Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) has delivered one of the most striking financial performances in the AI cloud sector, reporting first-quarter 2026 revenue of $399 million, a 684% increase compared to just $50.9 million in the same period a year ago. The results underscore the extraordinary pace at which artificial intelligence infrastructure demand is outstripping available compute capacity worldwide.
The company’s adjusted EBITDA swung firmly into positive territory, reaching $129.5 million compared to a loss of $53.7 million in Q1 2025. Net income from continuing operations reached $621.2 million, reversing a loss of $104.3 million in the prior year period. The adjusted EBITDA margin in Nebius’s core AI cloud division reached 45% for the quarter, nearly double the prior quarter’s level, reflecting significant operating leverage as the business scales.
Contracted power capacity now exceeds 3.5 gigawatts, surpassing the company’s previous year-end target of 3 GW, and Nebius has raised its guidance to over 4 GW by the close of 2026. More than 75% of that contracted capacity is now owned outright by the company rather than leased, a strategic shift that strengthens long-term margin potential.
Geographic expansion is accelerating in parallel. The company has broken ground on a gigawatt-scale AI factory site in Missouri and secured land and power capacity in Pennsylvania for an additional 1.2 GW deployment. These moves position Nebius to capture demand from hyperscalers and enterprise clients as AI workloads continue their rapid transition from pilot programs to production-scale applications.
CEO and founder Arkady Volozh said the company is experiencing demand that vastly exceeds current supply across computing, cloud infrastructure, and inference workloads. He described the shift as industries moving “beyond experimentation to real-world applications,” adding that Nebius is building not just for today’s market conditions but for where AI infrastructure will need to be tomorrow.
Three acquisitions were also announced this quarter: Tavily, Eigen AI, and Clarifai. Together, these deals are intended to extend Nebius’s capabilities beyond raw compute into managed inference and agentic AI orchestration, a higher-value layer of the AI stack where margins and strategic differentiation are likely to be more durable.
The broader context helps explain the velocity of growth. Nebius has a $27 billion long-term supply agreement with Meta and a $2 billion infrastructure partnership with Nvidia, both announced in recent months. These arrangements validate Nebius’s position as a serious full-stack AI cloud provider, competing with hyperscalers while offering more customised solutions for enterprises and AI-native companies that need dedicated infrastructure rather than shared public cloud resources.
The company’s results arrive at a moment of intense investor interest in AI infrastructure plays that offer direct exposure to the compute buildout without the multiple compression risks of consumer-facing AI applications. Nebius’s revenue trajectory, expanding capacity base, and improving unit economics suggest it is capturing a disproportionate share of the AI infrastructure wave.
