Missed AI’s “Act 1”? Act 2 Could Be 14x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn’t buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of “Act 1″—the R&D phase. “Act 2” is the global rollout. Continue »
Fast growth is easy to love and hard to value, as CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) recently showed. On Oct. 14, 2026, the stock plunged 15% even as its revenue more than doubled, with investors worried about rising debt costs.
Here’s what investors are paying for growth at five fast-growing companies, ranked by the latest quarter’s revenue growth: Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS), CoreWeave, AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP), Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD), and IREN (NASDAQ: IREN).
Let’s start with the fastest of the bunch.
Nebius tops its AI cloud peers, but investors pay a premium
In the second quarter, revenue jumped 454% year over year to $582.3 million, outpacing neocloud rivals like Applied Digital, up 322%, and CoreWeave, up 112.5%. Nebius secured major AI cloud contracts, including agreements worth more than $1 billion each, while management has been expanding compute capacity to meet demand.
But with a price-to-sales ratio (P/S) of about 46, the highest of the five, investors are paying a hefty premium for that growth, which is largely funded by cash, customer prepayments, and outside financing.
Today’s premium also rests on a long runway: management expects 5 gigawatts of contracted power by year-end and plans to add more than 1 gigawatt a year from 2027.
Nebius also faces risks around customer concentration and execution. Meanwhile, a similar company is growing fast at a more reasonable valuation.
Big AI contracts power CoreWeave’s growth, but debt is a worry
CoreWeave’s revenue jumped 112.5% year over year to around $2.6 billion, outpacing Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS in the same quarter. The company also reported a revenue backlog of $104 billion, and management is guiding to revenue between $12.4 and $13.2 billion this year.
The stock also trades at just 6.0 times sales, making it relatively cheaper despite its growth. But the major concern is funding: with $640 million in net interest expense, its growth relies heavily on debt, making its build-out riskier to fund.
However, unlike these high-growth neoclouds, another company is already seeing better profitability.
AppLovin’s AI-driven ad business is growing and profitable
The combination of strong sales growth and profitability sets AppLovin apart from the more capital-intensive AI names.
