The term ‘neocloud’ now encompasses five companies with markedly different business models. CoreWeave and Nebius are publicly traded entities that release quarterly results and file with the SEC (CoreWeave via Form 10-Q, Nebius as a foreign private issuer on Form 6-K). Lambda and Crusoe remain private, inching toward IPOs. Groq has operated GroqCloud on its LPU architecture since 2024; after licensing that technology to NVIDIA in December 2025, the independent Groq pivoted entirely to inference-cloud infrastructure. This article compares them on the factors that truly matter to buyers: published pricing, deployed and contracted power, hardware roadmap, contract structure, and independent quality ratings.
TL;DR
- CoreWeave is the only Platinum-rated GPU cloud in SemiAnalysis ClusterMAX 2.0 and commands premium list prices on H100, H200, and B200.
- Nebius is the sole provider here publishing B300 on-demand pricing; Lambda offers the lowest B200 on-demand rate.
- Lambda still posts the cheapest on-demand B200 at $6.69/GPU-hour, yet lacks a spot tier.
- Crusoe is the only provider with AMD MI300X/MI355X on its rate card.
- Groq is now an NVIDIA Cloud Partner and plans to integrate NVIDIA GPU capacity alongside its LPU inference cloud.
Provider Snapshot (as of August 21, 2026)
Key financial and operational metrics:
- CoreWeave: Q2 revenue $2.575B, up 112% YoY; first Vera Rubin NVL72 bring-up.
- Nebius: AI cloud ARR of $3.0B; $5.0B converts priced on August 19.
- Lambda: B200 on-demand at $6.69/hr, the lowest published rate; Michel Combes appointed CEO in May 2026.
- Crusoe: 4.9 GW contracted with a 40 GW+ pipeline; sole AMD MI300X/MI355X provider on rate cards.
- Groq: 13 data centers, 54 MW currently, targeting 200+ MW by 2027; raised $350M Series A at $3.5B on August 17.
Ranking Rationale
Ranking is based on a composite score of published pricing competitiveness, contracted power scale, hardware diversity, contract flexibility, and third-party quality ratings. CoreWeave leads on quality and scale; Nebius excels in pricing transparency; Lambda offers the best entry-level rates; Crusoe leads in alternative hardware options; Groq focuses on inference efficiency.
Conclusion
Choosing a neocloud depends on your workload priorities—whether you need premium performance (CoreWeave), cost-efficient scaling (Nebius or Lambda), heterogeneous hardware (Crusoe), or specialized inference speed (Groq). With 2026 bringing increased transparency in pricing and power contracts, buyers have more data than ever to make informed decisions.
via MarkTechPost