Nebius Shares Shed 11% as Hot US Jobs Data Compounds a $5 Billion Financing Squeeze

Nebius shares fell 11.45% after May's U.S. jobs report crushed rate cut bets. Despite a $46B AI cloud backlog and big deals, insider selling and massive capex needs raise concerns.

The euphoria that swept Nebius shares earlier in the week evaporated in a single session on Friday, with the stock dropping 11.45% to €197.90. The trigger came from across the Atlantic: the U.S. economy added 172,000 jobs in May, more than double the 80,000 analysts had penciled in, pounding the final nail into hopes for a near-term rate cut. For a capital-intensive growth story like Nebius, a higher-for-longer interest rate regime is about as welcome as a GPU shortage.

Just three days earlier, the stock had been trading at an all-time high of €242.95, thanks in large part to a splashy announcement from France. President Emmanuel Macron used the "Choose France" summit to tout Nebius’s plan to turn a former Bridgestone tire factory in Béthune into a massive AI data center. The company will spend more than €8 billion on the project, with a 240-megawatt capacity target. The first 60 MW phase is slated to come online in summer 2026 and create about 120 direct jobs. The market loved it: shares surged 14.5% on June 1 on volume of more than 24 million shares. But the jobs report, released June 6, washed all that euphoria away. The stock now sits 18.54% below its peak.

Adding to the unease is a steady drumbeat of insider selling. Over the past twelve months, Nebius has seen 16 insider disposals and not a single purchase. Chief technology officer Danila Shtan sold 15,678 shares on June 4 — part of a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan, so no panicked exit. He still holds roughly 291,700 shares worth about $69.7 million. Yet the pattern is hard to ignore. Over the last three months, insiders have collectively shed 694,898 shares valued at roughly $130.7 million. Other executives, including sales chief Marc Boroditsky, finance chief Maria Del Dado Alonso, and directors Elena Bunina and Andrey Korolenko, have all been trimming positions through scheduled plans. None of this screams distress, but it does suggest that the people who know the business best see the current valuation as rich relative to the operational grind ahead.

The valuation debate is real. Nebius’s backlog of AI cloud contracts stands at a breathtaking $46 billion. The biggest prizes are a deal with Meta that could run to $27 billion ($12 billion in committed capacity plus up to $15 billion in optional compute) and a separate agreement with Microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion. Revenue exploded 684% in the first quarter, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has name?checked Nebius as an early partner for the Vera Rubin architecture, alongside Microsoft and CoreWeave. The bull case is thick with blue?chip names.

But the cost of turning those contracts into revenue is staggering. Nebius spent $2.47 billion on capital expenditures in the first quarter alone and has raised its full?year 2026 CapEx guidance to between $20 billion and $25 billion. With $9.3 billion of cash on hand, the company faces a financing gap of roughly $4 billion to $5 billion, according to analysts. Management aims to close it with secured debt and customer prepayments, but any move to equity at current levels would hammer existing shareholders. The risk of dilution hangs over the stock like a storm cloud.

That cloud is already darkening the mood among sell?side analysts. BNP Paribas initiated coverage on June 2 with a "Neutral" rating and a $255 target, arguing that the stock’s run?up had gotten ahead of the operating reality. DA Davidson downgraded to "Neutral" as well, though it raised its target to $250. Citizens JMP remains staunchly bullish with a "Market Outperform" and $270 target, while Morgan Stanley is the most cautious on the Street with an "Equal Weight" and just $144 target. The S&P Global consensus is still "Buy," but the average price target of $238.86 lies barely 6% above Friday’s close. The range is wide — from $120 to $380 — reflecting the deep uncertainty about how the capital?raising saga will play out.

Technically, the selloff looks more like a healthy shakeout than a breakdown. Year?to?date, Nebius is still up 158.69%; over the past twelve months, the gain is 387.44%. The stock trades 32.45% above its 50?day moving average, and the relative strength index has cooled to 56 after flirting with overbought territory. But the 30?day annualized volatility of 136% should give anyone pause. This is not a stock for weak stomachs. Any macro data point — especially a hot jobs number — cuts straight to the price when volatility is that high.

One bright spot that may provide near?term support: billionaire fund manager Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness LP, which manages about $13.7 billion, bought 12.4 million Nebius shares earlier this year, giving it a 5.6% stake. Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, clearly sees long?term value. Nebius also secured power and land in Pennsylvania for up to 1.2 gigawatts of capacity in mid?May, and will hold its "AI Expert Forum" in San Francisco on June 9 to lay out the next phase of its vision.

For now, the market is laser?focused on the hard numbers: first production capacity from the Meta and Microsoft contracts won’t come until the second half of 2026. Until then, every macro surprise and every insider filing will be magnified. Nebius’s fundamental thesis — to be a leading AI infrastructure provider for the hyperscalers — is intact. But the path from a $46 billion order book to actual cash flow runs straight through a $5 billion financing gap, and this week’s jobs report was a blunt reminder that the road is getting steeper.