Nebius shares soar 22% as AI demand powers revenue beat
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Nebius, a cloud-computing company, saw its shares rise 22% following a revenue beat driven by booming AI infrastructure demand and large contract wins. The company invested heavily in GPUs and data-center expansion, signaling strong growth and confidence in AI cloud capacity.
Nebius shares surged nearly 22% on Wednesday after the cloud-computing company beat quarterly revenue estimates, driven by booming demand for AI infrastructure, larger contracts and higher prices, Reuters reported.The stock traded between $216.11 and $235.96 after opening at $226, compared with its previous close of $193.23.Nebius reported its results a day after its larger rival CoreWeave raised its annual forecasts, fuelling a broader rally in AI infrastructure stocks as both companies signalled that demand for computing capacity continued to outpace supply.Nebius reported a sixfold surge in revenue from its core AI cloud business, which took overall sales to $582.3 million in the June ended quarter, beating analysts' estimates of $572.75 million, according to LSEG data.Nebius is turning rising demand into “contracted, profitable growth,” CEO Arkady Volozh told Reuters.The Nvidia-powered AI cloud provider secured four deals averaging over $1 billion each, nearly quadrupling its total contract value, while contracts from new customers surged more than ninefold.Asked about growing competition from newcomers such as xAI, Volozh told Reuters that demand for AI computing continued to far outstrip supply, adding that Nebius could sell its entire planned capacity for 2027 at current terms.Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said that demand for AI cloud capacity remained strong despite increasing competition. However, he said the key question was whether that demand would prove diversified and sustainable beyond the AI industry.Nebius spent about $5.7 billion during the quarter, above analysts’ estimate of $4.7 billion, as it continued to invest heavily in GPUs and data-centre expansion. The company said AI cloud contracts signed during the period, with annual values exceeding $20 million per megawatt, were expected to come online late in the fourth quarter.Nebius raised its contracted power target for 2026 to 5 gigawatts from more than 4 GW and plans to add over 1 GW of capacity annually from 2027—enough to power about 750,000 US homes. It expects more than $9 billion in customer prepayments this year and has secured over $40 billion in customer commitments.(Disclaimer: This article is based on inputs from agencies. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)