CoreWeave‘s stock has more than tripled since its IPO this March as it dazzled investors with its explosive growth rates. Unlike other cloud infrastructure platforms, which provide a wider range of computing and storage services, CoreWeave only uses its cloud-based graphics processing units (GPUs) to process machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tasks.
CoreWeave was once a crypto mining company, but it abandoned that market in 2018 and repurposed its GPUs to process AI tasks. It expanded its cloud platform by buying thousands of data center GPUs from Nvidia, and its number of data centers grew from just three locations in 2022 to 33 locations at the end of its latest quarter.
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CoreWeave has deployed over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs in its data centers. It claims that this scale helps it process AI tasks about 35 times faster and 80% cheaper than larger cloud infrastructure platforms. The rapid growth of the AI sector tethered more companies to CoreWeave’s platform, and its revenue surged from $16 million in 2022 to $1.9 billion in 2024. It expects its revenue to more than double to about $5 billion this year, and analysts expect that figure to soar to $11.7 billion in 2026 and $16.5 billion in 2027.
That’s a jaw-dropping growth trajectory. But CoreWeave is still unprofitable, taking on lots of debt to expand its data centers, and it isn’t cheap at 14 times this year’s sales. So while CoreWeave might have a bright future, another AI play might just outperform it and eclipse its market cap over the next two years: Snowflake (SNOW 0.40%).
What does Snowflake do?
Many large companies store their data across a broad range of computing platforms and software applications. That fragmented approach creates “silos,” which make it difficult to get everyone on the same page and make efficient data-driven decisions. Snowflake addresses those issues with its cloud-based data warehouse, which gathers all that data into a centralized location and cleans it up so it can be accessed by third-party apps.
Big cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure also offer their own integrated data warehouses, but Snowflake’s platform runs independently on top of those cloud services. That makes it a flexible choice for organizations that run their services across multiple cloud platforms. Snowflake also charges consumption-based fees, based on how much computing power clients actually need, instead of locking them into recurring subscriptions.
It will benefit from the expansion of the AI market as companies feed more data into its warehouses. Its new AI services — including its Cortex tools for analyzing large language models (LLMs), Snowpark machine learning (ML) toolkit, Snowflake Copilot for conversational queries, and Document AI for quick document searches — could drive that growth.
How fast is Snowflake growing?
Snowflake went public in 2020. Its product revenue, which accounts for most of its top line, more than doubled annually in both fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022 (which ended in January 2022). Its product revenue rose another 70% in fiscal 2023, 38% in fiscal 2024, and 30% in fiscal 2025.
Its total number of customers surged from 4,139 in fiscal 2021 to 11,159 in fiscal 2025, even though its net revenue retention rate — which gauges its year-over-year growth per existing customer — slipped from 168% in fiscal 2021 to 126% in fiscal 2025.
Snowflake’s growth is cooling off as its business matures, but it still has plenty of room to grow as the cloud and AI markets expand. From fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2028, analysts expect its revenue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24%. But it isn’t expected to turn profitable anytime soon, and it isn’t exactly a bargain at 15 times this year’s sales.
Why could Snowflake become more valuable than CoreWeave?
Snowflake is growing more slowly than CoreWeave and trading at a slightly higher price-to-sales ratio, but it could still eclipse its market cap in two years. If Snowflake matches analysts’ expectations through fiscal 2028 and still trades at 15 times forward sales, its market cap could swell from $70 billion today to $103 billion by the beginning of fiscal 2028 (February 2027). If its revenue rises another 24% at the same valuation, its market cap could grow to $128 billion by the beginning of fiscal 2029 (February 2028).
Assuming CoreWeave matches analysts’ expectations for a three-year CAGR of 106% from 2024 to 2027, grows its revenue another 30% in 2028, and still trades at 14 times forward sales, its market cap would more than quadruple from $72 billion to $301 billion over the next three years. However, it could struggle to match those lofty estimates as it faces more competition from its bigger cloud competitors.
If CoreWeave misses the mark and grows its revenue at a slower CAGR of 30% from 2024 to 2028 while trading at 14 times forward sales, its market cap would only rise 6% to $76 billion. In other words, too much explosive growth is already baked into its high-flying stock. If it fails to live up to those sky-high expectations, it could easily fall behind Snowflake, which has a more established business model and faces more grounded forecasts.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Leo Sun has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Snowflake. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
