William Blair bullish on CoreWeave and Nebius as AI buildout accelerates

Investing.com -- William Blair began coverage of neocloud providers CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) with Outperform ratings in separate notes on Wednesday, saying both are well placed as the AI infrastructure buildout accelerates.

Analyst Jason Ader said CoreWeave has become a strategic supplier to many of the world's largest hyperscalers and AI labs, noting it has about $130 billion of committed backlog, and its second-quarter revenue of $2.58 billion likely exceeded all other neoclouds combined.

Ader added that CoreWeave stands apart through its AI-native architecture and proprietary software, even though rivals use the same Nvidia chips. The main debate, he said, is whether growth can deliver attractive returns given capital spending of about $37 billion this year, high debt and deeply negative free cash flow.

"Recent contract economics are encouraging, with higher pricing and contribution margins on newly signed capacity pointing to improving returns on incremental investment," Ader wrote. The stock trades at 3.1 times 2027 enterprise value to sales, against a peer median of 6.1 times.

On Nebius, Ader said the company is moving beyond renting out raw computing capacity into a full-stack AI cloud platform. Its annualized revenue run rate has grown from about $1.25 billion in 2025 to roughly $3 billion in the second quarter.

Nebius has secured long-term commitments from Microsoft and Meta and raised its contracted power target to about 5 gigawatts. Ader said its stronger balance sheet and lower debt than peers give it flexibility to fund expansion.

For both names, William Blair highlighted an attractive risk/reward.

Original Article

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