Piper Sandler has initiated coverage of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS), assigning CoreWeave an Overweight rating while placing Nebius at Neutral.
The firm set a price target of $151 for CoreWeave, reflecting confidence in the company’s position within the rapidly expanding AI cloud infrastructure market.
Nebius received a price target of $224 alongside its Neutral rating, as analysts weighed the company’s growth potential against near-term execution challenges.
Both companies are positioned to benefit from sustained and accelerating enterprise spending on artificial intelligence computing capacity, according to Piper Sandler.
The firm pointed to each company’s relationships with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) as a key competitive advantage, alongside infrastructure and software designed to deliver lower-cost services than traditional cloud providers.
Piper Sandler identified CoreWeave’s execution on large customer agreements as a critical factor as the company continues expanding its infrastructure footprint.
Nebius faces a comparable challenge, needing to carefully manage investment levels while simultaneously building capacity to meet rising AI workloads from clients.
The firm flagged financing requirements and customer concentration as notable risks applicable to both CoreWeave and Nebius at this stage of their development.
Despite shared risks, Piper Sandler said CoreWeave offers a more favorable risk-reward profile at current levels, giving it the edge over Nebius in the firm’s initial assessment.
Investors will also be watching Nebius’ Vineland data center closely, which Piper Sandler identified as an important near-term execution test for the company.
The initiation of coverage reflects growing analyst interest in the emerging class of AI-native cloud providers that are challenging established hyperscalers on both price and performance.
CoreWeave and Nebius represent a new generation of infrastructure businesses built specifically around GPU-intensive workloads, setting them apart from more traditional cloud competitors in the space.
