Nebius secures $27B AI infrastructure commitment from Meta Platforms – News

Dutch cloud computing infrastructure company Nebius Group NV has secured a colossal $27 billion deal with Meta Platforms Inc., boosting its stock by more than 14% today.

Under the terms of the deal, Nebius will provide Meta with $12 billion of dedicated artificial intelligence compute capacity across multiple data center locations, including what will be one of the world’s first large-scale deployments of Nvidia Corp.’s new Vera Rubin chips. In addition, Meta has committed to purchasing additional available compute capacity up to a total of $15 billion over the next five years.

Netherlands-based Nebius has emerged as one of Europe’s leading players in the fast-growing AI cloud infrastructure industry. It’s one of a number of so-called “neoclouds,” like CoreWeave Inc., which rents access to full-stack infrastructure for training and running large-scale AI models. It offers high-density GPU clusters plus managed services for enterprises, AI startups, researchers and other customers.

Since listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024, Nebius’s stock has soared more than 400%. The contract with Meta represents another landmark deal for the company, coming just months after it secured a $17 billion commitment from Microsoft Corp.

The deals should make it easier for Nebius to secure additional funding in future as it manages to scale its cloud compute offerings. Like CoreWeave, most of its infrastructure is funded via loans and equity agreements because it lacks the cash to pay for its hardware upfront. While some may see it as a risky bet for investors, big technology giants such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Google LLC, Microsoft and Meta have committed to spending more than $650 billion on AI infrastructure over the next year, and Nebius is trying to position itself to secure a big chunk of that money.

Nebius co-founder and Chief Executive Arkady Volozh said the deal will help to “accelerate the buildout and growth of our core AI cloud business.”

The company is not short on funds. Last week, Nvidia said it would invest $2 billion in the company. Nebius was founded in 2022 after a restructuring of the Russian search engine firm Yandex NV’s operations outside its home market.

Meta is racing to build out its AI infrastructure, and has committed to spending between $115 billion and $135 billion this year. However, it’s also reported to be considering a significant restructuring of its business operations. Yesterday, Reuters reported that the company is planning to lay off almost 20% of its global workforce, which currently numbers about 80,000. Meta refused to confirm the report, telling media via a spokesperson that Reuters’ story was “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.”

Photo: Nebius