Nebius Group Deep Dive, Part Two: Competition and Valuation in the AI Cloud Race
A closer look at Nebius versus CoreWeave, AWS, GCP, and Azure, and whether NBIS stock is priced for perfection or still worth owning.
In Part One, I explored Nebius’s origins, side businesses, and explosive growth. Now it’s time to ask two big questions:
How does Nebius stack up against competitors like CoreWeave, AWS, Azure, and GCP? And is the stock fairly valued, overvalued, or still attractive after its run-up?
1. The Competitive Landscape
Nebius vs CoreWeave
CoreWeave is the closest peer. It went public in March 2025 at $40 a share, giving it a $23 billion valuation. Since then the stock has almost doubled to around $90, though trading has been volatile because insiders still hold about 90+ percent of the float. Microsoft is by far its largest client, making up more than 60 percent of revenue in 2024. That concentration shows both strength and fragility.
Nebius, by contrast, is earlier in its revenue curve but has a more diversified customer base. They too, recently signed a major deal with Microsoft ($1bn in total). It is rooted in Europe, with a growing footprint in the United States, and it carries some additional optionality through its stakes in ClickHouse and Toloka as well as side businesses like Avride and TripleTen. Investors effectively have two ways to play the GPU cloud theme now, but Nebius gives public markets earlier-stage exposure.
Nebius vs the Hyperscalers
AWS, Azure, and GCP dominate cloud computing. They enjoy scale, custom silicon, and entrenched enterprise relationships. But Nebius has carved out a different niche.
It is focused only on AI workloads. It can deploy capacity quickly, often faster than the big clouds, and it positions itself as a more approachable partner for startups that may not get attention from the hyperscalers. Most importantly, with GPUs still scarce, Nebius wins business simply by being able to deliver capacity on time.
The right way to think about Nebius is not as a replacement for the hyperscalers, but as a specialist. Capturing even a small slice of the exploding AI infrastructure market could make it a multi-billion-dollar business.
2. The Stock: Overvalued or Opportunity?
Nebius is valued at about $16 billion when I started writing this article, but today it is close to $22 billion. In the second quarter, it reported $105 million in revenue, up more than 600 percent year on year and doubling from the prior quarter. Management has raised its forecast for annual recurring revenue to between $900 million and $1.1 billion by the end of 2025 and just weeks later they announced a deal with Microsoft worth up to $19 billion dollars over 5 years. Given that I still don’t know how this deal will translate to revenues it is somewhat difficult to say at what p/s ratio they are trading. But back of the envelope calculation would mean a contracted revenue of $1.1bn + $2bn per year in 2026, meaning a ~7 forward p/s ratio.
How does that compare? CoreWeave, with a $35 billion market cap and around $3.1 billion in estimated 2025 revenue, trades at closer to 11 times sales. Hyperscalers’ cloud divisions sit around 8–10 times. High-growth SaaS names like Snowflake or Datadog are generally between 15 and 25 times sales, but with growth rates far below Nebius’s 600 percent.
The bull case for NBIS is straightforward. If Nebius continues scaling and reaches three to five billion dollars in revenue within a few years, today’s multiple compresses quickly and the upside remains large. It also benefits from scarcity: there are only two public pure plays in AI infrastructure right now, Nebius and CoreWeave. Add in the optionality of its side businesses and stakes, and there is room for pleasant surprises.
The bear case is just as clear. Execution risk is high. Nebius is building data centers, securing GPUs, and onboarding customers all at hyperspeed. Competition will only intensify, whether from CoreWeave or from hyperscalers that could decide to cut prices and target startups more aggressively.
So where does that leave us? Nebius is not priced for perfection, but they need to do really well. For long-term investors who believe in the AI infrastructure boom, NBIS remains one of the cleanest ways to play it.
👉 In Part Three, I’ll look closer at Nebius’s side bets: Avride, Toloka, ClickHouse, and TripleTen — to see whether they are hidden gems or distractions.