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World desk4 min

What Is Nebius, and How Does Its AI Cloud Business Work?

Nebius is an AI cloud provider that combines GPU compute with storage, networking, and software. Here is how its contracts, revenue model, growth, and infrastructure risks work.
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Nebius is an AI-focused cloud provider and the central business of Nebius Group N.V., an Amsterdam-headquartered company listed on Nasdaq. It sells GPU computing capacity alongside storage, networking, managed services, and software for building and running AI workloads. Customers pay for usage or reserve capacity under contracts. Nebius is not a chip maker or an AI model vendor; it operates infrastructure and cloud services for organizations that use AI.

What Nebius includes

“Nebius” can refer either to the AI cloud business or, more broadly, to its parent company, Nebius Group N.V. The group also includes Avride and TripleTen as separate businesses and holds equity stakes in ClickHouse and Toloka. Those activities are distinct from Nebius AI Cloud. The group’s annual report describes its structure and business lines in more detail: Nebius Group’s 2025 annual report.

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How Nebius AI Cloud works

Nebius provides infrastructure and software for workloads across the AI lifecycle, from model development and training to deployment and inference. Its offering combines AI-optimized GPU clusters with storage, networking, managed services, and development tools. In practical terms, customers use Nebius’s cloud environment to access computing resources and supporting services rather than buying and operating all of that infrastructure themselves.

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The company says it builds hardware and software in-house. That does not make it a GPU manufacturer: the service is cloud infrastructure and associated software, delivered to customers over the cloud.

How Nebius earns revenue

Nebius earns revenue by providing cloud services under customer contracts. Its two broad commercial approaches are pay-as-you-go usage and fixed agreements reserving capacity. Usage-based arrangements let customers pay for resources as they consume them; reservations commit capacity for a specified period and can support the provider’s planning for infrastructure deployment. Contract terms and customer-specific details vary.

Large capacity agreements can provide a basis for financing data-center expansion, but a contract is not proof that capacity has already been deployed, fully utilized, or converted into a particular level of profit or cash flow.

Scale and recent reported results

Nebius AI Cloud revenue grew from $68.3 million in 2024 to $480.3 million in 2025, an increase of $412.0 million, or 603%, according to the company’s 2025 annual report. These figures are for the AI cloud business, not total group revenue.

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For the quarter ended June 30, 2026, Nebius Group reported $582 million in group revenue, up 454% year over year. In the same quarter, the company reported a 50% adjusted EBITDA margin for its AI cloud segment. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure; it is not net income or cash flow. The company also said production inference workloads in its Token Factory increased more than threefold during the quarter. See the company’s Q2 2026 shareholder materials and Q2 2026 financial results.

Nebius said four AI cloud deals announced in Q2 2026 averaged more than $1 billion in total contract value each and more than $20 million per megawatt in yield. The company also reported that 70% of the deals included prepayments covering 50–60% of associated capital expenditure. These are company-reported metrics for those deals, including future capacity and estimates; they are not guaranteed future economics for every contract or evidence of audited returns.

Contracts and infrastructure partnerships

Microsoft capacity agreement

In September 2025, Nebius announced a multiyear agreement to deliver dedicated AI capacity to Microsoft from its Vineland, New Jersey data center, with delivery expected to begin in late 2025. The announcement said deal cash flow and debt secured against the contract would help fund the associated capital expenditure. The announcement does not, by itself, establish current utilization, the contract’s value, or its realized financial contribution. Details are in the Microsoft agreement announcement.

NVIDIA partnership

In March 2026, Nebius and NVIDIA announced a strategic partnership covering AI factory design, inference software and models, infrastructure deployment, and fleet management. NVIDIA announced a $2 billion investment. The partners also described deployment of more than 5 gigawatts by 2030 as an ambition; it is a forward-looking target, not capacity already delivered. See the partnership announcement.

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Infrastructure demands and business risks

Running an AI cloud requires substantial investment and reliable access to facilities and electricity. Nebius identifies data-center operations, electricity and utilities, maintenance, personnel, and depreciation of servers and networking equipment among its costs. Its ability to grow therefore depends not only on demand for AI computing but also on building facilities, securing power, financing equipment, and delivering contracted capacity.

  • Buildout and power: Delays in data-center construction or limited electricity availability can constrain when promised capacity becomes usable.
  • Contract execution and concentration: Large reserved-capacity agreements can support investment plans, while creating delivery obligations and potential reliance on a smaller number of major customers.
  • Financing and operating costs: Infrastructure investment, debt, energy costs, maintenance, and depreciation affect the economics of expansion.
  • Competition and technology: Cloud pricing, customer demand, and the hardware and software needed for AI workloads can change as the market develops.

The company reported an average portfolio power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.25 for 2025 and cited a global industry average of 1.54. These figures come from Nebius’s sustainability announcement, which reports 2025 data; the comparison is company-reported and is not independently verified here. PUE is a data-center energy-efficiency metric, so it does not alone establish the overall environmental impact or cost of a cloud service. See the 2025 Sustainability Report announcement.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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