Neoclouds are on cloud nine

There’s plenty to watch in the sky today, from a solar eclipse to a meteor shower. Wall Street, meanwhile, is focused on the clouds.

CoreWeave, one of the biggest names in the “neocloud” industry, reported better-than-expected second-quarter results as revenue jumped 112% year over year to $2.58 billion. The company also raised its full-year revenue outlook, with the midpoint of guidance implying 158% year over year growth.

Shares surged 19.96% this afternoon, extending a 30.48% gain this year before today.

Wait, what’s a neocloud? Neoclouds are cloud-computing companies that make money by renting out the massive amounts of computing power needed to train and run AI models. CoreWeave’s customers include Meta, Anthropic, and Caterpillar, all of which it added this year. This quarter, it also signed companies like Bentley Systems, Grammarly, and Isomorphic Labs as it works to diversify its customer base.

Nebius joins the frenzy

But CoreWeave isn’t the only company hitting stratospheric numbers.

Rival Nebius also blew past expectations. Second-quarter revenue reached $582 million—up 454% year over year—as sales from its core AI cloud business rose nearly sixfold from a year ago.

The strong results were driven by a surge in customer demand: Nebius closed four landmark deals last quarter, each with an average value of over $1 billion. Better yet, about 70% of Nebius’s second-quarter deals included upfront prepayments, and the company expects to collect more than $9 billion in customer prepayments this year.

Nebius has been somewhat of a Wall Street favorite this year. Shares were already up 176% in 2026 before today’s report, and climbed another 33.07% this afternoon.

Big builds, big bills

Investors are celebrating today, but both neoclouds remain unprofitable as they spend aggressively to expand their AI infrastructure and capitalize on strong demand.

CoreWeave increased its capex to between $35 billion and $39 billion this year, nearly three times its projected revenue of $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion. Even with an established customer base and more than $100 billion in its backlog, that’s a pretty hefty bill.

Nebius, meanwhile, spent about $5.7 billion on capex in the second quarter, but it’s increasingly getting customers to help pay for it. Upfront prepayments now cover roughly 50% to 60% of the associated capex, giving the company cash to expand without relying as heavily on outside financing.

As of right now, though, demand is so strong that this isn’t really a zero-sum game. Nebius says it could sell essentially all of its planned 2027 capacity today, while CoreWeave added another $25 billion of customer commitments just in the first weeks of Q3.

For today, at least, neoclouds are enjoying clear skies.—SY