Nebius Faces a $15 Billion Debt Wall Even as Revenue Soars 684%

Despite a 684% revenue jump to $399M, Nebius stock falls 7% as total liabilities surge 1,000% to $15B and Meta eyes competing AI cloud, overshadowing strong cash reserves.

The numbers coming out of Nebius tell two opposite stories, and the market has chosen which one to believe. First-quarter revenue exploded 684 percent year-over-year to $399 million. The stock, however, took another leg down on Thursday, sliding more than seven percent to €187.10 — roughly 28 percent below its annual peak and miles from the $215.62 it was trading at just a day earlier. What investors are staring at is a company whose operational momentum has been completely overshadowed by a balance sheet that is ballooning faster than its top line.

That ballooning is the central concern. Total liabilities have surged more than 1,000 percent over the past twelve months to around $15 billion. Long-term debt alone has doubled to $8.4 billion, and management has ratcheted up the 2026 investment budget to as much as $25 billion — a figure that towers over the maximum $3.4 billion in revenue analysts expect Nebius to generate this year. The company is effectively pre-financing a colossal AI infrastructure build-out, and the market is pricing in the risk that those commitments will overwhelm earnings before they ever pay off.

Compounding the debt anxiety is a strategic threat from the company’s biggest customer. Meta Platforms is reportedly preparing to launch its own commercial AI cloud, using excess compute capacity that could one day compete directly with Nebius. The two are locked into a five-year contract worth $27 billion, and Meta alone is planning up to $145 billion in capital expenditure this year — nearly double last year’s figure. Yet analysts who follow the sector argue that Meta remains compute-constrained and still desperately needs the capacity it has rented from Nebius. The partnership is a matter of necessity, not convenience. But the specter of a client-turned-rival has spooked the market badly enough that all nuance has been lost.

Nebius is not without ammunition. The company holds a cash pile of $9.3 billion, built in part through convertible bond issuance, and a total order book exceeding $46 billion — a sum that includes a $17 billion commitment from Microsoft and backing from Nvidia. To fund further expansion, the board plans to use asset-backed financing secured by the Meta and Microsoft contracts, alongside customer prepayments. That contrasts sharply with rival CoreWeave, which is saddled with nearly $25 billion in debt and crippling interest expenses. Nebius’s balance sheet, while stretched, is at least cushioned by a fortress of committed revenue.

Further unsettling investors were recent insider sales totaling $132 million in stock. The company has said CEO Arkadiy Volozh sold his shares solely to cover tax obligations, but the transaction added to bearish sentiment. Technically, the stock remains up nearly 145 percent since the start of the year, and its 200-day moving average is still 62 percent below current prices. The Relative Strength Index has cooled to 42.6, signaling that the overheated rally has given way to a pullback from extreme levels.

Management, meanwhile, is trying to build a moat that doesn’t depend on raw compute margins. Nebius recently awarded generous compute credits to healthcare innovators in London, previewing a platform built around specialized AI for biopharma and genomics. The goal is to pivot away from low-margin capacity sales and into higher-margin vertical ecosystems — a diversification strategy anchored by that $46 billion backlog and the Microsoft and Nvidia relationships.

In the weeks ahead, the financing plan will be the single most important factor for the stock. Nebius must convince investors that its $25 billion spending spree will generate a return large enough to service its debt load and still leave room for profit. The 14 analysts covering the stock remain broadly optimistic, with a consensus price target of $244. For now, the market is focused on the shadow Meta casts and the $15 billion liability stack, ignoring the 684 percent revenue surge and the $9.3 billion war chest that sit on the other side of the ledger.