Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS | NBIS Price Prediction) and CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) both filed Q2 2026 earnings this week on the same story: AI compute demand is outrunning supply. Nebius jumped 34.14% on filing day. CoreWeave climbed 19.28%. The businesses behind those moves look nothing alike.
Hypergrowth Sprint Meets Hyperscaler Scale
Nebius pushed revenue to $582.3 million, up 454% year over year, with the AI Cloud segment contributing $574.9 million, or 98.7% of the total. Cost of revenue dropped to 23% from 29%, and adjusted EBITDA for that segment swung to $285.7 million from $9.5 million. That is genuine operating leverage.
CoreWeave operates at a different scale. Revenue reached $2.575 billion, up 112.32%, with adjusted EBITDA of $1.51 billion at a 59% margin. Active power expanded by nearly 500 MW to 1.5 GW. CEO Michael Intrator called it “an important inflection point” where scale “began to translate into expanding operating leverage.”
| Driver | Nebius | CoreWeave |
| Q2 revenue | $582.3M | $2.575B |
| Backlog | $37.49B RPO | ~$104B |
| Contracted power | >4 GW target YE 2026 | ~3.7 GW |
Full Stack Builder vs. Pure Play GPU Cloud
Nebius is assembling a portfolio: the core cloud, plus TripleTen, Avride, Toloka, Tavily, ClarifAI, and Eigen AI Labs. Founder Arkady Volozh described the plan as building “the infrastructure, tools, and capabilities for where it will be tomorrow.” Convertible debt carries at $8.5 billion but has a fair value of $20.8 billion, a dilution overhang.
CoreWeave goes deeper on GPU cloud. It became the first to validate the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72, launched CoreWeave Interconnect with Google Cloud, and added Bentley Systems, Caterpillar, Grammarly, Isomorphic Labs, and Sunday Robotics. The balance sheet carries $72.05 billion in liabilities and $640 million of quarterly interest expense.
The Next Test Is Turning Backlog Into Cash
For Nebius, watch whether management hits reaffirmed guidance of $3.0 billion to $3.4 billion in FY2026 revenue and $7 billion to $9 billion in ARR. Customer concentration is the pressure point: the top three customers were 59% of Q2 revenue. For CoreWeave, monitor whether the $25 billion in new commitments added early Q3 converts to booked revenue faster than interest expense grows. Free cash flow ran to -$5.74 billion this quarter.
Why I Lean Slightly Toward Nebius, With Caveats
If I had to pick one today, I would tilt toward Nebius. Margins are widening faster, the balance sheet holds $8.04 billion in cash, and Reddit sentiment stayed bullish across the 3-day post-earnings window. A forward P/E of 71 and convertible dilution keep me cautious. CoreWeave suits someone comfortable with leverage who trusts that a $104 billion backlog and NASDAQ-100 inclusion outweigh the debt load. Analysts see more room there, with a consensus target of $138.37. A clean quarter of positive free cash flow would be a meaningful signal to watch.
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