The $100 Trillion AI Story No One Is Telling You (From Brownstone Research)

AI Infrastructure Is Exploding—Don’t Overlook CoreWeave & Nebius

A historic wave of investment is pouring into artificial intelligence (AI), creating a foundational shift in the technology sector. While the spotlight often lands on mega-cap companies, the real engine room of the AI revolution is the specialized computing infrastructure it requires. This demand has given rise to a new and powerful class of competitors.

At the center of this movement are two companies capturing intense investor interest: CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS). After entering the public markets, both have experienced high trading volumes and significant stock growth.

They operate as pure-play AI cloud providers, offering something the giants often cannot: purpose-built infrastructure explicitly designed for the massive workloads of AI. This specialization gives them a critical performance advantage and is the primary reason they are on investors' radar.

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Right now, we’re witnessing a monumental shift in the world.

The CoreWeave Strategy: Control the Power, Control the Future

CoreWeave is executing a powerful strategy focused on dominating the U.S. market by building a deeply defensible competitive advantage. The stock’s impressive performance since its March 2025 IPO clearly reflects the market’s confidence in this approach.

The company’s defining move is its pending $9 billion all-stock acquisition of Core Scientific. This is a clever strategic play to control the most critical resource in the AI industry: energy and data center capacity.

By purchasing Core Scientific’s 1.3 gigawatts of power infrastructure, CoreWeave is effectively securing its supply chain. This move reduces a significant risk that all other AI players face.

The financial benefits for stockholders are substantial. The deal is expected to eliminate more than $10 billion in future lease obligations and generate approximately $500 million in annual cost savings. 

These savings can directly boost future profits. And because the deal is structured entirely with stock, CoreWeave gains this incredible asset without adding any debt to its balance sheet.

Massive contracts with industry titans further solidified this operational control, which supports a $25.9 billion revenue backlog and offers outstanding visibility into future earnings.

Nebius Group's Blueprint for Global Growth

Nebius Group’s strategy is built on speed and aggressive international expansion. After becoming a standalone European entity, Nebius is now focused on a global expansion, and its financial results show remarkable growth. The company posted a stunning 385% year-over-year revenue increase in its latest quarterly report.

This hyper-growth is being fueled by a $2 billion capital investment plan for 2025. This capital is being deployed to rapidly build new data centers across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. While this level of spending affects near-term profits, Nebius has provided a clear path forward.

The company expects to become profitable on an operational basis, as measured by adjusted EBITDA, in the second half of 2025. Its remarkably strong balance sheet, with a current ratio of 18.0, demonstrates it has ample cash to fund this global race.

A key part of the Nebius strategy is securing a first-mover advantage. It became the first cloud provider to offer NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) latest Blackwell superchips in Europe, giving it a powerful edge in attracting the continent's most valuable clients.

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2 Competitors, 1 Goal

For investors, CoreWeave and Nebius present two distinct profiles built to capture the same AI tailwind. CoreWeave is the larger, more established player, with a market capitalization of around $68 billion and a strategy focused on vertical integration.

In contrast, Nebius is a smaller, more agile challenger valued at around $13 billion, suggesting more potential upside if it can execute its global growth plan.

This difference is reflected in analyst sentiment; CoreWeave currently holds a Hold consensus rating, which may indicate its premium valuation, while Nebius sports a Buy rating, suggesting that analysts see more room for its stock to grow.

CoreWeave’s competitive moat is built on operational control and a fortified U.S. position. In contrast, Nebius’s moat is being built on speed, technological agility, and first-mover advantages in new international markets.

Why the AI Infrastructure Race Is Just Beginning

The immense build-out of AI infrastructure is not a short-term trend but a durable, generational technology shift. Both CoreWeave and Nebius Group have positioned themselves as essential pillars of this new economy, offering two powerful but different ways to invest in this movement.

CoreWeave offers the story of a fortified market leader that has secured its supply chain for stable, long-term growth. Nebius, on the other hand, presents a compelling case for explosive, international growth driven by speed and strategic market capture.

For investors looking for exposure to the foundational layer of AI, both companies represent compelling opportunities at the forefront of innovation.

Written by Jeffrey Neal Johnson

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