CoreWeave (CRWV) shares charged higher on Wednesday as the “AI Neocloud” specialist secured a major deal with one of the industry’s fastest-growing search disruptors — Perplexity AI. This multi-year strategic partnership will see Perplexity utilize CRWV’s dedicated GB200 NVL72 clusters to scale its Sonar and Search API ecosystem.
In return, the Livingston-headquartered firm will integrate Perplexity’s Enterprise Max across its operations. Despite today’s gains, CoreWeave stock remains down more than 25% versus its year-to-date high.
The Perplexity news is constructive, as it shifts the narrative for CRWV stock from capital-intensive buildouts to high-margin execution.
Perplexity currently answers more than 1.5 billion questions monthly, and by choosing CoreWeave over traditional hyperscalers, the startup is validating the superior latency and reliability of its purpose-built AI infrastructure for real-world production.
Investors cheered the announcement as it focuses particularly on AI inference, which many believe will eventually become a larger market than model training.
By securing a flagship inference customer, CoreWeave is “diversifying” its revenue stream beyond experimental labs and into daily consumer application, opening the door for further gains in 2026.
Long-term investors should consider investing in CRWV for the strength of its revenue backlog as well. In late February, the company reported a remarkable $67 billion backlog.
Meanwhile, its recent $5 billion agreement with Meta Platforms (META) further solidifies its role as a primary provider of the Nvidia (NVDA) GB300-powered infrastructure.
With a 3.1-gigawatt power pipeline, and a clear path to $30 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR), CoreWeave is strongly positioned for long-term dominance in GPU-as-a-Service.
This is why options pricing currently signals a rally in CoreWeave shares to north of $100 by mid-May, which means the AI stock could gain nearly 30% within the next three months.
Wall Street analysts also remain bullish on CRWV shares, especially after management guided for a 140% year-on-year increase in revenue to more than $12 billion this year.
