Nebius Brings Clarifai’s AI Inference Know-How In-House as Revenue Soars 684%

Nebius buys Clarifai's AI inference team and patents to build its 'Token Factory' software platform, while Q1 revenue jumps 684% to $399M and cash flow turns positive.

Nebius is no longer content just renting out GPU capacity. The Amsterdam-based neocloud provider has snapped up the core research and development team from Clarifai, a specialist in AI inference and compute orchestration, and licensed that company’s patent portfolio. The move, announced on May 12, 2026, pushes Nebius deeper into software — exactly where the cloud giants earn the fattest margins.

Clarifai founder Matthew Zeiler will join as senior vice president of research, overseeing work on multimodal agentic reasoning, world models, token efficiency and long-term memory for AI systems. Alongside the talent, Nebius secures a non-exclusive, perpetual license to Clarifai’s modern inference and reasoning stack, plus its related patents. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal slots in neatly with Nebius’s earlier $643 million acquisition of Eigen AI. Eigen optimises at the model level; Clarifai brings the system layer — software that distributes, orchestrates and stabilises AI workloads in production. Together they form what Nebius calls its “Token Factory”: a platform designed to slash the cost per generated word or image and give customers tighter control over the entire inference chain.

Revenue Surge and a Leaner Loss

The strategic push arrives on the back of blockbuster quarterly numbers. Nebius generated $399 million in revenue for the first quarter, a 684% jump year on year. The adjusted net loss came in at roughly $100 million — far better than the $174 million loss analysts had pencilled in on revenue of $375 million.

The Nebius AI Cloud segment alone contributed $389.7 million, up 841% from a year earlier and 82% sequentially. Operating leverage is starting to show: the segment’s adjusted EBITDA margin hit 45%, a sharp improvement from 24% in the prior quarter. Overall adjusted EBITDA reached $129.5 million. The stock touched record highs in response.

Cash generation also flipped. Operating cash flow swung from an outflow of $198 million a year ago to inflows of $2.3 billion. Nebius ended the quarter with $9.3 billion in cash and equivalents. The company raised over $6 billion year to date, including $4.3 billion in convertible bonds and a $2 billion investment from Nvidia.

Infrastructure Accelerates — With a Price Tag

Nebius is racing to lock down power and land. Contracted electricity capacity now exceeds 3.5 gigawatts, with management targeting more than 4 GW by the end of 2026. A new site in Pennsylvania secures up to 1.2 GW for a dedicated AI factory. In Independence, Missouri, construction has begun on a 400-acre AI campus that will create over a thousand construction jobs and roughly a hundred permanent roles.

A distribution deal with TD SYNNEX adds another channel: the IT distributor will offer dedicated Nvidia HGX B300 clusters hosted on the Nebius AI Cloud, giving the company access to enterprise customers through an established partner network rather than relying solely on direct sales.

But the infrastructure buildout comes at a cost. Nebius plans to invest $20–$25 billion in 2026, a staggering sum that underscores both ambition and execution risk. The company forecasts full-year 2026 revenue of up to $3.4 billion with an adjusted EBITDA margin around 40%, though it warned of a temporary hit in the second quarter when new server capacity comes online.

Analyst Divergence

Wall Street reaction has been broadly positive but not unanimous. Bank of America raised its price target to $240 from $205, citing strong demand. Citizens went further, lifting its target to $270 from $175 and highlighting Nebius’s control over both technology and power supply. Wolfe Research initiated coverage with a “Peer Perform” rating, noting that execution and funding risks remain, and pegged a fair-value range of $80 to $170.

The stock has rallied nearly 134% since the start of the year, giving Nebius a market capitalisation above $52 billion — roughly 16 times forward revenue. That multiple leaves little room for error. The next test will be whether the software platform, now supercharged by Clarifai’s technology, can translate Nebius’s enormous infrastructure expenditure into sustainable margin expansion.