Nvidia (NVDA +2.39%) has been one of the best plays on the booming artificial intelligence (AI) market over the past decade. From fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2025 (which ended this January), its revenue grew at a CAGR of 39% as its EPS increased at a CAGR of 58%.
Most of that growth was driven by its brisk sales of data center GPUs, which are used to process complex machine learning and AI tasks. Nvidia now controls more than 90% of the global discrete GPU market, according to JPR, and all of the world's top AI companies -- including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms -- use its data center chips. That's why Nvidia's stock soared 31,430% over the past 10 years and turned it into the world's most valuable company with a market cap of $4.26 trillion.
Image source: Getty Images.
But even after that millionaire-making run, Nvidia still doesn't seem that expensive at 39 times its forward adjusted earnings. From fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2028, analysts expect its revenue and EPS to grow at a CAGR of 33% and 31%, respectively, as the AI market keeps expanding.
So for now, Nvidia remains one of the simplest and safest ways to invest in the AI market. But could CoreWeave (CRWV +4.21%), a hypergrowth AI stock that has a much smaller cap of $45 billion, deliver similarly life-changing gains as Nvidia in the future?
NASDAQ: CRWV
Key Data Points
How CoreWeave pivoted from crypto to AI
CoreWeave was founded in 2017 as a cryptocurrency miner that bought a lot of GPUs to mine Ether. But after the crypto market crashed in 2018, it stopped mining Ether and repurposed its GPUs to process AI tasks. In 2022, it spent roughly $100 million to install Nvidia's H100 GPUs in its own data centers. It then used those GPUs as collateral to secure additional funding to open more data centers and buy more GPUs. That bold strategy impressed Nvidia, which invested $100 million in CoreWeave in 2023.
Nvidia invested another $250 million in CoreWeave's IPO this March. It increased that stake over the following months and now holds 24.28 million shares, which are worth roughly $2.2 billion today. That makes it Nvidia's biggest investment in a single stock.
Unlike bigger cloud infrastructure platforms -- which provide a wide range of computing and storage services -- CoreWeave only provides cloud-based GPUs for processing AI tasks. It claims that streamlined approach allows it to process AI tasks roughly 35 times faster and 80% cheaper than traditional cloud infrastructure platforms.
How fast is CoreWeave growing?
CoreWeave now operates 33 data centers in the U.S. and Europe. That's up from 15 centers at the end of 2024, 14 centers in 2023, and just three centers in 2022. Its top customers include OpenAI, Meta, and IBM. Its revenue surged from $16 million in 2022 to $1.92 billion in 2024, then grew another 276% year over year to $2.19 billion in the first half of 2025. Analysts expect its revenue to rise 173% to $5.25 billion for the full year.
But as it grew, its net losses widened from $31 million in 2022 to $863 million in 2024. Its operating expenses skyrocketed as it opened more data centers, purchased more GPUs from Nvidia, and paid higher energy bills. Its net loss widened again to $661 million in the first half of 2025, and analysts expect a net loss of $1.1 billion for the year.
In addition, CoreWeave has been funding most of its expansion with debt, which caused its annual interest payments to surge from $28 million in 2022 to $784 million in 2024. Its planned $9 billion acquisition of Core Scientific (CORZ -1.62%) -- which will be entirely funded in newly issued shares -- could still drive those debt levels even higher as it integrates the company's 10 data centers into its platform.
At the end of the first half of 2025, CoreWeave still had $1.15 billion in cash and equivalents, but it was shouldering $22.42 billion in total liabilities. So even though it's clearly benefiting from the AI boom, it hasn't proven its business model is sustainable yet. With an enterprise value of $65.5 billion, it isn't a bargain at 12.5 times this year's sales.
Could CoreWeave be the "next Nvidia"?
CoreWeave has plenty of growth potential, but I wouldn't call it the "next Nvidia." It's expanding rapidly and enjoys an early mover's advantage in its niche market, but bigger cloud competitors like Amazon's AWS could eventually roll out their own cloud-based GPUs at lower prices. It also hasn't monopolized a critical link of the AI market in the same way as Nvidia has with its proprietary chips. Those weaknesses could prevent it from ever breaking even.
A lot of its future sales growth has already been baked into its valuations -- so a few quarters of slowing growth could easily derail the bullish thesis and bring in the bears. So for now, CoreWeave remains a good speculative growth play on the AI market, but it probably won't come close to replicating Nvidia's massive gains.
