Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which participated in an oversubscribed private placement in Nebius in December. Like CoreWeave, Nebius may have all the same advantages, including a preferred GPU allocation over other cloud providers, due to Nvidia's investment. However, both stocks also have the disadvantage of being highly dependent on Nvidia and Nvidia's competitive position in the industry.

Nebius differentiates itself by building its own data center server infrastructure, whereas CoreWeave tends to buy servers from others, and opts to differentiate itself through its in-house software and middleware.

It's hard to say at this point which is the better pick, given how similar their positioning is and how early we are in the AI infrastructure build-out. However, if one believes in an Nvidia-dominated AI future and that AI spending will continue to grow by leaps and bounds, both Nebius and CoreWeave are worth consideration.

Should you invest $1,000 in Nebius Group right now?

Before you buy stock in Nebius Group, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nebius Group wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $692,914!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $963,866!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,050% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 179% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Billy Duberstein and/or his clients have 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.

Why CoreWeave Rallied 46.5% in June

Key Points

  • CoreWeave submitted new benchmarks on its largest Nvidia Blackwell GB200 NVL72 cluster.

  • The data release seemed to put CoreWeave ahead of other clouds in deploying the most performant Blackwell chips.

  • The massive June rally happened on top of a miraculous 170% gain in May.

Shares of artificial intelligence (AI) neocloud CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) rocketed 46.5% in June, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

CoreWeave went public in March under a cloud of scrutiny and fears over tariffs. However, it has since become an AI darling, skyrocketing not only in May on the back of an incremental Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) investment, but also in June.

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June's gains appeared to come from increasing optimism over AI-related growth, with CoreWeave publishing impressive leading benchmarks running Nvidia's latest Blackwell chips.

Two people walk among server racks in a data center.

Image source: Getty Images.

The largest and fastest GB200 NVL72 cluster in the industry

In early June, CoreWeave submitted MLPerf Training v5.0 benchmarks for its GB200 NVL72 cluster, in collaboration with Nvidia and IBM. CoreWeave's submission used 2,496 Nvidia GPUs running on CoreWeave's AI-optimized infrastructure. That infrastructure includes CoreWeave's proprietary software and middleware innovations such as SUNK, which allows customers to use a combination of popular AI training programming languages instead of having to choose just one. CoreWeave's Tensorizer software also routes data to the closest possible GPU, resulting in faster training times.

CoreWeave said its training cluster was 34 times larger than the only other cluster submitted for the same benchmark from a major cloud provider, underscoring CoreWeave's current advantage of deploying huge Nvidia clusters quickly. The company noted its infrastructure ran the large 405 billion-parameter Llama 3.1 model in just 27.3 minutes, more than twice as fast as other submissions.

CoreWeave may have an advantage due to Nvidia's investment, but also is risky

CoreWeave may be getting a preferred allocation of Nvidia chips before other major clouds, due to Nvidia's investment in CoreWeave, as well as all major clouds now pursuing their own AI training and inference ASICs.

So CoreWeave appears to have a time-to-market advantage versus others, which may make CoreWeave attractive to AI labs needing the latest and greatest Nvidia chips as quickly as possible in large numbers. For instance, OpenAI, thought to be the leading AI lab today, inked an $11.9 billion deal with CoreWeave in March.

That being said, CoreWeave is inherently at the mercy of Nvidia, which is both a supplier, investor, and customer, in a somewhat circular relationship. While the arrangement seems to be working for now, there is always the danger that if Nvidia ever gets a big competitive threat, things could get complicated for CoreWeave -- especially at its current elevated valuation.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $692,914!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $963,866!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,050% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 179% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Billy Duberstein and/or his clients has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends International Business Machines and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

This Home Run Growth Stock Is Too Good to Ignore

The investing community is beginning to take notice of Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS). I say that largely based on the almost 150% surge in its share price since mid-April. There's a reason behind that, though. Nebius has been executing on its plan to grow its revenues to a level that would justify a valuation well above its current one.

The company, which went public in May 2011 under the name Yandex, was originally a Russian search engine company. The stock peaked in late 2021. It now trades as Amsterdam-based Nebius Group more than 40% off that previous high.

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Nebius sprouted as the cloud computing arm of Russian e-services giant Yandex. It was formed after Yandex restructured and divested all of its Russian assets in July 2024. It resumed trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the Nebius name in late October 2024.

Map image depicting data being sent all over the world from data center.

Image source: Getty Images.

Nvidia believes in Nebius

The stock remains far below its Yandex-era highs since the post-transition business has yet to fully demonstrate its potential for growing revenue. But Nebius management is giving investors a good idea of how to value that expected growth. If its assessment proves accurate, Nebius stock would be a good buy at recent prices.

Nebius' core business is cloud infrastructure. It's one of a growing number of hyperscalers supplying the computing power needed in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).

Hyperscalers like Nebius have the massive amounts of data center infrastructure that it takes to supply cloud computing services on a global level. It competes with leading players like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud.

While its cloud infrastructure and services segment is Nebius' core business, the company has four business segments, all in specific areas of the AI ecosystem:

  • Nebius (cloud infrastructure): The core business, providing infrastructure from a network of data centers for AI workloads, including large-scale GPU clusters, cloud platforms, and developer tools.

  • Toloka: A data partner with a network of human specialists to test and evaluate large language models (LLMs) in generative AI development.

  • TripleTen: A technology platform focused on reskilling individuals for tech careers, leveraging AI-driven educational tools.

  • Avride: Developing autonomous driving technology for self-driving cars and delivery robots, targeting sectors like ride-hailing, logistics, e-commerce, and food delivery.

Nebius' work in the AI ecosystem has attracted the attention of AI leader Nvidia. The chipmaker participated in a $700 million private funding round for Nebius late last year. Nvidia also owns more than 1 million shares of Nebius stock.

Why Nebius shares could keep rising

Nebius is leading the way in providing computing capacity from Nvidia's GB200 Blackwell Superchips to European customers. The GB200 is a key component in the architecture of Nvidia CPU and GPU liquid-cooled server racks, including networking links for AI model inference.

Nebius' partnership with Nvidia gives the cloud services company the ability to scale at a rate that management says will result in an annualized revenue run rate of between $750 million and $1 billion by the end of 2025. It also expects to reach positive adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) this year.

The upper end of that revenue run rate would give Nebius a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of about 12.5, even after the stock's recent surge. That appears to be a reasonable valuation for such a fast-growing tech company. By comparison, fellow cloud AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave sports a P/S ratio of about 15 based on this year's revenue guidance.

Nebius may now be showing up on some tech investors' radars, but it still isn't being valued as richly as it could be. If Nebius does achieve the sales growth management says it's on track to reach this year, the stock could have more room to run over both the short and long term.

Should you invest $1,000 in Nebius Group right now?

Before you buy stock in Nebius Group, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nebius Group wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $713,547!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $966,931!*

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Howard Smith has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Nebius Group, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq and Nebius Group and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Better Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock: CoreWeave vs. Nvidia

There will prove to be many winners as artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure continues to grow and AI end-uses expand. Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been the Wall Street darling surrounding everything AI for the past two years.

CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) has been getting the love most recently, though. Shares of the AI hyperscaler providing cloud services have soared about 185% in just the past month as of this writing. Nvidia stock has increased 24% in that time. CoreWeave just went public in late March, and the shares have jumped about 270% since that initial public offering (IPO). Investors may wonder if Nvidia's shine is fading, and it's time to buy CoreWeave instead. I'd argue that is flawed thinking, however.

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Image source: Getty Images.

The growth isn't over for Nvidia

Investors may be taking a breather after the early exponential gains in Nvidia stock. Growth in the business itself has also slowed, though that was inevitable. Sales of its advanced chips in the data center segment had been growing like a weed. Revenue in that segment has been increasing in each consecutive quarter for the last two years. In the most recent fiscal quarter, that growth rate slowed to 10%, though, as seen below.

bar chart showing Nvidia data center revenue growth quarter-over-quarter for the last two years.

Data source: Nvidia. Chart by author.

Despite that trend, it's clear AI demand hasn't yet peaked. Remember, these are still sequential quarterly increases in data center sales. For perspective, that fiscal first-quarter revenue was a 73% jump compared to the prior year period. Management also guided investors to expect further revenue growth in the current quarter. So, while an unsustainable growth rate slows, the company is still solidly in growth mode.

Nvidia is more ubiquitous than you might think

That's because it's not just Nvidia's advanced GPU and CPU chips driving sales and expanding AI infrastructure. Its AI ecosystem includes interconnect technologies, the CUDA (compute unified device architecture) software platform, and artificial intelligence processors that are part of many different types of architectures.

CEO Jensen Huang recently touted Nintendo's new Switch 2 gaming console, for example. The unit includes Nvidia's AI processors that Huang claims "sharpen, animate, and enhance gameplay in real time."

Nvidia has a broad array of customers. As AI factories and data centers are built, it will continue to be a major supplier and one that investors should benefit from owning. Nvidia also invests in the AI sector. It makes sense to look at where the AI leader itself sees future gains.

Nvidia thinks CoreWeave is a good investment

One of the AI companies in which Nvidia holds a stake is CoreWeave. Nvidia should know CoreWeave well, too, as an important customer. CoreWeave leases data center space to companies needing the scalable, on-demand compute power it has control of from the 250,000 Nvidia chips it has purchased.

It's a desirable option for enterprises that require significant computational power to process large amounts of data efficiently. There appears to be plenty of demand. But there is plenty of risk for investors, too. It just announced a new lease agreement to further increase capacity.

Applied Digital, a builder and operator of purpose-built data centers, has agreed to deliver CoreWeave 250 megawatts (MW) of power load on a 15-year term lease at its recently built North Dakota data center campus. CoreWeave has the option to expand the load by an additional 150 MW in the future.

Demand is quickly driving growth for CoreWeave. That's led investors to jump in and drive the stock higher in recent months. Valuation is just one major risk with CoreWeave. Customer concentration is another. Last year, Microsoft accounted for nearly two-thirds of revenue. CoreWeave also disclosed that 77% of 2024 revenue came from just its top two customers.

CoreWeave is also spending massive amounts of capital to grow AI cloud capacity. It had about $5.4 billion of liquidity available as of March 31 and raised another $2 billion from a late May debt offering. That's approximately its level of capital expenditure in just the first quarter alone, though.

CoreWeave has the risk, Nvidia has the profits

That spending may pay off. But there are risks there as well. Customers could develop their own AI infrastructure or could redesign systems that don't require its services. CoreWeave stock also trades at a high valuation after the stock has soared. It recently had a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of about 30.

That could be cut in half this year with its strong sales growth, but it isn't earning any money yet. At the same time, Nvidia sports a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of about 30 based on this year's expected profits.

Remember, too, that as CoreWeave grows, so do Nvidia's profits. Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins said that its leased North Dakota data center campus will be full of Nvidia Blackwell class servers. I think the risk profile, financial picture, and massive potential for Nvidia make it the better AI stock to buy now.

Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now?

Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $868,615!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 173% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

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Howard Smith has positions in Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Nintendo and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

3 Top AI Stocks to Buy in June 2025

The U.S. equity market made a strong recovery in May 2025, fueled by robust earnings, decreasing trade tensions, and rising investor confidence in the U.S. economy -- a significant improvement compared to the market's performance in April 2025. Now, Deutsche Bank analysts have raised the target for the benchmark S&P 500 index from 6,150 to 6,550 by the end of 2025.

Given this renewed market optimism, artificial intelligence (AI) stocks are poised to be key beneficiaries of the next wave of capital inflows. Long-term investors can benefit from this trend by investing in these high-quality, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered companies that offer significant growth potential in the evolving market landscape. June is a good time to take a closer look at these three top AI stocks.

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1. Nvidia

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has reported stellar results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 (ended April 27, 2025). The company reported revenue of $44.1 billion, representing a 69% year-over-year increase. Nvidia also generated a solid $26 billion in free cash flow.

Nvidia currently accounts for nearly 80% of the AI accelerator market. While a dominant presence in AI training workloads, the company is also focused on inference (real-time deployment of pre-trained models) workloads. The company is at the forefront of handling reasoning workloads (computationally intense and complex inference workloads) with its Blackwell architecture systems. Major cloud providers are already deploying these chips at a massive scale -- almost 72,000 GPUs weekly -- and plan to ramp up even more in the coming quarter. Hence, Blackwell is powering the next phase of AI where technology is thinking longer, solving problems, and giving better answers than just responding with pre-written answers.

Besides hardware leadership, Nvidia's robust software ecosystem has ensured developer lock-in and a sticky customer base. With the CUDA parallel programming platform, TensorRT for deployment, and NIM microservices for inference, clients find it extremely costly and time-consuming to switch to competitors. The company has also built a healthy networking business, with this segment's revenue growing 64% quarter over quarter to $5 billion in the first quarter.

Thanks to the technological superiority of its comprehensive ecosystem, Nvidia managed to provide a healthy outlook for fiscal 2026's Q2, despite its revenue being negatively affected by nearly $8 billion due to export restrictions for the Chinese market.

Nvidia stock trades at 31.8 times forward earnings, which is not a particularly cheap valuation. But considering its growth trajectory and competitive advantages, Nvidia is a smart AI pick now, even at elevated valuation levels.

2. Broadcom

Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) has emerged as a prominent AI infrastructure player in 2025. The company's custom AI chips and networking solutions are being increasingly used by three prominent hyperscaler clients -- rumored to be Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Chinese company ByteDance -- to optimize the execution of their specific workloads.

CEO Hock Tan expects the three hyperscalers to generate a serviceable addressable market (SAM) of $60 billion to $90 billion in fiscal 2027. Additionally, the company is engaging with four additional hyperscalers to develop custom chips, underscoring the even larger market potential.

Beyond custom chips, Broadcom is building the critical networking infrastructure that enables the training and deployment of large and powerful frontier AI models. The company's recent $69 billion acquisition of VMware positioned it as a key player in the enterprise software and hybrid cloud infrastructure space. With VMware's cloud orchestration and virtualization technologies, Broadcom can offer full-stack AI infrastructure solutions to its clients.

Broadcom stock currently trades at 37.8 times forward earnings. However, considering its critical role in building global AI infrastructure, the company is an excellent pick, despite the rich valuation.

3. CoreWeave

Previously a cryptocurrency mining operator, CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) has now positioned itself as a prominent "AI Hyperscaler."

Unlike traditional hyperscalers such as Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure, or Alphabet's Google Cloud Platform, which are primarily designed for general-purpose applications, CoreWeave's cloud infrastructure has been specifically designed for AI and machine-learning workloads. The company has established an extensive network of 33 purpose-built AI data centers across the United States and Europe.

Solid demand for CoreWeave's specialized AI-first cloud infrastructure is directly driving its exceptional financial performance. The company reported $982 million in revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, up 420% year over year. At the same time, the company's adjusted operating income rose 550% year over year to $163 million. This highlights that the company is on its way to becoming profitable, despite the high level of capital expenditures typical in the AI data center business. The company had a massive $25.9 billion revenue backlog from multi-year contracts at end of the first quarter.

CoreWeave's strategic partnership with Nvidia is proving to be a significant competitive advantage. The deep relationship has given the company preferential access to Nvidia's cutting-edge GPUs and advanced networking technologies. With Nvidia having more than a $2.5 billion equity stake in CoreWeave (at current prices), the latter is practically assured of continued access to next-generation GPUs in the coming years.

CoreWeave stock currently trades at 37.5 times sales, which seems quite rich. However, the elevated valuation is justified considering the company's huge addressable market, robust contract backlog, and impressive financial performance, making it a buy now.

Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now?

Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $868,615!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Manali Pradhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Move Over Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor, and Micron. Brad Gerstner's Altimeter Capital Just Gave Investors 2,999,536 Reasons to Check Out the Hottest Artificial Intelligence (AI) IPO Stock of 2025

Brad Gerstner is the founder and CEO of hedge fund Altimeter Capital. Some of his more notable wins include being an early investor in data cloud company Snowflake and Asian ridehailing leader Grab.

As is the case with many investment funds, Altimeter has made artificial intelligence (AI) stocks a core feature of its portfolio in recent years. According to its most recent 13F filing, Altimeter trimmed its stake in Nvidia during the first quarter while completely dumping its stakes in Micron and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

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Interestingly, though, I discovered that Altimeter holds a position in red-hot AI IPO stock CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV). This comes from an investment Altimeter made when CoreWeave was still a private company. As of the close of trading on June 4, Altimeter's 2,999,536 shares were worth about $489 million

Let's explore some of the core themes in the ongoing AI revolution to try and discern what may have motivated these moves. From there, I'll break down CoreWeave's business and recent price action to help determine if the stock is a good buy right now.

Why sell Nvidia, Micron, and Taiwan Semi stock right now?

Considering how robust demand has been for high-end graphics processing units (GPU) and memory storage chips, reducing exposure to names such as Nvidia, Micron, and Taiwan Semi looks like a head-scratcher on the surface. However, this is not the first time that Gerstner has shown some contrarian characteristics in his investment style.

While I cannot say for certain what Altimeter's current thesis is regarding chip stocks or the AI movement more broadly, I've come up with some reasons that may help justify the fund's recent moves.

According to industry estimates, Nvidia currently controls roughly 90% (or more) of the data center GPU market. While a lead like that might suggest Nvidia's moat is insurmountable, there are some risks to consider. First, Nvidia's revenue sources are heavily concentrated among cloud hyperscalers such as Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft.

Each of these companies has been developing their own custom AI chips, potentially signaling their intentions to migrate away from Nvidia's architecture over time. When you layer on top that the fact that Advanced Micro Devices has steadily been gaining momentum in the data center arena -- as its deals with Oracle, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms demonstrate -- Nvidia's growth could be on course for some deceleration.

Lastly, one of the storm clouds hanging over Nvidia at the moment is its exposure to China. New U.S. export controls and President Donald Trump's tariffs could cut into its sales there.

Micron operates in a unique pocket of the AI realm. It specializes in memory storage chips, which are vital hardware for data centers, personal computers, and smartphones, among other technologies. With that said, memory chips are relatively commoditized. On top of that, a shift toward cloud-based AI infrastructure could potentially serve as a headwind for Micron's hardware-centric chip memory business.

Taiwan Semiconductor specializes in fabrication services -- its foundries are where chips designed by Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and a host of others are actually manufactured. While demand for GPUs and other types of AI chips is strong, a deceleration in sales growth from key customers (i.e., Nvidia) could trickle down to TSMC's business, too.

Furthermore, most of TSMC's factories are located in Taiwan. Given the ongoing geopolitical pressures Taiwan faces from China, it's possible that U.S. chip designers like AMD or Nvidia could begin to turn to alternative foundry providers such as Intel.

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Image Source: Getty Images.

What does CoreWeave do?

CoreWeave is a cloud computing infrastructure provider that offers its clients access to Nvidia GPUs and a host of other chip integrations. As such, its business is not as exposed to the time it takes to design and manufacture sophisticated hardware -- unlike the names explored above. In a way, this makes the hyperscaler more nimble than other chip and data center stocks, allowing the company to scale at a faster pace.

CoreWeave is able to take advantage of the booming chip landscape but more so on the AI training and inferencing side. Ultimately, it fills the gap between producing chipsets and accessing optimized AI cloud infrastructure.

It's not that Nvidia, Micron, or TSMC are poor investment choices right now. It's simply that those businesses might be reaching levels of maturity, whereas CoreWeave's model could be in the early phases of exponential expansion.

Is CoreWeave stock a good buy right now?

The chart below illustrates how CoreWeave's price-to-sales (P/S) ratio has progressed since its initial public offering (IPO) earlier this year.

CRWV PS Ratio Chart

CRWV PS Ratio data by YCharts

There are a couple of big takeaways from this chart. First, it's clear that CoreWeave has experienced notable valuation expansion. In my view, outsize momentum is propelling CoreWeave stock right now -- and buying in the wake of its recent climb could leave you as an unsuspecting bag holder.

In addition, CoreWeave's P/S multiple is almost fourfold that of Oracle -- which also provides core data center infrastructure services. Oracle is a mature, profitable business, unlike CoreWeave's high-cash-burn operation.

While I understand the thesis behind CoreWeave's value proposition in the AI landscape, I think the stock is overbought right now. I would pass on investing at its current valuation, but would keep tabs on the company and its growth prospects.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $668,538!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $869,841!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 789% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Adam Spatacco has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Intel, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

CoreWeave Stock Is Sinking Today -- Here's What Investors Need To Know

Shares of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) are falling on Thursday, down 16.2% as of 2:13 p.m. ET. The large drop comes as the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) fell by 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively.

CoreWeave stock's sharp drop isn't really being driven by specific news from today; rather, it's a retreat from the stock's recent massive run-up. The stock was up nearly 50% this week before today's fall after the company announced several catalysts.

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CoreWeave inks a key deal

CoreWeave, which provides cloud computing services to artificial intelligence (AI) companies like Nvidia and Microsoft, announced earlier this week that it has entered into a deal with Applied Digital to lease 250 megawatts of computing power for the next 15 years. The deal greatly expands CoreWeave's total capacity and ability to serve its customers.

CoreWeave appoints a new executive

On Wednesday, the company announced it has appointed Ernie Rogers as chief architect of strategic financing. Rogers will help CoreWeave continue to finance its rapid expansion. Michael Intrator, co-founder and CEO, explained in a statement that his "deep understanding of our business makes him uniquely qualified to help drive our next phase of growth."

There are reasons to be cautious

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Image source: Getty Images.

CoreWeave's growth has been impressive, but I'm not sold on the stock. The company is highly leveraged and, with the recent appointment of Rogers, appears to be looking to add to this debt. This makes the company highly vulnerable to any disruptions in its growth.

This would already be cause for concern, but considering that CoreWeave's revenue is entirely dependent on just a handful of companies, the risk is greater. After all, its largest client, Microsoft, is a cloud provider itself. It's more than possible that CoreWeave sees a major disruption in sales that could handicap the company as it grows. Therefore, I would avoid CoreWeave stock.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $668,538!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $869,841!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 789% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Why Applied Digital Stock Rallied 50% on Monday

In today's video, I discuss recent updates affecting Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) and CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV). To learn more, check out the short video, consider subscribing, and click the special offer link below.

*Stock prices used were the market prices of June 2, 2025. The video was published on June 2, 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Should you invest $1,000 in Applied Digital right now?

Before you buy stock in Applied Digital, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Applied Digital wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $657,385!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $842,015!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 987% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

Jose Najarro has positions in CoreWeave. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Jose Najarro is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through their link they will earn some extra money that supports their channel. Their opinions remain their own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

Why Shares of Nvidia-Backed CoreWeave Have Blasted 39% Higher This Week

Surging U.S. Treasury yields may be pressuring the broader market, but they aren't slowing down the artificial intelligence (AI) data center company CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV). Since last Friday, the stock has blasted roughly 39% higher, as of 11:41 a.m. ET Thursday.

Having a big week

CoreWeave is having a huge week, due to several big announcements. On Wednesday, shares surged after the Nvidia-backed company announced a $2 billion debt offering that matures in June 2023, with the notes yielding 9.25%. The raise came in half a billion dollars higher than expected and was reportedly five times oversubscribed, according to Barron's.

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Image source: Getty Images.

Also on Wednesday, Citigroup analyst Tyler Radke maintained a neutral, high-risk rating on the stock, but more than doubled his price target from $43 to $94. Radke cited the company's first-quarter earnings report last week, showing a continuation of strong AI demand.

Radke said in his research note:

Overall, we think the print reinforces CoreWeave's high-growth status, especially with recent $4B OpenAI expansion deal, and likely assuages investor concerns around AI capex/infrastructure slowing. Shares have gone vertical ... While we'd argue a portion of the rerating is justified, given strong Azure/hyperscaler numbers and capex... we'd like to see more progress on profitability and more customer diversification.

Keep an eye on valuation

Just a few months ago, many investors saw CoreWeave's highly anticipated IPO as a failure because it was priced much lower than management had hoped. Since then, the stock is up 176% and trades at over a $55 billion market cap.

While CoreWeave should be a big beneficiary of continued AI success, remember that the company is not yet profitable. For this reason, I'd recommend investors start small and then dollar-cost average into a position over time because the stock could be susceptible to big moves in both directions.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

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Why Shares of Coreweave Are Rising Today

Shares of artificial intelligence infrastructure company CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) were trading roughly 7% higher, as of 11:05 a.m. ET today. The stock rose along with the broader market, which surged due to positive macro and tariff-related news. It also comes after numerous analysts recently issued bullish ratings on the company.

Wall Street likes what they see

At least a dozen analysts kicked off coverage of CoreWeave yesterday, with seven assigning buy or equivalent ratings and five saying hold. The company runs data centers with Nvidia's graphics processing units, specifically for companies looking to run AI applications without having to build out the infrastructure themselves.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

CoreWeave had arguably been the most hyped initial public offering of the year, but disappointed in its debut, pricing below its target of $40 per share. AI stocks have largely disappointed this year and CoreWeave's stock has been volatile since going public. Still, many analysts see a lot of runway ahead.

"We believe we're still in the very early innings of this build-out for AI, and CoreWeave being one of the few who has been able to scale and host AI compute reliably, is positioned well to capture this opportunity," Jefferies analyst Jeffrey Thill said in his initiation report. "While there are concerns over the durability of CRWV's business model, we believe that the unrelenting appetite for AI compute minimizes the downside risks."

An interesting way to play AI

CoreWeave offers an interesting way to play the AI trade because it makes it easier for companies to delve into AI. Right now, Coreweave's customer base is heavily concentrated, which does present a risk.

But if you believe AI is the future, then CoreWeave should be a part of that future. However, the company already has a high market cap and there could be several bumps along the way in the AI journey. For this reason, I'd recommend keeping positions in CoreWeave smaller for now.

Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now?

Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $561,046!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $606,106!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 811% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 153% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 21, 2025

Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Jefferies Financial Group and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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