NEW YORK, Feb 25, 2026, 02:56 (EST)
Meta Platforms is snapping up AI chips, fueling a rally in firms powering the technology’s backbone—Nebius Group among them. Shares of Nebius climbed roughly 2.7% Tuesday. Meanwhile, AMD announced it will supply Meta with up to $60 billion in AI chips over five years; the agreement also gives Meta an option to take a stake of up to 10% in the chipmaker. 1
Spending is in focus after Meta told investors it would ramp up capital expenditures this year, chasing what CEO Mark Zuckerberg dubs “personal superintelligence.” The company has already inked capacity deals with outside cloud vendors. Reuters reported in late January that Meta projects 2026 capex between $115 billion and $135 billion. Its CFO flagged lingering capacity constraints for much of the year. 2
Nebius, the AI cloud outfit based in Amsterdam, is aiming to fill that void. In its February shareholder letter, Nebius reported annualized run-rate revenue of $1.25 billion at the close of 2025, projecting a leap to between $7 billion and $9 billion by the end of 2026. The company also bumped up its power goal for contracted capacity to over 3 gigawatts for year-end 2026. That figure refers to energy Nebius has secured for yet-to-be-built data centers. “Active power” — the actual running capacity — stood at 170 megawatts as 2025 wrapped up, according to the company. 3
A Motley Fool article linked Nebius to Meta’s infrastructure push, highlighting Nebius as an Nvidia cloud partner and noting Meta’s intention to roll out “millions” of Nvidia chips this year—some of which are expected to flow through Nvidia’s partner network. The piece also reported that Meta handed Nebius a $3 billion contract in November 2025. 4
Some bulls are making noise about it. In a Seeking Alpha piece, contributor Rick Orford called the stock a case that had “defied logic,” pointing out that investors seemed willing to shrug off both the recent revenue and earnings misses, zeroing in instead on capacity expansion and those long-term contracts. 5
Simply Wall St highlighted the stock’s sharp climb in a valuation note published Tuesday—shares notched a 6.47% gain over the past month and a total return of 177.77% for the year, based on the most recent closing price of $100.61. Still, the platform flagged that a popular narrative among its users pointed to the stock being pricey at those levels. 6
GPU access is Nebius’s product—the chips are key for training and running AI models—and the company is jostling for share in a packed sector. Back in December, Reuters noted Nebius’s pitch as Europe’s biggest “neocloud” provider, part of a new breed leasing AI-centered compute power, setting it up against U.S. hyperscalers like Amazon and Google alongside names such as CoreWeave. “For when the winter will come,” co-founder Roman Chernin said to Reuters at the time, describing the company’s preparations. 7
Nebius isn’t slowing its outlays. The company, according to Reuters on Feb. 12, is projecting $5 billion in revenue for 2026 and expects its adjusted EBITDA margin to land somewhere between 20% and 25%. That comes as it ramps up spending on data centers and chips. 8
Nebius has been building out its product lineup beyond just raw compute. Back on Feb. 10, the company announced a deal to acquire Tavily, aiming to integrate “agentic search” — essentially, tools for AI agents to extract up-to-date web information — into its cloud platform. No financial details were shared. 9
But there’s a catch. Nebius is pushing to expand just as chip supply, power constraints, and build-out schedules are in flux. On top of that, its biggest customers could yank workloads back into their own data centers or push for new terms if AI budgets tighten.
Investors are tracking the chip-and-data-center race closely, trying to gauge if the current surge holds — and if the smaller infrastructure players can turn the scramble for capacity into steady, profitable business, without losing ground on pricing or stumbling on execution.
