AI Daily: CoreWeave jumps after Microsoft results, Citi upgrade

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

BUY COREWEAVE: Shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) are on the rise on Thursday after Microsoft’s (MSFT) strong results amid record AI spending and following Citi’s upgrade of the former’s shares to Buy from Neutral with an unchanged price target of $160. The firm also closed its “90-day negative catalyst watch” on CoreWeave with the stock down 45% from its peak. Citi still expects trading volatility around the share lockup expiration on August 15, but views CoreWeave’s fundamentals as stronger post the Microsoft earnings report. It sees accelerating growth for the company in 2026 on ramping contracts and positive artificial intelligence demand.

APPLIED DIGITAL DEAL: Alongside its earnings release, Applied Digital (APLD) revealed a massive leasing deal with CoreWeave. The company said that since the end of the fourth quarter 2025, CoreWeave exercised its option for an additional 150MW, which would bring the total capacity leased by CoreWeave to 400MW and would add approximately $4B in contracted revenue, which would bring total contracted revenue to approximately $11B for the approximately 15-year lease terms.

MICROSOFT RESULTS: Microsoft reported Q4 EPS of $3.65 and Q4 revenue $76.44, both above consensus of $3.38 and $73.84B. “Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We’re innovating across the tech stack to help customers adapt and grow in this new era, and this year, Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue, up 34 percent, driven by growth across all workloads.” “We closed out the fiscal year with a strong quarter, highlighted by Microsoft Cloud revenue reaching $46.7 billion, up 27% (up 25% in constant currency) year-over-year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

META RESULTS: Meta Platforms (META) reported Q2 EPS of $7.14 and Q2 revenue $47.52B, both above consensus of $5.90 and $44.84B, respectively. Meta said, “We expect third quarter 2025 total revenue to be in the range of $47.5-50.5B. Our guidance assumes foreign currency is an approximately 1% tailwind to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates. While we are not providing an outlook for fourth quarter revenue, we would expect our year-over-year growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2025 to be slower than the third quarter as we lap a period of stronger growth in the fourth quarter of 2024.”

Further, the company said that it is also launching new Performance AI glasses with the Oakley Meta HSTNs, and that it believes AI glasses are going to be the main way people integrate superintelligence into day to day lives. It sees Meta AI become an increasingly valuable complement to content discovery engines. Zuckerberg believes AI superintelligence is “in sight.”

AI-DRIVEN GROWTH: HSBC upgraded Meta Platforms to Buy from Hold with a price target of $900, up from $610. The company reported strong Q2 results as its artificial intelligence tools and network effect supported double-digit revenue growth, the firm tells investors in a research note. HSBC believes Meta is well positioned to outpace digital advertising market growth. The company’s AI capabilities improve targeting and the quality of content, creating new growth opportunities, contends the firm. It cites higher operational forecasts and a higher valuation multiple for the upgrade.

STARGATE: Microsoft-backed OpenAI will be an anchor customer for a new data center in Norway, which will become the company’s first European site for the AI’s Stargate infrastructure effort, Mark Bergen and Vlad Savov of Bloomberg report. Nscale Global will construct the facility with funding from Aker ASA, with the initial goal of delivering 230 megawatts of capacity and plans to add an additional 290 megawatts.

FUNDING: Surge AI, a leading data-labeling startup, is in talks to raise about $1B in its first round of funding at a valuation of at least $25B, according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg’s Rachel Metz reports. The valuation, which has not previously been reported, would make Surge one of the most highly valued startups in the U.S. It would also put Surge in striking distance of rival Scale AI, which received a $14.3B investment from Meta Platforms in June valuing it at more than $29B, including the money raised, the author notes.

POWER AI FOR ENTERPRISE: Anaconda, the company committed to advancing AI with open source at scale, announced that it raised over $150M in a Series C funding round led by Insight Partners, with participation from Mubadala Capital. The company operates profitably with over $150M in annual recurring revenue as of July 2025. This news comes on the heels of Anaconda’s newly launched AI Platform as well as a recently announced partnership with Databricks, the data and AI company. As Python surpassed Java to become the most widely adopted programming language in the world, Anaconda unveiled the Anaconda AI Platform to deliver trusted software packages, development environments, and AI tools, along with simplified workflows, secure AI capabilities, and actionable insights, the company said. Looking ahead, Anaconda believes it is positioned to grow beyond package management to become a comprehensive model hub where organizations can securely access and manage all their AI building blocks, from models and datasets to libraries and dependencies, all purpose-built for Python development.