Nebius Group, the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure powerhouse, reported a staggering increase of nearly 700% in first-quarter revenue, signaling its rapid ascent in the global race to power generative AI.
The company’s stock jumped 13% in premarket trading following the release of results on Wednesday that significantly outpaced Wall Street expectations.
For the quarter that ended March 31, Nebius reported revenue of $399 million, a massive leap from the $50.9 million recorded during the same period last year. This performance beat analyst consensus of $371.4 million.
To sustain momentum, Nebius is aggressively expanding its physical footprint. The company announced plans for a new AI factory in Pennsylvania, having secured land and up to 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of power. This follows the recent groundbreaking of a separate gigawatt-scale campus in Independence, Mo. These U.S. projects are central to Nebius’ ambitious goal of deploying more than 5 GW of capacity by 2030.
Nebius, which emerged from the Amsterdam-based holding company that sold the Russian operations of internet giant Yandex for $5.2 billion in 2024, has rapidly reinvented itself. It now operates as a specialized cloud vendor, providing GPU-based computing and storage for AI developers, a model similar to competitors such as CoreWeave.
Fueling this transition is a partnership with NVIDIA Corp., which has committed a $2 billion investment. This collaboration grants Nebius early access to next-generation hardware and assists in the design of high-efficiency data centers. Further cementing its market position, Nebius recently secured a landmark five-year contract with Meta Platforms Inc., valued at up to $27 billion, to supply massive computing capacity.
The company’s rapid scaling comes at a steep price. Quarterly spending hit $2.5 billion due to massive chip acquisitions and data center construction. While debt levels have risen, analysts note that the company’s balance sheet remains robust, supported by $9 billion in cash and a debt leverage ratio below 1x.
Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh noted that “unprecedented demand” currently exceeds the company’s capacity. This backlog grew by 250% in the first quarter alone, reaching 4 GW of contracted capacity.
“All of the neoclouds will announce build-out plans over the coming months. I expect to see a raft of data centers coming online in the quarters and years ahead as AI providers try to service the huge demand for AI inference,” said Steven Dickens, CEO of HyperFRAME Research. “This announcement is part of a multiyear trend that will manifest itself in build-out and power consumption on a scale we have never seen before.”
Institutional investors have taken note, with ownership rising to 20% as the market reacts to improved gross margins and narrowed non-GAAP losses. While technical indicators suggest the stock may be entering overbought territory, the prevailing sentiment among analysts remains a moderate buy.
With a planned $20 billion in capital expenditure this year, Nebius is positioning itself as a critical, de-risked pillar of the global AI stack.
