Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS) stock surged 14.96% in pre-market trading on March 16, 2026, following the announcement of a $27 billion, five-year AI infrastructure deal with Meta Platforms. The agreement, which exceeds Nebius’s current market cap of approximately $25 billion, includes $12 billion in guaranteed dedicated computing capacity starting in early 2027, with an additional up to $15 billion in optional capacity over the same period.
Strategic AI Infrastructure Deal
The deal marks one of the first large-scale deployments of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform, the next-generation AI chip succeeding the Blackwell architecture. This positions Nebius at the forefront of the AI infrastructure race.
The agreement is split into two parts. The first phase covers $12 billion for dedicated computing capacity that Nebius will begin delivering across multiple locations, starting from 2027. Here is where the Vera Rubin comes into action; this infrastructure will be built around the Vera Rubin clusters, designed specifically for Meta’s AI training and inference workloads.
The second phase will provide Meta the option to purchase up to $15 billion more in available compute capacity over the same five-year window. Nebius intends to sell this capacity first to a third-party customer, and Meta can buy whatever remains.
Last Wednesday, Nebius shares surged 16% following the announcement that Nvidia (NVDA) was planning to invest $2 billion in the firm as part of “a strategic partnership to develop and deploy the next generation of hyperscale cloud for the AI market”. Nebius shares have gained more than a third this year. Yesterday, during the after-hours trading, the price again surged by 0.21%, climbing to $130.12. Moreover, Nebius is also partnering with Nvidia to build a cloud for robotics and physical AI .
Hyperscalers Ramp Up AI Spending
Meta Platforms, Inc. is part of a group of hyperscalers planning huge spending as they race to build out the infrastructure to power the AI boom. The firm has reported earlier that its AI-related capital expenditure would hit between $115 billion and $135 billion this year, as part of a combined $700 billion in spending by hyperscalers, including Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft.
This huge capex comes as investors piled into the AI cloud computing sector. The U.K.-based AI data center startup Nscale announced it had raised $2 billion at a $14.6 billion valuation last week, from investors including Nvidia. Meta also inked a deal to deliver computing resources to Microsoft, worth up to $19.4 billion over five years, in September.
Furthermore, Meta has made AI its top strategic priority and has signed multibillion-dollar infrastructure agreements with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) since the start of this year, while also developing its own chips internally.
Nebius: Rising European AI Cloud Player
Nebius is a Netherlands-based firm that has emerged as a leading European player in the rapidly developing AI cloud computing space. The firm has witnessed its share price increase more than 400% since the listing in New York back in 2024, with a 330% gain last year. The company is aiming to scale its power capacity to 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt by the end of this year, with a target of $7 billion in annual recurring revenue by year-end.
The firm is among a group of newer ‘necloud’ operators building data centers that are specifically designed to train AI models and run services such as ChatGPT. NVIDIA has increasingly emphasised and backed these companies as they compete with large providers like Alphabet’s Google and Amazon, which are building their own AI accelerators.
Bullish Analyst Outlook
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already announced that they are planning to invest up to $600 billion in the U.S. infrastructure projects by 2028. Just for this year, Meta and its largest tech competitors together are expected to spend around $650 billion on data centers and AI infrastructure. This is where Nebius is soaring.
The firm isn’t just renting out servers. It acquired an agentic search technology company, bringing approximately 700,000 developers onto the Nebius platform. The agentic AI market is projected to grow from $7 billion in 2025 to between $140 billion and $200 billion by the early 2030s. This is the main reason that, despite its high valuation and lack of profitability, analysts initiated coverage of a ‘buy’ rating, citing the growth potential and capital-efficient scaling.
