With the market hovering near its all-time highs, it might seem like a precarious time to invest in higher-growth tech stocks. After all, many of those highfliers are trading at premium valuations which could be quickly compressed in a market downturn.
However, that near-term pressure won't matter much if you plan to hold your stocks for at least another decade. If you're focused on those longer-term returns, these three breakout growth stocks might still be worth nibbling on in this frothy market: SoundHound AI (SOUN 3.16%), CoreWeave (CRWV 10.06%), and Nebius (NBIS 6.99%).
Image source: Getty Images.
SoundHound AI
SoundHound develops AI-powered audio and speech recognition tools. Its namesake app is used to identify songs with just a few seconds of recorded audio or a few hummed bars. Its Houndify platform -- which generates most of its revenue and drives most of its growth -- enables companies to develop their own voice recognition services.
NASDAQ: SOUN
Key Data Points
Houndify is a popular platform for companies which don't want to share their data with big tech companies like Microsoft or Alphabet's Google. Its growing list of customers includes automakers like Stellantis, restaurants like Chipotle, and credit card giants like Mastercard.
Over the past two years, it expanded its ecosystem by buying the AI restaurant services provider SYNQ3, the online food ordering platform Allset, the conversational AI firm Amelia, and the customer service AI company Interactions. Those acquisitions boosted its revenues and exposure to the automated restaurant service and AI chatbot markets.
From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect SoundHound's revenue to grow at a CAGR of 51% as its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) turns positive in the final year. With an enterprise value of $5.1 billion, SoundHound's stock isn't cheap at 22 times next year's sales. But if you expect AI-powered chatbots to replace more human workers over the next decade, it could grow into its premium valuations and generate even bigger gains.
CoreWeave
CoreWeave was once an Ethereum miner. But after the crypto crash of 2018, it repurposed its mining GPUs to remotely process AI tasks. It spent $100 million to upgrade its data centers with Nvidia's H100 GPUs in 2022, and it leveraged those GPUs as collateral to secure additional financing to buy more GPUs and open new data centers.
NASDAQ: CRWV
Key Data Points
At the end of 2022, CoreWeave only operated three data centers. Today, it operates 33 data centers across the U.S. and Europe. It claims its dedicated cloud-based GPUs can process AI tasks roughly 35 times and 80% cheaper than traditional cloud infrastructure platforms.
CoreWeave's business is booming as more companies run their AI applications on its cloud-based GPUs. That approach is simpler, cheaper, and more scalable than running those demanding applications on on-premise servers. That's why many of the top AI companies -- including Microsoft and OpenAI -- use CoreWeave's cloud-based services.
From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect CoreWeave's revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at a CAGR of 115% and 124%, respectively, as the AI market expands. But with an enterprise value of $61.4 billion, its stock still looks reasonably valued at less than seven times next year's sales. Its valuations might be squeezed by the near-term concerns regarding its heavy spending and rising debt, but it might be a great long-term play on the AI market over the next ten years.
Nebius
Nebius is another provider of cloud-based AI infrastructure services. But while CoreWeave mainly crunches GPU-intensive tasks, Nebius is a "full stack" AI infrastructure company which integrates managed software services into its data centers. It also provides customized AI infrastructure services for the data training, edtech, and robotics markets.
NASDAQ: NBIS
Key Data Points
Nebius is a lot smaller than CoreWeave. It only operates a single first-party data center in Finland, and it shares its other data centers through colocation deals in Missouri, France, and Iceland. It's currently building its second first-party data center in New Jersey. But from 2024 to 2027, analysts expect Nebius' revenue to grow at a CAGR of 302%. They also expect its adjusted EBITDA to turn positive in 2026 and more than triple in 2027.
Most of that growth should be driven by its new five-year, multibillion-dollar contracts with Microsoft and Meta Platforms, but it should gain even more customers as the AI market expands. To support that breakneck growth, it aims to secure up to 1 gigawatt (GW) of GPU-ready connected power by the end of 2026 -- compared to its goal of securing 220 GW in comparable capacity by the end of 2025. With an enterprise value of $26.9 billion, Nebius might seem pricey at 48 times next year's sales. But if you expect it to keep opening new data centers to meet the AI market's insatiable appetite for more computing power, it could deserve that higher valuation.
