Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ: NBIS), a European AI neocloud provider, posted a staggering 229.9% share price gain in the first half of 2026, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The company outperformed all other AI neocloud competitors during the period, driven by strong execution, major contract wins, strategic acquisitions, and a landmark investment from Nvidia.
Nebius was formed in 2024 from the remnants of Dutch holding company Yandex N.V., a business that had operated primarily as a Russian internet company before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sweeping sanctions.
Following the sanctions, Yandex shed its Russian assets and relaunched as Nebius, an AI cloud services company, beginning trading on the Nasdaq on October 21, 2024.
The company provides cloud computing and GPU capacity for running and training AI workloads, operating seven data centers across North America, Europe, and Israel by the end of 2025, with plans to reach 16 facilities by year-end.
Nebius secured a series of high-profile contract wins in the first half, beginning with a selection by the Israel Innovation Authority to build the country’s national supercomputer through a competitive bidding process.
The company then landed a $27 billion, multi-year compute deal with Meta Platforms in March, a five-year agreement beginning in 2027 that dramatically expanded an existing but much smaller customer relationship.
Nvidia agreed to invest $2 billion into Nebius, granting the company early access to the latest Nvidia architectures and a commitment to help deploy five gigawatts of Nvidia-based capacity by 2030.
The Nvidia investment mirrored a similar $2 billion deal Nvidia had previously made with Nebius rival CoreWeave in January, and the expanded Meta deal followed shortly after the Nvidia announcement, suggesting the backing may have acted as a catalyst.
Nebius delivered a blowout first-quarter earnings report in mid-May, with revenue surging 684% year over year and adjusted EBITDA swinging from a $54 million loss to a $130 million profit.
CEO Arkady Volozh noted that demand for compute was still vastly outstripping supply, signaling continued momentum heading into the second half of the year.
To strengthen its competitive position, Nebius expanded beyond infrastructure into inference and agentic AI through acquisitions, including agentic search leader Tavily in February and inference platform Eigen AI.
Nasdaq announced it was adding Nebius to the Nasdaq-100 index, sending shares nearly 10% higher on the news.
Despite the remarkable run, analysts caution that Nebius carries a high valuation, and any meaningful shift in AI demand sentiment could expose the stock to a significant pullback.
