CoreWeave (CRWV 2.77%) just announced that it has landed an order from AI chip giant Nvidia (NVDA 0.34%) worth at least $6.3 billion. The deal obligates Nvidia to purchase its residual unsold capacity until April 13, 2032, if it is not already purchased by CoreWeave’s customers.

CoreWeave is a longtime Nvidia client. It has purchased hundreds of thousands of GPUs, which CoreWeave rents out to clients. With the agreement, CoreWeave gains an additional revenue source.

Still, investors need to remember that the spare capacity was valuable enough to pay CoreWeave $6.3 billion, raising questions about which company will reap the greater benefit. Thus, investors should take a closer look at the deal to see whether CoreWeave or Nvidia benefits more.

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How CoreWeave benefits

CoreWeave obviously benefits from the deal since it has a guaranteed customer, and it will receive $6.3 billion in revenue over the length of the agreement.

But understanding the benefit fully means knowing what CoreWeave offers to the market. CoreWeave is an artificial intelligence (AI) based cloud computing company. It differs from cloud providers like Amazon‘s AWS as it builds servers specifically for workloads related to AI, machine learning, high-performance computing, and visual effects.

It also provides customers with the latest hardware, can handle heavy workloads at lower costs, and its per-instance pricing allows customers to manage their costs more closely. Such an approach makes CoreWeave valuable to the AI industry, but it can also leave it with unused capacity. Nvidia’s move to claim that spare capacity should therefore provide CoreWeave with some degree of stability.

Knowing that, investors should note where CoreWeave stands financially. Its $58 billion market cap is a tiny fraction of Nvidia’s $4.25 trillion size. Also, even though CoreWeave’s revenue of $2.2 billion in the first half of 2025 grew by 275% yearly, it still lost $605 million during that time. Such losses mean it will likely have to turn to capital markets to raise funds.

That need is even more acute because it pledged to spend between $20 billion and $23 billion in capital expenditures (capex) in 2025 alone. So it needs deals like the one with Nvidia so it can recoup its capex investments and eventually grow into a profitable operation.

Why Nvidia made this agreement

What may confuse investors is how the deal helps Nvidia. Even though Nvidia and CoreWeave are close partners, CoreWeave’s business requires it to purchase Nvidia’s latest AI accelerators. But investors may not understand why it chose to spend $6.3 billion to help this particular customer.

For one, Nvidia owns 24.3 million shares of CoreWeave as of June 30, about 5% of the outstanding shares. The agreement goes a long way toward solidifying Nvidia’s investment and the relationship between the two companies.

Intense demand for AI has led to a shortage of cloud capacity, so this deal also gives Nvidia a claim over a scarce commodity. Thanks to this deal, Nvidia will have to rely less on large cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft, giving it more control over its destiny in this regard.

Furthermore, having CoreWeave in a more solid financial position means CoreWeave will more likely meet the aforementioned goals on capex spending. With that, it will spend more on Nvidia GPUs, helping to boost the size and expanse of the AI ecosystem over which it has considerable control.

What may look like charity to CoreWeave will likely serve Nvidia’s interests in the end.

Does CoreWeave or Nvidia benefit more from the deal?

This deal will probably benefit both companies, although CoreWeave is likely to derive more benefit, at least from an investor perspective.

Nvidia may benefit more in an abstract sense, as it gains influence over the AI ecosystem. Nvidia’s larger size also makes it a safer investment, a welcome relief to investors who feel uncomfortable buying into a money-losing company spending heavily on capex.

Still, the Nvidia deal offers a considerable boost to CoreWeave’s top line. This makes it more likely that CoreWeave’s massive spending will ultimately deliver positive returns for the company.

CoreWeave’s much smaller size also means it can attain higher percentage growth from a much smaller base. The doubling of CoreWeave’s value takes its market cap to $116 billion. The same percentage move would take Nvidia’s market cap to $8.5 trillion, a challenging feat in a market that has yet to see a company with a $5 trillion market cap.

In the end, CoreWeave comes with higher risks than Nvidia. However, if you are willing to take a chance, CoreWeave offers greater potential for higher-percentage returns.