$NEBIUS(NBIS)$ just released an EXCELLENT earnings report, sending the stock up 30%!
Here are 5️⃣ most important things you need to know:
1. Capacity guidance increased from 4GW ➡️ 5GW.
This is a 5x increase in guidance since August 2025!
The increase comes from Nebius announcing new data centers in the UK, Estonia, and Finland.
"We are raising, actually, the contracted power to 5 GW now, by the end of 2026... Our future capacity pipeline effectively makes Nebius one of just a few companies in the world able to build more than 1 GW of new capacity a year, and we plan to do so in 2027." Arkady Volozh, CEO, Q2 2026 Earnings Call
Essentially, he confirmed that they plan to add over 1GW in new capacity in 2027 and will continue doing so in the future. They are scaling significantly faster than I and others expected.
2. New Asset-Light Segment
Because the demand for AI compute is so vast, building enough data center infrastructure requires a lot of capital that is difficult for Nebius to raise. The asset-light model is meant to address this problem.
In this model, others take on full responsibility for financing, building, and owning the data centers.
These partners provide everything physical, land, buildings, power, GPUs, memory, and all equipment. Simply put, the partner takes on all the heavy capex burden, not Nebius.
In return, Nebius provides its complete AI software ecosystem!
"We provide value-added services that sit on top of our partners' infrastructure, which delivers us with high-margin revenue and requires minimum balance sheet capital. This model has the potential to unlock new capacity for us in 2027 and beyond." Arkady Volozh, CEO, Q2 2026 Earnings Call.
Most importantly, Nebius brings the customer demand, acting as the sales team.
This segment will be much more profitable.
3. Higher Customer Pricing
Rather than simply contracting away all future capacity as quickly as possible, the company is delaying deals to maximize the revenue per MW.
“Most importantly, we could sell today our entire 2027 capacity on these terms if we wanted to. We are not doing this. We see that we can achieve higher value by retaining some capacity to serve shorter-term and immediate client needs.” Arkady Volozh, CEO, Q2 2026 Earnings Call.
The company could sell all its capacity today if it wanted to, but they are choosing not to do it, as short-term agreements to smaller clients generate a better return from each MW of capacity.
Long-term contracts generated about $12M per MW in annual contract value in the company’s earlier agreements in 2026. However, deals signed in Q2 2026 are for more than $20M per MW, significantly higher than just a few months ago.
By strategically retaining a portion of their capacity for later, the company can increase the revenue per MW to above $40M per MW.
If this is not impressive enough for you, Nebius already indicates that it is getting better in Q3.
They had an auction for short-term capacity deals, where they see an opportunity for even $50M per MW. For comparison, I estimated that their $17.4B 5-year deal with Microsoft generated about $11M ARR per MW. So, these short-term deals are 5x better per MW. Additionally, 70% of these deals had pre-payments, generating about 50-60% of the capex required to serve these deals.
The demand is simply extraordinary!
4. ARR Growth
ARR grew by 598% Y/Y, 56% Q/Q to $3B!
This means that Nebius June revenues were $250M, compared to $104 in December 2025. 140% growth in monthly revenues in just 6 months.
The company reiterated its end-of-year 2026 ARR guidance of $7-9B!
This implies December 2026 revenues of $583-750M. So, Nebius expects to grow its monthly revenue by 133-200% in the next 6 months. Absolutely insane growth by the company.
5. Cash Situation
Nebius closed Q2 2026 with a strong cash balance of $8B!
This quarter the company raised cash from:
- $775M from asset-backed financing
- $2.9B from selling its stock
- $1.2B from customer pre-payments
Let’s talk about the $775M raised through its first senior secured debt facility.
The financing was secured by pledging GPUs alongside contracted cash flows from a customer, likely Microsoft. The raise was organized by the Japanese bank MUFG, but there was a lot of interest from major global banks, including Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.
This was great as Nebius established a non-dilutive method to turn GPUs into growth capital. It signals that Wall Street and institutional lenders now treat AI servers like real hard assets, comparable to aircraft or real estate, which can now be pledged as collateral.
“The $775 million facility we completed in July, ……. was backed by deployed GPUs infrastructure and contracted cash flows from an investment-grade customer. It demonstrated that even in a more volatile market, there is a strong demand to finance these contracted cash flows on attractive terms. Look, with more than $40 billion of committed backlog, we believe this is a highly scalable and repeatable financing model.“ Dado Alonso, CFO, Q2 2026 Earnings Call
Most importantly, as the CFO confirmed in the above quote, it creates a repeatable financing template!
Nebius can securitize and unlock liquidity from its pipeline of over $40B in contracted commitments from Microsoft and Meta.
Next, the company raised $2.9B from selling its stock on the market!
This means that in the last 4 quarters, the company has now raised over $6B from selling stocks directly on the market. This creates a lot of dilution, but is absolutely necessary if the company is to grow rapidly.
Earlier in the year, it filed an ATM filing with the SEC, indicating it plans to sell $6B of stock. So far in H1 2026, they have already sold $4.9B, so about $1.1B remains.
Lastly, the company collected $1.2B in customer pre-payments in Q2 2026. In fact, as of Q2 2026, Nebius has collected $6B in customer pre-payments!
Most importantly, only $979M of the deferred revenue liability is current and to be recognized in the next 12 months as revenue.
So Nebius has already received $5B in pre-payments from customers for services that will be delivered in 2027 and 2028. Again, this is extremely impressive and demonstrates how strong the demand is for their services.
Which company collects payments from customers more than a year before delivering the services?
Most of the time, in the corporate world, it is the opposite, with clients paying suppliers 60, 90, and even 180 days after receiving the service.
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