Will Perplexity's AI Workloads Accelerate CRWV's Next Leg of Expansion?

As AI models become larger and more capable, the demand for powerful infrastructure capable of handling massive inference workloads has grown significantly. In response to this need, CoreWeave, Inc. CRWV and Perplexity inked a multi-year partnership aimed at accelerating AI innovation and scaling advanced inference workloads. By hosting Perplexity’s AI inference workloads on its infrastructure, CoreWeave gains another high-growth customer in the rapidly expanding generative AI ecosystem.

Perplexity’s AI products, which operate continuously in real-world environments, require infrastructure capable of delivering consistent performance under heavy load. This need made CoreWeave an ideal infrastructure partner. Under the agreement, Perplexity will run AI inference workloads on CoreWeave’s cloud platform. The deployment uses dedicated NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 clusters, designed for high-performance AI inference, and the infrastructure will support Perplexity’s Sonar and Search API ecosystem, which powers its AI-driven search services.

During the initial phase of deployment, Perplexity has already begun running inference workloads using CoreWeave Kubernetes Service. In addition, Perplexity is leveraging Weights & Biases (W&B) Models for managing its AI development lifecycle. However, the partnership is not one-sided. CoreWeave will also adopt Perplexity Enterprise Max across its organization to enhance productivity and improve decision-making across its teams. By combining AI-native applications with specialized AI infrastructure, the joined forces are positioning themselves at the forefront of AI innovation.

Although CRWV faces challenges related to heavy capital spending and profitability, partnerships like this strengthen its long-term growth trajectory. Combined with major contracts from large AI developers, these partnerships could accelerate CoreWeave’s expansion significantly.

CRWV vs. AI Cloud Rivals: How Competitive is the Landscape?

Nebius Group N.V. NBIS is witnessing strong demand from large accounts, hyperscalers, AI start-ups and enterprises. AI-native firms are rapidly scaling GPU usage from hundreds or thousands to tens of thousands, while enterprises are expanding AI adoption across core operations, driving larger and longer-term contracts. Its growth is further driven by the expansion of its AI cloud platform through both organic development and acquisitions, including the launch of Token Factory and Aether, as well as the acquisition of Tavily, which strengthens platform capabilities and developer engagement. Recently, it got approval to proceed with its Independence AI factory campus with up to 1.2 GW capacity.

Microsoft MSFT cloud dominance with Azure, AI leadership, diversified revenue streams and record contract backlog are tailwinds. Azure holds about 25% of the enterprise cloud market, second only to AWS, supported by deep integration with Microsoft’s enterprise software that drives high switching costs and customer stickiness. Its strength in hybrid cloud makes it a preferred choice for large organizations modernizing legacy systems. Consistent double-digit revenue growth and heavy data-center investment underpin scalable, high-margin recurring revenue as global digital transformation accelerates. For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, it expects total revenues between $80.65 billion and $81.75 billion, suggesting growth of 15% to 17%.

CRWV Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of CoreWeave have gained 98.8% in the past year against the Internet Software industry’s fall of 10.3%.

In terms of Price/Book, CRWV’s shares are trading at 7.92X, higher than the Internet Software Services industry’s 5.18X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CRWV’s earnings for the current year has remained unchanged over the past 60 days.

CRWV currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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