New York, Feb 28, 2026, 14:41 EST — Market closed.
Shares of Nebius Group N.V. closed down 13.05% on Friday at $91.19, after touching an intraday low near $88.40. Trading volume rose to about 22.8 million shares, up from roughly 8.3 million the prior session. 1
The timing matters. Investors are trying to work out what fast growth is worth in AI cloud infrastructure when the bill for chips, power and data centres keeps rising. For smaller “neocloud” firms — specialist providers of GPU-heavy capacity for AI workloads — capital spending is the story again.
The reset intensified after larger peer CoreWeave laid out a step-up in spending that revived margin and funding questions across the group. “Markets understand CoreWeave’s plan to accelerate spending,” AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said, but investors are also looking hard at “the long-term economics” and how these builds are financed. 2
CoreWeave has said it plans capital expenditure of $30 billion to $35 billion in 2026, up from $14.9 billion in 2025, as it pushes to scale capacity around Nvidia chips and new data centres. CEO Michael Intrator said the company decided to “build faster”, while CFO Nitin Agrawal said the spending was tied to signed customer contracts; D.A. Davidson analyst Alexander Platt said the market was “being punished for either having too little capex or too much capex.” 3
Nebius has its own spending curve. On Feb. 12 it reported capital expenditures of about $2.1 billion in the December quarter, up from about $416 million a year earlier, and said it expected to end 2026 with an annualised revenue run-rate of $7 billion to $9 billion. CEO Arkady Volozh said demand continued to outpace supply and the company was selling future capacity “well in advance.” 4
That mix — big demand, big bills — can make the stock jumpy. Investors can buy the growth story and still flinch at the funding maths.
Another pressure point is timing. These companies have to bring capacity online on schedule, with the right power and the right chips, or contracts and margins get messy.
The upside case is simpler: if demand stays tight and customers keep paying for guaranteed GPU capacity, the sector can absorb heavy spending and still grow into it.
The risk is that funding costs rise or capital markets narrow at the wrong moment. In that scenario, equity issuance or more expensive debt becomes part of the trade, not a tail risk.
With U.S. markets reopening on Monday, the next company-specific catalyst is close. Nebius said CEO Volozh and Chief Revenue Officer Marc Boroditsky will appear in a fireside chat at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media and Telecom conference on March 4, an event investors may use to test management’s read on demand, capacity and spending discipline. 5
